This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
I've been enjoying these conversations, this kind of back and forth dialogue about people's business ideas, about their specific challenges, what they're trying to do, what's going well, what's not. Just as a reminder, if you have a question, a comment, something you might like to participate in or share with other folks out there, we have a global community. You can always go to sidehustleschool.com/questions and send us a note. But today let's talk about someone who feels like they might be stuck in low paying gigs. So they have been able to work for themselves, which is good, but they're not quite doing it in a very profitable way or they want to be more profitable, let's say.
And even if you have made some progress, you can always make more, we can always improve. So we're gonna hear specifically from a contract bookkeeper. She wants to boost her productivity and income. What are some ways to do that? Especially when you're juggling multiple projects and deadlines, how can you streamline a workflow, attract higher paying clients?
And you can do this regardless of the field. And if you have an e-commerce business or if you're into affiliate income or blogging or like there's always a way to apply what you hear on the podcast, at least that's my goal. My goal is to always give you something helpful, even if it's in a different industry or it's a different kind of person or something. Like there's something we can do to improve ourselves. And I try to do that myself every day.
So we're all learning here together. Today's topic, stuck in low paying gigs. Let's get out of that detailed question and my answer coming up in just 30 seconds. [Music]
Hey, my name is Lena and I'm a contract bookkeeper. I've been juggling multiple projects for the past year, but I'm struggling to manage my workload and meet deadlines consistently.
I'm looking for tools and techniques to help me stay organized, prioritize tasks and boost my productivity. Additionally, I feel like I'm stuck in a cycle of low paying gigs and want to find better opportunities to grow my income. How can I effectively manage my time, streamline my workflow and attract higher paying clients to take my side hustle to the next level? [Music]
Okay, so it sounds like we have a couple of different things going on here. I'm gonna give you three recommendations and the third will be the most important by far.
So in terms of the tools and techniques to stay organized and such, project management tools like Trello, Asana or toggle to track tasks, deadlines and time spent on each project can be helpful. I use a tool called OmniFocus. I use another one called Timular. So OmniFocus is to track my tasks and projects. Timular is to track my time.
So that's the first tip is using some project management tools. I think those can be helpful. I will link some of those up on the notes page. The second thing is prioritizing and batching tasks wherever possible. And you could also do some automation and outsourcing as part of that.
So basically this is all like how to work smarter which is important. And we could have a whole episode about that. But my third recommendation, this is where it's really at because I think the greater problem here is the second part of the question. Stuck in a cycle of low paying gigs and I wanna find better opportunities to grow my income. Okay, well, in that case, it doesn't really matter which project management tool you're using.
What you need to do is raise your rates and specialize. You need to gradually increase your prices to reflect your experience and value. And a big part of this is gonna be specializing in a particular industry or niche to position yourself as the expert and therefore commanding a higher fee. We see this over and over. We see this across different industries, case studies, different callers, listeners, stories and such when they choose to specialize and when they become the go-to expert in this particular field, that's what allows them to charge a higher rate.
They may not even be doing anything that different from what they were doing before, but by marketing themselves as this specialist, it makes a big, big difference. So if it were me, I would try to learn some of these tools and improve my ability to work smart. But I would more importantly think about how can I really raise my rates and specialize? I think that's gonna make a bigger difference in your life. So I'm wishing you well, cheering you on.
As always, listeners, let me know how I can be helpful to you as well, sidehustleschool.com/questions. New episode every day, seven days a week. This was 2,719. A new one's coming up tomorrow and beyond. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
