Productivity Hacks for Solopreneurs (That Actually Work)

In this video, I'm going to share productivity hacks for solo founders that actually work and are actually simple to execute. In fact, these are the same productivity hacks that I've used to grow an eight-figure business as a solo founder that I eventually sold to a publicly traded company. For me, productivity is all about keeping things really simple. The first tip on the list is to really separate your time between maker time and manager time. In other words, create before you consume. This is something I learned from Paul Graham, who is the founder of Y Combinator. What do I mean by this? Well, most people, they get up, they grab their phone, they check Instagram, they reply to some text messages, they check their email, and then they sit down to do something, to accomplish something, to create something. It's really difficult to make that transition because your brain is in consume mode, which it loves because it's easy, right? It's easy dopamine and easy satisfaction. It doesn't have to actually work to get dopamine. When you're in consume mode and try to get into create mode, it's almost impossible, at least for me. What I learned from Paul Graham is he calls it maker versus manager time, where you need to have dedicated time to make things, and then you need dedicated time to manage things. For me, when I get up, I really focus on creating first before I check anything, before I check email, before I check a notion or whatever. I just go right into creating, whether that's writing, creating YouTube outlines. Either way, the point is you need to be creating first because I learned, at least for me, if I get into consume mode, it's really hard to get out of that and get into creator mode. The opposite is obviously really easy, right? Once you've created and then it's done, you can reward yourself with social media, with emails, with text messages or whatever. The next tip is more of like a business tip, but it's also really important for getting the most out of your time, which is to focus on things that aren't treadmill traffic. So no matter what business you're in, you probably need more traffic or at least want more traffic. And there are two ways to get it, basically. There are passive sources of traffic and there's treadmill traffic. Treadmill traffic is any traffic that's sort of a one-off thing. You have to do something and then you get a burst of traffic. So for example, if you create this long Twitter thread, it might do well, it might get you some traffic to your website, but after like a day, people are going to forget about the thread. Contrast that with creating a YouTube video that you create a video, you publish it on YouTube and it lasts for years. People watch it for years. I have videos for my channel that are like four or five years old and people still watch them. None of my tweets have had more than like a day in the limelight and then they go away. So for me, the number one thing in terms of productivity is if you focus on treadmill traffic, you're always going to be chasing that traffic, you're going to be on the treadmill and you're never going to be able to get off of it. If you focus on passive traffic sources, those will eventually compound and you're getting traffic over time, whether you're working on them or not. Obviously the advantage of treadmill traffic is usually it's faster to get traction. So for example, if you go on someone's podcast and the episode gets released, you get a little burst of traffic. But again, you had to work for that traffic, you had to grind for that traffic. If you spent that same amount of time creating a blog post that is published and ranks in Google, you can get traffic passively over time for potentially years. So for example, in the case of my last company, Backlinko, I would spend crazy amounts of time creating these ultimate guides. We call them the definitive guide to everything. We had one about link building, email marketing, copywriting. These took me at least 25 hours each to create. Took a lot of hard work. But once they were published and out there, they provided value over time. So if I publish that piece and I got a burst of traffic and then the traffic went to zero, that would be treadmill traffic. The difference is I got a burst of traffic and that traffic sustained over months and years over time. So it takes a lot of hard work for these passive traffic sources to work. But it's still worth it because when you invest in it, you're creating an asset that's going to bring in traffic for potentially months or years as opposed to something that's going to be a flash in the pan like a Twitter thread or a live stream. So if you want to be productive as a solo founder, you can't be doing grindy stuff like you need to work hard, but you need to be always thinking how can I sell this product that can create this asset? It's going to bring in value over time. If you're doing grindy stuff like speaking at events, doing sales calls, creating Twitter threads that are going to be gone tomorrow, that's not really a great use of your time. You might get burst here and there, but you're not really building something for the long term. The next thing that's been huge for me as a solo founder in terms of getting more done is having no meetings and no calls. Now, I have a whole video on why I don't do meetings, why I don't do calls and what I do instead. But the basic gist is meetings are usually a waste of time. They're a way to delay making a hard decision or just to chit chat. It feels like work, but you're not really accomplishing anything. If you're a solo founder, your job is to create things that are giving you leverage, whether that's intellectual property, technology, software, content assets, media, all about leverage because you're just one person, right? There's only so much you can do as a person. So every minute you spend in a meeting is time you're not spending building something, creating, putting stuff out into the world. That's the important thing. And for me, it's easier just to say no meetings, like we just don't do meetings, than to try to decide every time something comes up. Is this worth having a meeting? Should we have a meeting? It's easier just to have a no meetings policy and you'll figure out ways to make decisions without meetings because you're kind of forced into it. And in fact, you get better at making decisions and empowering your team to make decisions because they'll have to make them. They won't be able to schedule a meeting for next week to talk about making the decision. They'll just have to make it, which moves things along much faster. You kind of know inherently that meetings are a waste of time versus creating something. Just think of how different you feel after you have a meeting. You probably feel drained and tired and not very energized as opposed to accomplishing something. It feels good. It gives you energy. It makes you want to do more. So knowing that, why would you have meetings at all? So if you don't have meetings, how do you communicate with your team? Well, in my case, we use asynchronous communication tools like Notion. No Slack, no meetings, no Zoom, no Google Meet. It's 100% on Notion or email. For us, it's the best way to communicate because it allows people to have deep work, to accomplish things on their own time, to work on their own schedule without being interrupted all the time. When someone doesn't see a message, I assume they're getting something done or taking rest that they need. I'm not a big clock in and clock out. It's not a coal mine. And last up, one of the most important things that I've learned, don't create systems, hire experts. So if you see any blog post or watch any video or listen to a podcast episode about how to get more done in your business or how to be more productive or how to be more efficient, they're all going to tell you systems and documentation. You need to document everything. You need to have systems for everything. Like McDonald's is an example they use a lot. Like look at McDonald's. They have a documentation for how to make French fries and how to greet the guests and how to do everything. If you're McDonald's, that's really important. But if you're a solo founder business where your time is your most important asset and you need to get as much done as possible, you can't be spending time creating documentation. The reason I say that, even though that's somewhat controversial, is from experience. I used to create documentation for everything. I was big into this whole systems thing like, yeah, you need to create systems because then you can hire anyone off the street. They'll execute because you just have to follow a document that you created. There's a couple of problems with that. First of all, if you're hiring people that need to have their hand held through every step of a process, they're probably not going to be a good fit for you as a solo founder, right? Because you need high level people. You don't have time to be holding someone's hand on how to send an email or how to create a blog post in WordPress. You need someone that can just figure it out or ideally is better than you at that thing. Basically, you want people that have this figure it out gene. They're the people that are like, I started a project. I ran to a roadblock and I figured it out. Because think of any project you've ever done in your life. Has it ever gone smoothly? A hundred percent? Never, right? You've always run into roadblocks, problems, situations that you didn't foresee. It's bound to happen. And you want to work with people that run into that situation and they say, good, I'll figure out how to get past this. As opposed to emailing you. What do I do in this situation? As a solo founder, your time is so important, you don't have time to be dealing with that stuff. The counter argument. You create documentation. You won't have to worry about that because the person will just follow the documentation. What happens when something changes? Which it will. For example, back in the day, I created a bunch of documentation on how to send emails in Aweber, which was our email service provider. A week after I created the documentation, the whole UI changed. So if I had a VA go in there, they'd be completely lost. You want someone that's experienced with Aweber, knows how to use it better than you. So when they log in, they know what to do exactly. Or someone that has the figure it out gene and you just say, figure it out. You watch YouTube videos online, you contact their support if you have a problem. Someone that can take something to the finish line. If you're a big company, this is what middle managers essentially do. They micromanage people that can't do things on their own. But as a solo founder, you don't have time for that. You need to hire people that can execute on their own without your intervention. It's like, imagine if you're stranded on a desert island. That's kind of what it's like if you're working with someone, right? You guys are on this team together. Would you want to work with someone that's resourceful and can make a radio out of coconuts? Or do you want someone that's going to be completely lost and say, what do we do? What do we do? Every time a problem comes up. Otherwise, you're going to be spending your time managing people instead of growing. Yes, it's more expensive to hire someone that's good and has that figure it out gene, but the ROI is usually much better. Let me give you an example. Exploring topics. One of the things that separates us is that we don't just find trends, we manually curate them. So when a trend comes into the database, we have a human analyst look at that trend and determine whether or not it's worthy of going in the trends database. And we recently hired someone for this. It seemed like a good fit, but they were constantly asking questions because there are a lot of edge cases. So I created a video, like a quick Google doc that I put together on the criteria and they constantly ask questions. It just weren't a good fit. Right now, to be clear, it's okay if someone's new asking questions. Like that's actually good. It shows they care and they want to do a good job. But if someone's like far along in the process and they keep asking a question every time they run into an edge case, it's not a good fit, right? Like what I want is someone that's better at moderating topics than me, right? Someone that's going to teach me about moderating topics so I don't have to worry about it. It's the same thing with video editing. I could figure it out. It would take me years or I could just work with an expert who's better at it than I am. Which is a better experience? Me trying to figure it out myself or hiring someone with no experience and having them learn on the job or hire an expert who's already edited hundreds of videos. Obviously, the expert is better and that applies to everything in your business. You should be learning from them, not the other way around. You shouldn't be teaching them. You tell them what you want and along the way, they're blowing your mind and they're teaching you stuff because they're experts. So to quickly recap the most important things that you can take away from this video, number one, create before you consume. It's very tempting to get up, check TikTok, check Instagram, check your email because that's what your brain wants, right? It wants cheap dopamine. But if you get up and you create, your brain is going to be primed to create. And just think of how the feeling you have when you get up and you sit down and you have that cup of coffee and you're writing or you're creating something. It's a good feeling as opposed to cheap dopamine and then struggling to get around to actually creating something and procrastinating as much as possible before you finally get there. Next is focusing on channels that aren't treadmill traffic. Now it's okay occasionally to create something or to do something that brings in a burst of traffic. Like I go on podcasts sometimes as a guest. It's totally fine to do that now and again, but you don't want to rely on treadmill traffic because you'll never get off the treadmill. Next I recommend doing no meetings and no calls. Now if this is something that's really challenging, you can do it as an experiment for a week. Just be like for a week, I'm not doing any meetings or any calls and let's see how it goes. Worst case scenario, you're like meetings were super important for us. Like we were completely lost without them and you can go back to them. But more often than not, you're going to find that most meetings, if not all meetings are unnecessary and your business is much more efficient and moves along faster with a no meetings policy. And last up and maybe the most important because this is who you're going to be working with. Don't create systems, hire experts. Hire people that are either experts in the field or have that figure it out gene where they don't ask you a million questions. They don't get stuck with a problem. They figure it out. So that's about it. Now I'd like to hear from you. Are there any productivity hacks that you found that are really helpful that I didn't cover in this video? Leave a comment below. I'd love to hear it. I'll see you in the next video.