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One of the biggest mistakes I see jewelry business owners making is confusing important tasks and urgent tasks and actually assuming that they're the same thing, which they very much are not. So I'm diving into that with you today. And before we dive in, I wanna take a moment to just say that if you are feeling excited to grow your business, if you're feeling motivated, if you're feeling ready to really take intentional and strategic action in your business, then the jewelry business academy is the place for you.

It is the most expansive container for jewelry business owners ready to scale their business. So if that feels exciting to you, you know what to do, head to Robin Clark coaching on Instagram and you can DM me there or you can head to jewelrybusinessacademy.ca to learn more about the program.

And you can go ahead and book in a call with one of our team. My name is Robin Clark and I'm obsessed with all things business and marketing. I'm a jewelry designer who left the corporate world and grew a successful jewelry business.

And now I help women just like you from around the world do the same. I'm the founder and CEO of the jewelry business academy, the host of the jewelry business academy podcast. And I'm here to help you scale your jewelry business to six figures and beyond without burning out.

Through my coaching program and podcast, I help you navigate the challenging seasons of business as well as teach you the secrets to building a sustainable business that makes you feel good. So grab a cup of tea and your notebook, get cozy and let's dive in. Hello and welcome back.

I am so happy to have you guys here with me today and to be diving into a really important topic, which to be honest is something that I see a lot of business owners struggling with no matter how many years they have been in business for. And so I think it's actually something that's really important for anyone to be listening to no matter where you are in your business, how long you've been in business for because it's something I even have to remind myself like, hey, you need to make sure you're prioritizing the right things here on a weekly basis when I check in with myself and check in with the tasks that I'm doing. And so today we're gonna be diving into, the difference between important tasks in your business and urgent tasks in your business because a lot of people assume these are the same tasks and that's where they make a detrimental mistake, which honestly is why there's a lot of people who are very busy and aren't seeing a huge return on that investment for that level of busyness.

And so it's really important to understand the difference which is what we're gonna be talking about today, like what is the difference between important and urgent tasks? How do you identify that difference? And then how do we make sure we are prioritizing the right tasks on a day-to-day basis in our business and in our life as well? So when we first looking at important tasks, what are important tasks? Essentially, important tasks are things that you can do in your business that have an outcome that's going to lead to you achieving your goals in your business or in your life. So important activities lead to you achieving your goals. Now, urgent activities on the other hand, are tasks or activities that demand your attention.

And very often it's associated with achieving someone else's goals and maybe you're thinking, well, how's that possible? Because there's urgent tasks in my jewelry business and there's nobody else in my business, it's just me. How am I achieving someone else's goals through that? So we wanna remember these urgent activities, they're time sensitive, they require immediate attention to avoid consequences that we may have put on them ourselves which we may have put those on ourselves when in fact that's not the case, there aren't necessarily such big consequences to them not getting done in that time period. But generally what we do is we prioritize urgent activities over important activities because of the time sensitive nature of these.

So, if we look at kind of examples of what these could be in a jewelry business, well, urgent, there's just so many urgent things. When I look at like what I've spoken to jewelry business owners about even just in the past week in terms of the tasks they're doing which they believe are super urgent which do fall under the category of urgent but they are prioritizing over everything else. It would be things like, getting new displays for an upcoming event which is like a couple of months down the line.

It would be things like, doing collaborations with other brands when you're not actually even getting the key things done in your business yet. Anything that's time sensitive, anything that other people are demanding of you to do. Even things like getting orders out, our urgent, making orders, replying to DMs from customers.

This is massive. There seems to, people put this in the urgent category and yes, we wanna be mindful of the time that it's taking to send messages and replies to customers but it doesn't necessarily mean that that is something that we need to prioritize above all else. So I think that's actually a really, really good example when we break this down of an urgent task because of the time sensitive nature and people jump and give their time and energy freely to people in their DMs who maybe aren't even purchasing yet or maybe will never purchase.

So that's something we wanna be mindful of. And then when we look at what the important tasks are in your jewelry business, well, those are things that are going to move the needle. Those are things that are gonna move you closer to your goals.

Those are things that aren't necessarily fun and exciting but it's things like prioritizing, sitting down each month, getting clear on your goals for that month, getting clear on your marketing strategy, getting clear on, okay, how many emails am I sending? What is the theme of these emails? What is the content? What is the structure of this? And taking the time to actually be intentional with what you're sending out and not just sending out random stuff on in a survival mode sort of way. It's also about, you know, taking the time to step back from your business and looking at your results. It's really important to step back every month or every single week and just get some perspective, look at what's doing well, look at what's not doing well and either pivot the things that aren't working or hone in on the things that are working well and go all in on those.

And your business is gonna be a continual refinement process. You are constantly going to be refining the processes, the tasks, the way you do things in your business as you scale, that's business, that's how it works. But if you don't take a moment to step back on a regular basis, you're gonna keep doing the same old thing without any kind of growth.

And that's why you often will see business owners who are like, well, this worked really well for me after this point, I was doing all the same things. And now I'm kind of plateaued and I don't understand why. And so often it's because they've been so busy in the hustle and bustle of like going to events and shipping orders and replying to DMs that they haven't prioritized taking a step back every single week, looking at their numbers, looking at what's doing well, looking at what maybe they need to put change or pivot and looking at the things that are going well and that they need to hone in on and do even more and just double down on.

And so, if you're plateauing in your business, it's a sign that you need to take a step back and get perspective and really take a look at what is happening, why it's happening and what you can do to pivot and to change and to improve and to get out of that place where you're in that plateau and to actually start building momentum again in your business. So don't underestimate the importance of prioritizing important tasks in your business. These should be done before urgent tasks.

And I know how challenging that is because we're like, oh, but I have to do this and I have to do that. You don't have to do anything. You're your own boss and typically we're terrible bosses to ourselves.

You know, what you do have to do is prioritize things that are gonna move the needle in your business. This is why, like I personally pretty much never take calls in the morning. That's when I prioritize things that are moving the needle in business and I don't allow anyone to take that headspace because that's a priority for me and that should be a priority for you as well.

You shouldn't be giving your key headspace and energy out to tasks that can be done later on in the day. You want to be making sure that you are getting perspective every day, that you are taking time to work on those key important tasks that are going to drive results. And so, you know, first thing in the morning, you're jumping onto Instagram and replying to DMs from customers and replying to emails.

That is a very clear example of somebody just diving into the urgent tasks, which can be done a few hours later and it's not gonna have an impact on your business, believe it or not. You people can believe that you sleep and that you eat and that you have other things going on. They do not need immediate responses.

They will survive and they will still be happy when you reach out to them. As long as it's not days later, you know what I mean. So that's a clear example of someone who's prioritizing urgent tasks and what does this do? It puts them in a state of feeling frantic in their business.

And you know, I can tell you when I talk to somebody who's frantic in their business, it gets my anxiety up because just the way they show up when they come and talk to me is they're frantic. They're frantic and they're in a rush and they're like, there's so much to do and there's so much to do. And when you're in that state of like, it's kind of like a flight state of mind, it's really hard to look at things logically.

It's really hard to get perspective. It's really hard to make sure that you are focusing on the right tasks in your business. And it's really hard to prioritize tasks that feel less urgent, feel like, oh, but I can do that tomorrow.

Oh, I can do that next week. Oh, I can do that later this month. But actually, if you prioritize those today, if you prioritize those this week, you would be seeing better results in a week from now or in a month from now.

So, you know, I really want you to take a moment and journal about like the tasks that you're doing on a daily basis and think about, okay, well, which of these tasks are urgent and which of them are actually important? And I'm curious to know if you're actually doing any important tasks in your business on a daily basis because let me tell you, quite a few business owners aren't doing any of those. They're just focusing on the urgent tasks, which is why they plateau in business. So, I'm gonna keep this short and sweet and so that you can actually go take action on this, which is what I want.

And yeah, really start prioritizing those urgent tasks. And when it comes to prioritizing those tasks, it's really key that you are clear on how long that's gonna take. What does that look like for you? How can you make it a fun task to do? And, you know, schedule it into your calendar or put it in your list and make sure you're checking it off.

And it's not just something that's floating somewhere in your mind that you know, oh yeah, that's important. I need to do that. I remember Robin had a podcast and she mentioned, I need to do these important tasks, but I know I'll get round to it.

Don't do that. Make sure you're clear on how many important tasks you need to be doing in your business. It's gonna vary a little bit for each jewelry business owner.

You need to get clear on how often you need to be doing those tasks on a daily and weekly basis. And then you need to make sure you have it on a list so you can check it off and actually get it done. You need those different levels of accountability to actually get things done and to actually see results in your business.

So, yeah, I hope this helps all you business owners who are in hustle mode. I hope this helps you step back, get some perspective, get clear on the tasks that you are working on in your business and actually like, prioritize things that are gonna move the needle in your business. And if you're struggling to identify those tasks, go through each task one by one and say, okay, is this particular task going to drive sales and growth and move the needle in my business? Or is this something that is necessary to do? It is urgent.

There is a time requirement, but it can wait a little bit longer because this other task is a priority in terms of driving that growth in my business. So, yeah, take some time to journal. I don't wanna go on too long because I want to keep this focused.

And let me know how it goes. Thank you so much for listening today and I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. If this podcast is really uplifting you and inspiring you and making you feel motivated to show up in your jewelry business, then I'd love for you to take a second to screenshot the episode you're listening to and tag me on Instagram.

It's Rub and Clark Coaching. I love connecting with you on your entrepreneurial journey over on Instagram. And if you are also finding this podcast incredibly valuable, I really would appreciate you to take one minute to quickly leave us a five-star review on Apple podcasts.

It really has a huge impact on helping us get the word out there so that we can support more and more jewelry business owners on their journey through our podcasts and through our content and program. So thank you in advance for taking a moment to do that and I'm looking forward to seeing you next week.