In this episode of the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast, host Richard Toutounji interviews Ev Chapman, a systems‑focused marketer with eight years at ComNow, to address a common obstacle: marketers claim they don’t have time to market. Richard shares results from a recent OzActive workshop where 70 % of participants cited lack of time as their biggest barrier. Ev outlines a four‑step framework to reclaim time and boost marketing output: 1. Write everything down – capture every task, big or small, in a daily log so nothing slips through the cracks. 2. Schedule marketing activities in your calendar – treat marketing tasks like meetings, blocking dedicated time the night before or the afternoon prior. 3. Prepare your work environment in advance – open the necessary browser tabs, logins, and passwords ahead of time to eliminate start‑up friction. 4. Create momentum with easy wins and a strong why – start the day with quick, 5‑minute tasks to build a sense of accomplishment, and keep a compelling purpose (“the why”) front‑and‑center to sustain effort. Richard reinforces each point with personal habits (e.g., pre‑opening his browser) and emphasizes that a clear purpose fuels consistency. The episode closes with a call‑to‑action for listeners to book a “Marketing Muscle Up” accountability call at commarketing.com.au.
Chapters
With somebody who doesn't have time to market, meaning that they know the activity they have to do, they know they have to post, they know they have to do a Facebook Live, they don't— but they're struggling with time. Welcome back to the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast Show. I'm back with the one and only Ev Chapman. How are you?
I'm great. It's good to be back. It's been a while.
It's been a while. Yep. I've been doing these podcasts myself and some really great guests that we've been having on, and I've got a whole bunch of good guests lined up moving forward. I recently just got off a podcast with Jackson Millan talking about wealth creation, coast wealth creation. That was yesterday. So really excited for this episode. What's been happening at the moment, I can tell you right now that I ran a workshop to OzActive yesterday and great workshop. We had a few hundred people on the workshop and I asked the question. I said, what is the thing that's holding you back from marketing? And they said, and like when I asked, you know, webinar with a few hundred people on, you see the chat on Zoom go pretty, pretty fast. And I scanned and I kid you not, won't believe I told you this.
I
don't know if anybody else is going to believe me, but the number one thing that people had a problem with, with marketing was not like, don't know what to do. Not, you know, marketing's changed. 70% of the responses was, I don't have time to market.
Yeah.
I don't have time to do the activity. Now, I thought it was interesting too. And I thought, wow, okay, let's, I mean, let's scrap my talk. And I kind of bouncing into time management techniques. And so I did want to talk to you about that because a little backstory of Ev is that you're really big on systems. You've been at ComNow for close to 8 years, I think, and you've created a lot of systems in those times. I think our company has more systems than most. And we're talking about systems before the cut and paste funnels, before the ClickFunnels.
Yes.
Like systems that you'd had to create and you had to create these Massive thing. So, but saying, you know, we're going to talk about systems, but I just want to start first of all with somebody who doesn't have time to market, meaning that they know the activity they have to do. They know they have to post. They know they have to do a Facebook Live, but they're struggling with time. I'm just hoping that you can show me how to get more 24 hours in a day. What are your top 3 for this?
Okay. I think that when people say they're struggling with their time, most of the time it's because they haven't planned. So for the majority of people, sure, yeah, I have to post today, but like you haven't got that written down anywhere. You don't have that in any kind of planning, you know, whatever it is, whether you use, you know, paper or some kind of, you know, fancy digital thing. So I think that's the first thing is that, you know, most of us overestimate what we have to do.
Yep.
And the time that we have to do it in. And so we end up with these massive to-do lists and then we're trying to struggle to do it all. So I would suggest that the first thing that you do is just write down everything that you possibly have to do, even the things that seem really obvious because most of the time, those are the things that are taking up our time and then we're like, well, where did the day go? Like we've all had those kinds of days where we're like, I know I've—
As I've been crossed off.
Well, that's it. You know you've been doing things but you just don't know what those are. So Getting everything down and writing everything down as soon as you think of something, writing it down in a list. I just like have this kind of daily like log where I just write things down as I think of them and they kind of like dump it in. And then as I then go to plan my day, I know all the meetings that are coming up. I know what I've got to do. If you've got to go and do some training, all of those are already in your calendar. And then you can slot in what else you have to do because at the end of the day, you know, you have to do marketing, you know it's important, but other things kind of creep up in. And so I think that if you want to make it a priority, you have to schedule it in.
And you'd schedule it, would you schedule that time in your diary? What do you think about that?
I do. Yeah. If I have to do something, I schedule it in my calendar because—
But it's not a meeting. So is that why do you think people don't schedule in? Like they're not meeting or something?
Well, yeah, but I think the meetings that you set with yourself are the most important meetings because otherwise, you can choose to do whatever you want with your time. You can choose to go home and have a nap and, you know, you might definitely need to do that. Or you can put it in your calendar. I've got to do this. I've got to post. I've got to write an email. I've got to reach out to some people, you know, some partners or that kind of thing. If you put it in your calendar, It's there. You know that it's a time that you can sit down and do it rather than, I think what happens to most people is getting to the end of the day and thinking, I don't know what I did today and I don't know where the day went.
Okay. So basically write everything down, everything you got down. And number 2 is put it in your diary for the activities that you want to do. Not like the, I got to clean my desk or that, like the activities talking about marketing. Like I go do a Facebook Live, but you put it in your diary at that time.
In your calendar. And Bonus tip, I do that the night before or the afternoon before so that I'm not— because like, you know, when you're waking up at 5:00 AM to go and do a class and then you've got back-to-back classes and then you get home, maybe have some breakfast and it's like 9:30 and then you're like already exhausted for the day and you can't really think about, well, what is it I'm supposed to be doing today? So if you take a little bit of time the day before and you say, okay, what do I really need to get done? And then that way, when you get home and when you're ready to go, you've got your list there and off you go.
So good. Love that. I want to add to that as well. What I found really useful, and I know you talk about too, is I've always found useful to, you know, there's so many different apps, so many different logins, passwords. I've never been great with passwords. So many different things out there that you have to log on there and just so much.
Yes.
I love just, you know, opening up the browser on my desktop if I'm going to go to market and be ready for the next day because it takes me a good 10 minutes to find the link.
Do you know what I mean?
I know everybody has that problem too.
That is a great tip, Richard.
Oh, thank you.
I'm actually so surprised that you do that, but it absolutely works. Like, you don't have to have that thinking time. You could just open up. Yeah. And start working.
Totally. So we've got number 1, write everything down. Number 2, we have plan your day. Schedule your day. Number 3, which I talked about, which was opening browsers, tabs, passwords, whatever you need to start the work straight away to get it done. And one more tip, Ev. What's the final tip that you can give to really then execute and know that, hey, I've done it. I could do more. What's What else have you got for us?
Yeah. You know, doing things creates momentum. So like, if you can, like all of this seems very simple. Like, sure, Ev, I can write everything down. Like, but most people don't do it. So as soon as you start doing it and you get that, you know, a lot of people talk about eat the frog, like do the most important thing in the morning. I tend to do the easy things first because that kind of gives me a sense of accomplishment. So if I can tick off a few like little 5-minute tasks, that kind of thing, I'm like, oh yeah, okay, good to go. And so that then creates momentum to do more things and want to kind of tick more things off your list.
So good. Like that. All right, guys, that's the quick podcast today because I don't want to take too much time up on this. I want you to go and do the easy task first. Write your list. You know, I've got my marker here. You know, color it off and highlight it off. I like highlighting because I feel like you accomplished something.
Yes.
And put everything on that list. So by the end of the day, you've done the important things. And most importantly, put the time in your diary to do that. And I think I want to finish off this by saying you've got to have a big enough why to do it. If you're still figuring out why you want to market and then you're struggling with either cash flow or leads, or, you know, we're still complaining about the market, blah, blah, blah. This is your opportunity to say, it's like, okay, the moment to say, hey, things aren't working because I didn't put the time and the effort into the business. I didn't put the time and effort into that Facebook Live. I didn't put the time and effort into it. And if you didn't do it before, that's fine, but get onto it and get it done because other people are putting the time and effort in. And so sometimes that motivates me when it's like, okay, well, someone else might be doing it, so I'm going to put the time and effort to market. I'm going to do that. You know what I mean?
Yeah.
At the same time too, you've really got to have the why. You know, if you want to grow your business, you want to have the best community, if you want to help more people out, it doesn't just come to your lap anymore. It may used to, but not anymore.
No. And you can't kid yourself. If you don't have the why, you're not going to do those activities. So, you know, that could be one of the reasons that you're procrastinating.
Hmm.
All right. Because you don't see any way of doing it. Yeah.
Love it, guys. That's this episode of the Marketing Muscle Up podcast show. Good to have you back, Ev.
Great to be back.
If you love this episode and you really want help with this and you want someone to hold you accountable, I would jump on commarketing.com.au and jump on a call there. It's called the Marketing Muscle Up call, and we can really help you to get your marketing working. I'm sure Ev can help you with the to-do list, but that's not the big thing we want to do. We want to make sure that your leads are generating Great quality. I mean, your leads are generating great quality sales. So if that's something you need help with, go to commarketing.com.au and find the Book Me a Marketing Muscle Up, and hopefully we see you on that call. Bye there for now, guys. I'll see you next time on the Marketing Muscle Up Show.
