👋 Hey there!

🚅 This is issue #28 of The Double E Bullet where I share two bullets of things to help you elevate your entrepreneurial journey so you work smart, not hard.

Did you know that today is considered Digital Learning Day? Apparently, it’s being celebrated every last Thursday of February – but regardless, I think that learning should never stop especially with technology being fast-paced and constantly changing.

BULLET ONE
​📝 Divide and Conquer 📝

We’re starting our EE bullet this week with a concept that has been extremely helpful not just in the world of business but has even been used in ancient warfare.

The divide and conquer strategy is pretty simple: break down larger tasks into smaller, manageable, and achievable items through a task or to-do list.

Even better if you can delegate these tasks to individual team members, ideally based on their area of expertise, to create greater efficiency and productivity for the entire team.

In my own business, I power-up this strategy using the four tips below:

1. ELIF (Explain Like I’m Five) – As the name suggests, we break down larger goals into smaller tasks and explain the details as you would to a five-year-old.
2. Define tasks to their core- When working on a project, it’s very important to write down everything there is to know about the client, including meeting notes and their expectations of the project. This helps create large tasks that are workable within your time frame, even after you’ve broken them down into smaller tasks.
3. Prioritize like a pro – I love using the 4D Matrix (check out below) to help me sort through tasks, especially when they become overwhelming.
4. Use calendar containers – Setting goals is all about making them smart, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound. Creating very specific timelines for your tasks helps you keep them small because you are forced to complete them only within the specified time frame.

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BULLET TWO
📹 Loom Videos 📹​

And while we’re on the topic of dividing and conquering tasks – here’s one cool tool that I have found has been very helpful in many areas of my business: LOOM.

Loom is a video messaging tool that you can use to create five-minute clips (on the free version), of you, speaking to the camera or with you sharing your screen, talking head optional.

“How can I use it for my business?”, you might ask. Here are a few examples:

1. Recording feedback or communicating tasks: Let’s face it, meetings can be such a waste of time and emails can be confusing and disorganized. With video messages, you can show exactly what, where, or how you want things to happen. This helps save time and improve communication among team members.
2. Creating SOPs and onboarding communications: Do you have repetitive tasks for your team members that you seem to be teaching over and over again? Record yourself doing those tasks- exactly how you want them to happen, and send it to your team as part of their training or your company’s knowledge base. In case you need to train another member in the future, they can just access it anytime.
3. Creating content: If you have courses or digital products that are better explained with a video, let Loom do its job. Record presentations or share your screen with you talking in the background, and then download or embed it to add to your course content. You can even use it for YouTube videos! Loom has some basic editing tools, can generate transcripts for free, and can even remove uhms and ahhs from both your video and transcript.
4. Sales & Marketing tools: At Cloudscape, we use Loom to send proposal explainer videos to prospective customers. Prior to sending the proposal, we use Loom to record our faces and screens to walk through the proposal and have found it to be a really effective way to explain all of the aspects of the document without having to jump onto a Zoom call.

Now, I am just scratching the surface with this list – there’s so much more you can do with Loom. What is also awesome is that their Business Plan already offers unlimited videos and recording time; so the possibilities are endless!

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DHIREN’S UPDATES

You’ve now gotten a lot of tips and hacks on productivity and are probably now a master at breaking down your huge goals into smaller, more attainable ones.

Even though delegation is a critical part of running a startup, it can be hard. For founders and entrepreneurs who are used to wearing every hat, it can be hard to find someone who can share their workload. After all, we consider our businesses are our babies so it can be extremely difficult to hand over even just a portion of that to someone else.

To make delegation a habit, there is an entire skill set that you must learn. Luckily, I’ve been there and done that, and I’m willing to help you out. In this video, I make the process of delegating your work simple – by teaching you three easy skills they don’t teach in business school that will have you making a habit out of effective delegation in no time.

Check out the video below 👇