It’s time for another Hassl Chat; part of our in-depth interview series with fellow Hassl users to get a quick look at how they Hassl. We’ve got Tayllor in today — business owner, business coach, serial entrepreneur, agency founder, front end developer and a full-time badass in business. When we found out about how she uses Hassl to stay on top of things, we were thrilled!
I jumped on a call with Tayllor on a frosty Thursday morning. As I was steeping my morning tea from the other side of the globe, Tayllor was in Texas, finishing off another big day of work.
Tayllor helps women create their perfect business plan and strategy to make a profit from purpose. She is the owner of VZN Digital Design Workhouse, a black-led design workhouse that helps entrepreneurs & creatives bring their visions to life through brand and web design as well as Your Lash Bar, her other business.
It was great talking with someone who is so passionate and driven but cares to still build everything with balance and purpose. There is more to life than just work (you know, like rollercoasters and birthday cake) so it’s important to run a business that helps you be the best version of yourself.
Enough of me blabbering on, let’s get to our interview!
What’s the one bit of advice you typically give small business owners?
Workflow and systems! I find that a lot of people in service-based industries are just kinda winging it. This might have worked for them so far but it’s not sustainable or scalable.
Especially solopreneurs, they have lots stored inside their head but no systems in place to help them out. They have files all over the place – Google Drive, Dropbox, desktop, hard drives, emails – and they don’t realise that this is wasting so much energy and preventing them from getting bigger because their workflow sucks.
The best thing you can do is get organised and organise in a way that is sustainable. Get everything in place, from clients to accounting to files.
Task management, project management, file management, communication management. I think a lot of people just shrug it off because it’s boring or they think it’s not important. It is.
Why do you think so many people struggle to get their business off the ground?
Niche-down. We all have 1000 ideas about what we want or should be doing. But it’s important to find one idea and focus on it. Even though it might not be the right idea at first, you can always pivot, it’s just important to focus your energy on something rather than 100 things. You can’t grow 5 things at once.
What is profit with purpose? How do I create it?
I believe that work and purpose should be separate. You can have a purpose in your work and still make a living and be happy in your job but you can also separate your work-life from your real life.
It’s not healthy to identify yourself with your work or your job.
You are much more than that. Don’t look for the purpose by working, you’ll end up burnt out. Find a lifestyle and job that gives you purpose.
So often people are in dead-end jobs and hate going to work every Monday. But if you have something you are passionate about, there’s probably a way to profit from it. It might be indirect or it might be in a really long time, but you should still give it a try.
Do something you care about, something that interests you first. Then you just need a really good strategy and business plan.
That’s what I love to do and that’s what I love about coaching women. I help women pivot into something they are passionate about, something that feeds their purpose that they can make a living from that.
What’s the first step? How do you pivot passion into profit?
So the first thing I always ask is, what’s the thing that you’re going to do that you’re actually going to care about?
Because as an entrepreneur, you need to care, because some days you will wake up, and you will find it hard to find the strength to do all the things on your to-do list and you need to be able to get through it.
I ask my clients, “So, what are you going to do that you care about?”
I had a client recently that was like, “You know, one thing I really care about is the acoustic guitar. Like I just have this connection with the acoustic guitar. I’ve been playing since I was nine blah, blah, blah.”
And I thought about how he could pivot his passion into profit.
I bought a guitar 9 months ago but never learnt to play anything. So I told him he could create short, daily guitar lessons that his audience could follow along with.
It’d be nice for me to just pick up my acoustic guitar and follow someone who’s giving tips on Instagram saying, “Alright, today we’re gonna learn how to play this song in one minute.”
Once you build an audience, you could sell courses or provide tutorials over Zoom. Yes, you might end up doing a lot of work for free, but at the end of the day, you’re doing something that you love anyway so it won’t feel like you’re getting ripped off, you’re playing the guitar every day because you love it.
That was a way to pivot into profit.
How do you stay productive? Does Hassl help with that?
Hassl is the perfect tool for planning and running a business without getting overly complicated.
I start planning quarterly, and then I go monthly, and then weekly, and then daily. Planning quarterly gives me motivation. I make high-level goals every quarter – that works for me best. When I plan out in quarters, I plan out milestones and goals I want to achieve.
Last quarter, my goal was to officially launch my coaching business, my next quarterly goal might be to get 5 new clients. I write all of my quarterly plans down in the same notebook. It’s a notebook that I don’t look at every day but I’ll look at it on a weekly basis to remind myself what I need to be focusing my energy on.
I’ll review my progress and write down if I am on track or what I need to focus more on.
Each Sunday, I plan out my week, using my quarterly milestones to create tasks under that to reach them. So when I’m planning my week, I write down my weekly schedule in my planner. I also write down the main four things that I need to achieve that week on Sunday. These are my top things and then I’ll write out my sub-tasks for those major tasks throughout the week to make sure I’m accomplishing those four milestones.
I put all of my milestones and tasks into Hassl so that I can tick them off every day.
For some people, it’s tedious. But I like doing it. I feel so good when I personally accomplish my goals, especially my quarterly goals. So, I want to do everything I can to reach them. Those are the most important things to me. If I set a goal for myself, I want to make sure that I’m close as hell to achieving it. And the best way for me to do that is to start breaking it down into smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller tasks until it’s achievable on a daily basis.
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Damn, how good was that!? We talk a lot about productivity and planning at Hassl but Tayllor is a living, breathing powerhouse and it was so amazing to grab some nuggets of wisdom from her.
She also has some amazing tips on her socials, so jump on over and give her a follow on Instagram.