157: Time Management That Actually Works For Busy Entrepreneurs - #GrowYourLife

Hey, everyone, thanks for listening to the Grow youw Life podcast. My name is Jeremiah Krakowski, and on this podcast we talk about ways that coaches, course creators, authors, trainers, and even agency business owners can help grow their business, can help other businesses, and can make the amount of money that they want to make. Now, today we're going to talk about time management, time management tips, tricks, techniques, what I've used to successfully build a business to multiple six figures or over the last four years, and what you can do right now if you feel like I don't have the time to build a business. Time is one of the biggest things. It's one of the number one assets that a business owner has. Now, a lot of people say, well, you need money to make a business in the beginning, when you're getting started. Time is actually one of your biggest limitations because you lack money. Most of the people, if you're not already a millionaire or already have a lot of money put aside or have success in another business, which I know we have a few people with that, but time management is the number one thing that they need to deal with because they can clear out time. Imagine that you had all the time that you want to create the business that you've always dreamed of. And so that's what we're going to talk about is how you can do that. Now, full disclosure on this. I don't have kids at all. However, comma, what I'm going to teach you is what I have business owner friends that are making millions of dollars and they have three, four, five kids. And these are the same tax tactics that they use. And I've asked them like, okay, when I do have kids, what do you use? I know a lot of my business owners have kids. So this is. Takes into account that I have a bit. A lot more time than most of you that have kids. Obviously, I know that. But I'm structured my life in the way that I want to in the future now to develop the right habits. And so the, the habits that I'm going to show you, these are not just for people without kids, okay? These are not just for this special scenario that you don't have a lot going on. In fact, what we're going to talk about is how you can build a business when you have a lot going on, when you might have a job that you're working, when you might have a job and kids and three businesses that you're trying to run and how you can actually make those profitable. My goal with you is I want wherever your income level is right now. I want it to go up without you having to work more. Does that sound fair? Does that sound pretty good? Does that, if you're listening to this podcast, does that sound like something that you would, that you would like? I think everybody, if you're listening to this right now, can agree with that. We want to make more money, but we don't want increased stress. We want to stay sane. We don't want to go crazy trying to juggle more and do more stuff. This isn't about hustling harder and doing more work. There's some days when, yes, you have to go grind down and do some stuff, but that's not like every single day. I only spend a few minutes a day on my social media content. I used to spend a lot more time on that when I was able to shrink the amount of time that I spent on my social media content to just five to 10 minutes a day. That's five to 10 minutes, literally maximum that I could find to do social media. One of the biggest things that business owners, coaches, course creators, trainers, authors, agency business owners need to be able to do when they start to get more customers to social media content daily. Okay, but here's what I want to talk about. One of the biggest areas, one of the biggest time sucks that business owners have is not a sexy topic. It's. It's a topic that is hard to hear sometimes, but it's an important one. And it's about finding the approval of everybody around us is actually one of the number one time management techniques. Now let me explain this. If you're constantly seeking approval from everybody, you will say yes to things that suck your time away in your life just to make others happy again. I'm not talking about your, your, your children, I'm not talking about your spouse. Those need to be your top supreme priority. Absolutely. But there's other people in our lives, especially if you're doing services and consulting in an agency where you got people calling you at all hours of the day asking for questions. If you're a coach, you got people messaging you all hours asking questions. If you're a course creator, you got people asking you customer service questions. If you're like me and you're doing all three, I do consulting, agency work, high level stuff. I do coaching and I do courses. I do all three of those. I know people that are making seven figures with kids that are doing those the only, only way. Listen, if you have one client, you can say yes to everything that they ask you for and it's not gonna be stressful, but you gotta change your mindset and treat your business as if you have a hundred clients, as if you have 100 agency clients, 1,000 coaching clients, and 10,000 course clients. I want you to just imagine that, okay? Imagine how you would manage your time if you had 100 agency clients, 1,000 coaching clients, and 10,000 course clients. Just for the mental exercise, that might seem like a huge number. We're not talking about, like, what it's going to take to get there. I teach that in other stuff. But mentally I want you to think about how would you structure your time? You, you physically can't say yes to everything, and yet you have to be able to serve these people. Right now you might say, well, I would have staff, so that's a big part of it, right? Delegation, learning to delegate to other people so that you're not doing all the work. But that costs money. Okay? So before you're at a place, it's usually about 20 to $30,000 where you can start to hire people. If that's like your, your total household income. Total household income monthly, 20 to 30,000. You can hire different roles out, but how do you get to 20 to 30,000? Imagine that you have. Just imagine you have 10 agency clients, 100 coaching clients, and 1,000 course clients. Okay? Imagine that we cut the number to 1/10. How would you manage your time differently? And the answer unequivocally to everybody is you would not say yes to everything that those hundred agency clients or those 10 agency clients or those hundred coaching clients would want you to do just because they want you to do it. You wouldn't say yes to everything. Always going to every social gathering that your friends want to have you go to, you would say, and that's the thing, my friends, the reason most business owners don't reach their goals is they're not willing to make the time management sacrifices to say no to things in order to build their business. Again, we're keeping our family, spouse, children, top priority, top line, above the business, above our friends, above people at church, above all of that. Okay? Keep your priorities in order. And then what are you saying yes to and agreeing to do constantly from everybody that's pulling you in different directions in your life that are not your immediate children and spouse. And then when you have a business you could end up having, this is what happened with me, by the way, a toxic relationship with your business clients where you're letting them pull you in 100 directions because they're giving you money. So you feel like they're entitled to use you for whatever they want. I'm sorry, but people that pay money and are entitled to use people for whatever they want, that's called prostitution. It is. We're not in the prostitution business. We're just not. And I'm going to shoot straight with you. You're not going to be able, you're going to burn out if you operate that way to where everybody can have as much of you as they want simply because they feel entitled to it. So for me, I was constantly seeking the approval of everybody. As long as I could say yes to everything and burn myself out, I could please everybody, right? Wrong. That's not a way to live your life. It's not. And so in the time management thing, just one huge area that has changed my life is learning to prioritize what I say yes to and what I say no to and not prostituting myself out just to get self validation, to feel like I'm good enough, to feel like I'm doing enough for people just because they're paying me money. There are literally business owners right now that believe that what I just said is unethical. I'm watching the live Stream. We lost 90% of all the streamers after I just said that. So, so knowing that I know that what I just said triggered people. If 90% of my listeners just dropped off on all my social media platforms by saying that, it's because it's a hard thing to hear. It is. And, and, and you, you gotta work through, why am I doing this? Why am I letting other people run my life so much? We have to stop worrying about what other people think about us all the time. We have to stop being concerned about pleasing everybody all the time. When you make your priorities in order, your spouse, your kids at the top, your home at the top, and then everything else comes after that. Your business comes after that. And then you learn to say no to things. You don't say yes to everything. Just because people feel entitled to you, you're willing to disappoint people. I've disappointed a lot of people by saying, no, I can't work on this project for you. And then I lost them as a client. The best thing that ever happened to me, I had a client. I'm gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna tell you this. Two years ago, agency client paying me six figures. They were upset that I wouldn't answer my phone at all hours of the day without scheduling with me and felt that it was dishonoring to them. So they dropped me, lost six figures and found better six figure clients. So a big thing is up front. You gotta manage the expectations with people. When you're getting into business, you gotta manage the expectations. Some of you would not be willing to walk away from a six figure contract because they demand you to do a certain thing, right? And we hear this like, you gotta do what's uncomfortable to be successful in business. The uncomfortable thing you gotta learn to do is to actually say no to everybody who's trying to suck the life out of you. That's one of the biggest time management tips that you can learn. Be willing to walk away from money in order to have your sanity. When you do this, you can command higher rates in your business. And a lot of you as business owners need to raise your rates at least double what you feel comfortable with. Those of you that are listening to this right now, now here's how you justify that, right? First off, when you believe in yourself, when you have a level of self esteem and you know your worth, you don't need to justify it. That whole justification of how much you charge thing is, is really a cr. Like a crappy way to look at things because it comes from a belief that we're not good enough for people to pay us what we're worth. So a, it starts with you believing that you're worth that amount first off. Then second, you set the expectations up front because you're not as available to people. You have to charge more because you're not willing to work as many hours to make the same amount of money. So it's called business for a reason. Business is about making money. If you're working half as much, you're going to have to charge twice as much to make the same amount. It's just simple math, right? And then some of you are going to double your rates even more to then start to hire some staff. Hey, stop undercutting your services. Stop undercutting your coaching. Stop undercutting your courses. Fix whatever's going on in your money mindset. The only reason that you're not making the kind of money that you want to make as a course creator, a coach or a trainer right now is because what's going on between your two ears is wired to prevent you from doing so. That's it. And so you can strategically learn how to rewire your brain in order to actually do the things that you need to do as a business owner in order to make the kind of money that you want to make. And that includes Saying no to things just because people feel entitled to your time, because they're paying you money. Oh, they're paying me six figures. That doesn't mean that I have to bend over backwards and give all of me to them just because they feel entitled to it, because they would do the same thing or expect you to do so. And that's why manage expectations up front in the relationship. Okay, So a huge time management tip. Boundaries and expectation management. Learning to explicitly express what you are willing to do up front even if you lose a prospect. I did that this week. Had a meeting with a client, by the way. They hired me by managing the expectation up front by saying what I was willing to do and was not willing to do. And they loved it, and they've been the best. So what I found is that people are actually dream clients when you do this. They don't get disappointed in the beginning, though. You're gonna disappoint people if you're not operating this way. Okay? You're gonna make some people upset. You're gonna make them angry. You're gonna talk to them. You are going to lose some clients, and that's a good thing. So you have to break past the fear of losing in order to gain the life that you want to live. It's a huge thing. I'm not willing to lose my relationship with my wife for a client. I'm not willing to when I have kids. And for those of you that have kids, say this. I'm not willing to give up my kids for a client. What are you saying yes to, and what are you saying no to? As a business owner, learning to prioritize, learning to say no more often, learning to have better boundaries will literally create time for you that you can build your business and make more money more than anything else. Okay, now, how do we manage that time? Now here's the next part. Some of you, you're like, Jeremiah, you've been flapping your jaws for 17 minutes. When are you gonna get to the real content? I get it. For those of you that listen to me long enough, you know that I build upon topics. If this is your first time listening, this is how I teach. I usually get to the main point towards the end because I pre qualify it. Take an account for everything that you're doing every single day. Account for what time are you getting up? When are you going to bed? Start there. One of the biggest things, a lot of people set an alarm clock for their waking up time, and that's actually backwards. Setting an alarm clock for when you go to bed is actually more effective because if you can control what time you go to bed, you can actually still get the same amount of sleep that you want to now. Again, I understand with babies and certain kids it's different. I get it. I hope you understand that. I get it. But what can you control in your life? Not who can you control. The only person you can control is yourself. Boundaries aren't about controlling other people, by the way. It's a common misconception. They're about controlling yourself to protect your energy, to allow you to operate at your best, to be able to prioritize self care in your life. Some of you haven't prioritize self care in years and your business is suffering because of it. If you can learn to prioritize self care in your life, it'll change everything. It really will. And then you look at, okay, when am I going to bed? When am I waking up? Okay, what time do I have lunch? So this is how I do my time management. A lot of people are like, okay, you got to take a whole day planner and map everything out, right? The way I've done it is I do everything incrementally. So I've tried the day planner thing and it's been hard for me. So I use Google Calendar for me. Okay, Kind of the same thing, digital day planner. And what I do is I, I make sure I have non negotiables for when I go to bed, when I wake up, when I eat lunch. So those are blocked out meetings of time that I know when I wake up. This is how long it takes me to get into the best headspace to start working. Okay. Then I look at what would I like to do at a certain time in the morning. So then my morning time is set aside for that activity. I have certain openings for clients to meet with me in the morning and afternoon. And then after 6pm it's with my wife. Now we work at home, so it's a little different. So I see her all the time. So in between meetings I go down and say hi, give her a kiss and stuff like that, right? See this is the part, oh, we lost some, a whole bunch more people on the stream again. As soon as you talk about boundaries and actually documenting what you're doing and disciplining yourself, people run like you have five heads. And then they wonder why they're not successful in business. They wonder why it's so hard for them to be successful. Self discipline and boundaries are the number one actions that you need to be Successful as a business owner, you can't operate just based off of your emotions and feelings and what feels good and the whim of what you feel like you want to do all the time. See, look, more people are dropping off the stream. It's okay. You just. You just can't. You have to learn to discipline yourself, to document your time. Now, that might trigger people. Listen. The reason it triggers people is this. If you're still listening to this podcast, I commend you. It's triggering a certain part of you that feels like you're not good enough, inadequate, and that you're not doing enough. When we talk about discipline and boundaries, that's really what it is. And that you want to do that, but you have. It makes your brain start to hurt. It's related to, I wouldn't say trauma, but it's. You're. You're basically going against life patterns. Okay. And so it's. It's a triggering thing to talk about. When we look at why am I not disciplined? The answer is, is painful oftentimes. But when we can go through the pain, not press through it, but sit with it and observe it and observe. Why are boundaries so painful for me? Why does that thought of disciplining myself to write down what I'm doing in the day so painful for me? We actually start to come to the truth of why we're not doing it in the first place and why it's been so hard. And oftentimes for me, it pointed back to experiences in the workplace, childhood memories, and just feeling like I had to be perfect all the time in order to be successful. Imposter syndrome. That's one of the number one reasons people, they're like, well, if I can't be perfect, then I'm not going to do anything at all. That's why I say perfectionism and the need to do everything right. I'm not talking about, like breaking the law, the need to do everything right, Best practice or nothing at all. So a lot of people, very extreme, all or nothing. If I can't do it all perfect with my prioritization and time management, then I'm going to do nothing at all. Figuring out, like, where that came from and sort of rewiring your brain out of all or nothing. Extreme mentality will change your life. It'll change your life with your time management, with your business, because you'll be willing to show up to do just a little bit of work. Oh, I got 10 minutes here. I'm going to do 10 minutes. I didn't get the whole project done, great. But you know what? I'm rejoicing, thankful and grateful that I had 10 minutes to do this right here. And so when you can really start to figure out, okay, like, why do I feel like I'm almost nauseated when I can't get everything done? Why do I feel like I'm almost nauseated that I have to be perfect all the time and that I have to do everything right and all the best practices all the time in my life, or I'm not going to do anything at all? Why do I feel that way? You can start to get to the root issue of why we're not managing our time, why we're not prioritizing things, why we're not saying no to things. It's all connected to your beliefs. Your time management is 100% a mindset thing. It has very little to do with actual strategy. I believe that we all know the strategy. What I've just shared with you is the simplest strategy for time management. You block your timeout. You say no to people sucking your time away. You learn to say no to pleasing everybody. But the real root issue is that's painful to do because by doing so means you're going to have to sacrifice your image, other people's opinions of you. You, you're going to have to do hard things that trigger you in order to discipline yourself to do that. And so that's why really, the real key of time management is when you can really get to the root of why is my brain wired against even talking about or doing this stuff? Why is my brain, like, wired to not even allow me to, to do what's best for me, my family, and my business? See, when you make your priority be your, your spouse, your children, your God, your faith. If you're somebody of faith, that's what I do. And then you come there and then everybody else comes after that. You know, I'm going to address something too. There's some people that they have bought into some really bad Bible teaching that tells them that they're supposed to give all of their time away to everybody else in their life. Lay down your life for others. And so they misinterpret that as let everybody have all of me. You're not, you're, you're, you're literally losing your ability to actually serve people when you do that, when you don't have boundaries. Jesus had boundaries. He pulled away to pray. Some would call that self care. I consider prayer to be self care because I am not myself which myself and God know that the way that God and I know that I need to be when we don't spend time together because I'm so focused on everything else. And they're, again, not going into the theology of it. Would God need you to like all that? Learn to prioritize your time. Learn to say no to things that suck your time away. Start to document what you do every single day. Start to make time blocks out of. Okay, for an hour here, I'm going to focus on this. Even if you only get 10 minutes of actual work time done in that, that's great. Another big tip for time management, since y' all are watching on social media. Cut out the scrolling on social media. Literally discipline yourself to not be scrolling on social media all day long. I know it's hard. I find it hard myself to do so. I get it. I think that social media addiction is one of the biggest time sucks there is. And then we get into conversations. I do it myself. It's like, I'm saying, as somebody that is, like, still kind of recovering from this thing, I love social media. I get all my clients on social media. I'm not saying get rid of it, but when you're just sitting there scrolling mindlessly and you go into a trance, it sucks your time away. And so when you can learn to do these really simple things, whether you got kids or not, it's literally, it's gonna allow you to create time in your life to at least start to do the basic activities of building a business. Those of you that say, I don't have. I literally had a. And I appreciate her, but she said, I don't have Jeremiah. I don't have 10 minutes to record social media content a day. I don't even have 10 minutes. And I told her all this, and then she's like, why don't I just. I. I can't. I got too many people at my church that rely on me, so I can't displease them. Okay, so that's her choice. That's great. But eventually, if you want to build a business, if you feel called to build a business, see, that's why your business does have to be a priority in your life. So if you want to make six figures, multiple six figures, feel called to make seven figures. You're going to have to learn to prioritize your time to block out time. Okay, I got two hours here. I'm going to record, and that morning, then the rest of the day is for my family and all the obligations. I Got just do that, just start there. And you would be shocked by having focus. It's called Deep work. So there's a book, it's called Deep Work by Cal Newport and Deep Work by Cal Newport talks about this, the rules for focused success in the distracted world. And another great book is called Indistractable. Okay, so these two books, indistractable, how to control your attention and choose your life and Deep Work are really great books on this topic of having those focused blocks of time to do what you want to do, how to control where you put your attention and to really create the life that you've always wanted. So I hope that listening to this today, this has inspired you, this has challenged you. If you've made it all the way to the end of this podcast episode, listen, I want to like honor you and commend you. There's, there's literally people, they, they, they physically couldn't listen past a third or a quarter or three quarters of the way through this episode because it triggered them so much. And, and I want to honor them too. They're going through stuff, they're going through issues, they're dealing with stuff. They're in a different stage in their journey, but you're somebody. By getting to the end of this podcast episode, if you've listened all the way from the beginning to the end, you've demonstrated that you have what it takes to, to start doing this stuff. Now it's time to take action, it's start to apply it. It's time to start doing what you say that you're going to do. And this is a framework that you can use for time management in your business. It'll change your life. Listen, if you're somebody that's a business owner and you want to grow your business more, I'd love to work with you and I'd love to talk with you. I do one on one coaching over my website, Jeremiah Krakowski.com where I work with business owners and I come alongside them, coaches, course creators, authors, trainers, agency business owners and entrepreneurs and help them build their business, get more customers, write their messaging and learn how to attract the type of sales that they want to. I'd love to work with you and I'd love to coach with you. You can schedule a free discovery call by scrolling to the bottom of my one on one coaching page. If you're serious about coaching with me and we can talk together and listen if you're not ready for that. I have courses on my website that are self study courses that'll walk you through everything that you need to know about your direct response, marketing and how to get more sales in your business as well. There's 150 plus episodes of this podcast on my podcast, the Grow youw Life Podcast, the one that you're listening to right now. I talk on so many different topics about business for course creators, coaches, agency business owners, consultants and entrepreneurs that I think would really help you. So grow your life. Everybody. Share this episode with somebody if you know that they need this help with their time management and we'll talk soon. Have a good one.