762 The Real Reason You Don’t Have Time to Scale

Welcome to the Next Level Life Podcast with Christine Corcoran. This podcast is made for the powerhouse business women who are ready to ignite their fullest potential. This is where we will dive deep into the mindset breakthroughs and sprinkle in some kick up the butt motivation so you can scale your business with confidence and clarity. Whether you're craving more income, impact, or inspiration, this podcast will be your ultimate resource for all things next level. Listen in as we have authentic conversations with game-changing female entrepreneurs as we reveal the secrets on what it takes to rise and thrive. 5. So go ahead, ignite your inner fire, and let's get you taking massive aligned action. Are you ready to elevate? Let's go. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for hitting download. There's a couple of exciting things happening this week that I thought you might want to know about. Firstly, tomorrow on Tuesday, the 21st of April, I am running a live workshop called The Unapologetic Authority, the premium positioning framework that you need to become the go-to person in your industry And you do not need to be an expert to be the go-to. Trust me, you don't. And if you really want dream premium clients coming to you, if you want to not have to justify your price, if you want referrals coming to you all the time, if you want to be known as the go-to in your industry to make everything else in your business much easier because you're not having to convince people to buy, you're actually having premium dream clients coming to you wanting to work with you, and I imagine that if you're in business, you want that. This is a workshop definitely designed for you. We're going to be going through 3 core areas. 1, your authority, building your authority. 2, your premium positioning and how to actually, you know, think about the language you need to convert more consistently. We're going to talk about content that converts more consistently. We're going to talk about the language that attracts the right dream premium clients. And then we're also going to be going through the most important piece, the identity. The identity behind someone who is the go-to, the identity behind someone who is the authority in the space. And this is some of the biggest mindset shifts you're going to have to have in order for you to really step up and own and claim your authority. So feel free to jump across to the show notes now and check out all the details. It is a $27 workshop. It's 90 minutes. We're going to be doing the work in the workshop and you will walk away with your authority statement, your new premium positioning, 5 different content types that convert more consistently, and your new identity statement that's going to help you step up. All right, come and join me. It's going to be so worthwhile. There will be replays, but only for, only for those people that are registered. Check out the link in the show notes. The second exciting thing that's happening this week is that I am opening up a few spots to the Next Level Mastermind. I only have 12 spots available for this cohort, and I keep it intimate because of the high level of support that's included in this. This is my highest touch container, and what that means is that you get one-on-one coaching sessions, you get monthly business coaching sessions, you get access to get your everything reviewed within your business. So we look at everything that you're working on, whether it's your scalable offer, whether it is your email sequences, whether it is your sales pages, like everything you need in order to scale your business. You get access to ask me to look at it and give you proper feedback. Now, this is definitely for an established woman in business. So if you were doing 6 figures already and you're wanting to scale it, whether you wanna scale with team or whether you wanna scale with a scalable offer where you sell one-to-many, this is designed specifically for you. You can check out the link in the show notes. There's so many incredible inclusions with this. We get together, we do a 2-day immersion days on the Gold Coast with a branding photo shoot. We do an online retreat day. You get one-on-one coaching. Like, there is so much included in this, but the reason why it's included is because for you to step into your next level, we need to look at core areas of your business. We look at your scalable offer, we look at your ability to lead, we look at your authority and really build your unapologetic authority. We look at your visibility and your sales strategies. We look at everything within your business in order to take it to the next level. And then woven throughout the entire 6 months is deep identity work. Identity work that helps you shift and step up to be the go-to in your industry. And I absolutely love seeing this come together. Like, if I think about the women in this round of the Mastermind where we're just finishing up on the 30th of April, Oh my gosh, it's been so good. It's been so phenomenal watching them really step up and own their worth, claim their authority in their space, and see the results coming back because of it, right? These are women that are charging more, are hitting new income levels. Like one of my clients hit $56K last month. Another client that has launched a whole new program and had 7 people sign up straight away. We also had another client of mine that built her scalable offer from scratch with us and built it out, went to market, launched it, ran the beta round, had full paying clients in there, and is about to go back to market with another— with her next round. So there's so much that can happen in 6 months, and it's so important that you choose to decide what your next level is going to be and then get the support that you need to make sure it happens. So if this feels aligned for you, I'd love to connect with you. You can either check out the link in the show notes or you can book a call with me to chat further about it. So if you want to book a call, I'll pop the link in the show notes again. Book a call with me. Let's just have a chat, see where you're at, what your goals are this year, what you feel like your biggest challenges are, and we could talk about whether the Next Level Mastermind feels like a good fit for you. Alright, let's talk about today's topic, which is all about the real reason you don't have time to scale. And I'm sure as I even say that, you're thinking, I'm busy. Like, I'm busy. I know, I know exactly what you mean. You are busy. Absolutely. And we get caught up in this term time, right? Whenever your brain goes to, well, I don't really have the time to scale. I don't really have time for this. All of those types of things. Anytime the word time comes into your mind, I want you to reframe that to priorities. Because time is spent on what you prioritize, of what you deem to be most important. Now, sometimes when we're in our business, we can get into a state of being really reactive and we're just basically putting out fires. And out— all of our time is taken up being really reactive. And one of the biggest things that you can do if you notice you're in a state of being really reactive is to get back into a state of being proactive. And the way that we do that is we take a step back. And even in those times where you feel like you don't have time to do this, where you can't set aside the time, where you can't take a day out of your business, That is the most important time that you do, do this, because I guarantee you, if you don't, you will keep being reactive and you will make a bad decision. You will do something that is detrimental to your business. You will burn yourself out. You will go in the direction of a path that doesn't really feel aligned for you, but you feel like you have to just keep putting in all the effort and the energy, and you will get to the point where you get burnt out. So I just want you to bring your attention back to priorities because it's not like you're going to get any quieter. It's not like you're going to get any less busy, right? And so what I want you to do is think about like, okay, well, what— how am I approaching my use of time? And as we go through this today, there's a few different things I'm going to bring to your attention that I'd love to help you shift your attention and focus and really bring you back to the state of being proactive, right? Okay, so the first one is where we're spending our time working in the business versus on the business. So this is like being in the operator shoes where we're doing all the do, we're doing client work, we're serving our clients. We're doing all the things, right? When we're working in the business versus being the CEO, we're working on the business. So I would just start there and be like, okay, what percentage of time am I currently spending in my CEO shoes? Now, when we're really busy and we don't have time to scale, it's usually because we're spending a very, very minute amount of time in our CEO shoes, and we're probably again in the reactive stage. So for us to get into the proactive phase, we need to be in our CEO shoes more. Even when we feel like we don't think that it's possible. But what I want you to come back to is actually where you place your value. Because often when I have this conversation with clients is when we're stuck in the operator shoes versus the CEO is that we're often looking at the work that we do in the operator shoes. So we're working in the business. We look at that to be more valuable and more rewarding or more important than being in our CEO shoes because we haven't prioritized being in the CEO before. Or we did it for a little bit and really didn't benefit us, so we kind of stepped back into being the operator shoes, right? Because we didn't give it enough time for it to actually start generating the results we were looking for. So if you have a belief system that causes you to look at the operator as this is where I'm most valuable, this is where I make my money, and I ha— and I, if I step away from making my money in this way, then I will absolutely feel like I'm gonna have a pay cut or I'm gonna not stop making money. And that's actually not true. I just wanna say this is absolutely not true, but I get that we can get caught up in that mindset. It's true, we do. We absolutely get caught up in that mindset and we think, well, that's where the invoices go out. When I'm doing the client work and I'm doing my deliverables, that's how I make money. Yeah, look, and that's absolutely right. You need to be in the operator shoes in order for the business to make money, right? But if you're only in your operator shoes, there will come a time where you are not progressing and you're not scaling and you're not making any more money. You're just getting by. And that's where we need to really step into our CEO shoes to start scaling the business and start really looking outside the box and having that bird's eye view to be like, okay, what is actually going to move the needle? Where's the, what's the direction that I want to go in? And what do I need to focus on in order to get there? What are my priorities? Because if we looked at even the percentage of time that I just asked you to think about, of like the percentage of time you're in your operator shoes versus your CEO shoes, I guarantee the priorities in those areas also will dictate where you're progressing. So if your priorities as an operator is, well, I need to get this client work done, I need to get this deliverable to that person, I need to finish this up, I need to invoice these people, that's where you're gonna progress. And it's the only place you're gonna progress. Whereas if you shift into your CEO shoes and you start going, okay, what will help the business move forward? What needs to happen in order for me to move the needle here? You're more likely to have different priorities. And it can feel like, oh my gosh, I'm taking my attention away from my clients. And that can feel scary. But it is necessary in order for you to run your business and be proactive in scaling your business. It does not mean you stop giving your clients attention. Hell no. It does not mean you stop servicing them at the high level that you've been servicing. No, absolutely not. We need to just be conscious of where we're over-delivering, where we're not prioritizing time. Because when we do start prioritizing time to be in our CEO shoes, it doesn't have to be a lot of time depending on your goals. It'll always come back to your goals, right? We really want to consider like, okay, where does the business need to go? Where do I want it to go? What kind of money do I want to be making? What services do I need to create and provide? You know, all the things that keep the business moving forward, which we'll get to in a second. But it just comes back to the priorities of where we're spending our time. So all I'm asking you to do is if you're finding that you don't have enough time, we need to start changing the language of what we do to describe our experience and start saying that we do have time. We get to time— my, one of my favorite sayings is we where I spend my time, I progress. And allowing yourself to be like, it's okay. And it's safe for me to spend time in my CEO shoes, even if it's just a little bit more than what I've currently been doing. And we need to give it time to actually show the results because you can't just spend an extra day in your CEO shoes this month. And then 3 more months go by and you've not spent any time doing your CEO activities. That's not going to move the business forward at all. Right? We need to be conscious of, okay, how much time am I spending in my CEO shoes per week? And how can I just incrementally spend a little bit more time? So it might be like, well, I'm currently 98% in my operator shoes and 2% in my CEO shoes. I might need to just adjust that to be 90% and 10%. Yeah. And then we eventually get to 80% and 20%. 20% of your time spent as a CEO would be amazing. Right. And then getting to 30% and then getting to 40%. When you start seeing those results, then you're going to be like, oh my gosh, why didn't I do this sooner? So let's just recap really quickly, right? Whenever your brain says, I don't have the time, I want you to go, what are my priorities? Where am I prioritizing my time currently? And sometimes we need to first look at the time leaks, right? Because if that's also where you're like, okay, I really don't feel like I know where I've got time or I don't have time. And this is actually best to be done in hindsight versus looking ahead. So I would wait to the end of the week, right? Or you can review last week and be like, okay, at the end of the week, where did I progress? Where did I make progress? And I always ask the question as well, like, what did I actually produce? Because I guarantee if you ask yourself that question, you will realize if you've been in your operator shoes, you may have produced only outcomes for other people, which is, I know is important and it's good. Like, don't get me wrong, but if you've only created and produced outcomes for other people, your business will not move forward. So that's where it brings it back to. We start to have that review and be like, oh, okay, maybe that's where I need to be spending my time a little bit more. Then I look at what were the bottlenecks, right? So we wanna be really strategic here and be like, not just judge ourselves to be like, oh, I didn't spend enough time here. I was so tired and I finished at 5:00 PM instead of 6:00 PM. Like, no, this is not a place for judgment. This is a place for strategic review. Okay? End of the week review. Where did I make progress? What did I actually produce? Where were my bottlenecks? Where did I get stuck? Right? Was I the bottleneck? Was I self-sabotaging myself? Was I actually playing small here? Was I getting scared? Was I really reacting to fear? And instead of doing the thing that I knew I should have been doing, I retreated over into doing more client work. Because a lot of the time, when you're in your operator shoes, you actually are your most confident because it's things that you've always done. And so sometimes when you're starting to step into CEO shoes, it feels uncomfortable doing these uncomfortable actions because you haven't done them before, or you haven't done them enough times in order for you to feel confident. So we end up retreating back to where we feel most confident. It's natural for us to do that, right? The other thing I look at is like, what were some of the fires that showed up that week that I had to take away from other things in order to put the fire out? This is actually a really good question to ask yourself, especially if you have team, because a lot of the time if you're putting fires out, it's usually because we haven't got the foundations of an SOP in place, or it's just a freak thing that happens in business, right? Like it's natural for you to have a few fires here and there, that pulls your attention and you have to give your fullest attention. And sometimes it takes a little bit longer. Like if you have a website breakdown or if you have something tech-wise that just stuffed up. Like I had something the other week that I ended up changing a custom domain and it ended up fucking with so many other links that I had done previously. I didn't realize it and it took up half of my day to fix it. Right? And I'm like, I knew I shouldn't have been spending that time there, but it was a big attention sucker because it had to be fixed. Right? So I know these things happen. So again, zero judgment, just an awareness. Because sometimes with those fires, we can look at, okay, are these a pattern? Am I currently always having the same fire? That's when I need to look back at and be like, okay, why is this keep happening? And how can I fix it? What's the solution here? And then I always, with the information that I've gathered from that review, right? Reviewing where you made progress or didn't make progress, your bottlenecks and the fires. I look at what are the solutions to fix this so it doesn't happen again. Because if we don't address them, then sometimes we are never gonna progress because we're always gonna have these time sucks come into your life, right? Into your business. That then brings me to the next piece, which is your decision-making, which again comes back to being in the CEO shoes, because when you're scaling your business, you actually make different decisions or different decisions are required of you as a CEO versus just putting in more effort. And this is where we can get caught up in being busy, right? Busy being busy, but busy doesn't pay the bills unless you're invoicing for that amount of time, right? Being busy is not going to make progress. And so I always just get caught up of like, oh my God, it was such a busy week. Okay, but where did I spend my time? What was it? What did I actually produce? And I look back at things and be like, okay, I'm really proud of myself because I got this done and I got that done and this moved the needle forward here because I'm ready for this now. And this is actually progressing. Like, if you're able to look back and have these beautiful conversations with yourself that you're like, hey man, I really just smashed it this week because I was able to achieve this and this and this. Right? That's what I want you to have happen because then you can start seeing the progress. And whenever you get caught up in that thought head space of like, oh, I'm not— should be further along than I am. It's usually because we're not doing this type of review because the different decisions that you'd be making as your CEO is that you are gonna be encouraged or maybe spotlighted. How else do I put this? You will be rewarded by the level of risk that you take and the biggest decisions that you make. Not by the busy work that you do. So the— what I mean by making different decisions is because we're making the harder decisions to be like really truly looking at ourselves and be like, where did I progress and why didn't I progress? And sometimes it's because it's like, oh, I keep getting pulled back into the operator shoes when I should have hired someone already for this, or I keep doing— getting caught up in content creation over here because this is taking me longer than it really should, when really I should be giving my ideas and the content and getting someone else to create it, or It may be because I'm responding to messages that could have been a ManyChat setup, or it could be that I was putting out all these fires with team members, or I was training a team member, and really it's because I don't have any SOPs set up. Like, there's so many things that we can look at, and I could probably keep going, but I won't. But I want you to come back to your output must be set by the priorities that you are setting as the CEO of the business. And if we're spending too much of our time as the operator, then it will always feel like you don't have enough time to scale the business because we're making operator-based decisions, not CEO decisions. So then the question always comes around to, how do I change this, right? How do I create space? And one of the things I will say to you that you maybe won't like, but honestly, I say this to clients all the time, and when they do it and it actually works, they're so surprised. So I want you to know that it feels like lame that I'm going to say this, but if what you prioritize is where you progress, and if you don't prioritize CEO time, then you're most likely not, not going to progress. So even when it feels like you don't have the time, that's when you have to prioritize it. Because the reason why you're so busy in your operator shoes is because you're not making CEO-level decisions in your CEO time. So how do you make space? You create space by opening up your calendar right now, looking ahead, and putting it in your calendar, CEO time. Whatever that looks like right now, and it could be an hour next week, or it could be 3, it could be 10, it could be a whole day, whatever feels right for you. Now, as you do this, if you get to those timeframes locked into your calendar and you revert back to client work and you don't know what you actually should be spending your time on, and you end up just like keeping yourself busy by doing busy admin stuff, again, that's actually a lot of the time, it's fear. It's fear showing up, or it is a lack of clarity of where we should be spending our time. And so if that was you, Oh, maybe I'm jumping ahead a little bit. So how do we create space? One, we prioritize it. Start with what you feel is currently doable, and we just work to incrementally build it up to be longer amounts of time. Now, depending on your business model, that will change and will really be dependent on your business model, because you, if you have team, you might be a split between management time versus CEO time. It might be dependent on what your priorities are and what your next season is gonna look like. Right? So you might be in a maintenance season. So you might not be needing to address as much time for your CEO time, or it might be in growth season. You need to be actually truly dedicating time to progress by working on things that are gonna help move the business forward. Right? And then you'll have scale time where it's fucking go time and you have to be putting your attention in the biggest decision makers, taking the biggest risks and putting yourself out there and challenging yourself to scale. So if that doesn't make sense to you, let me just clarify that. Maintenance, and when you don't have a big goal to necessarily grow that year, but you just wanna maintain what you currently have, you're still gonna have to spend time maintaining the business. Growth is where you want to grow and you're recognizing for you in order to scale, you don't have things in place in order for you to be able to scale yet. So it might be that you need to work on a specific offer or a program or something that you need to bring to life in order to sell it to be able to scale. So you might be, or you need to hire, you need to go through the phases of hiring team members. In order to get to the ability to then scale it. Or you need to focus on sales activities to have the money to then invest in these next pieces to then scale it. So that's a growth phase. Whereas when you're in scale phase, it's literally when you have all of those pieces in place and it's fucking go time. And that doesn't feel possible if you haven't allocated time as a CEO for the growth phase. It's going to feel like, I don't have anything ready. I'm not ready. I don't have anything prepped. I don't know what to launch. I'm doing all these things, but I'm busy, busy, busy. And I just don't know what I should be spending my time on. Come back to your goals. Come back to your goals. What is my goal for this year? What needs to happen in order for me to achieve that goal? And then start allocating the time, because I guarantee you the goals should motivate you. They should inspire you. They should bring you to life, and they should challenge you to think bigger. And that's where the decisions should come from, not from, I'm just gonna need to just maintain this, my current— again, this episode is very much about scaling, so it's not about like just staying in the maintenance phase. Now I get it, some people are in the maintenance phase, and that's fine, that's great. I love that for for you. But if you're in this scale phase, it's probably why you've hit play for this episode. It's those decisions, it's that next level decision making and those next level goals that really are going to inspire you to move forward. So how do you create space? Create fucking space. Put it in your calendar. Do the reviews at the end of the week. Ask yourself, where are the bottlenecks? Where are the fires? Where did I progress? Because I guarantee you that will be clarity in order for you to then realize what's sucking your time. So do a little time audit, review where you're spending it, because I guarantee you that's actually what's causing the problem, is that you either are spending busy time doing shit that doesn't matter, or you are actually putting out a hell of a lot of fires and doing all the things when we need to look at, okay, what do we need to do? What's the solution here in order to fix this so I do have the space and time to spend on the growth of the business? All right. I hope you found this episode really clarifying and inspiring in order for you to really think about where you're gonna be spending your time for the rest of the year. If you would love my support with this and you really are ready to scale this year, I would suggest that you put yourself in the room that's going to support this growth and expansion and give you a new fresh set of eyes on your business to help you determine all of the things we covered off today. And that is the Next Level Mastermind. So come and join us. We're ready to take things to the next level. And I feel like it's your time. It's your time. So come and join us. Thank you for listening. And if you found any value out of this episode, make sure you hit the follow button so you get access to the episodes as soon as they are live. And make sure you come hang out with me on Instagram. You can find me at Christine Corcoran underscore coach. Have an incredible week.