EP 231 Effective Time Management for Busy Business Owners
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the bold goal crusher podcast for anyone looking to stop letting life get in the way and start crushing bold goals. I'm your host, Sara Mayer, and I'm thrilled to navigate this journey with you because it's time to start boldly achieving without working double time. So let's dive in.
Sara Mayer: Hello Bold Bull Crushers! I'm always excited about every episode, but this little mini series on business has Really excited. A lot of you, many of you have a dream of starting a business or a side hustle, or you just want to make a little extra cash on the side. And I am all about it, but you have [00:01:00] questions about how to actually crush your goals because sometimes.
Sara Mayer: This seems like something, an additional thing you need to do, or maybe seem like a faraway dream or adding something else to your plate may not be possible right now. So today we're going to talk about effective time management for busy startup founders. So whether you have a side hustle, you're dreaming of a side hustle, or you have a business, this episode is for you.
Sara Mayer: If you're struggling to manage your time. So a couple episodes ago, we talked about whether or not you're building a business that you dream of, or you dread. And I think it's really important to think about your why. Why did you start your business? Why did you want to go into this business? And why did you start your side hustle?
Sara Mayer: Is it because you simply love making the craft that you're making, doing the thing that you're doing, or is it because you want to make money? And no matter what it is, it's okay. [00:02:00] We're building businesses. We're not building side hustles. So it's okay to say you want to make money. People, so many founders, especially women are like, Oh, I just want to help people.
Sara Mayer: Well, you can help people volunteer for a nonprofit. without spending your time and energy building a business. So we really want to build a business that is profitable for you and allows you to live the lifestyle that you dreamed of when you determined your why. So let's talk about time management.
Sara Mayer: When you are in a corporate setting or any type of formal work environment, there is this underlying culture. There's an underlying schedule. There's a layer of accountability. And there's a drumbeat that goes on in those organizations, whether they're positive or negative. Those are the drumbeats that help you to accomplish your goals and for you to be successful.[00:03:00]
Sara Mayer: So many organizations, they already have that built in. So, you know, that you start work at this time, people go to lunch at that time there, there's just this built in. Schedule and that helps many employees to meet the goals that they're that they're given in the tasks and the objectives. Now, whether or not you have a micromanaging boss or a really cool boss who is like, okay, you know, I trust you to get it done and let's get it done.
Sara Mayer: It doesn't matter. The structure of that organization, the structure of the company that is provided, allows you to thrive. And hopefully you do thrive. Now, some companies have a really bad culture and a really bad structure. And so it may be difficult to thrive, but there still is that pace, that drumbeat that goes on.
Sara Mayer: So I think it's really important to think about when you move into your own business or you create your own side [00:04:00] hustle, especially if you're leaving a nine to five, you need to create that structure and that pace and you get to create it.
Sara Mayer: I'm going to say that again. You get to create it. It's an opportunity for you to really think about what is the structure. Now, many entrepreneurs struggle when they first leave that really established structure to create their own thing because they feel or they may feel like they have endless amounts of time to do something.
Sara Mayer: There's nobody breathing down their neck to meet a deadline. They get to do all this stuff and they can go at two o'clock and pick their kids up from the carpool. But what happens is. Sometimes business takes over and then they end up building a business that they have no time or the opposite. They think they have so much time [00:05:00] that they end up not actually accomplishing what is really important and it's hard to make that business succeed.
Sara Mayer: And so I'm going to give you a few tips for time management for busy startup founders. The first thing is. We've heard a lot about batching content and stuff like that for social media, for creating your emails every week, whatever it may be. And batching is a great way to get things done, but I want to break down why it's a great way.
Sara Mayer: So if you're not familiar with batching, it could be you put a block of time on your calendar once a week and that's where you work on your social media during that block of time. Or it could be monthly tasks, like, you know, you want to send 3 email, 4 emails a month. And so you put a block of time on your calendar to work on your 4 emails.
Sara Mayer: And that's great. And batching really works for for this reason, because when you have a focus time where, you know, that that's what your goal is, you're able to get it out [00:06:00] quickly. You're not mind shifting like going from, Oh, I'm coaching a client. So now I'm working on social. So now I'm doing an email.
Sara Mayer: It creates a great way for you to get maybe some tasks that require a little more thought done in a specific designated time. And you're able to actually move through those more quickly. So batching is a great way to get things done. For entrepreneurs, what I encourage you to do is look at all the things that you need to do on a monthly basis.
Sara Mayer: So I already mentioned some things. You may send an email every week, so you need four emails. You may do social media, so you need a month's worth of social media. You may have a blog. Maybe you do one blog a week. You need four blog posts. Maybe you produce a podcast. You do two episodes a week. You need eight recordings.
Sara Mayer: And so on and so on. So those things that are routine monthly, anything like that, it's a great practice to batch those, because if not that drumbeat of producing a [00:07:00] blog every week, an email every week, a podcast every week, whatever you may be doing can get in the way of you actually making. Money. Okay.
Sara Mayer: And so what I like to do is I know I want to do four emails a month. I want to do four blog posts a month, and I want to record eight episodes. So I do, and half of them are guests and half of them are solo. So I do four, four, four, and four. Okay, for blog posts, for emails, for podcasts, guest episodes, and for.
Sara Mayer: solo episodes. And I put that on a block on my calendar called monthly tasks. And it is a two hour block. Now I could break that up. I could do all the blog posts in one, all the emails in one, but what it helps me do is knock those out. So I don't have to worry about them for the rest of the month. It's a big life saving hack.
Sara Mayer: It's also a great business hack. And I put those on the calendar monthly. I [00:08:00] do it the first. the last week of the month so that it's ready for the first week of the month. You could figure, figure out when you do those, but that's time where I don't multi shift and I don't multitask. I work on that task laser focus.
Sara Mayer: It's really important though, to keep appointments with yourself. And that's the hardest part because it's easy for me to say. Okay, I have time I have 4 more days this week before it has to go live, or I don't have to write the blog post at the end of the month right now, because I have 3 weeks until I need to do that.
Sara Mayer: And there are months where I'm really on task with this and then months where. I'm like, Oh, I'll do that later. I can tell you the months where I do that later. I don't produce the best content and I don't produce my best work because I end up being rushed and I put it off right to the end. So if you set the deadline, I'm going to get all this done by the [00:09:00] first of the month for the, for the month, then you can feel a little more relaxed.
Sara Mayer: Now I talked a little bit about money and one of the things I will tell you is that it's a business owner. It's really easy to work on the business work in the business and to be working so hard and you're making money. And then what happens is the The building of future clients or ensuring that your future clients coming in kind of falls to the back burner.
Sara Mayer: So 1 of the things that I love to do is on my calendar and I wish you could see it. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm looking up. By the way, if you're not watching on YouTube, you should check me out on YouTube. Anyway, please hit that subscribe button if you're on YouTube. So I'm looking up because I have a big calendar of the entire year, and it's got all four months in the first quarter, and then so on and so forth.
Sara Mayer: And one of the things I do Is I [00:10:00] just, I, I'm not, it doesn't need to be beautiful in my opinion, but I do like a little ziggly line through any day that I actually made money. And I do that in green. And then any day where I talk to someone that could lead to me making money, a perspective client, I do a little orange line.
Sara Mayer: And I'm very proud right now, because when I look up at February, there are only six days where I didn't actually make money. I didn't actually. Receive money in my account that didn't used to be like that. And the reason it's like that now is because I make sure when I look at my calendar every week that I have 2 things going on.
Sara Mayer: I have activities that are. Attracting potential clients or customers, and I have activities that are closing clients that I've already attracted and billing them. So I'm closing up stuff so [00:11:00] I can build up and I think that's really important. So, if you're launching a business, like, maybe you're not doing 1 on 1 client work, or you're selling a product, but you're launching.
Sara Mayer: It's doing activities that attract clients. So it could be holding a master class would be color coded orange. And then the day you actually get the money is green. And that's what's really important for business is to make sure you don't get too focused on working on the business or working in the business so that you forget about building the business.
Sara Mayer: So, there's really 3 triangles that are working on the business, working in the business and working on building the business, which is generating leads, generating clients. And you could be the best designer of graphic logos in the world. But if you don't have clients coming in the door, if you don't have a way to get new people, you're not going to be.
Sara Mayer: World renowned because people won't know about you. So it's really important to think about that. [00:12:00] And I do want to say a word about social media because sometimes people, when they do the color code exercise will be like, well, I posted on social by my thing. So that's orange. No, it's not really. That's a visibility thing.
Sara Mayer: You're creating more visibility and awareness for your business, whether they buy or not. Is really a passive thing. You're not actively engaging with people to try and get them to buy. So it needs to be a little more active because remember, not everybody's going to see what you post on social. All right, so we talked about some time management tax 1st of all, batching content, figuring out what you do every month and then figuring out a way to chunk that into a group so that you can do it all at once instead of sprinkled throughout where you're shifting tasks back and forth.
Sara Mayer: Second, keep your eye on the money. How much time are you spending building the business? Color code your calendar. How much time are you on the business and how much time are you working on [00:13:00] building the business? Okay. Working on the business, which could be creating your content, you know, bookkeeping, stuff like that, doing the business, like whatever service or that you're providing, then how are you building that business?
Sara Mayer: And you really want to keep that balance. Sometimes you're going to have, Oh, I'm doing a little more client work. Sometimes you're going to have, Oh, I'm building a lot of structure into my business. And sometimes you're generating a lot of leads, but the more you can keep that balance in your calendar, The more successful you'll be in business.
Sara Mayer: I hope that's helpful on how to break down your goals so that you truly can be effective as a business owner. All right, folks, it's time to get to it because you can crush your goals without working double time. So let's get to it.
Sara Mayer: Thank you for tuning into the bold goal crusher podcast where we crush goals and everything that gets in the way. [00:14:00] I always love to support my community. Thanks for tuning in.
Sara Mayer: I look forward to seeing you crush your goals this year.
