46 | How I Structure My Weeks to Work 20 Hours or Less
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How I Structure My Weeks to Work 20 Hours or Less
Ever wondered how some people seem to have it all, running a successful business while still having plenty of time for life outside of work? In this episode, I'm taking you behind-the-scenes of my business and sharing exactly how I work 20 hours, or less, each week and STILL manage to grow a successful & thriving business.
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If youโre reading this, youโre probably someone who is currently running a business that leaves you feeling a little bit overworked, and wondering how you can optimise your work schedule to create a better work/life balance.
Over the years, I have experimented with different work structures and time management techniques, and I have been able to create a schedule for myself that allows me to work just 20 hours a week on average. Of course, some weeks I might work more, some weeks I might work less. But on average, I work 20 hours a week, 4 hours a day.
And with this schedule, I am still able toโฆ
Consistently market myself to attract and sign new clients and students
Create and publish weekly podcast episodes
Have an effective content strategy that reaches my ideal clients across multiple platforms
Earn passive income while Iโm out enjoying & living my life
This is 100% possible for you too. Despite popular belief, you donโt have to hustle 24/7 to run a successful business, and it is more than possible for you to reduce the number of hours youโre working in your business each week, and not see a dip in your incomeโฆ you can even increase it!
The mentality thatโs killing your business.
Letโs talk about why you started your business in the first place, and I want you to really think about this. What was your initial reason for becoming a business owner? For wanting to work for yourself?
Iโm going to take a guess and say that one of the main reasons is because you wanted more freedom in your day-to-day life; freedom that the rigid 9-5 structure just doesnโt provide. Am I right?
This is true for many women who leave their 9-5 jobs to start their own business, but unfortunately, it doesnโt always work out that way - and the reason often relates to our mindset.
Iโve had so many conversations with private clients who have told me that the reason they work so much is because they feel like the more they work, the more money theyโll earn, or the more productive theyโll be.
This is a mentality that we get from corporate. We are programmed to believe that longer hours equate to more money, and while that might be true for some jobs that do pay an hourly wage, you have to remember that you are no longer in the corporate setting. You are running a business, and the rules are different.
The number of hours your work in your business does not equate to how productive you are or the amount of revenue youโll receive.
Itโs this mentality that really damages your business and really just holds you back from growth. The bottom line is, we waste hours on meaningless tasks that donโt move the needle forward in our business.
You donโt need to work more - you need to learn how to work efficiently! This is how Iโm able to work 4-hour days, 20-hour weeks, and still make sales consistently.
But it hasnโt always been this way for me. If we rewind back to my first year of business in 2019, you'd find meโฆ
โ Hustling every weekend to try and book clients
โ Working well into the night + depriving myself of sleep
โ Blowing off friends + family so I could work on my business
โ Constantly reaching my limits and burning out
That was where I started. So trust me when I say that I know how it feels to want to hit your income goals, sign new clients and fill your programmes without having to work all the time, but just not seeing how that's possible.
It did take me a while, but eventually, I learned that there is another way and that you can build your business in a way that works for YOU.
You donโt have to hustle 24/7 to sign clients and you can create a business that gives you the time freedom to live your life and spend time with those you love the most. You can build your business, YOUR WAY.
Here are the steps I took to structure my working weeks to be 20 hours or less, and how you can do the same.
How I structure my weeks to work 20 hours, or less.
1. PRE-PLANNING
I always take the time at the end of my workday on a Friday to plan for the week ahead. Doing this allows me to open up my laptop on Monday and start my week on a high because Iโm not wasting time wondering about what I have to do. I already have everything laid out and structured day by day on my calendar.
When pre-planning my weeks, I brain dump all of the tasks I need to get done and input any deadlines into my calendar. I then organise my tasks into categories and group them together to do on the same day. For example, I might do all of my content creation on a Monday, client work and meetings on a Tuesday, project work on a Wednesday and so on.
I always try to only focus on one task category a day so that I can avoid context switching. And if you havenโt heard about this before, when we switch between different tasks it takes our brain a significant amount of power to switch from one task to another, actually making us less productive. So when you group all your similar tasks together, youโre so much more productive and youโll get so much more done as you end up in a kind of flow state.
2. CONTENT BATCHING
I always set aside time to batch-create my content so that I can get it all done at once and not have to worry about creating any more until my next batch session.
Creating content has the biggest impact on my business and is my biggest revenue generator, so content creation is a huge focus for my business.
I create weekly podcast episodes, weekly blog posts, 1-2 emails a week, and then 3-5 social media posts a week. That is a lot of content, and I would not be able to keep up if I were to create it in the moment. Plus, I wouldnโt have a birdseye view at my content strategy, and I would be as strategic and intentional with my content so it just wouldnโt work as well as it does now. And like I said, content is a huge revenue generator, so having a strong strategy is a huge priority of mine.
How I plan and batch my content does vary depending on the season of business Iโm in. If Iโm about to go into a promotion or a launch for an offer then I usually plan my content for the entire quarter and then batch it at the beginning of each month. If Iโm in more of a nurture period, I plan my content at the beginning of the month and then batch on a weekly basis.
How you batch your content will depend on what works for you, so I always recommend to my clients that they experiment with different ways and just find what they align most with.
3. DAILY ROUTINES & FOCUS SESSIONS
Iโve found that creating a structured routine that I can stick to each day has helped me immensely with my productivity.
I work based on when Iโm most productive, which is in the morning. So each morning, after my morning routine, I sit down to do my CEO work. This is 60-90 minutes where I sit down to work exclusively ON my business, rather than IN it.
The intention here is to do something that moves the needle forward, something thatโs going to drive sales and have an impact on my business growth. This could be content creation, or creating a sales page, or working on a funnel.
One thing I will not do during this time is client work. Itโs so easy to get lost in our clients businesses and then forget to work on our own. But I make my business a priority, and so I know that my business is going to grow as a result of that. Once Iโve done my CEO work, if I have client work to do then I can move on to that, but I always want to make sure that I get that needle-moving task done first, otherwise itโs easy to forget, or get lazy and think โIโll just do it tomorrowโ
When your CEO task is your priority, you donโt have that excuse. So if you arenโt already doing this in your business, I would really encourage you to start! This is one of the first things I always have my clients do and they all come back to me and say how much itโs changed their business!
After my CEO time, my next move is to prioritise my tasks in order of how much energy they take. Anything that requires a lot of energy, I do first, and then low-energy tasks are left for the afternoon when Iโm losing that productivity and brain power.
4. RESTRUCTURING MY PRODUCT SUITE
I used to work with a lot of private clients where we would have weekly or biweekly calls and although I loved supporting my clients, I began to feel extremely drained by the calls. I started my business to have the freedom to travel and do whatever I wanted, but that wasnโt really possible when my calendar was taken up by calls.
Iโm a firm believer in building a business that works for you, so towards the end of 2020, I decided to take action on this. I stopped taking on new clients, and introduced a new, flexible mentorship experience that would take place entirely through Voxer. Not being constricted to weekly coaching calls freed up a tonne of time on my schedule and allows me to support my clients even better than I could before!
As well as that, I started creating digital products and courses, which allowed me to package the knowledge I taught to my 1:1 clients and sell it for a lower price to hundreds more women who needed what I had to offer, but may not have been ready to invest in a private coach/mentor. Through doing this, Iโm now able to make the most of my time and energy by creating something once that I can sell over and over again to maximise my profit.
Creating tripwires and evergreen funnels has also been a huge profit generator in my business over the past year, and now that I have the systems in place, the income has become truly passive.
Letโs Recap.
I was able to structure my weeks to work 20-hours or less byโฆ
Pre-planning my weeks
Content batching
Creating a daily routine
And restructuring my product suite
If this is something youโd like to implement into your own business so that you can spend more time with your family, travelling, or doing whatever or it is that makes you happy then I am currently accepting private clients and I would love to chat with you! Click here to learn more about 1:1 Voxer Mentorship.
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If youโre an ambitious entrepreneur looking to create more time, freedom & profit in your online business and finally start building your business in a way that feels good to YOU, click here to learn more about how Leticia can support you with Private Voxer Mentorship.
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Hey! Iโm Tish!
I'm a marketing mentor for ambitious entrepreneurs who want to create more time, freedom & profit in their online business, in a way that feels good to them!
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