MBA1869 My Typical Work Week

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USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and Sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With usaa, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a'@usaa.com bundle restrictions apply. Hey O welcome to the $100 MBA show where you don't have to build a business alone. We got your back. Every sing daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's episode I'll be sharing my typical work week as an entrepreneur. Many people have asked me how do I spend my time in the office during work? How do I balance work with life, exercise, mental health? So I'm going to share it all with you. And I wanted to do week and not typical day because not every day is the same as you'll see in today's episode. I'll also share a little bit about the strategy or the rationale behind my schedule and why my schedule often changes. My goal, today's episode, is just to share what I do what works in hopes that you could take away something and apply it in your own work week. Also, a lot of people are just curious what other entrepreneurs do in a typical week. So let's get into it. Get down to business.

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All right, my typical work week. Before we begin, a couple of caveats. Number one, I'll be talking about what I normally do outside of a COVID lockdown. Life without restrictions. Okay. And number two, I'm just sharing what I do. I'm not saying this is what you should do or is the best way to do things. This is just what works for me. My work week is Monday through Friday. I try as much as possible to take Saturday and Sunday off. For the most part, I work only Monday through Friday. But sometimes I do sneak in a bit of work on an off Saturday or Sunday. Like today, I'm recording this episode on a Sunday, but I would say 90% of the time or 90% of the year, I do not work on Saturdays and Sundays. And this is important to me because resting and recharging is super important. Especially as a leader of a company. Your decisions have a huge impact on everybody that works for the team, all your customers, your whole business. Okay? So you want to make sure that you're making decisions with a sound, rested mind. And as much as I can on Saturdays and Sundays, I try to step away from work as much as possible. I mean, I don't even open my office door at home. I don't want to look at my laptop. I don't want to look at anything that's related to work because I need to recharge my brain and not just recharge my body as much as I can. I like to go out, I like to maybe have a dinner out or exercise. I often play basketball on Saturdays and Sundays with my friends. I do something that's totally outside my normal work week. So I feel like I had a break. We'll talk a little bit more about the weekend towards the end of today's episode. But let's begin with Monday. On Mondays, I wake up at 5:30am I like to wake up at 5:30 because I like to have a slow morning. I wake up, the first thing I do is before I even go to the bathroom while I'm still in bed, I do my five minute journal. Every day I do a five minute journal. I like to journal and do my journal entry for the morning. And then I put my feet on the floor. I get up, I go to the bathroom, I shower, brush my teeth, do whatever I need to do to get ready for the day. And by the time I'm in the kitchen, it's like 10 minutes to 6. I prepare breakfast. I kind of have a slow morning. I like to just do a little bit of YouTube watching or maybe read a little bit. But often I just take it easy and just watch a bit of YouTube. Some of my favorite car reviews or some guilty pleasures like some sports highlights. That goes on for about an hour and then I start my work day at 7 o'. Clock. Mondays for me are slow on purpose. I like to start the week slow and I like to do creative work on Monday. Now because we're ahead of the rest of the world in Sydney, I have that luxury. Most of the world is still in the weekend, so there's not a lot of demands from my team at this time. So this is when I get to do some creative work. Some writing, some planning of the podcast episodes, some strategic planning even for the business, maybe putting some slides together for my next webinar or my next meeting or maybe even. Or all hands. Or all hands, meaning for the team. This is when I'm most refreshed because I'm calling off the weekend. So it allows me to think a little clearly, especially if I'm making decisions on the business, pricing, new products, new services, new features, things like that. So I like to tackle these types of tasks on Monday every day before I actually get on my computer and I say start work at 7, it doesn't mean I actually am on the computer at 7. I should take my legal pad. I love using a legal pad and a pen, just really old school analog. And I actually go and sit outside on my balcony and I just plan my day. I actually make my to do's for the day. These are the things I need to accomplish today in order for it to be a productive day. And the list is not that long. I try to make the list less than 10 items so I'm not overwhelmed and I make sure that they're high, high priority and that will really move the needle. And again, Monday's focused on creative work. Now it doesn't mean I don't do any administrative tasks like answering messages or emails. I do do that, but I don't like to spend more than 30 minutes a day on that. So that's really what Monday's all about. It prepares me for the week. It allows me to make the big decisions I need to make so that I can then meet with the rest of the team the rest of the week and talk about these decisions, talk about some of the things we want to maybe discuss together or decide together or present the things that I prepared. Like some presentations. I rarely have calls or meetings on Monday because I like to keep it creative. Tuesdays on the other hand, are completely different. They're very busy. I wake up at 4:30 on Tuesdays because again, I like to Have a slow morning. And because my first meeting is at 6am, I have a product meeting with our product team. This is a very important meeting because product is a huge part of our success in business, our success with our software company, Webinar Ninja. We review our product decisions, our product designs, how we're doing in terms of timeline of projects, make decisions that we need to make together as a team. That's from 6 to 7, 7 to 8. I use this time to plan my day, do any urgent tasks or reply to any urgent emails that I have. Eight o', clock, I have a C level meeting which is me, my co founder Nicole and our CTO Taylor, where we make sure we plan the week, we set our goals for the week, we evaluate how we're doing. We have something called a precision scorecard that we track the metrics, where we're tracking to make sure that we are on track with our product progress and our goals as a business. We answer any questions we have of each other, we share what we're working on this week. And that's eight o'. Clock. My next meeting on Tuesday is at 10:30. So as you can see, Tuesday is a meeting day. And this is with our EA Romina. She fills us in on all the HR matters, any other administrative things going on with the team, anything we should look out for for the rest of the month. And this is a quick, easy meeting, about 30 minutes long. But from 9 to 10:30 I usually step away from the laptop, I have a cup of coffee, I take a little break so I can refresh my brain before my next meeting. And then I get through maybe one or two of my tasks that are on my to do list until that meeting at 10:30. From there it's 11 o' clock after that meeting with our EA Romina. At this time I'm pretty much hungry because I Woke up at 4:30. I usually have my lunch around 11. 11:30, I get back to work and do my to do's. And then in the afternoon from 1 to 3, I record the podcast. I record, I batch record episodes for this podcast often. A lot of the planning and the outlining that I've done on Monday will be for the episodes I'm recording on Tuesday, 3 o'. Clock. I try as much as possible to have a hard stop and get some exercise in. I forgot to mention on Mondays at 3 o' clock as well, I'd like to exercise. I like to exercise as much as I can every single day because it gives me energy. This could be going to the gym. This could be just doing some resistance bands in the park. This could be shooting some hoops. It could be going for a run. After I do my exercise, I do a final check of anything that's pending for me from 4 o' clock to 5, and that's pretty much my day on Tuesday. Wednesday, I shift gears again. A little bit more creative work, a little bit more strategic planning. I have most of my external meetings that I have with other vendors, companies, demos. I have to do interviews for other podcasts. I do them on Wednesdays and Thursdays. So usually Wednesday is pretty filled with that. I often do a webinar on Wednesday as well. And Thursday I do webinars as well. And that's what Wednesday looks like. I wake up around 6, wake around 5:30 on Wednesdays, just like on Mondays. And by Wednesday I'm starting to feel a little bit, you know, it's been an intense week and this is why it's important for me to make sure I stop at 3 or so to exercise, recharge and get ready for the next day. At the end of the day, I take a look at my to do, see what I did, not get done, move those tasks to the next day. I realized maybe I bit off more than I can chew and it allows me to evaluate my to do list the next day. Thursday, a very interesting day. This is the day where I do a couple of webinars, I do more podcast recording in the afternoon. Again, wake up 5:30. I like to have a little bit of a slow morning. But Thursday is content creation day really, where I do a lot of talking, podcasting, I do a lot of presenting with webinars. So it's a bit of a draining day. By the end of Thursday, I'm ready to wrap the week up. I'm pretty tired because I'm pretty much on. I'll do some interviews for podcasts as well here and often Thursday, I would say about half the day is me going through coordinating with the rest of the team on tasks that we set out to do at the beginning of the week. So maybe in the marketing department we assigned a few tasks for the team and I will evaluate those tasks, take a look at them. So at the beginning of the week, we may have set up some tasks for the marketing team. I'll then go on Thursday and take a look at some of the work that has been done, look at the progress, maybe make some comments. Maybe I have to do something as a part of that task and I fulfill that task. Same thing with products. Same thing with engineering. I might answer a few questions or answer a few tickets on Jira. That's pretty much it. We still got Friday, guys, and I'll get to that in a moment. But I know you might be thinking, Omar, what about emails? When do you do your emails? When do you answer messages? What about social? All that kind of stuff? Well, when it comes to social profiles that are company social profiles, our team takes care of it. Our customer service manager takes care of it when they represent the company and they answer those queries. Personal social. I'm not very big on personal social. I'm not very big on communicating on social. Most of my friends that want to get in touch with me email me or text me or call me. That's just my style. I'm not huge on social, so therefore my time having to answer people on social is very limited. I like it that way. Email, on the other hand, whether it's my personal inbox or a company inbox, because I'm taking care of maybe a marketing email or a partnership email, I spend 30 minutes every morning at the start of the day. Depending on my schedule, I slot in 30 minutes to do that. I only spend 30 minutes. I just go and I blast through my inboxes for 30 minutes. I go in priority order. I archive the things that don't matter, things I may want to read later, but only the things I need to reply to. I attack for 30 minutes and that's it. I don't look at it again for the rest of the day. I don't try to reply to it the rest of the day. That's it. Tomorrow I try again. If it's, you know, urgent, I'll answer that day. If another email comes in later in the day and I answer tomorrow, it's not a big deal. People are not, you know, expecting me to reply in seconds. But every day I spend 30 minutes blasting through my inboxes.

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All right, Friday. Friday is an interesting day for me. I try to end work early on Friday because Friday I feel if I take some time to relax towards the end of the day, it allows me to feel like the weekend is longer than it is. I know it sounds strange, but it's funny. If I stop working or I start having fun at 3pm on Friday. It makes a huge difference versus me stopping work at 6pm Having said that, I like to stay consistent with waking up at 5:30 and I try to get as much work as done in the morning knowing that I'll be ending work a little early on Friday. From 7 to 8 I am working on my inbox. I'm working on anything that's urgent. I'm responding to my team in basecamp, all the messages, internal messages, slack, things like that. 8:00 clock I have a meeting with our CTO Taylor. It's a C level meeting. We wrap the week. We start the week on Tuesday and then on Friday where we wrap up. Hey, this is what we plan to do this week. This is where we got. This is our accomplishments. This is how we're doing on our score sheet. We communicate as much as we can together as a team to make sure we're getting closer to our goals. This is a much shorter meeting than the earlier meeting in the week because it's just basically making sure we're on track. Friday often consists of webinars. I do a lot of webinars, as you may have noticed. It also consists of me spending time working on big creative projects. So I don't do planning. I actually do work here. So for example, the last big creative project I was doing is I was doing a video lead magnet on how to sell your online course. It's called the Online Course Sales Machine. You can check it out over@webinarninja.com sell your course. And there is a example of what I was working on on a typical Friday where I would, you know, record a video, edit a video, create the landing pages. I love just getting knee deep in creative work and creating content for our business. In a way, I am the face of our company, so I do a lot of the content. So Friday is a day I really just kind of go all in and be creative, whether that's with webinars or with content. For our opt ins or our next project, I may do some podcast recordings, some inserts, some sponsorship inserts, something like that that I may have to do. I'll take a call or two. Have lunch on Fridays. I actually like to have my exercise time right before lunch and have a little bit of a later lunch. So I exercise around 11 and have lunch at 12 and then I just kind of wind down from one to three. I make sure there's nothing pending, there's nothing urgent needed for me. I check with my team, say, hey, anybody need anything? Before I check Out. I check with accounting, I check with finance. I check with everybody. How's everybody doing? Good. All set. Any questions? Good, because I want to shut off at 3pm on Friday and not have to worry about the team needing me. And that wraps up my week. So as you can see, every day is a little bit different. Tuesdays are my heavy meeting days and I like to just do all our meetings in one day so it's done. So I can switch my brain to creative work or content work or webinars or whatever it is. I'm the kind of person that my mindset works better when I'm doing the same thing over and over. If that day is dedicated to one thing, I'm just in that mindset, in that mind groove, you can call it. And I just am more productive when I do that. So I like the themed days now. I gotta say, this is not the week I've always had. I'm always tweaking, I'm always changing my routine because I want to improve it. Also, I want to tell you that when I started our businesses, both 100 LMBA and Webinar Ninja, well over seven years ago, I was putting in a whole lot more hours. I think the first three years I didn't take a weekend. Maybe it would take a few hours here or there. Maybe one day was like a splurge. I really worked a whole lot more. But that's just not sustainable forever. You could do that this sprint to get your business going, but to continue to grow and scale and to be sustainable, you know, you need to rest, you need to recharge. And you know, in the beginning you have the urgency to hustle and work more hours. And I agree with that. But understand you can't do it forever. I learned that the hard way. Burnt out a few times. Well, there you have it. There's my tip of the week. I hope that you found some insights. Enjoyed that. Felt a little less different hearing what I do every day. If you love this podcast and you want to show us some love, leave us an Apple podcast rating review or just leave. Leave us a review on any podcast app you use to listen to podcasts. Thanks in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. It's easy to get caught in a routine. I like to step away from the routine sometimes and change it totally. So for example, one of the best ways to do that is to change your environment. Actually go to work somewhere else, go to a co working space, go to a cafe, go to your mom's house. Whatever. The point here is that when you change your environment, you re evaluate. Hey, what am I working on? What am I doing? Why am I always doing this? Is this the smartest way to do this? It's a good way to kind of shake things up and to look at it from a different angle. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check in tomorrow's episode. Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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