Time Management for Entrepreneurs | Discover Secrets to Boost Your Business

Hello, Believe Nation! Welcome to another edition of the Evan Carmichael Show. I am your host, Evan Carmichael. I believe in entrepreneurs, and this show is all about turning your business and turning your dreams into a success. I'm super excited to be back. It's been a while since my last show. I went on a vacation to Disney World with the fam, and and just got back. And I'm in a new time slot. It messed me up. I was dialing in at 11. I was all excited to go for the show and like, oh, I still have another hour until the next show. Super excited to have my old producer Daniela back just for this episode. Amazing to work with you again. And welcoming my new producer Shanna in for a guest appearance today. It's our first time working together, so I'm super pumped about that as well. Hello guys. So today, super important episode. I want to talk about managing your time. Time management is one of the biggest issues that entrepreneurs face. Working 80, 100-hour weeks trying to get our businesses off the ground. You guys know, for those of you who have a business and are listening, you know how hard it is to run a company. It's one of the hardest things you're ever going to do in your life and hopefully also one of the most rewarding. What I found was I was doing so much work, putting in so many hours, and was getting frustrated with not getting the results that I was looking for. Everything I had done up to that point in my life before starting my first business, I knew if I put more time in it, I'd get more results. And here I was putting all this time and energy in, and I'm not getting any results.

What's happening?

It's the biggest knock on your self-confidence and your pride. So then I discovered a few secrets, a few secrets to time management that really helped change my life and change my business. And today's show is all about sharing that with you, and hopefully you can take some of those lessons back and apply it to your schedule and your business to start achieving more results. Alright, let's get to the tips. The first one that I want to share is called chunking your time. The magic solution to doing all of the same tasks that you are currently doing but spending half the time doing them is chunking your time. And the idea behind chunking is you do common tasks together instead of as they arise. See, a lot of entrepreneurs, and most entrepreneurs, we are just in default reaction mode. Somebody sends us an email, we respond. Somebody calls us, we respond. And we are constantly just jumping from one thing to another out fires, and it doesn't give us the time we need to focus on the bigger picture stuff. If all you are doing is running around putting out fires and you don't have time to focus on that big stuff, then you are never going to build a highly successful business. So you have to chunk your time. And what I mean by that is anything that you do multiple times per day, I want you to do once per day. So think about email. Instead of being distracted all day long by email, do email once per day. Any task that you're used to doing multiple times per week, you do once per week. So an example could be meeting people. If you have meetings, instead of running all over your city meeting people after person after person and losing all that time in travel, have it all on one day per week. And anything you do multiple times per month, you do once per month. So you get the picture. Some people now, and this may be you, some people pride themselves on being multitaskers, right? Like it's a badge of honor to be a multitasker. And that used to be me, right? I could do, I could take it all on. Give it to me, I'm going to work hard. I got it all. But the thing is multitasking, it doesn't work as you get into higher level work. If you're doing admin, boring, mundane, easy stuff, then it's easy to switch between tasks. But when you start working on the bigger picture stuff, which you need to do to grow your business, that higher level stuff, Multitasking doesn't work because you lose too much time switching. So I want you to think about how you can chunk your time, do multiple things. Anything you used to do multiple times per day, once a day, multiple times per week, once a week. It will dramatically change how you look at your schedule and improve your productivity. I have Stacy on the line. Stacy, where are you from and how can I help?

Hi, Stacy, I'm from Virginia. Can you hear me?

Welcome aboard. What's going on?

Okay, great. Um, I understand the, the— you got to work hard but work smart. I understand that concept. I also understand you're only as good as the people that you have around you. I'm lucky enough to have, um, good people around me. I only have like one employee, but he was my fiancé's friend, so he makes sure I don't fail. My problem as a, as a businesswoman is being taken seriously by the in the workforce. I'm having a difficult time. I have to get Rick to hire contractors to do repairs on my building because if they see a woman there, I don't get the regular prices that the men would get. Everything is always ballooned out of proportion. This weekend, for example, I was bullied by a builder, literally bullied, where I had to call the police to ask to help because this guy— I have— what had happened was I had contracted him. I was going to hire him. I put the bid out for a couple of people to fix my sidewalk where grass had eaten away at my sidewalk and created a hazard where people could trip. So I wanted to get that fixed. So since Rick handled all the stuff because my pipes had burst, he handled all that stuff, got it all taken care of, I thought, oh, this is something that I can do. Stacy can call a mason and have him come in here and fix the sidewalk. Well, I thought that's what I could do. Unfortunately, when I called this guy, I called a couple, and I went with the cheapest price, all right? And that was my first mistake there. So I went with the cheapest price, and I agreed to take the guy and let him fix the sidewalk. He called me and told me that he couldn't come in that day because he, uh, it was, it was raining that day, so he, he can't work and lay concrete in the rain. And I understood that, but The day that he called me, it wasn't raining. So I called him back and I told him, well, it's going to rain until Sunday, so, you know, you only have a window of 3 days to actually do the work. And when I called him back, I could tell that he was drunk and he was in the process of making a drug buy because I heard him ask the guy for some crack.

You're dealing with some shady guys here. But, but Stacy—

no, he gave me his license, he gave me his insurance stuff, he gave me— he gave me all the proper stuff. It's just that I caught him with his guard down, and when I called him back to tell him about the weather, he sounded like he was on a bear drunk, and I overheard him talking about drugs.

This is going to get better when you start changing your mindset. See, I had the same thought when I was first getting started. I wasn't a woman, but I thought I was too young to be able to sell to these guys. I was 19 years old trying to sell my product to people 3 times my age, and it was my mindset. And it wasn't until I realized that I got to stand up for myself and that I'm good at what I do and I am a business owner and I have to believe in myself, that they started to respect me, right? When you respect yourself to a higher level, then other people will respect you. And you're going to have contractors who will try to walk all over you, whether you're a woman or a guy. I built my own house from scratch and I had contractors try to bully me and tell me that I had no idea what I was talking about. Because I wasn't in the industry. Nelson Mandela, when he went to prison, he refused to talk to anybody unless they acknowledged him by Mr. Mandela. And the guards started calling him Mr. Mandela because he had that self-confidence and he commanded the respect. So it has nothing to do with your race, with your sex, with your age. It's can you command respect? And it starts with you respecting yourself enough. So you got to increase the level of your own respect for yourself and command that from other people.

And not that this guy's a crook and a crackhead, um, does that have anything to do with it? I don't— I, I have a difficult time finding a car. As a woman, it's a difficult— dude, it's difficult for a woman to buy a car. It's difficult for us to get repairs done. It's difficult for us to get repairs done on our, our properties because we are not respected. And, and, and we always will get a different price and will be treated treated differently than a man is treated. As soon as I told him my business partner was going to be handling it, then it was a whole different story. I mean, this guy literally sent me texts cursing me out, acting like a madman for 3 days because I refused to let him take the job. I'm not going to have a drunk work on my historic building. I don't give a shit who you are.

Stacy, you started talking about this— you started this call off saying, hey, it's important to have good people around you. You have that one guy, your fiancé's friend. Just the same thing, it's important to have good contractors that you work with. You're gonna deal with douchebags whether you're a man or a woman. And so you gotta dump those people from your life and move on to the people who are good, who do their work. You know, you're dealing in shady industries, and so finding good contractors is gonna be a challenge that anybody will have to face, whether you're a man or a woman. Stacy, I appreciate the call, I have to move on. I wanna share with you what my schedule looks like. Now I used to be the workaholic, the guy who pressed prided himself on being super fast to reply to email and answering phone calls. And as a result, all I did was those little tiny projects, and I kept getting distracted from the big projects that I wanted to work on and I knew I needed to focus on to grow my business, but I just didn't have the time to work on it because I kept getting interrupted by these little things. So here's what my schedule looks like now, and I want you to try to model it to make it work for you so you can work on those bigger ideas. On Monday is my get stuff done for the weekday. That's where I have all the tasks I need to get done for the week, if it's answering important emails, if it's planning my social media campaigns, if I need to write a proposal or answer something that's long or look at a presentation that I'm working on. Anything that I need to get done for the week, I do it on the Monday. It's the working in my business stuff that's still a high enough level that needs to command my personal attention. And I feel like that helps set me up for the rest of the week. On Tuesday is my writing day, so I'm working on a book and I'm working on my YouTube videos and writing scripts. So I sit down and I'm spending the whole day writing, and it allows me to free up my time to work on those projects. I'm not getting interrupted constantly during the day on both of those days. It also gives me the right mindset, so I know I wake up All I have to do is sit and do my admin stuff and do my writing on Monday and Tuesday. So, if I don't want to shave, I don't have to shave. I don't have to have my extroverted personality ready to go. I know I don't have to jump between calls and meetings and coming back to try to write my book. So having that mindset when you wake up and you know this is the kind of stuff that you're doing today makes it so much easier. Wednesday is when I film my YouTube videos. So I'm spending the whole day, I usually make 13 videos for the week, it's a lot of videos. And I get ready, right? So now I'm shaving, I have my Believe music playlist going, I'm getting pumped up, I'm getting my extroverted personality on and ready to go. And I just line up the whole day ready to do video. Thursday is going to be my radio show, my public-facing day, my calls, my meetings, everything is back to back to back. And again, I'm extroverted, I know I'm waking up ready to go out. I can do these things on Thursday. So that sets me up for the week. You want to create a schedule that works for you, that helps you plan your day and plan your week to get all those big picture things done and not get bogged down by the minutia and the little tasks. Okay, I want to get to the line. I have Denise on the line. Denise, where are you from and how can I help?

I'm in Portland, Oregon, Evan, and you've given me some tremendous help in the past.

But I have a quick question.

My whole, you know, my whole business, everything from my for-profit, my nonprofit, it's a very spiritually based endeavor. And I just recently, um, starting to understand that there's a difference between a regular nonprofit and how a church is set up. And I'm wondering if it might not be advantageous for me to set up my nonprofit with the privileges of a church, but I don't really understand the difference.

So your question is if you should change the structure of your nonprofit to then incorporate a church.

What's the advantage of being a church as opposed to just a regular nonprofit? Because we certainly have a spiritually based message, I— it's, you know, we would qualify, but is it a financial advantage?

The thing with the church and why, why people might go through a church, one is they can be your fiscal agent, and what that means is they can write tax receipts charitable receipts. Can you write charitable receipts through your nonprofit right now?

Only for a donation. If somebody purchases something through our nonprofit, no, because it's no different than going to Salvation Army and buying something. But I don't know if there's other privileges that we might enjoy as a church, because we do want to set up a brick-and-mortar place where people can come join us in our beliefs and our lifestyle. You know, is it an advantage to be a church as opposed to a regular nonprofit?

Yeah, so the biggest advantage is going to be more on the promotion side. So if you can write your own charitable receipts, because a lot of people can't. They want to set up a nonprofit and they don't get approved, and so they can't write charitable receipts. So if somebody gives them a donation, they can't give that charitable receipt. So they might partner up with a church, that they give the money to the church, and then the church gives the money to them. That's called being a fiscal agent. But if you can already write your own charitable receipts, receipts, and you don't need that. It's more the promotional opportunity. And it would be more, can— will the church be willing, for example, to spread your message to their congregation? Can they put you in their pamphlet that goes out at each Mass? If they have a website, will they put you up on there? Will the priest, the preacher at the front, say something about your cause and what you're doing? Does it help give your organization more credibility and more awareness if you You can say you're aligned with the church. So it's more, it's more that kind of promotion marketing side of things. If they're willing to help promote you and help spread your message, then that could be a great way for you to be able to reach more people.

Right. Right.

Cool.

Thank you.

I'll, I'll look into it more because it just seems like it might be the right way to go for us because we're basically selling a lifestyle. So to get people to congregate with us and understand what it's about might be a real plus.

Yeah, and it's a way easier pitch to them. If you wanted them to be your fiscal agent where they are taking money and then they are giving it to you, that's a much more complex relationship. But you don't need that from them. All you are saying is, hey, I think we might be able to work together. We have similar beliefs. We have a similar audience. We are trying to do good as well. Maybe there is a way we can work together. And maybe you can help promote them. You know, if you know what the sermon is going to be, uh, the topic is going to be for the next Sunday Mass, you can—

well, actually, I'm talking about creating my own church that revolves around this philosophy and this lifestyle and then running my business through that, basically, instead of through the nonprofit that we're working with.

Oh, you want to create your own church? So do you want to run a church? Because you don't need it from a financial point of view because you, you you can already write the charitable donation. So, from a philosophical point of view, is that something that you really want to go after?

Right, okay. But financially, I already have what I need because I can write a receipt for a donation.

Exactly.

Okay.

Good to hear from you again, Denise. Thanks for calling in.

Okay, take care.

Okay, take care. And with all big decisions for you entrepreneurs listening, You've got to make the big decisions with your heart and the little ones with the head, right? A financial decision is a little one. Like, we can do this because it's going to make us more money. But the big one, should we start a church, you do that because you believe in it, right? That's a big decision. You make that with your heart. You take a stand of, yes, I want to start a church. And so big decisions with the heart, small ones with the head. Today we're talking about time management, giving you strategies to help you Get more out of your day. And I've got a special guest with me on the line today. He is the Time Management Chef. What better guest to have on a show that we're talking about time management than the Time Management Chef, Thor Refsland. Thor, welcome to the program.

Thank you, Evan. I'm so happy to join your show.

Welcome aboard. And can you tell us, how can entrepreneurs create more time in their lives?

It's a very good question. There are many ways. To create more time in your life, but basically the best tip that I have been using several years to optimize is actually to use a system. In order to use that system, I use a master to-do list because it's crucial that you have all your to-do tasks collected in one master to-do list. The most important thing with having a master to-do list is to, of course, collect all your tasks in one list because if you have several lists, you will lose track of the tasks. So it's very important to just have one list. And after you have collected all your tasks in one to-do list, you should use the ABCDE system in order to prioritize the tasks. Have you heard about that method, Evan?

No, I haven't.

So it basically says that when you're prioritizing your to-do tasks, an A task is a task you should complete today. If not, it will give you serious consequences. A B task is a task that you should do today. If you don't complete it today, it will give you mild consequences. And a C task is a tasks that you, doesn't really matter whether you do it today or not, so it's like whatever. And D stands for delegate. Those are tasks you of course just delegate to other people. And E stands for eliminate. Those are tasks you never do. So basically what you want to do, you want to identify your most important tasks and you want to start and complete all your A tasks before you start on your B tasks, and you would start and complete your B tasks before you start on your C tasks.

Do you wake up every day and look at your master to-do list and then assign A, B, C to the task?

Yes, that's correct. I've been studying time management for quite a long time, and I've been learning from the experts and have been testing different system for a long time, and I usually try to plan my schedule a week in advance. Every Sunday I look at my to-do list and I just schedule my tasks one week in advance. And then when it comes to the next day, I will also just take a quick review of the tasks the night before and in the morning. So basically, let's say it's let's say it's Tuesday today and tomorrow it's Wednesday. So Tuesday night I will take a brief look at my to-do list, and if there are some modifications, I would just do the changes. And in the morning, the first thing in the morning after I get out of bed and when I sit down at my desk, I would just take a brief look at my to-do list just to make sure that if there are any new changes in the to-do list.

So out of personal curiosity, how long does it take you on the Sunday to plan your week, and then how long are you spending every morning looking at the list and seeing what you have to get done?

It's a very good question, Evan. Usually what I do, I have this master to-do list and I just continuously add tasks. So when I look at it after Sunday, I may use maybe not more than 30 minutes because all the tasks are on the to-do list, so I kind of just rearrange the importance of the tasks. And then when I look at it in the morning, I spend maybe 5 to 10 minutes to just review the to-do list before I start on my most important tasks.

Got it. And then how do you handle— and this happens a lot with entrepreneurs— how do you handle the crisis that comes, the last-minute thing that changes change in your schedule and you couldn't forecast it from Sunday, but now you've got to deal with this thing. How do you factor that in?

Very good question, Evan. So as we all know, there will always be continuously new to-do tasks down in our lap all the time. So basically what I use, I use the 80/20 rule. To always identify the most important task. So let's say for an instance, okay, so today it's Wednesday and it's 10 AM and I'm working on my to-do list and then suddenly I get an important call or an important email and there's a task that I just have to do. So when I get the new task in my lap, I immediately identify it if it's an A, B, A, B, or C task. And if it's an A task, I just have to do a quick analyze if it's more important than my current task. So I would just put it into my plan. If it's more important than the task I'm currently handling, I'm starting on my new, the more important task. If not, I'm just scheduling it on my current list.

Got it. What do you think is the biggest struggle that entrepreneurs have when it comes to to planning? Because they may have heard about this, they may have heard about other things, they may have tried to plan a schedule, but it just doesn't work, they keep falling off track. Why is that? Why is it such a struggle to do time management?

I think there are several reasons. So I think number one reason can be that they don't know actually know what to do. And number two is that they actually know what to do, but they don't take action. Number 3 is that they think that when it comes to saving time, that it has to be a big hairy goal, like it's this big project, and that it will take way too much time and effort to implement. Number 4, the most important thing, is that perhaps they don't have a system that they already know is working.

So what's the solution? Create a system? Use ABCDE?

Yeah, I would say that. So, should I just go through what I would think is the solution here?

Yeah, like overcoming that struggle. I mean, a lot of entrepreneurs have probably read books on time management and they still struggle with it. So, how do they overcome that?

Yeah, so I would say number one is of course to find out what to do. And number two is to actually take action and to implement the steps. So as Napoleon Hill says in his book Think and Grow Rich, knowledge is not power, application of knowledge is power. It doesn't matter if you have all the knowledge in the world in a specific area if you don't apply it. And then it comes to number 3 about the big hairy goal. Often I think it's the best way to approach this is to break the big hairy goal down into smaller goals. So let's say if I said I could help you save 182.5 hours each year, you think that it might sound a bit unrealistic. But what if I broke the goal down into 365 days? So I said, what if I help you save 30 minutes per day? That sounds more realistic, right?

Yeah, that's really quick, Steve.

Yeah, so 30 minutes per day, if you multiply it with 365 days, it will be 182.5 hours per year. So if we say that the normal, normal work week is 40 hours, we can take 182.5 hours and just divide it by 40 hours. It will be the total result of 4.55 weeks. So by only saving 30 minutes per day, you will actually be able to get 4.5 work weeks more per year. And if you spend that time wisely, imagine what you could do with your life and business. It's awesome.

That's a lot of time. That's a lot of time. Thor, thank you so much for joining us. For people who want to learn more about you, where can they go?

Yeah, thanks for asking. They can go to the following website, timemanagementchef.com.

.com/Evan.

I will have a free ebook which will help them to double their productivity in 7 days. timemanagementchef.com/Evan.

All right, thank you so much for joining us, Thor. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Evan.

Now I've been talking about chunking your time, right? That's been the theme for this show. Is there anything you're doing multiple times per day? We're doing once per day. Multiple times per week? We're doing once per week. I shared my schedule and that Monday I'm doing my admin, get stuff ready for the week. On Tuesday I'm doing my writing, there's my book, I'm preparing for videos. Wednesday I'm recording the videos. Thursday I'm doing meetings and public-facing stuff and radio shows and interviews. And what you want to do is now create a schedule that works for you. Anything that again you're doing multiple times per day, like email for example, then do that in a 90-minute chunk every day if you need to. If you've got to check email every day, it's a 90-minute chunk every day. And 90 minutes is a great amount of time to force yourself to get it done and be fast. Because let's be honest, you say you have a lot of work but you are often getting distracted. You might be getting a Facebook notification and flopping over to that. So you want to make sure when you only have 90 minutes to do a task, then you are going to be focused on getting it done and being really efficient and not allowing yourself to get distracted. So I plan all my days out into 90-minute chunks. With 15-minute breaks in between. So intense, hardcore, 90 minutes of work. Don't go to the bathroom unless I have to. Don't get distracted. And then move on to a 15-minute break and then back into a 90-minute chunk. And I find that really helps me organize my day and get a lot of stuff done and stay focused. I have time for one last caller. I'm going to hit up the lines and we have Laura on hold. Laura, where are you from and how can I help?

Hi, I'm from outside of St. Louis and I love what you're saying about the 90-minute task events. I think I could maybe do 9 minutes with my focus capacity, but you know, maybe I could alter it a little and get something done. But my question has to do with entrepreneurial business partnership. I'm a water garden landscape designer and my main contractor is kind of like my business partner and we work together all the time. on bids and sales. So we kind of show up to the customer as one team. Sometimes the tricky part is that his numbers, in terms of the price he bids the job for, often makes it so that we don't get the job. The customers like me, they want to work with me, but it's not in their budget. Right. We're good friends. We've been working together for years, but I have a friend that keeps saying, you know, Laura, you're doing it wrong. You need to be the general contractor, and then you need to be hiring other contractors to give you the best price in the bids. So I'm having a dilemma.

Yeah, and I'd be thinking what's best for the customer, you know, because if you're going in and you only have one option and they love working with you, but then they can't move forward because they don't like the price point of the guy you're going in with, then you're losing business and it's not in the best interest of the customer because they want to work with you. They like you, trust you. They like the designs you're coming up with. And so what's your reluctance to go work with somebody else just because you like this guy and know him and you work together for years?

Yes, there's, there's just that we just have a good strong relationship. We work well together, and I do coaching with he and his wife. I work in the business. I, you know, sometimes I stay there when they're, you know, they're a couple hours from where I live. So, you know, there's nothing like mixing friendship and business to have it get a little fuzzy around the edges, but it's, it's just sometimes a little challenging because I want to be in integrity. That's important to me in the relationship, and I also would like to eat.

Yeah, no, both are very important things. Yeah, so I would say, first of all, you have to have a conversation, right? If you're considering this, then you need to have an open conversation, not do this behind his back, because that's not something that you would do, right? So he has to He has to know that this is something that you're thinking about and that you might move forward on it. I think obviously if he's bringing the deal, then he's the only guy, right? You're not going to swipe his client from him, some contact that he made, you know, now you're going to sell somebody's, his competitor's services, right? If he's bringing you in, then you only work with him. But if you're getting the deal, if it's one of your contacts from networking, then you want to be able to provide whatever the best solution is for that customer. And that's still integrity and that helps feed you, but it's just having a conversation with your friend so that he knows that here's something that you're thinking about and it's obviously going to help grow your business. I'll give you an example. I have a great buddy of mine who's a photographer. He does a lot of celebrity photography pictures. He's done it with Lady Gaga and just huge celebrities. And sometimes I could bring him in on deals that I'm working on, right? If there's any video or photo involved, I can often bring him in and say, "Hey, here's an opportunity to introduce you to Rich." But his price points are really high too. And so it's not always that I can recommend him, but it's not always the best solution for the client. And there's no way I would lose a deal with my client just to bring Rich in. Right? It's not the best thing for the client, and it's not the best thing for me either. And Rich totally gets that, right? He's not— he can't work with every client because of his price point. So I think it's just you having that conversation with him and being open and honest. And those aren't clients you want to work with anyway, right? Like, they can't afford him. You're losing the deal anyway, but you can work with them. And so there should be an issue. You can still say, I'm going to recommend you, but if they can't afford it, then I'm going to try to give them another option. Somebody who's willing to be a little bit more affordable.

I think that's great. And it's, it's, you know, and the other tricky factor is that, you know, 6 months ago or a little over 6 months ago, he came down with a brain tumor and then had surgery and radiation. And so he's, you know, doing great, doing fine. MRIs look good.

Yes.

But he's just fuzzy. And so, you know, he needs me even more now than what he did in the past.

Um, we're just running out of time. I gotta let you go at that. But I, I think it's still that he shouldn't be hurt. He shouldn't be offended if you approach it with, uh, and still be a friend. It doesn't mean you're not being a friend to him anymore. You're still being a friend to him, but at the same time, you're protecting your interests and still being a good entrepreneur at the same time.

That's great.

Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. Great show. We'll see you in a month. Thank you, Danielle and Shannon. You guys are awesome. Stay tuned, continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.