87 | How to find time to work ON your business, not just IN it
How To Find Time to Work On Your Business, Not Just In It
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Running an online business can be incredibly tough - especially for solopreneurs. You spend so much time on client work that it can be hard to find time to work on your own business growth. In this episode, I’m sharing 3 tips to help you find time to work on your business, not just in it so that you can grow your business to be what you always dreamed of.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
🔗 FREE: 18 Ways to Grow Your Audience Through Collaboration
🔗 Toggl
🔗 Episode 50: How to uncover the most profitable activities in your business
want to listen instead?
Running an online business can be incredibly tough - especially for those of us who are solopreneurs. You’re not only the person responsible for completing and delivering client work, you’re also the admin person, the customer support rep, the head of the marketing department… with all the tasks we have to complete to keep our businesses running, it can be overwhelming.
As business owners, particularly with coaches and service-based businesses, we tend to put a lot of focus on our clients. But we then forget (or run out of time) to work on the tasks that will help to grow our businesses. Essentially, we spend so much time working in our businesses that we neglect to work on our businesses.
Working on your business vs working in your business
When you work on your business, you’re working internally on the tasks that are going to grow your business, increase your revenue and allow you to scale. For example, improving your client experience, creating digital products or improving your marketing materials.
When you work in your business, you’re completing client work that is necessary, yes, but doesn’t actually grow your business.
Many online business owners, particularly solopreneurs, have so much client work to complete that they spend the majority of their days doing this and rarely prioritise time to work on their business and on those tasks that will actually move the needle forward. This is why so many business owners find themselves stuck at the same level with little to no growth for so long.
If you want to grow your business, you need to set aside time to actually work on your business and make that a priority.
You might feel like you have no spare time to work on your business but, I promise, you do. The problem isn’t that you don’t have enough time, it’s that you don’t know how to prioritise it and balance it correctly. In this episode, I’m sharing 3 tips to help you find time to work on your business, not just in it so that you can grow your business to be what you always dreamed of.
1. Track your time
This is something that I have been doing in my own business for years and it has been such an eye-opener, and something that’s really helped me to understand where my time is going, and then make practical changes to improve my productivity and better manage my time.
I recommend using an app, such as Toggl, to track your time and make note of how many hours you’re actually spending working each week, what tasks you’re spending your time on and how long they tend to take you.
At the same time, track how much time is spent on procrastination. Are you getting sidetracked? How much time are you spending scrolling social media when you should actually be working?
Record absolutely everything for the next 30 days, and then go in and identify exactly where your time is going. From this, I guarantee, you will find that there are hours of unaccounted time wasted on procrastination and random tasks that could be better managed.
2. Organise your time
Once you have your data from tracking your time, then you’ll need to make a plan and figure out how you can re-organise your time to prioritise working on your business. How you do this will be different for everyone, but here are 2 things that you could try:
Complete a Business Boosting Activity first thing in the morning
Every morning, I carve out 60 minutes of uninterrupted time where I’ll work on my business and the tasks that will lead to revenue growth - I call this my Business Boosting Activity. This is the first 60 minutes of every single day. I do not do anything before this - no client work, no checking emails, nothing.
The reason for this is because I am at my most productive first thing in the morning, so I want to use this time to do something that is guaranteed to grow my business. Once I’ve spent my first hour of the day completing that needle-moving task, I’ll then move onto my regular to-do list and start my client work, going through emails etc.
If I were to work on my to-do list first and then leave my Business Boosting Activity for the end of the day, I simply wouldn’t get it done and I’d just end up putting it off until the next day, and the next, and the next.
By prioritising the growth of your business first and foremost, you ensure that you’re setting yourself up for consistent growth. So I always recommend spending the first hour or so of your day working on something that’s going to grow your business.
Have a dedicated CEO day
Another way you could carve out time to work on your business is by implementing something called a CEO day. For example, every Friday is your day to work on your business. On this day, you don’t do client work, you don’t take calls or meetings, you don’t engage in busy work - it’s solely dedicated to your needle-moving tasks and designed for growth.
If you are able to organise your time in a way that allows you to do this, this is a great way to ensure that you’re making your business growth a priority.
3. Find an accountability partner
It’s all well and good making a plan to get organised and work on these tasks, but it means nothing if you don’t stay accountable to those tasks. For that reason, I highly recommend finding yourself an accountability partner who you can trust to check in on you and ensure that you’re doing what you said you were going to do.
This could be a biz bestie, but it could also be someone in your family. At the start of each week, share your goals and what you plan to work on that’s going to move the needle forward. Then, at the end of the week, check-in and update them on your progress. I promise you, having someone you have to check-in to is going to motivate you more than anything, because if you don’t do it, you have to explain why. And you’re not going to want to admit that you didn’t do this important business growth activity because you were too busy scrolling TikTok.
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hey, I'm Tish!
I'm a multi-passionate business owner, digital marketing strategist, business mentor & part-time digital nomad ✈️
I'm on a mission to help you create more time, freedom & profit in your business through the implementation of sustainable & scalable business and marketing strategies!
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The Simple Marketing Podcast is for ambitious entrepreneurs who want to build a sustainable & scalable online business. With bite-sized, actionable episodes, you’ll learn how to create more time, freedom & profit in a way that feels good to you.
