The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 146: Getting Time Back In Your Business
Today we are going to be talking about how you could be getting more time back in your business. I am going to dive deep into what this means for me, what you can do to add more time in your business and exactly how to start doing this for yourself today, along with so much more.
Getting Time Back in Your Business
By: Melissa Lin
Today, we are diving in and I'm going to spend some time sharing ways that you can start getting more time back in your business. Yes! Although it might not feel like it right now, this is so possible. I was in your shoes not too long ago, whether you're at the very beginning stages in your business, and you feel like you're spending 10 hours, 12 hours a day on Google, trying to figure out how to do it on your own, or maybe you've already started to sign some clients, your first few clients, first 10, 20 and you aren't sure what to focus on next. Maybe you've even filled all of your coaching spots, but just feel so overwhelmed in your client load that you can't even think of hiring somebody to help you in your business because you don't even know where to even start with the training process and things like that or where you're going to give the time to do so.
What More Time Means For Me
I have been working 20 to 25 hours a week on average for the past year or two, at least. So for me, 20 hour weeks have been where I was really aiming for quite some time, not that this is necessarily the goal you need to work towards. Right? This was simply my goal and I'm extremely happy with this balance. Now, if your goal is maybe to get two hours back per week or 10 hours back per month, you most definitely can. I used to work so much, especially in the beginning stages of my business, you know, before I made my first hire. Even when I did make my first hire back in 2018, I was working so much because I had that belief back then that the more time I spent in my business, the more success I'm going to see, which is not the case. I can tell you, I am making so much more and creating such a bigger impact now and working so much less. So you definitely can see the success without needing to really "hustle" and you can definitely move the needle forward without adding 10, 12, 20, 30, more hours onto your plate. It's so, so possible. That’s exactly what I want to talk about today.
As we get into this, really keep in mind, you get to create that structure, a business that you truly desire, right? Just because someone else is making 100K months or 20K months or even 10K, you don't necessarily need to follow their schedule for the day. Waking up at 5:00 AM isn't necessarily the thing that's going to help you get more of what you want. So we're going to go into all of that and how we can help you get more time back. Again, this is what you're looking for in your business, not necessarily what someone else is looking for in their business.
I recently got back from a little getaway and I’ve actually got quite a few getaways planned this month because my boyfriend, Ryan, and I are getting ready to break ground, cross your fingers, on our land that we purchased. So we're going to be building our first home together, but we really wanted to be nearby, like during the build, really be there for it. So we're doing a lot of travel and just getaways before that does start. When I got back, I had so many babes in my audience reach out after I shared that weeks like that, or getaways like that, or like the time spent doing the things I want to do outside of my business are very typical for me. So being able to leave town for a few days, without impacting my business, you know, being able to leave town for a few days with very little notice to the boss, which is me, you know, not needing to use any vacation days. Being able to leave town and my clients are still supported. Many in my audience, many babes, asked how and what it is that they need to do to start moving closer to something similar for themselves. Some of the reasons that I started my online business in the first place was to create an impact ,to help others, and also freedom of time and freedom of money. So what does getting more time back mean to me? What does it look like in my business and in my life?
So for me specifically, it means that I get to spend more time traveling. I get to spend more time being present with family and friends. I get to spend less time on my phone. I get to spend less time on social media and start spending more time doing the things I love doing outside of my business.
You Can Have it All
Now, don't get me wrong. I absolutely love my business and I absolutely adore my clients. I love supporting them and helping them move their businesses to the next level so that they can also create a bigger impact and find that freedom of time they're looking for, as well as freedom of money. But there's more to life than our businesses, right? We are so much more than our businesses. Which is the reason why I teach my clients and chat with them about, you know, finding things that make them feel good and finding joy in all aspects of life. You can have it all. You can start and scale your online business while enjoying the process, while having fun along the way, right? Why start if we're not going to enjoy the process and ensure that we have fun along the way? As you're doing this, you can find a balance for both. You truly can. Don't let yourself get too caught up in your business that you start missing out on things happening in your life right now. Right. You can have both.
If I were to ask you right now, like, what are the things that you love doing? If your only answer is, you know, creating content, building my business, signing clients, like things inside of your business, then I really want you to take some time to think about “Okay, What are the things that bring me joy outside of my business?” Because you can have it all, you get to do that.
So for example, for me, pre-COVID, I think July or August 2019, I got my sailing license. So Ryan and I took a class together and we started to sail. Like I'm big on learning how to ski. I have been skiing for a few seasons. I am learning to do more outside of my business and just learning all these other things and really finding joy in other activities and doing those things that fulfill me outside of my business, too. Right. You can have both, create a balance, start doing things outside of your business. Something that I have learned over the years is the more fun I have in and outside of my business, the more money I make and the more that I get to fill my cup and then support my clients as well. Something to just keep in mind, don't let yourself get too caught up.
Creating Systems
So where do we start? How do we start getting more of your time back? You know, how can you create more space in your calendar each day, each week? If I took a snapshot of my calendar for you, today's Monday and Mondays are either like a CEO day or a CEO and content day. My Mondays are usually fairly open because of those things. So how do you want your calendar to work? You know, how much white space do you want on your calendar? What do you want that to look like? If your calendar is just crammed full from 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM, let's make sure that there's some play plans. I love using color codes in my calendar, so yellow and green are my play colors. So because of that I make sure I always have yellow or green in my calendar throughout the week.
So how can you create more space in your calendar each day, each week without it hindering your business? So what I want to do is first I'll share the big picture, the higher level, how this can start happening and how I currently create more time in my life and in my business and the big picture. What this means is, having end systems? And little spoiler alert, you already have some systems in your business right now, now we get to amplify or add more structure to increase the efficiency to some of those systems that you have, so that they're actually working smarter for you. This means you get to also create additional processes in your business. You get to start to delegate, hiring your first or maybe your next team member, as you continue to grow your business. This also means removing things that don't necessarily mean to be happening right now, and it can be pushed to the future or removed completely from your business.
Automating, Hiring and Delegating
This also means automating more areas in your business. I absolutely love, love, love when we find new and fun ways to add in a few more automations into our business, because what that means is, when we're able to automate a bit more, we get a little bit more time back. Time we can use to spend more time supporting our clients, doing this and that, and focusing on other aspects of the business. So automating more areas in your business and really focusing on the things that are actually going to move the needle forward for you.
So for example, if you're in the very beginning stages of your business, well, you get to focus on number one, creating your foundations of your business, make sure those are solid. Then, sales activity. You should not be spending hours per day in Canva making graphics for the next five months of content. That's not going to necessarily help you move the needle forward today, this week, or even this month.
So, if you're consistently making sales and signing new clients, then we get to focus on expanding your team, making tweaks to your business so that it's even more scalable. So you can support even more people, helping even more. Adding more automation. So, if you signed two new clients today, what does that onboarding process look like? Is it completely hands on or is it completely hands off? If you were handed 20 new clients, could your business handle it? Now, I love asking that question because there are so many things we can add into your business automation systems that can really support you in handling and supporting more clients without adding 30 hours per week to your plate.
So, something I've learned in my own business over the years is that it's typically helpful to hire before you 100% need the support, because there is a learning curve. There is a training period as you onboard new team members and bring them in and teach them what it is you want them to be doing. You know, there's always that time period, that grace period. So I typically recommend hiring a little before you 100% need them. So for example, when we hired our first support coaches in our business, a few years ago, we hired them two to three months early and spent a few months training them because we knew we wanted to be prepared and trained before we were overwhelmed and had to rush that process. It's a very important process. We take it very seriously. So we didn't want to rush any of that. Definitely something I would recommend.
Tracking Your Time
Now that we've looked at some of the higher level items, some of those things that we can do to get more time back, I want to actually go a little deeper and take you through two exercises that you can do today, or at least start doing today for you and your own business to start getting more time back. Now this is where we're going to dive deep ladies. So grab those pens or favorite notebooks if you don't have them yet and we're going to go into two exercises.
So, the first thing that you get to do is a time-tracking exercise. Now, typically I recommend my clients do this for, at minimum one work week. So usually that's five days for most. We actually do this in many areas in our business with myself and with team members a few times each year. So it's not necessarily, we don't do one and done, like we do this over and over throughout the day so we can see the improvements we've made. See if anything pivots. Did we get sidetracked somehow? Is there something that we need to get back into? So we do it quite a few times throughout the year. You really get to know where you're at right now, what you're actually doing throughout the day and how much time you're actually spending on those tasks, before we can start making any adjustments. We need to have a baseline before we can make any changes. It's kind of like the standardized tests and PE class that we would all do in elementary school. You know, we need to know where you're at so that we can compare improvements down the road. We set a baseline and then take action.
I'm going to be so open and honest with you. It may feel like a pain doing this, but I promise, you get to know where you're spending your time right now and how long you're spending time on some of these things first, before we can move forward. So you can do this with a notebook, paper, a Google doc, a project management tool that you use, wherever you're most likely to actually fill it out throughout the day.
What I recommend you do is wherever you're most likely to fill out, add in the day of the week, the activity you're doing, like every time you do anything during your work day, the time spent doing that. You may even want to add a minute column of the amount of time you had scheduled and for that activity as well. So for example, if I say it's going to take me 15 minutes to record and prep a podcast episode, I'm going to offset my entire day because in reality, it's around 45 minutes per episode with, you know, episode prep, recording of the episode, saving files and then sending it to my team. So it's really important to have that information. Once we know this information, then I recommend the second exercise.
Prioritizing Your Time
So that was the first exercise. Once you have done your first exercise, I recommend the second exercise, which is something you've probably heard me talk about before. If you're a client, you've definitely done this exercise with myself or my team. And if not, you're about to learn about the Eisenhower Matrix to help you prioritize your to do's or ideas, and really support you in making some of those decisions on what gets to happen first in your business. What I want you to do is on your notebook pad in front of you, draw a line down the center of your paper vertically, and then another line horizontally so that you have a quadrant.
So you've got four squares on your paper in front of you. Then what we're going to do is we're going to label each of the squares. The first will be quadrant one. What I want you to add into this square at the very top is important and urgent. Then in the second, so quadrant two, I want you to add in important and not urgent. The third will be quadrant three, and this will be urgent, not important. And the fourth will be quadrant four, which will be your last, and this is going to be not important and not urgent.
As we go through this exercise, what this is going to help you do is rank all of the things that you're doing in your business right now, and all of those tasks, by both how urgent it really is in your business right now, or your life, and how important it is in this moment for you, to help you really strategically decide which to focus on first.
So that first quadrant, it should be the first one that you wrote down. These are going to be your important items, your urgent items. So can I give you some examples for each of these? So these tasks should be the ones that are at the top of your to-do list, very top of your to-do list every single day. So for example, the items of my business, the tasks of my business, supporting my clients, that is so important, high priority, always urgent. It happens every single day. Other items; checking in with my team, selling every single day, adding value. Those are the things that bring money into my business. Then, also self care. So start to jot down all of these things. Since you've already done your time tracking and all of the items that you did throughout the whole week, you should be able to pull from that list what those tasks are. Maybe you do these at the same time. Like as you start to time track the week, if you're going to start it today or next week, maybe in parentheses, add in what quadrant you would see it going into. However, for me, it's usually easier to separate the two exercises. So whichever is going to be easiest for you.
Now, moving into quadrant two. Again, this was important and not urgent. So these are items that you can schedule for another time, schedule in the future. It doesn't necessarily need to happen this week or this month. So it's important, but doesn't need to happen right now. So this could be content for future captions or future podcasts episodes. Maybe you already have your next two weeks of content. You may have other items in your list that are a bit more urgent than prepping more episodes, right. That could be pushed to next week if you have things that are more urgent.
Q3, quadrant three. This again, was urgent and not important. Now these are tasks that can be delegated to a VA, to a team member if you've already hired, or if not starting to automate. So these are things that don't necessarily need to be done by you, the business owner. So Canva graphics, onboarding clients, offboarding clients, company metric tracking, anything that also can be automated in your business.
Then, that last quadrant, Q4 quadrant. This was anything not urgent and not important. These are things that are just taking up and sucking your time that don't need to be done. These most likely can be removed from your list completely, or maybe archive it and come back to it, you know, in a year or in a few months, but these are things that do not need to be done. They get to be removed from your list. So maybe this is a $30 like digital product you wanted to create in 2022 or 2023, or maybe you're tracking items in your business right now that you don't necessarily need to be looking at right now, if you're tracking it just to track, why are we tracking it? Right. We always want to have intention behind what we're doing. It's very possible that there could be certain KPIs that aren't as important as they were a few months ago. Right? Maybe you're in a different business season, different season in your business right now. It's okay. We definitely don't track everything, we don't track every single little number. We're focusing on the things that matter to us that are going to help us move things forward. That's going to look a little different for everyone and different for you, depending on where you are in your business and what's important to you in this moment.
So again, this exercise is going to help you really see what gets to be focused on, what can be delegated, what can be pushed to a future project date and really help you start prioritizing other things and see where you can get more time back. Removing some of those tasks is going to give you more time back to put into other areas.
So, today we have touched on what having more time in my business supports me personally and what I mean by getting more time back. Along with how we can create more space in our lives, our businesses, both high level and a deeper dive with those two exercises that you can start to implement this week to see where your focus gets to be and what gets to be a priority really in this moment. So thank you for hanging out with me today. I am always going to be your biggest cheerleader, so you taking the time out of your day to spend with me truly means the world to me. Feel free to tag me and let me know your biggest takeaways, thoughts and goodies you want to send my way on Instagram @TheMelissaLin. I’ll see you next time!
Topics we cover include:
You Can Have it All
Creating Systems
Automating, Hiring and Delegating
Tracking Your Time
Prioritizing Your Time
And so much more!
Times to check out:
(5:12) What More Time Means For Me
(10:40) You Can Have it All
(13:06) Creating Systems
(15:30) Automating, Hiring and Delegating
(18:30) Tracking Your Time
(23:08) Prioritizing Your Time
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