Streamline Your Small Business for Growth: Essential Productivity Tips from Donna Dube

In this episode of the Talk About Digital Podcast, host Mark A Preston welcomes business growth strategist Donna Dube to discuss how small business owners can streamline their operations, boost productivity, and set up systems that drive sustainable growth. Donna brings a wealth of experience in helping entrepreneurs manage their workload efficiently, transforming overwhelmed business owners into confident CEOs who can focus on what truly drives their business forward.

If you’re a small business owner struggling to keep up with daily tasks while growing your customer base, this episode is a must-listen. Donna shares practical, no-nonsense strategies that allow you to step out of the weeds and work on your business, not just in it.

What Will You Learn?

Donna explains the importance of setting up foundational systems and processes that save time, reduce stress, and create room for business growth. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a clearer vision of how to free up your schedule for high-impact tasks and how to build a business that doesn’t burn you out.

Key Takeaways for Small Business Owners:

• The CEO Mindset: Donna discusses why every small business owner, even solopreneurs, should think like a CEO, focusing on vision, strategy, and growth rather than getting bogged down in daily tasks.
• Streamlining with Systems and Automation: Learn how simple tools, like calendar schedulers and automated reminders, can eliminate time-consuming tasks and let you focus on what matters most.
• Effective Time Management with the CEO Power Hour: Discover Donna’s concept of the CEO Power Hour—a dedicated weekly session to review your business goals, track progress, and set priorities. This one-hour habit can transform how you approach your week and keep you on track to achieve your business objectives.
• Focus on Revenue-Generating Activities: Donna breaks down the importance of prioritising tasks that drive revenue, allowing you to cut out distractions and focus on growth-focused activities that bring real results.

Why Listen?

This episode offers a roadmap for small business owners looking to take control of their time, improve efficiency, and build a foundation for steady growth. Donna’s insights will help you simplify your workload, establish productive routines, and make your business operations more effective, freeing you up to focus on customer growth and big-picture goals.

TAD Takeaway: Donna’s actionable advice is to implement a weekly CEO Power Hour. This structured, one-hour session is your time to step back, review your goals, and plan your priorities—helping you stay proactive and aligned with your vision.

If you’re ready to streamline your business and set yourself up for sustainable growth, this episode is packed with tips you can start using right away.

Connect with Donna Dube:

Website: https://www.ceoamplify.ca/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donna-dube/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/donna.dube.96/

Connect with the Host - Mark A Preston:

Website: https://www.markapreston.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markprestonseo/
X: https://x.com/MarkPreston1969
Mark's Latest Book: Customer Growth Unlocked

This podcast is produced by Voice It Podcast Agency
https://voiceitpodcastagency.co.uk

Transcript

[00:00:00] Mark A Preston: Welcome to Talk About Digital, the podcast for small and medium sized businesses looking to grow new customers through impactful, low cost digital marketing strategies. Have you invested in digital marketing with zero positive impact? If this sounds like you, then this is the place for you. Each week, we provide actionable steps to move your business forward with our TAD takeaway, helping you to harness your biggest asset, yourself, to achieve big impact with minimal investment.

Stay tuned as we dive into the world of digital marketing, offering insights and advice that will transform your business. Let's get started. Today on the Talk About Digital podcast, I'm thrilled to welcome somebody who's passionate about helping small business owners. Her journey through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship has given her a unique perspective on what small business owners truly need to succeed.

She's all about doing less better. Helping business owners banish the busy work and focus on what drives real growth and sustainability. Please welcome Donna Dew. 

[00:01:15] Donna Dube: Thank you. Hi, Mark. So happy to be here. 

[00:01:18] Mark A Preston: Wonderful. Well, before we get into a Q and A, could you just give the audience a bit of a whirlwind tour of who you are and your background and how you become to be what you are today?

[00:01:29] Donna Dube: Yeah, sure. And I promise I'll give The short version, because like many of your listeners, I'm sure our path to entrepreneurship is windy and twisty, not narrow and straight. Right. Um, so I actually started my career in the healthcare field. So I was an RN in the ICU for a number of years and one might wonder, well, how in the world did you get from there to, you know, helping online business owners?

Uh, certainly it was a jump, but. I found that once I had my family and the kids, the shift work was getting a little bit harder. And so I left to healthcare field, looked after kids, homeschool kids for a while. And then I wanted to get back into the working field. And I really had to do some big deeping to look at where are my skillset and how can I help people?

And so I ended up coming into online businesses and the backend being like project manager. I've always had a natural talent towards that type of thing, keeping things in track, keeping things on budget, what needs to be happened next, planning ahead, all those types of things. So coming into online businesses, helping them with manage a project, whether that was, you know, they want to write a book or they want to launch a new offer, whatever that looked like.

And I quickly realized Mark that so many online business owners are drowning. It all looks good on the outside. But they themselves don't have control. And so they're working 24 seven way more than they should be. They feel guilty because they don't have time for family and friends or their passions that they once enjoyed.

And they want to grow. And they want to get bigger and they want to make a bigger impact, but they have no idea how they're going to do it without working more and more and more hours. And there comes a point when you can't continue that anymore. And unfortunately for many, that leads to burnout. And so I quickly decided, no, I want to help these business owners dig into their operations and their backend a little bit more and actually help them start to think and act.

Like the CEO of the business. And I know for some small business owners, when I say CEO, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not a CEO. I, there's only me and I have one little contractor for 10 hours a week. But the truth of the matter is that you are the CEO of your business, whether you have a team or not, because CEO is responsible for the vision and the strategy.

Where are we rowing this boat? Where are we going in the next three to five years? That's got to come from you. And you need to have time in your days and your weeks to look at that big picture and think through those things. 

[00:04:04] Mark A Preston: All the way through there, I was nodding away for the audience who can't see. I was nodding away because I have been personally guilty myself of maybe not spending the time I should be for family.

And it's always been a big challenge personally to juggle family with basically building businesses. So when you've gone into these businesses, what are the commonalities behind them? 

[00:04:32] Donna Dube: Yeah. So a couple of things I see, Mark, one is some people are afraid or not sure when it's time to hire. So they might be solo partners.

They're doing a lot of things that I would call our maintenance tasks. And by maintenance, I mean, they need to happen to have your business run smoothly, but they're not necessarily revenue generating. So things like, you know, fixing your landing pages, setting up your email sequences, setting up social posts and captions, doing your bookkeeping, paying your taxes on time, all those things need to happen, invoicing, but they're not directly tied to bringing in more revenue.

And so what I try and help business owners with is, what can we do with those maintenance tasks to get them off your plate? Hiring is one option. We can hire someone part time. They don't need to be a full time employee. Delegating by automating is another option. And actually stopping is a third option.

And I don't mean stopping your business, I mean stopping things that don't actually have to get done. They're not giving you return on investment, but you're spending time on them. And that precious time, you don't have to do those growth level tasks or those CEO level tasks, the tasks that do move your business forward and move the needle in your business.

Things like networking, getting in front of new audiences, teaching and masterminds. Doing partnerships with other business owners, sales, whether that's one to one or one to many if you don't have a sales team, right? And so, developing new offers and products, all those things are things that you as business owner have to do.

And that's where we want you to be focusing most of your time. 

[00:06:18] Mark A Preston: Yeah. Well, people listening to this podcast, you know, it is about digital marketing and how to push your business forward and the whole customer growth. But a lot of the time when I've personally gone into businesses, I've seen that it's not about how can we get more numbers in, how can we drive sales?

Because there's a whole heap of backend stuff that needs to be done in order for that to be achieved. And I think a lot of time there are. Not complicated, just simple things that's being missed within small businesses. Now, what, what do you think those small things, businesses are missing? 

[00:07:00] Donna Dube: Yes, good point.

So what we like to call this in my operations world are systems and processes. And you're right, it doesn't have to be complicated. A system is really just a listing and order of how things should be done, right? And we can use a lot of the tools that we have available to us, the software tools available to us to help us with that.

So things like having a calendar appointment scheduler. So that you don't have to go back and forth with someone on email. Can you meet Tuesday at two? No, how about Thursday at three, right? You make your calendar available. They can see only the times that they're you're free, and they can compare it with their calendar and book without you having to intervene.

There's a lot of tools now to help us repurpose content in terms of the marketing side of things. So use those tools as we can. But there needs to be that foundation for how Different things are going to happen in our business before we bring in more numbers, because when we bring in more numbers, we have to be able to deliver on the promises that we made.

Right. And if we don't have systems and processes in place that foundation isn't there, we won't be able to handle those higher numbers. Right. So as an example, do we have three systems I like to talk about all the time, marketing, sales and client delivery, right? And within marketing, do we have a new way of attracting new people?

So do we have a system for attracting new people into our world each and every week? Is that system running smoothly? What parts am I responsible for as business owner? And what parts, if I have a team, are, is my team responsible for? Then once we have them in our world. Do we have a way of nurturing them?

How do we get them to know, like, and trust us? And is that a system continuously running behind the scenes? And then of course, do we have a way of inviting people to work with us? Do we have a launch plan if we're launching or do we have a way of inviting them? When are we doing that in our calendar year, right?

We all have a signature offer or a main offer that's our main bread and butter. How have we planned out? When I'm going to tell people in my audience about this offer and invite them to work with me. That's another system behind the scenes. And then, of course, once they become clients, a delivery system.

So do I have an onboarding? How do I work with them? How do they book calls if it's one on one or join a group? Or, you know, do I have a community where they need to communicate with me? All of that behind the scenes, that foundation needs to be there first. Then we can open the doors and let the floodgates come, right?

Because we're ready for those increased numbers. For more information, visit www. FEMA. 

[00:09:45] Mark A Preston: gov 

[00:09:45] Donna Dube: Does that make sense? 

[00:09:47] Mark A Preston: It does to me, and I'm sure it does to the audience. And a lot of time when I, when I've spoken to businesses, it's not the complicated things. It's like, well, why didn't I think of that? And that's what makes a difference.

It's not the high complicated, you know, big strategies and everything. It's usually that the light bulb moments thinking, well, why didn't I think of that? But sometimes you just need someone to bring it to the front and center to actually realize those things. Um, One thing that I want to talk about with the audience is this whole connection with the CEO bit you talk about and small business because I wouldn't put them two together.

So just give us a bit of an overview of how it links together. 

[00:10:43] Donna Dube: Yes. Well, if you look up what the definition of CEO is, it is the person responsible for the vision and the strategy, and that is what the small business owner is responsible for. They need to decide. How am I going to run this business? What direction is it going in?

What are my goals? What are my revenue goals? But beyond that, what are my goals in terms of how many people I want to reach, how many people I want to get in different programs, offers or services. And so that strategy and that vision has to come from the business owner. It doesn't matter if you have a team of zero or a team of 10, that focus and that vision has to come from you.

And so that's where I tie in. The CEO, because most of us are doing the day to day. Okay. Today I need to fix the landing page. I need to respond to that email. I need to tell my team this, I need to do that. I need to do that. And we're not taking that step back and looking at the big picture. Where am I right now, compared to my revenue goals.

If I'm down, what can I do to change that. Can I reach out to some people, you know, do some individual reach out. Can I do a flash sale. Can I, you know, join partnerships with somebody and get in front of someone else's audience. But if you're not tracking that and you're not staying on top of that. We end up getting to, you know, June or July, we're like, Oh, I'm nowhere near where I should be for my revenue goal.

Right. So it's about being proactive. Rather than reactive. 

[00:12:16] Mark A Preston: Yeah. I think a lot of time when I have similar conversations myself with business owners, he said, but I can't step back because all this stuff I'm doing now needs to be done and I can't really afford to pay someone else to do it. And I think they get into this route of, you know, working in the business and on the business and all this.

Yeah. these different aspects of the business and they just like running around like silly fools and everything. And sometimes you do need to take a step back. So for those small business owners that are in that turbulent space, what sort of advice would you give them? 

[00:12:59] Donna Dube: So the first thing I would say is, and while it's not exciting and it's not sexy, we need to do a time audit.

So I need to come beside you and see how you're using your time, right? So that means documenting two or three days in a row, how you're spending your time while you're at work. And it's okay if you're like, I took 20 minutes and sat on the couch, or I took 30 minutes and was scrolling Instagram. That's okay.

That's the reality of where you are right now. And we're going to help you. Elevate from that. So we do a time audit from that time audit. We can now see how you're spending your time. And we're going to put the things that you do into four buckets, things that I have to keep doing as business owner, things that I can delegate things that I can stop.

And things that I have to still decide about. I don't have enough data yet to know what to do with that task. So fine. Maybe we're in a position where we can't hire someone. Then we want to look at what automations can we set up? How can I make one piece of software talk with another piece of software so that I don't have to be in the middle of that.

Right. And there are a lot of automations we can do behind the scenes. It doesn't remove the human from the business. You're still there. It's just certain things can happen. This piece of data can go over there. Right. So for example, when someone purchases something from you, they're probably going to go on your email list.

You don't have to manually put them on your email list. Right. If you have a group program and you want to send out a reminder every third week of Tuesday. You can automate that. So setting up some automations will really help take some things off your plate. Evaluating, do all these things need to happen?

Because again, we get in a trap where we end up doing too much, too fast. And some of those things are not really bringing our business forward, right? So if you're in a spot where you're not having enough revenue come in to be able to even hire someone for five hours a week, then we really need to concentrate on what things do you need to do to bring in more revenue?

The extra shiny objects. They have to be put aside for now, put them in the idea parking lot. We really have to focus our time on what can I do to bring in the next three, 10 clients, whatever that looks like. And sometimes that may be looking backwards and saying, how did I bring in my last 10 clients?

And if there's a strategy that's working, I need to double down on that strategy and let go of some of those extra strategies I'm trying. that aren't producing results at the moment. 

[00:15:40] Mark A Preston: Right. So what sort of strategies have you seen in the past that actually work for small business owners to drive new customers?

[00:15:50] Donna Dube: Yes. So in terms of getting brand new people to your audience, is that what you mean? Or to, in terms of sales? 

[00:15:59] Mark A Preston: In terms of sales. So a customer is somebody that's paying you to do what you provide. Yes. 

[00:16:04] Donna Dube: Yes. Okay. So again, you have to know the audience that you have in front of you, right? And sometimes we can get in a trap where we end up getting an audience, but they don't match what we're selling.

So we have to go back to the basics there and make sure that what we're selling. Matches the needs of the audience we have. And if we don't know, then we need to find out, right? So we need to do some market research. We need to pull our audience. We need to make sure that what we want to offer them is fitting with what they're, what their needs are, what their pain points are, what they're looking for.

Once we know that offer is a match, then we need to have a strategy for how we're going to invite them. And many times, Mark, I just see it's a lack of actually inviting them frequently enough. So if you have a signature offer, I want you to be looking at your 12 months in front of you and saying, I want to invite people to the signature offer two to three times a year and actually map out when that's going to be right.

If you have something that's open all the time, great, but you still need to tell your audience about it. And I think sometimes as small business owners, because we know what our offers are, they're very clear to us. We forget that it could have been three months. Before we told our audience about that thing, right?

And so we do have to be open and, and communicative about our offers. We have to lead people where we want them to go. We can't expect them to go digging and find out and then, you know, eventually contact us and say, Hey, I want to work with you. What do you have? We have to be proactive and put that out in front of them.

And then for 2024, I have really seen, at least with my clients and myself, that one on one connection. Really making a big difference. So if you have the ability and the time and you have a, you know, a higher ticker offer, having that. Whether it's a, you know, discovery call, whatever you want to call it, but having that call where you get a chance to speak to your audience, they get a chance to see you one on one and really decide if it's a good fit or not has made a difference in terms of sales.

And then the piece that we always forget is that follow up, right? So here I am, I've launched something to my email list. People are clicking on the sales page and I'm not getting as many buyers as I want. So I'm actually going to go in and see who from my email list clicked onto my sales page. And I'm going to follow up with them.

I'm going to send a nice email and say, Hey Mark, you know, I noticed you're on the sales page for such and such an offer. Did you have any questions? I'd be happy to support you because sometimes our buyers are sitting there going, Hmm, I'm not sure if it's right for me. And they just need that personal connection.

I found that has really been helping in 2024. 

[00:18:54] Mark A Preston: Yeah, totally relate to what you're saying. And the whole personal connection thing is paramount, I think, for running a small business. And it's making that personal connection with your customers. But I think a lot of small business owners, they're afraid of being seen to be selling.

You know, they say, well, why haven't you just asked? Well, I don't want to be seen as though I'm pushy salespeople, but there's a fine balance there. You know, I mean, okay. You don't have to be the hard hitting salesperson, you know, that's on the telephone trying to sell you something you don't need, but there's a fine balance.

If people don't know you're offering what you're doing, then how You're supposed to gain new clients. And I think the whole sales aspect of customer growth is something that a lot of small business owners struggle with. Have you seen the same? 

[00:19:56] Donna Dube: Yes, a hundred percent. And I think part of it too, is that over the years we have led, been led to believe that create something and people will come and buy.

Right. It's not that passive, you have to be involved in it. There is so much noise out there, like if you go online you could buy how many things in less than 10 minutes. Right. And so, you have to be able to have that connection and you have to be top of mind for the people who are in your audience. And so I think.

For me, just trying to be authentic and being real and being human with the person on the other side makes a world of difference, right? And so if I get on a sales, sales call with you and we're talking and you're saying, well, this is kind of where I'm struggling. This is kind of what I need and what I have is not a fit, then it's not a fit.

And I'm going to refer you on to someone else who may be a better fit, right? And so I think it's really about having that mindset that I'm not desperate to take any fish that shows up, right? I need the right person and this offer needs to be right for them. And if it's not, I have to let them go knowing that there's other fish coming my way.

And so I think it really does start with our mindset. 

[00:21:15] Mark A Preston: Well. You've shared so much value so far and I'm sure the audience has got the cogs turning in the head. But I just want to finish off by asking you for a tad takeaway. It's something actionable small business owners can be doing in their business now that doesn't take a lot of money, that will help them Get from where they are now to where they want to be.

Now, my question to you is what is your TAD takeaway for the audience? 

[00:21:47] Donna Dube: Yeah, good question. So my TAD takeaway would be to implement what I call a CEO power hour. So this is one hour on your calendar. It's going to happen the same time, the same day, each and every week. And it's non negotiable, meaning that nothing gets in its way except for some life.

crisis. It's just as important as any other call on your calendar. And what you're going to do during this one hour is review. So you're going to look at some of your data, not every number that's possible under the sun. We're going to get strict here about what numbers, but we're going to look at a few numbers.

So we know where we're at. We're going to reflect on our week coming up and what our priorities are. We're going to set three, not five, not 10, not 17, three priorities. And we're going to make sure that we have time blocked off in our calendar to do those priorities. So I do have a PDF guide that will kind of walk you through that.

But the bottom line is this CEO Power Hour is really to help you set your week up for success. So you can do it on a Sunday evening. You can do it on a Friday afternoon. You could do it on a Monday morning, the day of the week. Doesn't matter. What's more important is that you do it regularly and consistently because you're trying to build a habit, right?

So this is giving you one hour in your week to really focus, look at the data, make some hard decisions and act like the CEO of your business. 

[00:23:14] Mark A Preston: Now that really is. A light bulb tag takeaway. Now, just to finish off, where can people find you and what sort of conversations would you like to have with small business owners?

[00:23:27] Donna Dube: Yeah. Thanks for asking. So you can find me at ceoamplify. ca. That's my website. And if you wish to download that PDF I was talking about, it's called the CEO Power Hour. Playbook. So it's free. You can download it and it'll walk you through how you do a CEO power hour in your business. It doesn't cost anything, just one hour of your time.

And so that's where, where people can find me. And certainly I love to have conversations with small business owners on how to get out of the weeds and be able to elevate and to actually take that step back from their business. 

[00:24:03] Mark A Preston: Well, Donna, many, many thanks for your time today. And I'm not sure, I know the audience will have received massive value from that conversation.

Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Thank you for tuning in to the Talk About Digital podcast. Remember every small step counts. Step you take brings you closer to your business goals. If you found today's episode helpful, subscribe to our podcast and sign up to your free 12 week TAD customer growth course@www.talk about digital.co uk to receive even more customer generating tips and in size.

Until next time, keep harnessing your strengths and making actionable. Impactful moves in your digital marketing journey. See you soon.