007: How to Clone Yourself

The Modern CEO Podcast Episode seven. Hey, have you heard the news? There is a new style of CEO on the block, the modern CEO. And she is changing the way businesses are run. She's setting her own hours and her own salary. She's creating a business around what matters most to her. Freedom, impact, and family. Her corner office looks nothing like what you'd see on Wall Street. It's a kitchen table, your grandma's lake house, a spacious home office, the living room floor surrounded by kids, and in my case, baby dolls or the local coffee shop. Your business, your way. This modern CEO is here to stay. Hey, it isn't always going to be easy, and Lord knows it isn't always pretty, but it's a lot more fun when we're in it together. And I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to the Modern CEO pod. Well, hello, hello. Welcome to episode seven of the Modern CEO podcast. I'm your host, Amber McHugh, and I'm excited to dig into today's topic, which is all about how to clone you. Essentially, that means how do we get more of you in the world without you doing more work, without you having to hustle more so you can get more done in less time, so you can get more leverage, so you can focus on the things that you are really good at, that you enjoy doing and forget the rest? After all, what is all of this for if we are constantly spinning our wheels and spending a ton of time on things that we kind of suck at or that we don't really enjoy anyway? So one of the questions that someone asked me recently was, what should I outsource first? What will give me the most relief? And I can't answer that question for you. What we need to do is we need to explore what is your zone of genius? What do you get excited about? What energizes you? Those are the things that you should be focused on. And then we should start to look at everything else and build a plan to, yeah, let's outsource it or systematize it, because everybody's got a budget, everybody's got resources that are. That are being spent any number of which ways, both time and energy resources. So we're going to take a look at what are those things that. That we need to take off of your plate, and that looks different than mine because we have different skills, we have different areas of expertise, we have different things that we enjoy, we have different things that energize us. So we are going to start to look at what is it for you personally. And we've definitely got some tools and supporting resources for you as you go through this episode. But if you're listening and you don't have access to a computer right now, no problem. I'm gonna talk through all of these tools and resources and you can pop into our show notes@ambermcch.com seven just the number seven. And we'll hook you up with all of the resources when you can get to them. But if you're listening now and you are by a computer and you want to grab these and follow along again. Ambermcchugh.com 7 the number seven. So what we need to do is we need to look at where your time is actually going anyway. So think about what are you spending your time on day to day, what did you do today and for the next day? Two weeks, minimum of two weeks, I recommend we're gonna track your time. And one week isn't quite enough. Three weeks would be great because you get enough variety from week to week. Not every week looks the same. Some weeks are just smooth sailing and other weeks, you know, things pop up, little fire drill items that you spend your time on and we wanna move you out of that fire drill space. And again, we wanna get you to focusing on the most important things so you can prioritize and you can take strategic next steps in your business and be in the weeds focusing on just whatever pops up at any given time. But we want to be intentional and we want to be focused and strategic about our time as best as we can. And I oftentimes plan and leave myself time to deal with the fire drills. So if I do get pulled into something that really needs my attention, but I didn't plan for it. I have planned just general space so I can get back to those other things that I want to be intentional about and that were at the top of my priority list in enough time. I've got time blocked to come back to that. If I do get, by chance get pulled into something that I wasn't expecting, because we know it comes up right, the kids get sick, I've got to run to school. I wasn't expecting this. Or, you know, in my instance, for a while, every now and then I come down with a migraine. So I had to leave time to plan, okay, what am I going to do about this migraine and what's going to shift? So I left that space, that buffer for the unexpected. But consider and look and track for the next three weeks, where is your time going? Minimum of two weeks and I track it. Every time your attention shifts, right? Facebook notice pops up. I get distracted by that. And if that happens too often, we're gonna identify a trend and like, okay, let's figure out how we get me out of Facebook. Get me out. Because every time you change gears and shift from one activity to the next, it takes about 20 minutes of focus time for you to get back into that thing that you were doing that needed your attention at any given time, right? So then track your time. How much time are you spending on those key activities? How much time are you spending on learning and development? How much time are you spending, you know, with your family? Because you can also track personal time as well as the time spent on business or work activities to get a holistic perspective. And one of two things usually happen. People realize, like, oh, I've got more time than I thought. Let me get intentional about how I'm sitting spending this time so I'm not burning hours and spending more time than I need to spend. Or people realize, whoa, I am spending time on all of the wrong things based on what my goals are. Let me refocus and juggle my calendar, right, so that you can spend time on all of the key activities and make room for that in what we call a time budget. But we'll get to that later in another episode because we're gonna focus on the outsourcing and the systematizing right now. And after you've identified these are all of the things that I'm working on, then we're going to start to break down and pull out those activities into things that you should keep on keeping on doing because it's all good for so many reasons. Or that you need to outsource because you hate it. It sucks your energy. It takes you way more time than it should. And someone else could do this a lot faster than you. Or you need to outsource it because it's something that you really need to get to. But let's face it, it's not going to happen, right? And there are some things that are on that you're not getting to list you actually need to do. So we need to create space for those. So we've got keep on keeping on. We've got think about outsourcing it, or we've got systematize because, right, you like it, but it's taking you too much time. And there are some different reasons for that. And then we've got things that we can just straight up delete because they are not having a big impact on your business. But you're gonna start by going through and thinking about where is my time going? Track where is my time going? So you can get really objective and see like, oh, this is where I thought it was going, but this is where it's actually going. Then as we start to break things down into those categories that we talked about, we're going to use the Get Efficient prioritization matrix. And this is a matrix that is available for you to download@ambermchew.com seven the number seven. And there are four different categories in this Get Efficient prioritization matrix. The first is outsource it. As you look at all of the activities that you're doing, think about outsourcing it. If you hate it, you're really bad at sucks your energy and it takes you a lot of time. So I put that energy sucks, I'm bad at it all under the hate it category. Like get these off of it is not good that these things are on my plate. It doesn't feel good, I don't like it. And on top of that, it's just taking me a ton of time. For me, the first thing that I put in that outsource bucket because it was taking me so much more time than it should and I really didn't like it, was the blog posting process. Getting blog posts up on WordPress. I was spending time tinkering with images and tinkering with fonts and tinkering with formatting and really it was going to have a lot of impact if I could just get the content up and out the door. I didn't mind doing the content but man, it was taking way too much time to get it actually out the door actually posted. So that's the first thing I outsourced in my business. Before I was actually generating revenue through nice ops. So I was taking investments from other places, a little bit of my full time job budget, a little bit of my side hustle and I was investing that in outsourcing in the blog posting process so I could spend my time on revenue, revenue generating activities. Now the second category that I want to look at is if you hate it but it doesn't take you a lot of time, I would still lean toward outsourcing that because as a business owner, as a leader in your business who's trying to create a different lifestyle for yourself and oh, by the way, I've got these other things going on. My energy is really important to me. I want to keep your energy at the highest possible levels so you can continue to Serve so you can continue to be creative. So I would also think about outsourcing and if not outsourcing, at least systematizing. If you really hate it, but it doesn't take a lot of time. So outsource. If you can't outsource there also because of budget reasons, because you're just not ready yet, because we want to be smart implementers, then just systematize it so it doesn't take you as much energy when you go to do it as well. Now, if you love it, love it, love it, love it. This is something that's in your wheelhouse or it's not directly related to your wheelhouse, but you enjoy it still. It connects you with people. For whatever reason, you love it, but it takes you a ton of time. At some point we're gonna wanna think about outsourcing that. But for now, definitely get a system in place. Because it's taking you a lot of time, right? Your time is important, your time is precious. We wanna get you leverage. We want you to be more so we can get more of you in the world. And so this how to clone yourself concept isn't necessarily about hiring, but it's generally speaking about how can we be more efficient to get more done through you, with you, with your ideas, get more of your vision out there. And that can come through systematizing as much as it can come through outsourcing. So outsource it. If you hate it and it takes a ton of time, outsource it. Ideally, if you hate it and it doesn't take a lot of time. And if you can't outsource it yet, systematize it. And definitely systematize it. If you love it and it takes you a ton of time. Now at some point you might even want to outsource it if you love it and it takes you a lot of time. Even if you love it, I should say, and it takes you a lot of time, so you're going to outsource it. And the last category that is on the get Efficient prioritization matrix is things that you love and it doesn't take you a lot of time. For now, as a first step, keep on keeping on, right? You love it. It's not taking you that much time. At some point, we may need to shake those things up because it's not on the list of things that you must be doing as a business leader to serve your clients right? But for now, keep on keeping on, do your thing. If you love it, keep on doing your thing. Now There's a whole host of other things that you just might not be getting to, right? I'm not doing it. It's not that I hate it, I'm just not doing it. It's not taking me a lot of time because I'm just not doing it. So there we need to think about, okay, do we need to delegate this or with this newfound time that you may have because you're systematizing and or you are outsourcing, do you need to add that thing into your schedule? Do you need to strategically make time to get to that thing because it is really important and you're not getting to it. Or there's a whole host of other activities that you're not getting to and it's not making a big impact on your business, whether you're getting to them or you're not getting to them. So we can just delete those things. Those are the things that might be the 5 and the $1 bills or something that you hold onto as a part of your vision, but it's not going to happen now. So we're going to delete that from the current state to do list and move that to a parking lot for the future. Because if it's an idea that you know you want to execute on someday, but it's not happening right now, now is not the time for you to spend your energy on that activity. You will get to it at some point. You will get to it in just the right time. But let's give that idea a home on a parking lot for later, right? A later. I'm going to work on this later or a someday list or the parking lot or, you know, a future list so that you keep that idea out there, you give it a home, you give it a space, but you're going to get to that at another point in time so you can tie that to in 2018. I'm gonna work on this thing and revisit it when you're building your 2018 plans. Or maybe it's 2019, or maybe I will work on this activity when I get this other thing done. So there's an if then tied to it. That's one of my favorite things to do. I've gotta do this first. But when this thing is done, then I can pivot to this next thing so I keep the focus. But I'm still holding onto and I'm still. I've given that other idea a home, and so I know exactly when to come back to it. So that is our get efficient prioritization matrix. And listen, if you are thinking that, hey, I'm a solopreneur, I don't need to outsource, I don't need to outsource. There ain't nothing solo about being a solo entrepreneur, right? So many people are getting help with websites. Even if you don't have a full time team, yes, you might still be leading this independently, you might still be flying solo when it comes to leadership, but I encourage you to get some support there too. And you might be outsourcing things to contractors, right? Someone to help with your website design because I am never going to get to it or I am just really, really bad at it. So I need to give that up now. I need to save so I can invest in getting that web designer or any number of other things right. Like I said, the blog post process was something that I let go of fairly early on when I realized, what am I doing? This does not make sense, McHugh. This is not in your zone of genius and it's taking you way too much time and way too much. So whatever that is for you, identify what those things are using the Get Efficient prioritization matrix and then put plans in place to move on the priorities that you have set. And if you were thinking like, no, I'm a DIYer, I am a solopreneur, I'm supposed to be able to do this on my own. No, no, no, no. It's a middle class mindset as Louis Schiff defines in the book Business Brilliant. Yes, I like the stats that are in this book. It is a middle class mindset and 9 out of 10 times people who stay in the middle class will keep DIYing it. I'm going to DIY it. I'm going to DIY IT. But it's those people who shift into the millionaire and billionaire status who are outsourcing it if they know there is someone out there that can do it better than they can do it. So let's start to move you out of that diy, out of that middle class mindset. And even if you aren't going for billions, let's start to just shift you there so you can grow a little bit and spend more time on the things that are going to have a bigger impact on your business so we can get more of you in the world, so we can generate and focus your time on client service and revenue generating activities. So with that in mind, I also have a surprise for you, especially if you've made it to the last episode or the end of this episode. And know today's surprise is not me singing Woo Hoo. That might be a celebration for some of you or some of you might be bummed. And for those of you that are bummed, I thank thank you very much for listening to the end for the song. But no, today's surprise is that we are gonna invite you to join us in how to clone yourself for a super discounted rate to the tune of $10. Usually this program and the value of this program is over $200. But we wanna invite you to join us just for $10 because we wanna get this program into the hands of as many people as possible. So if you want to go through how to step further into a leadership role, how to set yourself up to be cloned through systems and through your partners in crime in your team members, we're going to walk you through how to start to design and plan to hire, how to interview, right, how to set up your systems and then how to train those people that you're bringing onto the team through strong systems, but also through strong leadership and sharing your vision. Because when you have people who are working on your business with you, you want them to understand and be aligned to your vision. And we've got some strategies for how you could do that in the how to Clone Yourself course. So yes, we want as many of you out there being able to have as big of impact as possible without you spinning your wheels and having to do all the work. So how to Clone Yourself is yours and you can get the link to get that at the special rate for you for listening to the Modern CEO podcast over@amberbeq.com seven and then again, that's just the number seven. I can't wait to hear what you think about how to clone yourself. We are actually, at the time of the recording of this episode, revamping it. So if you get in there right away, you might see the old school style and the old school modules, but look out because there is new branding, new design, new worksheets and new recording coming. So you are getting in at the perfect time just before all the upgrades are made. Let me know what you think and I will see you. Oh, actually, I will chat with you in our next episode. Have a good one.