#203 Weeks that work with Greg Faxon

Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Nope Coach podcast. I'm your host, Suzanne Kohlberg welcoming back Greg Faxson. This time we are going to talk about weeks that work. We ended up on a tangent in the last episode, which is cool. That's life. And yeah. So Greg, walk us through this concept. I'm just going to be quiet and let you take the lead here.

Yeah. So in the last episode we talked about doing the least and I think that's one of the most important concepts behind having a week that works. So what's the difference between weeks that a week that works in business and a week that doesn't work in business? So the first thing, a week that works, you get to Friday and you know that you got the important stuff done. Right. That's number one. Number two, you actually started to see some results, ideally from those things. So you get validation because otherwise we can't sustain it. Right. But it's not just about making money. Right. Like you could have a week that feels very productive and you know that there's a lag effect with some of the results. Maybe you grew your audience, but that hasn't become income yet. Okay, so got the important stuff done. We got to see the results of it. But number three of a week that works is you have to have a good balance between work and rest and recovery because you could have, you could do five 12 hour days in a row and you did get results, you did focus on what matters, but you can't do that every week. So it's not sustainable. So that week doesn't really work. And so the program that we're putting together, which we can talk more about if it's helpful for folks, is we really helping them build a structure for themselves now that they're an entrepreneur and they're in control of their days that make sure they get the right stuff done at the right time in a way that's sustainable.

I love how you say not only the right stuff, but at the right time because. And this will be different for different people. So when is the best time for you to record your content or write your blogs versus to do the doing? If you're a coach, to do the coaching. I know when I was very early in business and we spoke on the last episode that you have a program for earlier in business, but I didn't ever consider when it was the best time for me. If someone was going to pay me, I would show up 10 o' clock at night, 6 o' clock in the morning on the weekend. Like, there was. I had very poor boundaries, hence why my business is now what it is. But it's kind of like it felt this kind of scarcity or lack that if I didn't say yes, then they wouldn't come. But in fact it was flipping it around the other way. If you're like, this is when I'm available, people will rearrange their stuff to come and make it a priority as opposed to, oh, well, you know, she won't mind and she'll just let me keep rescheduling it. So I think part of, you know, weeks, that works. Knowing when you work best, as you said, which things actually need to be done and which are, as you've said before, just admin. Because sometimes we. Like, I've done all this work and it's like, no, you've procrusted, branded and, you know, redone your website, but you didn't actually do anything that could technically be income producing.

Yeah, yeah. And you literally get no credit for that stuff. Like, you literally. It was, it was purely a waste of time. There isn't even a manager saying, well, at least Greg did some work. Like, it, It. It's as if you didn't do anything. So I, I just want to vibe on this because the when is important and in fact, when you're too open, it can actually hurt conversions. Like, I think sometimes we think being more available is better. We've done some experiments because with our business, it's a lot based on, like, people booking consults and then enrolling them on a sales call. And like, if you take two different calendars, one, there's maybe four or five times available. There's a scattering of times and days. But it's. It's pretty clear the options people have versus like a whole month's worth of like nine to fives, the first one's going to convert better because it's just like now I have to choose as the end user, I have to choose between, like 300 different times. You know, it also sends kind of a weird vibe because you don't seem very in demand.

Yeah, it does. If you like that. If you get a message and you like booking with me and you see all these things, you're like, well, they're not very busy.

Yeah, I guess this person sucks.

So.

So that. That can be helpful too.

I.

In terms of when I read a book called when by Dan Pink and it's about chronotypes, which is like, within a day, our energy fluctuates, it goes up, it Goes up and down. And we have times in our day that are really good for focused analytical work. We have times in our day for creative work or social work with other people. And then we just have a trough for most people that's like right after lunch for a few hours. So for me my trough is like 1:30 to 3:30. That's great admin time. Like eat lunch, take a nap and walk and then just do like little admin stuff. I'm not going to get myself to like you know, write a novel during that time. If you know your chronotype and I actually have a, if you search like Greg Energy tracking, Greg Fax and energy tracking, you'll see I tracked my energy every hour for a week and I put it on a little Google sheet and I literally got a graph for myself of like when is my peak energy, my lowest energy in the day and when does it rebound, rebound. And so I literally have like a weekly map for myself that then calendly, you know, is based on when people book consults with me. And I have time blocked off for focused work that really allows me to know when to do stuff. And that's helpful as an entrepreneur because if you don't have not just the boundary of I end at 5pm but the boundaries of like oh, I do focused work here. The more clarity you have, the easier it is to slot stuff in and just do it versus looking at an empty calendar for a week and realizing you have this big to do list and trying to make the two work together.

Yeah, that's, that's a really good point. What are your thoughts on? I love how you said like tracking for you when your peaks and troughs are and then putting the, you know, admin type stuff in the troughs. What about like for different people? Like I know some people do really well having say client facing days versus you know, content creation days. That doesn't work as well for me. I pretend to. I prefer to have like a client time and then a break and then that time in the one day. But like do you tell people to like go with what works for them or do you have a system or.

I think I've seen people work better with both in with with either like batching. Oh, I do all my focused work one day, all my client work one day obviously then you stay in the same mode. I think in general people would do better with a daily structure that's pretty similar day to day for the week. I've tried both and I found that I can't really do more than four hours of, excuse me, like good calls. So if I can't do more than four hours of good calls, then it doesn't really make sense for me to have a call day where I'm doing more than four hours. For me it tends to work better to have some focused work in the morning every day, have some calls in the afternoon and have an admin period and a break in between. But it really depends on the person and sometimes you have to experiment and see what works best for you.

Yeah, and like I have experience for me, I have clients globally and like I'm in Australia, you're, you're in the U.S. i assume.

Yeah.

And so what I do with my calendar is like today we're recording this in what is my morning and then, so then I'll have my break in the middle of the day and in the afternoon I'll do more, you know, admin type stuff and then other days of the week I'll flip it because I have also have clients who are in the uk, so that's more better served for the evening for me. But then also making sure amongst all that, that I actually have downtime. Because something that you said earlier that I'm just cycling back to is if say you have a really productive period and you work, you know, 12 hours, days for five days and get a lot of content created, videos recorded, batch things done or whatever, then that's not sustainable, nor would we want that in the long term. So, so it's kind of like, you know, looking at that, planning and blocking and going, okay, I'm launching a course, I want to have all the videos recorded or I'm wanting to do this so that I can like, I have a perfect example. My program, why wait is nominally 10 weeks. Next year I'm going on a cruise in what would be smack bang the middle of it. And I sat with it and I was like, I could do like a mid semester break. I've seen people do that. I could deliver half the program, have a break, come back with the other half the program. And I was like, yeah, that doesn't sit well with me. I don't want to like lose the momentum and suddenly, you know, because I'm, I'm going on a cruise, I'm not checking anything. I'm wholly unavailable for these two weeks. So instead I'm actually experimenting with running it shorter because my program is always delivered live. So instead of 10 weeks, it's going to be eight. I'm starting it earlier in the year. So that I can take that break. And I think that's really in terms of weeks that work or, you know, making your business work for you, that is embracing the flexibility of working for myself as opposed to like having created a job.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that experimentation is important and honoring like what's going to work best for you. In some ways this is going to sound like, I don't know, this is going to sound maybe unscientific. It almost doesn't matter what the structure is. You don't have to have the perfect structure. You do have to have a structure that's realistic to you and just tells you how you need to operate. You can always change it. But you do need to know, like at least for this few month period, here's what I'm experimenting with, with my how I'm structuring my weeks, how I'm structuring my days. And then you can switch it up, but otherwise you'll never learn. I also think it's important. I've had clients who were working on their weekly map, which is this. It's something that we're going to teach in weeks that work. But it's like just on an expel spreadsheet, very basic, that has the hours of the day for each day of the week. And you can say, here's what I'm going to do during those times. Not specific actions, but this is focused work. This is available for calls, but you need to actually take that and put it onto your calendar. You can't just leave it in Google sheets. You actually have to make it your calendar. And if you consistently find yourself ignoring reminders or rescheduling stuff that's probably not actually realistic for you, there's a different flow that's trying to emerge. It's not your willpower. It may just be you need to construct it differently.

Yeah. And I love that and it's really worth. I love the fact that you bring point to. It's not just an activity you do in a program to get a tick like from the teacher. Yay, you did the thing. But then actually go and implement it in the business and test it. Because sometimes we create this amazing system that looks beautiful and then we forget things. So, like, I know when I first started doing calendar like you, that's I've just now made a word calendaring like you mentioned, what I failed to take into account. Like my son is on the spectrum, so he has lots of appointments. Psychotherapist, occupational therapist, speech therapist. I'd put them in but the travel time, like to get to those and stuff. So it's like, why do I not have time to do all the things that I've put in here? It's like I forget. Or things like, you know, meal prepping or, you know, movement, exercise, self care. Like it needs to be overall structure, not just this is what I'm going to do and I can. When you work a traditional job, as you said before, you go and the boss gives you the things or you have, you know, this is what you do in these eight hours. When you work for yourself, not only do you not have that unless you create it, but then you've got to follow it. But the what happens when that falls down? Like your children are sick or whatever. In a traditional job, you'd be like, I'm going to take sick leave. Do you have things in place for that? Is that something you cover in the course?

Yeah, that's actually a good idea. I'm going to make a note because this is the first cohort that we've gone through on that and I think that's really important. It. It makes me think of the word self discipline. So discipline comes from disciple, which means student. So self discipline is basically being a student of yourself. And I think a lot of times when we think about discipline, we think about like forcing something or getting ourselves to do something. And discipline actually comes from learning, learning what works for you and making an adjustment. And so instead of when you consistently aren't getting stuff done or you're finding yourself procrastinating or avoiding something, say, well, tomorrow I'll just work harder and be more disciplined. What if it wasn't personal? What if you looked like, at like as a scientist on what was happening and said, how can I change the environment I'm in? Like, maybe I need to go to a coffee shop to do focus work because I don't do it here. What do I need to change and try so that I actually get this stuff done?

I love that you mentioned the scientist aspect is something I talk to my clients about as well. Because when we're in it, we can't be that objective. We make it mean something about us. Whereas when we're observing it, like, you know, and the simple, the simplest tweak like that, it's like I can't be focused. So here, this is my office desk. Literally right next to it, I have a creative desk with my craft stuff and my journal. They don't cross. When I'm at my work desk, I'm doing client calls. Or podcasts or whatever here and then over there. I do that. And it was just the tiny. It looks so bizarre when you look at my office to have two desks side by side. But when I was like task switching or like putting my craft stuff down and moving my laptop out of the way, it wasn't working. And that tiniest little tweak made all the difference.

Yeah, I like that. Keeping stuff separate. And I think about that in terms of time and calendar too. Like, let's get like clean cuts. Like when you're done, let's be done. You know, let's go to one space to do this, one space to do that. And I think a lot of people's time and tasks end up like float. Like I'm sort of doing this, but I'm also sort of like doing that. And sometimes we do need to watch the kid or sometimes more. We have more requirements. But the cleaner cuts you can have time and activity and environment wise, the easier it is to get in the mode of, of getting things done. One thing that's been working really well for me is just focusing on five hours of focused work each day. And that could include client calls or sales calls or independent work that I'm doing. But I think sometimes we. There's a sense that there's always more to do in the business and so it's hard to define enough for ourselves. So I've just said, look, five days a week, five hours, that's 25 good hours of work in my business. That's sustainable for me. And I can look in my calendar, I can say, all right, I'm at four and a half, you know, I'll do half an hour more and then I'm done. And I'm really done for real. Like, I'm not popping back in later in the night.

I love that. And you know, defining what is done for you and the self discipline too. So one of the things that I have implemented for myself is, is I don't have email on my phone. So that when I am done with my laptop and the lid goes down and I leave the room, I'm not like just checking to had any responses. Has anybody clicked the link? No, I'm done. It will all still be there tomorrow. And I think for a lot of us when we are online and some people are expecting a response immediately and it's like, yeah, no, there's no emergencies in coaching. Like if you need a true emergency, go to the emergency department. They have people who will help you with that. But having really clear on your boundary and self discipline to stick to that so that you're not constantly working.

Well said.

I love that. So, Greg, tell us more about this program, Weeks that work and where people can find out more about if, if they're interested in their fit.

Yeah, so I'm excited about this. So this is a 12 week group coaching program. I'm running it with a colleague, Gemma Gilbert. This is actually someone I coached when she started her business and she's just like killing it now. So she's become a colleague, which is cool. A lot of the people we both work with are like coaches, consultants, service providers. They're ambitious, they've gotten started and they're looking for more consistency in the business. They're not really clear, like what are the things I do in my business that make a difference, how do I get clear on that and how do I stay consistent with it and keep dialing them in and put that into a weekly structure that works for me. So that's what we're going to be supporting people with. It's kind of like a case study group or a beta round. So it's at a lower investment than usual and we're just focused on let's create as many success stories as we can for these 12 weeks and then we'll probably raise the price or not include live coaching after that.

I love that transparency and where can people find out about it? Is it Weeks that work dot com.

Weeks that work dot com.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Thank you everybody. We'll catch you on the next one. Bye for now.