Unlock Productivity and Decrease Overwhelm with Lifestyle Designer Simone Little

Productivity

Jul 1

Written By Netta Dobbins

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Feeling overwhelmed with running your business yet?

Truthfully, overwhelm is something I’m all too familiar with.

That hustle life can be a double-edged sword. We chase our dreams, just to find ourselves drowning in to-do lists.

But guess what? There's a way out!

In this episode of "How I Made My First Dollar,” I chat with the amazing Simone Little. She's a lifestyle designer and serial entrepreneur who gets what it's like to be emotionally driven and wear all the hats. But Simone cracked the code – she found the secret sauce to work-life harmony without sacrificing success.

Here's the juicy stuff we're diving into:

Simone's journey from virtual assistant to lifestyle designer (hint: it involves a powerful "Four Ps" framework).
Practical tips to slay the overwhelm monster (because seriously, who needs that?).
Why celebrating micro-joys is the secret weapon you didn't know you had.
How to turn email marketing from a chore into a client-connecting goldmine.

So, if you're ready to ditch the burnout and build a business that fuels your soul, buckle up!

Simone Little: [00:00:00] I didn't make $10K, but the way that it was selling, I was like, Oh my gosh, people are paying me for this and they're paying quickly and they're leaving reviews and they're saying things like this worked for my ADHD. This helped fix my marriage. Like the reviews were crazy! And I was like, wow, I can really do this.

Netta Dobbins: Welcome to How I Made My First Dollar, your go to podcast for entrepreneurial success stories and actionable marketing advice. I'm your host Netta Dobbins, and with over a decade of marketing experience and an interesting journey of successfully building my own business, I'll be your guide here, helping you create a revenue generating business everyone should know about.

If you're already 10 toes down in entrepreneurship or simply flirting with the idea of taking the leap, this This podcast will help you unlock actionable strategies to really shift your business to the next level. Let's get started.

Netta Dobbins: Welcome everyone to "How I Made my First Dollar.". My name is Netta Dobbins and I'm your host and I have a very special guest today.

Her name is Simone Little, and I'm going to give her a moment to introduce herself before we get started. Simone, what's up?

Simone Little: Hello, Netta!. Thank you so much for having me here

Netta Dobbins: thank you. Tell the audience a little bit more about who you are and what you're doing and how we connected. Because one thing I want to talk about too is Threads.[00:01:00]

Threads has been connecting me to everybody. People that I've followed for years on Instagram I'm finally having conversations with. So go ahead, give the audience a little bit more about who you are and what you do.

Simone Little: Yes. So again, my name is Simone. I'm a lifestyle designer. I help women wake up every day with lives they look forward to living through productivity processes and operations. I mix all the things together and help you get to your next goal in life. But I'm also, I guess what someone classifies as a serial entrepreneur, I own and have owned many businesses before I've owned a hair salon for the past 15 years.

I'm a makeup artist. I'm a paralegal certification girl. I just be doing all types of things. Um, but right now my main bread and butter is the lifestyle design and I've been following you for quite some time. I've been in some spaces that you've taught in. And although I've been following you on Instagram, Threads has really given us an opportunity to actually have conversations like almost one to one versus just like leaving comments.

Like it's just it's so much more fulfilling.

Netta Dobbins: [00:02:00] Yeah, I 100 percent agree. And I want to talk about that because you work with entrepreneurs. We are entrepreneurs and we're connecting, right? You help emotionally driven entrepreneurs understand how to hustle or understand how to get out of the hustle, escape the hustle and build a lifestyle that really allows for I guess progressing the way that they want to progress and like hearing about you having all of these businesses like how one I want to know, like, how did you even land in this space for yourself?

Simone Little: Yeah, it was really natural. So the progression is when I started at the hair salon, you go to the hair salon, especially as black women, you go to the hair salon and you over time you develop this friendship with your hairstylist and you end up telling her all your problems. And sometimes she gives you advice.

You start implementing advice. You'd be like, Oh my gosh, my girl was right. That's where it started for me. I would start letting, telling my clients, what to do. They would come back a couple of weeks later, girl, what you did really worked out. It was like therapy, yeah. And throughout the [00:03:00] years. Being a VA, online business manager, I always had really close relationship with my clients. And I would tell them, this is how you run a business product productively. This is how you manage your schedule. This is how you manage your energy. As so i've always been doing the work, but packaging it in a way that made sense.

I just wasn't doing it. So I burned out myself fired all my clients from my VA agency that I owned. And I was like, all right. What do I actually want to be doing? What do I love that I'm doing? And it was this. And so I really just leaned into that. And I've been able to take the parts of what I really love and do that every day for my clients.

Netta Dobbins: So let's talk about that now, because you in your bio, like your bio one, you did that. I was like, Oh my God, she's so organized. I love it.

Simone Little: I got somebody to do it for me. I can't take too much credit.

Netta Dobbins: Okay. Whoever did it, congrats. You're an amazing copywriter. But within your bio, you specifically called out something called the four Ps, right?

Priorities, productivity, process, and planning. Talk to us a little bit about what that framework [00:04:00] means to you and how you landed with that framework for coaching your clients.

Simone Little: Yes. So I realized that a lot of times my clients don't feel productive. Like they don't feel like they're getting enough done.

The first thing I tried to do is reframe what that means is really just making progress toward your goals. So how can you make progress towards your goals? By understanding what your priorities in your life is, what is the process going after those goals, whether it's in your business processes, or the way that you actually move throughout your life, and then how to actually plan those things in a way that makes sense in order to go after those goals or to feel truly productive.

And so with all my clients, they had, we do that work and we land on their version of productivity versus whatever is out there floating and whoever's version. Social media. So you're trying to keep

Netta Dobbins: up with everybody. Yeah. Okay. Priorities, goals. As entrepreneurs, we have a lot of those, right? I have a checklist that fills up an entire page each day, and then I'm wondering, like, when do I spend [00:05:00] time with me?

When do I spend time with my friends? When do I spend time with my family? And I want to talk about balance, because I feel like your framework really helps people achieve balance or . A perception of balance. I feel like as an entrepreneur, you're never completely balanced. There are going to be some things that take over depending on the seasons that you're in.

So how do you define a soft life? One, because everybody's on Twitter and Instagram and threads talking about stuff like this stuff like that. How do you define that for the entrepreneurs that you work with and how do you help them achieve that type of balance?

Simone Little: Yes. And so you said something that was, you just hit the nail on the head.

As entrepreneurs, like balance really feels elusive. I don't believe in work life balance. I believe in work life harmony. It's like when you hear your favorite song the strings and the notes and the tone, they're not perfectly balanced. Some are lower, some are softer and make such a beautiful melody.

Like your favorite songs, you hear all the diversity and you love it. So it's the same way within our life. We have times [00:06:00] in which. Work takes a little bit more of a forward seed. We have times in which life is like, Nope, this is time with my family. This is time for me. And that takes the forefront. And so it's knowing when to lean into those seasons of a little more work or lean out from them and having strong cutoffs. So there are seasons of hustle. There are seasons of softness, and it's about understanding how to actually set priorities on. What needs to happen when right? And so when it comes to soft life versus hustle and really trying to figure out what happens in between.

I always say you should have markers for what you're going after. One thing we want to be very aware of is not to be hustling for long extended periods of time. So after maybe it's a few weeks. Okay, cool. Maybe you had a big project that you needed to get off your plate. All right. That's understandable.

But then after that, what is your recovery plan? What do you want to do to pour into yourself to get some of that softness back into your life? Can you do a mini staycation? You don't need to have a lot of money for this. I'm not even saying going to a hotel, but how can you make your [00:07:00] home more of a hotel?

Can you just go out? Can you go to the Dollar Tree and get a face mask? You know what I mean? Can we treat ourselves to a movie and maybe our favorite cup of coffee?

There are other things that we can do. I like to infuse micro joys, which are things that take less than 15 minutes to infuse into your every day. Maybe it's your favorite playlist. Can you spend 15 minutes and read your favorite book from your favorite author? Maybe watch your favorite movie. Those things really pour into us and take out some of that.

Hustle mentality. Hustle feeling. It makes us slow down and gives us some of that soft life.

Netta Dobbins: Yeah. I love that you said that because I am just a hustler by nature. Like I'm always like go. But I recently I got an executive coach. She's a black woman and one thing that we've actually talked about are the micro joy moments when you win a client, when you get 50 likes on a post, like something that you were scared to do.

How are you celebrating? How are you stopping and saying, Hey, I'm I've never done this before and it did well, or Hey, that was really hard, but I made my way through it. I [00:08:00] may not have seen the results I wanted, but it's still something to celebrate because I'm one step closer. So I love the idea of like micro joys.

How do you bring joy to your home? Because it doesn't always have to be a vacation. That was another thing in my head. I'm going to make X amount of money and then I'm going to go on vacation. What if you don't make it? And now I'm like, Six months in and I'm burnt out and I want to cry all the time. So I love that concept and I think that's something that I really wanted to hone in on because I want entrepreneurs to, entrepreneurs, small business owners, side hustlers, whatever you want to call yourself, I want you to make time for you and really know that everything is worth celebrating.

Okay, you talked about, I was a beautician. I was giving people advice while they were in my chair. They took it, they came back and they were like, girl, you did that. I did what you said. And it worked. So I think as entrepreneurs, we all have something in us. It's like, we we're really good at this, but we've been giving it away for free.

It's just something that we're naturally doing. So I want to talk about what was the aha moment that you had when you realized, Hey. [00:09:00] I'm really good at this and I can charge for this and somebody's going to pay me for this. What was that process like for you?

Simone Little: Oh, that's such a deep question.

Cause there's so many little moments that made up to such a big moment. So one of them was, it's all, it feels like it always starts with talking to my sisters. They're like my group of cheerleaders. I have a younger sister and an older sister. And so when I was talking to them about Me just feeling tired from running the VA agency and the online business management stuff and telling them about all the things that I was doing and what I like to do.

They was like, can you find a way to just do that? Sure. I hear you. Let's figure this out. At the same time, I was in a group membership and they were talking about, 10 K, 10 days, launch a service, all that. And I was like, I'm gonna try it. What is something that I Can do for someone else that isn't really in what I'm doing right now.

I enjoy making other people's schedules. Like as an assistant, you don't. At least type of assistant I was, I had to really understand my client's life to make a really good [00:10:00] schedule and their energy and all the other factors. Let me try it when I tell you that thing sold like nobody's business.

I didn't make $10K but the way that it was selling, I was like, Oh my gosh, people are paying me for this and they're paying quickly and they're leaving reviews and they're saying things like this worked for my ADHD. This helped fix my marriage. Like the reviews were crazy! And I was like, wow, I can really do this.

And so that's, at that point that's the point that I took that break and I just sat for a second. I was like, okay. What can I do for productivity coaching? And that was the first shift and I liked it. And I was like, Oh, but something's missing. What is missing? I'm just doing business, but something's getting lost in the sauce.

It's the life portion of it. I'm not helping people actually on the other side of things with like, Hey, how do I manage my kid's schedule? How do I make sure I'm really, what can I do to, to zhuzh up date night with my husband? Like all those things I'm also really good at, but I wasn't incorporating them.

Netta Dobbins: Yeah.

Simone Little: Also to just [00:11:00] understanding how the human mind works, doing some research on psychology. I did a lot of that when I was in school, I did research papers on bipolar disorder, like all types of things that really led me to this moment throughout my years, even through high school, like it just all came together.

Yeah. Never knew.

Netta Dobbins: There are points in your life that make you who you are. And God is like sewing a little here, sewing a little here. And then one day you wake up and you're like, I have everything I need to do what I want to do now. And it wasn't intentional, , it was God's plan for me.

And now I'm ready to sit in it. So I want to dive into your aha moment a little bit more because One, this podcast, how I made my first dollar is actually about how do you make your very first dollar?

Like, how do you price things? How do you figure out your target audience? How do you sell? So let's back up a little bit. You say you were in a 10K in 10 days group chat type of challenge. And I rolled my eyes because I feel like there are so many of those. And some of them are great and you may make 10K and some of them are not, but you choose what you want to do.

So I want to talk about [00:12:00] let's start with that group, right? You were in the group, you saw people doing that. That was your community of entrepreneurs. Talk to me about what made you think, Oh, I'm going to join this and I'm going to do this challenge with them.

Simone Little: Yeah, so I initially joined the group because I had, previous to that, I had not done any type of coaching with anyone ever.

And at that point, I think I was like 10 years deep in business. And I had never had that experience. And I was like, I was on the fence. It was during the pandemic. My husband had been furloughed. I was the only one working and I was like I think I want to take the leap though and do something. And I think I just started, I was about to start my sabbatical.

Like I hadn't started yet. So I had this little nest egg of funds that I needed to save. But also I needed to make sure that the next move I made was going to be a good one, so I can make more money after the sabbatical. And so I joined it, I tried to get education in the community, was amazing because people were also interested in pouring into one another.

And so when the 10k and 10 days came up, I was like, It's first time I had ever heard it before. I was like, I don't know if 10K is possible, but [00:13:00] what can I launch that will help me get to whatever the next step is going to be, I needed the push is what I needed. I needed someone to tell me consistently that you should be doing this.

Here are the steps. Here's some tactics. Don't give up. Even when you think it's not going to work to keep going, that's what I needed. I never had that before. And so I think I, one of the tactics was reach out to my clients. That I already had boom, did it. Sold a couple, they loved it. So then they reposted, reposted it on Instagram, shared it to their um, and, and they weren't even actually the first person who did it.

Wasn't even a client yet. I'm not going to lie. She wasn't a client. She had just been following me for a couple of years. She did it. And then she has such a large following that then a lot of her people came over, they booked it and, Then I started my little email list. I'm telling you, I had a hundred people on that email list.

Netta Dobbins: Talk about email list. Cause you know how I feel about an email list. [00:14:00] Well, Okay. You had a hundred people on your email list.

Simone Little: Yeah. I sent it out a couple of people booked. I think by the time it ended, I think I had maybe 20 people that enrolled. It was less, the product was less than a hundred dollars.

It snowballed and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I still offer the service to this day. It's still my most popular service. And this was four years ago.

Netta Dobbins: Okay. So when you say you reached out to your customers, a lot of people are like, reach out to your customers, reach out to your customers. But what do I say?

Like, how did you frame your pitch? How did you, and you don't have to tell me word for word, but like, when you sat in your customer shoes and you're like, okay, why would they need this? How did you formulate that pitch?

Simone Little: Cheat code, the group that I was in had a pitch for me.

They would say, use these words, change it out, do this. That's what I did. But I remember it being something really short. I'm telling you, it was maybe five sentences that was like, Hey, I was thinking about you, I wanted to tell you I have this new offer. I think it'll be, I think it'll be beneficial in these three ways.

It's this [00:15:00] price. Let me know if you want to book it. Here's a link. Super simple, because these are people, it's not their first touch point with you. You don't have to try to oversell, you just let them know what you're doing. I used it for that, and then I started offering fractional COO services, which was a lot higher than $97.

Used it for that and got two clients that way too, from previous clients, that were virtual assistant clients that transitioned to fractional services.

Netta Dobbins: I love that. So I want to go back to the pitch because one thing that I noticed a lot of small business owners doing, they're like, Hey, my name is Netta.

I've been in business for 10 years. Here's my long story. Here's every service that I offer. What would you like to do? Can we schedule the call? And one it's way too long. Two, people probably don't care because they're already following me. They already know a little bit about me. What I loved about your pitch is that you're like, here are three reasons why this service is for you, right? Selling is about focusing on your customer's pain point and telling them how your service or your product are going to help [00:16:00] alleviate that pain point. It's not about you, it's about your customer. And when you can get clear on what are my customers wishes, what are their needs, what are their pain points and how can I solve them?

You're going to make a lot more sales and the most important part, keep it short, keep it quick. You just want them to be interested enough to book a call or book a consultation. They don't have to know. everything about your entrepreneurial journey since you started in the initial email. So very important point there.

Two, so you said I priced this at $97. How did you come up with $97?

Simone Little: It was my initial launch price. Like I had never, I did research and I really couldn't find anyone like making schedules for people like that just seemed something that was missing on the market. And I wasn't sure people understood the concept.

So I wanted to make it. Make sure that it was something that, okay, if I'm giving away an hour worth of my time, if I'm consulting someone, like I had a service that was like, I literally called it, figure it out. And it was like 30 minutes and it was like [00:17:00] 47. I was like, all right, how much is an hour of my time worth? About a hundred bucks. All right, cool. That works. Let's start there and see if I have enough to gradually raise the price over time. I feel like I would've came right out of it. Oh, with the price that it's at now, which is 397, they would have been like, now girl,

Netta Dobbins: who are you?

Simone Little: Who are you? What proof do you have that this is going to work? They would have needed to know that other people have done it before. They would have needed something else. It wouldn't have been a no brainer, but I need, I needed proof that this was going to work.

I need a proof of concept while still valuing my own time.

Netta Dobbins: And I think that a lot of small business owners make pricing way more difficult than it needs to be. You're like, how much is an hour? It takes me an hour to do this. How much is an hour of my time worth? We're gonna start here and we will raise it.

Like, when you price something the first time, Inflation, everything increases, right? Everything increases over the years. Think of your business like that. It won't be this price forever, but it has to be easily accessible to the people you're offering it to. [00:18:00] You have to have people come on board, maybe at a discounted price to get that social proof because word of mouth marketing is still the most important form of marketing.

People want to see that you have actually successfully done this, right? And then it helps build trust like $97. I'm not going to miss $97. And if I get way more value than $97, that's a win. That's a win for you. That's a win for me. Cause I'm going to refer people to you and I'm probably going to come back over and over again.

So I want to talk about email list. All right.

She said I had a hundred people and people will be like, I can't sell anything until I've amassed the following of thousands and thousands of people. Which is absolutely not true. If you follow me on. anything I talk a lot about, I talk a lot about email marketing because email marketing is really your direct line to your clients.

These people have already said, Hey, I'm interested in you. I'm interested in your business and I'm interested in what you have to offer. They're asking you to provide them more [00:19:00] value and to sell them things. So you had a list of a hundred subscribers. Talk to me about like how you

thought about email marketing when you were sitting there or writing up the emails to go to those 100 people?

Simone Little: I was It's probably probably to this day, honestly The weakest point in my business not the weakest the least consistent point in my business. It's where I struggle with consistency the most And so when I was thinking about it, I was like when's the last time I talked to them?

I'm coming out the gate offering them something and so I started off with just telling them where i've been. Hey guys, I know I've been off the grid. I'm in the middle of the da da da. And I will let you guys know that I have this thing that this new thing that I'm offering. I'm trying it out.

I want to let you know about it. And I put it out there. And I can't remember if anybody said from the first email, but the second email people started getting interested. They started clicking on links and all those types of things. And I always have feedback like my sisters are on my email list. So then they read it and say, all right, change this, do this.

I think that really helps me having people that I'm close to on my [00:20:00] email list. They tell me how they receive things when I send it out. So I just started off with a light introduction Hey, I'm doing a couple of things. Here's where I've been. And then I really start selling after that in the email list.

And so I sent out maybe a total of five emails throughout the course of maybe about a month to sell that. And I think I got two to three sales directly through my email, which is great. That's $200 to $300 in a month, just through emails. I love it. That was for me, that's

success.

Netta Dobbins: That is success because like email marketing, one, it doesn't take a lot of time.

We're not hustling when it comes to email. Like we are on social, somebody will see a post. Maybe they'll think about it. They'll try to find it. They don't remember who posted it, when it was posted, how to get back there. The thing I personally love about email marketing is that I'm going to send you offers.

Maybe it's not right now, or maybe you're busy, but you can go back and find it and purchase it later. Two, I want to talk about how you warmed up your audience. Because a lot of times people are like, I sent out an email and nobody bought it.

Do they know who you are? Do they know the value that you brought? Have you given them value yet? Are you just trying to [00:21:00] sell them? Are you being a sleazy car salesman? So what you talked about, I essentially call like a re engagement funnel and or a welcome funnel. Are you introducing them? Are you telling them why you're the person to solve their problems?

Giving them some free value, whether that's something to download or a video of you talking or just information within the email, right? You have to warm them up before you ask them to spend their money because you have to build that trust. The third thing that I like that you said is that you sent five emails.

People are like, I sent one email and nobody bought it. I'm just going to. I've never done email marketing again, right? So five emails is about consistency is about consistently showing up. Even when you think about marketing in general, these days, there was the marketing rule of seven, meaning people had to hear about you or have

at least seven touch points before they're ready to purchase. But I believe now in like this crazy digital marketing world where you're getting like ads all the time, it's going to take way more touch points. So don't be afraid to send multiple [00:22:00] emails or don't be afraid to post multiple posts about the same thing.

People are likely not seeing it or not engaging with it just yet, but that doesn't mean stop, it means keep going, small plug, I am launching an email marketing course for everyone who wants to be better at email marketing and just reach their clients directly. It goes on sale July 18th.

I'll make sure to put more about that in the comments section or in the description section of this podcast, so stay tuned. All right, let's keep it going. So for listeners who may be just overwhelmed with life, right? I want to talk about Your four Ps, but also what are two to three actionable tips that you can share for them right now that they can implement to not get rid of the overwhelm, but work their way through the overwhelm.

Simone Little: Yes. So it starts with planning. A lot of times when you're feeling overwhelmed the first thing is, actually figure out what you can offload. If you're overwhelmed for figure out what you can [00:23:00] delegate and delegate doesn't always mean you need to hire someone to bring it to your business.

That's actually a lot of work.

Netta Dobbins: People don't realize that hiring people is work until they are onboarding,

Simone Little: but absolutely. That's what it, that's going to keep you overwhelmed. So that's not necessarily what I mean, unless you already have someone who's on your team, right?

Who's good and well trained. But what I do mean is, can you send something off to Fiverr to get done? Maybe. Can you if maybe you can't do anything in your business and you have to do it, can you offload something at home? Can you get a cleaner in to clean your house? You can't afford a cleaner? That's fine.

You have sisters, friends, cousins. Can they come help watch the kids for a little bit? Can you take them to grandma's house? What can you do in your life right now to get rid of some of the overwhelm and give you just a little bit of space to get something off your list? Out of the way, like that's where I'd start just trying to lighten the load just a little bit.

Netta Dobbins: Yeah. I also think as black women or women in general, we take on a lot of things and we're like, if it doesn't get done, it's on me when we [00:24:00] have most of the time, somebody, some support that we can have. So yes, things may be crazy in your business. Look at your life, right? Because everything is interwoven as an entrepreneur.

I love that.You said. Your house is messy. Go hire a cleaner. You don't have to do that. Give yourself permission to ask for help. I think that's the biggest learning lesson for every entrepreneur. Okay. So one last question then you're going to tell everybody where to find you, but looking ahead, where do you see the future of work-life harmony for entrepreneurs?

And are there any upcoming trends or challenges that you see on the horizon?

Simone Little: So I think the biggest trend and challenge that I see is the continuation of soft life and luxurious lifestyles. And I think it's a trend because it looks really good. I think people are, I think stress is on the rise. I think anxiety is on the rise.

It's an election year. All those things are on the rise. So to combat that, people are binging [00:25:00] soft life content. They're binging luxury lifestyle content. But what they're finding is that unless you have the means and opportunity for that, trying to figure out how to get there is not really being spoken about.

And so that's the challenge. And so I want people to, as they're seeing all these things floating around social media and they see their real life and their stress goes up and other people's life and things that look great to really just bring it back down to know that social media just isn't your reality.

I'm not saying it's not those other people's reality. It's not your reality. And so you have to figure out what feels good for you as an individual. What are small things that you can do that bring you happiness and just a little bit of joy throughout your day that. May look different from that from there because without it you're going to continue to be stressed and anxious.

Netta Dobbins: Yeah. And remember that everybody started somewhere. They probably started where you are stressed and anxious, right? And then they started to find their own processes that helped them get to the next level. So remember everybody starts from somewhere. All right, Simone. It was [00:26:00] great talking to you. Finally, let everyone listening know how to contact you where they can find you on socials, all the things.

Simone Little: Yes. So on social media, I am @TheSimoneLittle that's on Instagram. That's on Threads. Email me at simone@thesimonelittle.Co. My website is fortheloveoflife.thesimonelittle.Com and yeah, hop in my DMs, hop on Threads, start a conversation. I love talking to people. I will send you a voice message though, because I prefer that over typing.

So yeah.

Netta Dobbins: Awesome. It was great having you today and thank you so much for being here.

Simone Little: Thank you, Netta.