Busy ≠ Profitable: Fix Your Time Management Today

Hey, welcome to today's episode of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. What's new in the world of entrepreneurship? Too busy to grow. I hear this a lot, so let's unpack it. Okay, pretend we're just hanging out, shooting the breeze, and then sharing stories from the trenches about the chaos of running a business. You know, the kind where your to-do list looks more like a scroll from an ancient library. I think I have some samples here. Skip you that. I'll skip that. But one minute you're running some client work, some project that you sold, and then the next you're realizing that you've ignored lead generation for weeks. Been there? Here's the thing. Not every founder is great at every aspect of running a business. Some of us, we're sales rock stars, and when it comes to project management, we can't manage a project to save our lives. Others, maybe they're very big picture type, the visionaries with a lot of big ideas. but they can't stand dealing with the details. But when I started my first business, I had, I had my strength. I was pretty resourceful. I love to learn new things. I, I can put time into whatever I'm focusing on and pretty disciplined when it comes to execution. But I wasn't good at sales. I had to learn it. And then I ended up liking it. And over the years, we grew our businesses to over $65 million in sales. But man, did I struggle when it came to details and when it came to project delivery. My projects and my tasks were just all over the place. And then deadlines, forget about it. Let's just say I wasn't exactly winning any awards there. So what changed for me at the time was that Learning how to prioritize effectively. And again, new business owners face a lot of priorities. You have to sell, you have to deliver, you have to learn how to market, you have to learn how to do accounting, you have to learn how to run payroll, you have to figure out new regulations and, and whatnot. So, so there's a lot, a lot going on, and prioritizing effectively was a big challenge for me, including prioritizing when I needed help and then getting the help in, in specifically in areas that I'm just not— I wasn't built to do well. And it wasn't just about working harder. I was putting a whole lot of time into, into the, the first business, but it was getting laser focused on what truly mattered and on the systems that I had to build that worked for me. And it's not just about me or my own experience, although I think it counts for a little bit after 7 businesses. But according to McKinsey and Company, organizations that invest in strategic prioritization— so this is big, you know, big companies— they deliver 40% more value. And that applies a lot to business owners, to founders who struggle with trying to grow, trying to deliver, trying to manage the business. And I think those statistics and others in a way are very important for us as business owners to realize and implement. So just dialing in on what the priorities for today, for this week, for this month, and dialing in and focusing on what's critical can definitely help you move the needle in a huge way. Let's make sure technology is working and we're good there. So, um, now the flip side, if you're not prioritizing, if you're missing deadlines, and missing deadlines not just with clients, that could lead to clients being dissatisfied, but also internal deadlines when you are working with your team. You made promises on improving certain things, on doing maybe reviews, maybe on doing things around partners that you have, some marketing campaign that you want to launch. If you start to miss these deadlines, it will impact the way you run the business. It impacts the results that you're expecting to have. And of course, with clients, unhappy clients are not a good thing for any business, especially for a consulting and a services business. So So you'd have to make it up, those dreaded late night panic sessions, or you have to potentially get additional hires or contractors to help you get back on track. But what I want to focus on today is to help you miss less deadlines and to help you make sure the clients are happy and avoid these dreaded late night sessions. So I want to go over specific tips and tools for you to better manage your time, to manage— to better manage your priorities without also, especially if you have a team, turning into a micromanaging robot. So we will figure this out together because if I can get it right, so can you. Good. Before we dive into it, let's just go over a couple of housekeeping items. One, If you are listening now or watching live and and you have a question, leave us a comment on any of the platforms you're on. You can also email me, direct message me, go on our YouTube channel at Startup with Ferris, go on our website at Startup with Ferris, and Ferris is spelled F-E-R-R-A-S like my first name. I'd love I'd love to hear from you. Let me know what issues you. You're going into, you're running into, what challenges, big decisions you're about to make and you're not sure how to solve. We keep all this information confidential. I get a lot of input from the community. People call, email, and I answer these questions, these challenges that you are facing through our, these, these episodes here, also through our content on LinkedIn and on YouTube, in our, in our weekly newsletter. So I'd love to hear from you. And also, if you're, if you have wins, small wins or big wins, I'd love to hear about what is working out for you and how you managed those challenges so that we can also share your success with our community. And a reminder that these episodes are— they go live on Thursdays at 3 PM Pacific, 6 PM EST. And then you can also listen to the recording on a podcast, the podcast platform of your choice. Excellent. So let's jump in. Right in. I first want to just hit on this point. I want to focus on this: the reality of running a business. So, and I was just speaking with with someone who was recently laid off, and and they're thinking of starting their starting their own business. And you know, we went, and he's very thoughtful about his approach to starting his own business. The one thing I I left him with at the end, I said. Before you decide to take the leap, make sure that you have the time, you have that mindset, the mindset, the mindset and the time to, to know what you're getting yourself into. There will be a lot of, a lot of new things, new, new skills to, to pick up. You have to manage people. If you haven't done that before, that's going to be something for you to learn. Sales won't come, come right away. You have to learn sales and marketing. Also, also just there's just so much to do in terms of packaging your offer and, and delivering, you know, after you sell. So, so the reality of running a, of running a business, whether you're about to start, you just started, or if you've been at it for a while, you know that the reality is that you have to deal with a lot of different aspects of the business, the different pillars as I call them, and you have to do that concurrently. So you have to balance delivery, then lead generation, marketing, back office, and of course client work, because you got to do all of this. There's just no other way. So I think understanding, acknowledging that challenge, that as a business owner, as opposed to when you worked in corporate, you had a specific task, especially in a midsize and a larger company, you know, you got to do a specific thing. You're not, you don't wear a lot of hats. So I think acknowledging this challenge, that I have to do all these things. And over time, as you hire people to do things for you, now you have to manage these people. That's just the nature of the beast. That's just the reality of running a business. But if you don't balance and if you don't have a strategy— and we'll talk about how to do that— but if you— I want to emphasize this— if you don't understand how to properly prioritize these different aspects of the business and you start to make overcommitments in one area and neglect other areas, you are going to create chaos and you are going to either burn out or certain aspects of the business, including the bottom line, could suffer significantly. And when we started out, I remember in the very first business, I had to sell, and I had zero background in sales, but there's nothing else to do. So we figured out a way, my partner and I, and, and we knocked on doors, and we got— and I've told the story many times— and we got, we got our, our first sale. So we were 100%, 100% dedicated to selling, and that's because that's the only thing we, we, we, you know, we, we had to do. We had nothing else to do. Now, once we sold that first project we jumped all over the implementation of that project and we neglected lead generation, and we started to making sure this client is happy, which is important, but there wasn't a balance between doing delivery work and delivering on the project and also keeping that pipeline of leads flowing. And that is the definition you hear a lot about feast and famine. You get a lot of projects, you get busy in delivering these projects, you forget about sales, then it gets very dry. So part of this prioritization discussion we're having today is for you to make sure that you're not neglecting any aspect of the business. And by using these, by following the steps we are talking about today and these systems, it will help you keep your sanity, make money, keep clients happy, and run a business effectively. All right, so let's talk about the first tool for you, and it's about structuring your project timeline. I think we have some slides here for those of you who are watching. So structuring your project timeline for success, basically think of a timeline As if you haven't done project management before, you have to break down what you sold, that service that you're selling, the consulting you're selling. Think of it as a recipe. You know, there's certain ingredients, certain things you have to do. You got to gather information from the client. You have to do a discovery call. You have to actually do your implementation. You have to run it by the client. You have to do a Q— maybe quality assurance cycle, depending again on the service you're offering. You have to deliver the report or the audit or the security system that you're installing or the accounting system that you're implementing, whatever the case might be. So it's like a recipe. There are different components and you have to— there are different ingredients and you have to follow a certain order at times, but you have to get all the ingredients in for you to have something that's going to be delicious and you want to delicious and you want to eat, and others around you will enjoy as well. Without it, you're, you know, you're either skipping steps or you're rushing, rushing at the end trying to make things up. So, so break down what I want you to focus on. This is not a course on project management, but it's take a look at the deliverable, what you have, and put it, break it down into phases, and under each phase have a certain number of tasks. And then have key milestones and key deliverables. So that is the minute you have a client sign up with you, you have a follow-up onboarding call, and we have an entire session on onboarding. But part of that onboarding is you've laid out the different phases of the project and then the subtasks under each phase and then the key milestones. And again, if you have— if you're— the service that you're offering spans, I don't know, 2 or 3 months, it's going to be a more elaborate timeline. If the service you're offering is just— it can be done all— it all can be done in, in a week, then obviously it's going to be much— the timeline is going to be more compact. But sitting down and breaking the deliverable into phases and tasks and having this in a system, whatever system you use, Asana or Notion or Basecamp or Trello, any of these systems. Uh, um, ClickUp is the other one that I, I came across recently. So have this list of phases, tasks, milestones, deliverables in a template that every time you have a new client, you apply this template. And then over time, which we'll talk about at the end of this episode on ways to improve this template so that you're always learning from previous, uh, previous projects. So the number one thing to save you time and to also help you understand what's ahead is to have a detailed project plan. And there's, there are gazillion templates on, on project plans. You can go online and search for one, and if we have one, um, we can— we'll link it, we'll add to the description. But the idea is to have, yeah, whether— is to have everything laid out by phases, by task, by deliverables, and whether this is actually a client-facing project, like you delivering the service, or it could be an internal project like running a marketing campaign, like a back-to-school campaign. There may be 20 things that are, that need to be included in this marketing plan. And you want to make sure that everything is listed, who the owner is, and especially if there are dependencies on one task to another. So that's number one is making sure you have a template or maybe a few templates for your business for external deliverables to the client, also for internal projects that you do, again, you do periodically, whether it's a marketing campaign or whether it's like a hiring, you know, like interviewing people, that is a project and you want to make sure you do all the paperwork, the proper paperwork before you interview and before you hire. So whatever, repeatable projects, you want to break those into a timeline, and you break them into phases and tasks and milestones. So that's number one. And this could be sort of task management, project management 101. But, but I see this, I speak with anywhere from 100 to 150 founders, entrepreneurs every year. And a lot of, a lot of the founders I speak with, they're not they're not following systems, they're not putting in checklists and templates. And if you are serious about scaling your business, if you're— if you want to be a solopreneur is one thing, you still need, I think, checklist and, and templates. But if you are serious about building and growing a business, you must, you must have processes and systems and SOPs and templates and checklists, because that's how you turn that knowledge that you have acquired and the experience that you have obtained into a repeatable system that others then can follow and implement and improve on. So that's number one. Number 2 is managing multiple projects simultaneously. So this is something that also we miss in the heat of, you know, I want to close another deal. I'm out there selling. I have 2, 3 leads coming my way and they happen to all close around the same time. And I made a whole lot of commitments to each of these leads. So now I have to manage these projects simultaneously, plus maybe an internal project. Maybe I'm implementing a CRM, or maybe I have a marketing campaign, or maybe I have to hire a couple of people. I mean, all these things are projects that you have to do. So assuming we follow the first tool that we mentioned earlier, that you have a timeline with phases and milestones and deliverables, now when things are happening, In parallel, simultaneously, you have to look at strategies to help you manage the chaos. So one of them would be time blocking, time blocking, and the other one would be sort of focusing and avoiding task switching. So, so you have to move the bigger rocks first. And as you're making commitments to clients, Make sure when you have these timelines and these milestones nicely listed, following that step number 1, make sure you don't make a commitment, the same commitment, 3 big deliverables on the same day to 3 different clients. So you have to, I think, think of it as I have big projects internally, I have, maybe I have something at home as well I have to deal with, and also I have these 3 big deliverables for clients. So So putting a master plan for the entire, the major milestones that you have for your business so that when you make a commitment to a client about a deliverable, you avoid times when you are maybe off or maybe you're attending a conference or maybe you have just big deliverables happening at the same time. And then using the techniques I mentioned earlier, time blocking, where you dedicate specific periods early in the day, late in the day, middle of the day, whatever works for you, where you are just focused on very, very specific aspects of a project, especially things that need focus, that need maybe brainstorming, or you need that quality time without any disruptions to get the creative juices flowing, and also that experience that you have, you know, You want to put that on paper. So blocking times for focused work, for specific projects, packaging that, and then putting that in a compartment, then moving to the next thing is important. And then that task switching, which is really hard, really hard for us as consultants, small business owners, not to multitask, but we got to— you have to find a time And it's a muscle where you avoid multitasking when in general avoiding multitasking, I think, is nothing new here, but build a system, a habit for you where you reduce that. So for example, when I'm working on a, let's say, writing a script for a video or like thinking of the outline for this episode, I basically Uh, minimize my browsers, all the other windows, and I have 3 windows here, and I just have 1 active window with the document, the Google document I'm working on. So I'm not looking around for other tabs. I don't get— I have all my notifications turned off by default actually on my computer. So whatever works for you, that's what works for me, is, is I just have 1 active screen, everything else is closed, and I put, okay, the next 30 minutes I just want to focus on this. And then it's packaged. I pass it on to my colleagues to review it, add to it, improve it. So, so I think come up— you don't have to follow my system, whatever works for you. But the idea is block time for tasks, the big rocks of a project, and then avoiding multitasking and finding some— excuse me— finding tips and tricks that work for you in terms of how you use computers and devices to stay focused on the task at hand. The next tool we have here is about risk management because part of business, part of life is there'll be delays, there'll be challenges, there are things that you knew might happen and things that you have no idea will happen. So that's the reality of the business. And as an entrepreneur, or maybe a want-to-be entrepreneur— sorry, I want to break it to you— but there will be a lot of things that you haven't thought of, not just in terms of delivering the project or selling, but things just will come your way that you had no idea that you have to do, including taxes that you knew about but you've been delaying getting all your receipts and all your paperwork. So, and then the CPA will say, oh yeah, we need more documentation, and then Oh yeah, there's a new regulation. So things will come up. Clients were supposed to give you some documentation for you to do your work and they don't do it on time. They wait till the last, absolutely last minute before they share that with you. So the 2 things you can do here is to be better prepared to handle unknowns and exceptions and challenges. Is that 2 things. One is buffer time, and, and then sort of real-time reprioritization. So buffer time, meaning if you have a deliverable— let's say today is Monday and you've told you have a deliverable that's due on Thursday, and the— and this is not very time sensitive, and you know you have a lot of things going on that week— potentially tell the client that you'll be— you'll deliver the project on, or that the that the document on Friday. So you allowed 1 day of buffer time. Let's say you have a contractor who's doing part of the work for you. The contractor says, I will have this deliverable to you by Wednesday. So when it's— and let's say you want to take that deliverable and pass it on to the client. Don't commit to Wednesday to deliver that deliverable. So add a buffer time. That concept of adding a buffer time, especially when you have a lot of people exchanging hands on deliverables, it saved me a whole lot of time, a whole lot of energy, saved deals and contracts because things will happen. People get sick, people have internet issues, people— I can tell you stories. So if you have that buffer time built into the time commitment that will allow you to absorb, accommodate for delays and things that are totally outside of your control, no matter how well you plan. Surprises will always happen. And then the real-time reprioritization, you know, with delays, when delays hit, you know, you have to move things around. And at times you have to go back to the client and say, you know what, this is This just happened, it's out of my control. One of my team members got sick, I need a couple more days. I mean, these things sometimes happen, but a lot of times you have to reshuffle if you have some time-sensitive deliverables. So getting used to reshuffling is an art that takes practice, but just be aware of it. Don't let this frustrate you all the time. But to the extent that you can plan, as we said earlier, your timeline, your milestones, your deliverables, to the extent that you can have— do more of that, I think you'll end up having less issues and less unknowns and less— if you've accounted for sort of everything that has potentially can go wrong, if you've listened from the lessons learned from previous projects and you've done, we call them also project retrospectives, and you've implemented all the mistakes that have happened over the last maybe quarter or 2 from the previous deliverables and previous projects, you are in a way building a stronger process, a stronger, a more comprehensive checklist. So you're less likely to, to run into, into issues. So, so real-time reprioritization is something that you might have to do, but to the extent that you can add buffer time and you can learn from previous issues that happened to other projects, you will have less— you'll increase your chances of meeting your deadlines and getting those deliverables on time and having time to also not spending all these nights trying to catch up on these deliverables. So the last thing I want to cover here is this concept of continuous improvement, this concept of feeding, getting feedback from all the stakeholders that are part of your company, including, and part of your venture, including potentially partners, suppliers, you know, you want to get feedback from clients. But the idea here is that no matter how well we plan, no matter how well we execute, it is always Important to reflect on what we've done and bolster the things that we do well, and also identify things that did not go well for whatever reason. It's not a blame game, like he did this, she did that. No, it's an understanding what led to something going, going wrong potentially. Like I said, we are depending on a supplier and the supplier was late, so adding a buffer time will help us. Potentially we are dependent on a client to give us, answer our survey. The client is late, right? So in the future, if this is always kind of coming back and biting us every time, in our contract we can add a small disclaimer, polite one, say our deliverable and our time, the clock starts ticking after we get the document from you. Mr. Client, right? So this way you're not on the hook. If the client gives you a document one day before you're supposed to deliver the audit, if you're selling audit services, it's on them because they were 2 weeks late. So adding, you know, getting, looking at what happened before, getting that feedback from your account managers, once you have a team, getting feedback from your salespeople, Getting feedback from clients, everyone who touches the project, you want to get their feedback, and then you are the business owner, you're the decision maker, you know, some things, some feedback you get, you might not be able to implement, some of it might also be not accurate or not applicable, but take all that feedback and then come up with a way to iterate, try different strategies, Again, if you're using a system that the clients are finding, like let's say you're using a task management system that the clients are finding difficult to use, maybe you can try a different system. If you're not, you're always, your salespeople are complaining that the pricing, your prices are too high, maybe you can have a different strategy, maybe offer different tiers for pricing. So always, you always want to be open as a business owner You always want to be open to feedback and have this mindset of continuously improving, continuously improving this. There's a Kaizen Japanese concept there. We can spend a whole session on it, but the idea is whether it's in marketing, in sales, in delivering, in the way you set up your operations, in terms of also accounting, in terms of hiring, all of those systems in your business, you want to make sure that you are getting feedback from the stakeholders involved and then applying that feedback into your systems, making your systems more effective and more efficient. And with being more efficient, you're saving time, which helps in terms of, you know, you not burning out. And also just with more time, you can have— you have that mental space, that mental capacity to think about the business, about growing the business. You're not always, always in the business. That's probably one of the most consistent advice I share with founders is that you have to have time. You have to find time for you to think about the business, not always be in the business chasing deliverables and then following up with people and tasks and whatnot. So that is, that is what we wanted to cover today. And it looks like we have— let me just check— we have A comment from Aman. Thank you so much for being here and said, well said as always. I appreciate that comment. Glad you're finding this material useful. So to wrap up here, running a business is tough. This is the reality of running a business. It doesn't come with a with an instruction manual. We try, we try, you know, with the content that we produce, with the course that we have. We lay out all the pieces, all the different pillars of running a business, but when you're into it, when you're in the thick of it, things will come up, challenges will surface, unhappy clients will knock on your door, send you these emails, unhappy employees as well. Sometimes, you know, you just have to take it all in and then prioritize, deal with, move these big rocks, And then over time, learn from what happened, implement it, add to your processes, improve your processes, make them more efficient, more effective, and you will end up doing much better. So if, if you have any questions related to time management, you have any tips, you've thought of something that had worked well for you in terms of managing time, managing priorities, maybe a template, template that you have created, I'd love to see it and love to hear from you. And before we wrap up, I do want to just highlight that we have— if you're liking this content on whichever platform you're on, whether you're on YouTube or on LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, on X, hit the like button and then subscribe if you're not already a subscriber. And if you're listening to this on a podcast platform, let us know, leave us a 5-star review or give us your feedback. Give us, uh, if you're— if you're specific, there's a specific topic that you'd like us to cover, or you have any specific feedback on what we're delivering, I'd love to hear from you. And last but not least, also want to highlight our training and coaching program at blackbeltstartup.com. It's a full and complete coaching program with a full curriculum for you to start from vetting an idea to business planning to sales and marketing and delivering and hiring. So every pillar of a business, of starting and growing a business, we have content on. And then with our membership, we have office hours and we provide you with a roadmap to help you scale your business to 7 and 8 figures. And this program is built on, on proven business principles and also the martial arts principles that I live and breathe every day. And it is, um, month-to-month, no yearly commitment, so check it out at blackbeltstartup.com, and again, leave us a comment, ask us a question, we'll be more than happy to address your questions and comments in our next episode. Thank you so much, and see you next time. Thank you.