Liz Hartke Interview: Reclaim 20 Hours a Week

When you do more of what you love to do. Because then you are just in this place where you're energized. And we all know, especially when you have young kids and you're juggling all the things of life that somehow we muster up even more energy that you never thought you had. You can kind of turn another gear that you didn't know that you had access to when you're doing something you love. So don't forget that piece. Let's not discount what I think could be one of the most foundational pieces that ties it all back to vision. Doing more of what you're made to do.

Short on time. Let's fix that. On today's show you'll learn four ways you can get up to 20 hours back each week. This is the Launch your business podcast because we know starting a business is challenging, but but it doesn't have to be confusing. Each week we'll give you the tactical advice and the necessary tools to scale your business without feeling burnt out. I'm Terry Rice, business development consultant and staff writer here at Entrepreneur Magazine. Let's dive in. I saw a LinkedIn post about parenting that just cracked me up. The author was talking about working from home and how his kid often interrupts him to share their latest drawing. He went on to say that he's amazed at their work and never regrets pausing to acknowledge it. Look, I gotta call BS here. I'm sorry, but there's no way any functional adult is constantly and truly amazed at their kids doodles. And it's impossible for me to believe that you're okay with getting randomly interrupted at any given moment. And look, I got four kids. They draw all the time. And I'm not saying they're bad artists, but I have not seen anything that would justify me stopping in the middle of an article that I'm working on. Do I still stop to acknowledge them? Of course. But then I lock the door and get back to work. But look, jokes aside, being a parent takes up a lot of time and sure it can be frustrating at times, but it also forces me to be more efficient and productive. And since my days are so unpredictable, I don't have time to procrastinate. I'm always focused on getting the most important thing done in the moment. And today's guest is also a parent in High performer. Liz Hartkey is a Forbes Featured International Business Leadership Advisor and founder of the Luminary Leadership Company known for her work equipping entrepreneurs to scale their business for freedom and prosperity. Liz and her Husband Michael, practice what they preach, homeschooling and soaking up life with their four kids from their hobby farm. And on today's show, we'll talk about how to get more done without burning out. This includes four ways to get 20 plus hours back per week, how to use AI to buy time back for you and your team, and how your end of day routine can actually be as important as your morning routine. Let's hop into it right now. Liz, how are you today?

I'm great. How are you, Terry?

I'm good. Before we started recording, I was telling you that I was running late because of various things going on here at my home, including one of my kids being homesick. And I was just so glad to see that you have four children as well. So you get. It just makes it so much easier when there's some unfortunate circumstance that happens and the other person just automatically gets it and understands. So I appreciate that.

Yeah, I totally understand. And I've. I've felt blessed to have people give me grace throughout the years of just having the chaos ensue in the background. So I always give it very freely.

Awesome, Awesome. I appreciate it. So one part of being a parent is that you never know what's going to come up.

Right?

Right. So your schedule might get thrown off at any moment. And luckily today we're going to talk about how we can get more time back in our days and our weeks based on some frameworks that you have. Before we hop into that, do you mind introducing yourself?

Yeah, sure. I'm Liz. I have four little ones like you mentioned. I have an eight year old, a four year old, six year old and an eight month old. So we're in the thick of it. And I am the founder of the Luminary Leadership Company. So we find that we encounter entrepreneurs at a point in their business where they've found some level of success, but they're entering into what, you know, business terms would call the S curve of business, where they're starting to experience some kind of plateau despite the success they had previously. And when we meet them there, we find that it can go one of two ways. They can work harder and fight more to try and grow through it or make more money or whatever it might be to drive forward. Or they can get really strategic and they can tap into the leader that they're called to be so that they can then build the business that allows for the freedom and prosperity that they're really seeking. Because behind every awesome, ambitious entrepreneur is a family that deserves more of them. So we teach the systems and the strategies alongside the leadership development to up level both the founder and the business itself, just to get back more time, have more quality of life and to really show up as the person, the leader, the parent that they're called to be.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the parenting part because it's, it's challenging as you know, where there's this paradox where you're working to support your children, but you want to spend time with them too. So it's like, well, how do you, you find that balance and that again, that's why I'm so excited to talk to you about this today. But let's go ahead and hop into it. I saw that you have this, these, these tools and these routines we can use to work smarter, not harder, and get 20 hours plus back in our week. So how do we do that? Where do we start?

Well, for me, the start that's most critical is getting laser focused in your vision. So the problem that I see with a lot of entrepreneurs is that they're focused on productivity first. So they're like, if I'm checking more things off my list, if I'm getting more done in the course of the day, then I'm going to be more successful. I'm going to move my way through it. But the reality is that the to do list never ends. It just grows and it grows and it grows. And then throw kids and family and all the other aspects of life into the mix, you'll be perpetually drowning. So when you're clear in your vision and you know where you're both called to go personally, and then using your business as a vessel to live out that mission, and you're confident in the goals that you're setting for your business and the trajectory that you're creating for it, then you can go into your business and say, okay, I'm only focusing on the things that are leading towards that vision. Because what we find is 50 plus percent of the stuff that we spend our time on in the business. Is it really a distraction from the actual vision that we're being guided towards that we want to achieve most? Because it looks sexy, it's shiny, other people are doing it and it's working for them. So when we look at that vision and we say, okay, what are the things that have gone well over the last 90 to 180 days? What are the things that haven't worked so well for us or haven't yielded fruit for us in our business, or over the last 90 to 180 days or maybe over the last year. And we start to extract the things like these actually are driving us forward. These are the actions and the behaviors that when we do them and we double down on them, we produce more, we get more profit within the business, we have more fun as we're building it, we see more exponential growth as we're trying to create more opportunity for us from both a business and a personal perspective. So that vision is key. And people try to skip that part or they try to be a little bit lax about it. You know, they're like, oh yeah, I know what I want to do and I want to be a best selling author and I want to make a million dollars. And that kind of stuff is so fluffy. The vision I'm talking about is really getting in tune with man, what am I put on this earth to do and how am I ensuring that my business is how I'm leveraging my path there. And then from there you set the goals because you might find that a million bucks literally means nothing in the grand scheme of things for you. Or maybe the goal is something financial and you're setting, you know, kind of more esoteric goals. So you just identify what is the clear path for. So that's, that's key number one.

All right, step two.

Step two. Okay, so this is not a perfectly clean framework, but in terms of the, I want to highlight and pull out the pieces that I think are most important. So when you have the vision, you know what to focus on. Then one piece of the process that I do with a lot of my clients, when they are hitting that plateau and they're like, okay, I know I'm made for more. I know there's another level for me in my business. But I can't keep doing the junk I've been doing all these years that's going to take me into stratospheric growth. It's game time. I got to figure it out. So that's where we do what I mentioned, which is called identifying your vital moves, right? So these are the moves that are vital for the heartbeat of your business. These are the things. So stop working from a freaking to do list and start working from these. Be more strategic and say, what are the things that truly not like just because I have an ego, but truly only I can do in the business. And I need to do them every day for the health of the growth of the business. So for different leaders, it's different things, different businesses, it's different things in different seasons too. This is not these are my three vital moves that I do every day in perpetuity, forever. Because there might be changes, but for example, I was in a season in my business years ago where I was like, man, it really is who, you know, like, you got to meet new people and you've got to build relationships. So relationship building became a focus for me and I actually didn't know what I was doing at the time. Another vital move for you maybe in this season is selling. Right? You need profit and that's what's going to help the business grow. So every day I want to see evidence in your calendar that you're doing something around selling. Are you prospecting, sending emails? Are you selling to people on your list? Do I see sales calls on your calendar? Because a lot of times you audit your calendar and you realize, man, I need this thing over here. But I have almost none of my time going towards that behavior that's going to build that vitality in the business. So identifying those vital, vital moves. And then there are the mission critical moves. These are the things, these are like the big leaps that you're going to take in business. So those, those vital moves are the same thing. They happen every day, but they're these bigger moves that you're going to make that are like kind of the risk taking moves and those should show up every week. There should be some kind of evidence that you're doing these things that are going to propel you forward in a big way. It's going to be a big leap. It's going to be a bigger risk versus just staying in the comfort of just going through your tasks and to dos. And the reason why this gets you back time in your life and helps you build smarter, not harder is because it actually helps the business grow versus living in this maintenance mode or this hamster wheel that sometimes we think we're escaping when we leave our job to build a business that ends up being a hamster wheel in itself, right? Without benefits. So it's like you got to get strategic about it. So those two things are super powerful. Just being able to say, man, I can see in black and white on my calendar the evidence as to whether I'm focusing on the things that are going to serve the growth of the business or whether I'm just really not. And I think I am. Because when we're busy, we can easily convince ourselves that I'm doing all the things like I'm pushing myself to grow. But, but the stuff we're doing isn't actually going to lead to true growth. A different you want to change your trajectory. You don't just want to maintain what is, unless the goal is to maintain what it is. But I have yet to meet an entrepreneur who says I want to hire you to help me maintain my business.

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Well this is just kind of a modern times kind of suggestion that if you're not use. Listen, I thought AI was going to be like the death of humanity and I still think it's, it's up for debate but I'm kind of in one of those if you can't beat them, join them phases where we are creating more content than I have ever created in my entire career, probably combined in month spurts. Leveraging the power of AI and I use it for everything from doing research. It's so much more efficient. Like you know I said earlier if you have something on your list you have to do, you go Google it or you YouTube it. It's so much more efficient. You're aggregating all the best possible information and it's like having a personal assistant. So really understanding how to use AI for good and in integrity and with ethics but using it and being wise with it we also were able to save a lot of money because the money that we were spending on resources like team to do certain tasks that we could train an AI model to do that we now got that, that time back where we could put our team members into their sweet spots where they're operating at a higher caliber, at a higher level, with more joy because they're doing more of what they love. And we can leave the more menial stuff to, you know, a system like ChatGPT that's going to help us produce at a higher level and more efficiently. So are you leveraging the tools that you have at your disposal? And the crazy part is this stuff is freaking free, right? Like, you don't even have to hey to leverage this stuff at this juncture to get incredible value. And you can do it in a way. I. So I would. I'm a copywriter by trade, right? I used to work as a copywriter in marketing before I started my own business. So I am. I'm a copy snob. So when I started to hear people saying they were using AI to write their copy, I like, rolled my eyes and stuck my nose up at them because I'm like, oh, your copy is going to be trash. And then I spent a week, I said, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to talk to this stupid machine like it's a human, and I'm going to train it like I trained my copywriter. And I start. And I started to input all of my content, right? So the stuff that I had personally written or the stuff that I had spoken on my podcast and then transcribed, I started to feed it to AI and say. And be very clear. The prompts are key, right? Very clear in telling it how I wanted it to essentially write like me. And it did. And it did it efficiently. And if not, if nothing else, it did it in a way where it gave me the bones. And then when I went to actually write the thing, it was like 90% done, and I didn't have to spend as much time creating it and writing it. And I could be way more efficient with it. So it's saving you time. So are you leveraging the tools at your disposal? Maybe it's AI, maybe it's something else. There's a lot out there that you can use that's just going to save you so much time just using that alone. We've calculated, because we do time audits every single month within our team so that we can just kind of challenge ourselves to get more efficient and effective and that saved us 22 hours a week within our team just using chat GPT that's not even talking about systems and team or any of that other stuff.

Yeah, it's one of those things where, and I'm glad you, you expressed your initial, like, apprehension towards using it because I think a lot of our listeners feel the same way. They're like, oh, what's this for? I'm not a tech person. This seems kind of spooky. Let me just write my own content. And to your point, it's a tool. I mean, I wouldn't use it to write my content for me, but it does give you good ideas for prompts to write about. And it also helps me repurpose. So what I'll do is I'll have a blog or a newsletter about, like, something like how to write proposals. And I'll say, hey, I want to create a carousel post on LinkedIn about this. Can you truncate each section and make them short enough to fit in a carousel post? And it just does it. Right? So little things like that, I mean, we talk about getting more time back. Well, one way of doing so is repurposing content. And you can use ChatGPT to do that as well. The more you learn into AI to tools, like any kind of automation tool, the better. But it goes back to our original conversation. But when you stop and realize you don't have to do more to be more, you realize, hey, I can also learn some new skills and some new tools that'll help me be even more efficient. All right, so we got our vision, we got our moves, we're using tools and automation. What else do we need to do here?

I think one of the most important pieces that we forget, because we're so in go mode, we run businesses, there's a lot of on our plate. Right. We don't have the luxury. Most people, even though they might tell us they do this when you run a small business, most of us don't have the luxury of saying, oh, I don't even touch the little stuff in the business. I've got a team to do that. Most of us, because we're not running companies with a hundred people that are employed, we do still have our hands in many aspects of the business that we forget that our business thrives when we do what is in our zone of genius, when we focus in on the things that make us come alive. And instead of always focusing on improving our weaknesses, we double down on the stuff that we're great at. So, for example, I have this client who's an incredible speaker. She's just a gifted speaker. She gets really big stages. She's increased her, you know, her speaking rate. And I think because it came so naturally to her, it didn't. Her focus was constantly on the areas of business she needed to improve. So over the last year, I challenged her, and I said, what if you actually leveraged your gifts more instead of taking for granted the fact that you're a great speaker? Because you are. You hired a speaking coach. You analyzed your talks, you improved your talks. You just went, you know, all out on the thing that you are most incredible at. And she's blown up her speaking business because she said, man, this is what makes me come alive. This is what I love. You know, she's over there trying to create all these online courses and doing these things that everybody else is doing because everyone's telling her, you've got to scale. You got to do this, you got to do that. Like, the. The growth sometimes happen and happens in the surge in your business. And what's next for you in your business is when you get even better at what you're already really great at, when you do more of what. What you love to do. Because then you are just in this place where you're energized. And we all know, especially when you have young kids and you're juggling all the things of life that somehow we muster up even more energy that you never thought you had. You can kind of turn another gear that you didn't know that you had access to when you're doing something you love. So don't forget that piece. Right. You think that it's like, how can I. Yes. There is patience, there is vision, there's strategy, there. Absolutely. There are tools and resources. There's team. All these elements are really important. But let's not discount what I think could be one of the most foundational pieces that ties it all back to vision. Doing more of what you're made to do, because that's how you become. People are like, how do you build a following? How do you become recognized? When you kick ass, people can't ignore you, so just do more of what you're super great at. And then all of a sudden, all that work you put into, like, I've got to get people to pay attention to me, and how do I make a post go viral? It happens because people seeing someone else in their sweet spot, they want to see more of it. They're hungry for it. That's where we come alive watching other people in their gifts. So go be in your gifts more.

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So I talk about this because it's what I struggle with. I feel like sometimes this, what we teach best is the stuff that we've personally walked through. And I found that, you know, I was obviously conscious enough to know, oh, I have to have time dedicated, let's say, to my family where I'm present. So I was able to say, okay, the phone goes away, the distraction goes away. I could put that stuff on the other side of the world. It doesn't mean it's left my mind. And when you're a business owner, you're juggling a million things and it's always bouncing around your head. So I started to realize, man, I'm physically present, but I am not mentally present. Or I am carving out this time right now to go relax and just enjoy it. Maybe it wasn't even being with my kids. Maybe it was like, okay, I need an afternoon where I'm not just like hustling. I need to just check out. But it was torture. I'm like, I just want to go get the stuff done that I need to get done. Like, I know when I get back it's going to be haunting me. So what I started to do at the end of my day is everybody likes to talk about how they start their day and that's super important. I Do that too. But I focus now more heavily on how I close down my day. So I have my process at the end of the day to go from in that overwhelm and that, you know, the work and the focus and all the things that come with. Or creativity, the good stuff too, that comes with business, to be able to mentally gear up for whatever it is that I'm stepping into next so that I'm intentional about it. So I started to get into this place where I'm like, I need to bring the same level of intention and impact into my home and into my family. And just by taking, you know, half hour at the end of my day, that's carved out and respected as though it's an appointment that I wouldn't miss. I sit down and I close the loops of the day. Even if I didn't get to everything I needed, I say, like, either aloud to myself or in my head, I'm like, all right, this project wasn't completed today. That's fine. We're ending it at this point. So I know where I'm picking up tomorrow, and this is what I'm going to accomplish tomorrow with that project. So just mentally I'm closing loops, or physically, if I can close loops, I do. I finish the things I start, and then I'm actually shifting gears into what I'm looking forward to in what I'm doing next in my day or how I want to show up as a parent or as a wife. And I'm getting just intentional and I'm setting some goals for that time period, and I'm getting my mind right the same way I said you have. You're not yet the leader you need to be to accomplish the big dreams. Same is true for us in our home, right? Like, I have so much. There's so much growth to be had as a mother for me. So. All right, cool. Who do I need to be? Right? I need to not yell at my kid when she breaks into the podcast and in the middle of it, as I'm recording, saying that she's hungry and. And I need to take her out quietly and have a good conversation with her and get her excited about what mom's going to do with her in 20 minutes when I'm done, and keep that patience because it's really easy for me to just go hot head on her. But that's not how I want to show up as a parent. So how can I bring that same intentionality that I'm bringing here with you to her? Because she deserves it. Just as much. So just how you tee yourself up for the things you want. Stop acting like it's, you know, we're super planned in business, but then we're just frivolous in the other areas of our life. But wondering why it's not coming to. That's one of the reasons. So when I say stress freedom, you gotta get your mind right, right? Like you can be, you can have that financial freedom and you can have time freedom, yet still feel like a ball of stress. You're not taking the time to work through that. You're not taking the time to close the loops. You're not taking the time to be the person that you, you're called to be. And you're putting way too, like taking life too seriously. Right? That's the cool thing about entrepreneurship is we're the. So if the deadlines are too tight, move the deadline. Like, if the deadline's making you a worse parent because you're stressed out, bump it. Like, you're not going to get in trouble. You get to make the rules. And I think sometimes we forget that because we put these imposed expectations on ourselves because we are the boss. Because if someone else doesn't do it, no one else is going to do it. So we have to do it. But how can we do it in a way that's incongruence with the person that we want to show up as in other areas of our life so that stress can start to melt away and, and we can start to just realize, wow, we're really blessed. Like, we get to do some really cool stuff. We get a lot of freedom from that stuff that we do. Sometimes we get financial freedom from that too. And I want to make sure that it also allows me to show up as the best version of myself for the people who matter most.

Liz, this has been really great. And I think one of my key takeaways is that that process you have of winding down after the day, because that's one challenge I have as well, especially working from home. So I appreciate that. But I know our listeners are going to want to learn more about you. So what's the best way for them to do so?

So I have a tool that I'm happy to share that I think is one of the best first steps in kind of taking all the things we talked about today and just getting focused on the right things. So it's called the Focused Entrepreneur Playbook, and it's something that I use with my high level clients and I'm happy to gift it to your crew as well. And if they just go to luminaryleadershipco.com focused past tense, they can download that. And it's something that I keep on my desk. I do it monthly because it just helps, you know, route me in on what's important. But I talk about all these principles. There's I have an episode, of course I don't know it off the top of my head, but I have an episode on the Luminary Leadership Podcast. That's my podcast where I actually break down step by step, how to do that afternoon process. So if you head over to Luminary Leadership, you'll. Oh, actually it's episode 182. I have no idea why that just popped into my head. But episode 182 of the Luminary Leadership Podcast, you can find me there and also on Instagram, Liz Hartke E L I Z H A R T K E. Please reach out. I love connecting and I just appreciate being here and chatting with you, Terry.

Awesome. Thanks, Liz. This has been great on mine as well, so I appreciate it.

Yeah, of course.

And that's our show for today. To learn more from Liz, be sure to tune into the Luminary Leadership Podcast and follow her on Instagram at elizheartkick. I'll spell it for you. It's E L I Z H A R T K E. And if you got value from this episode, help us spread the word by sharing on social and leaving a review. Thanks again for listening and I'll catch up with you next time. Apply what you've learned on today's show. You'll find the show notes and more resources at TerryRice co. Podcast. Again, that's TerryRice co. Podcast and the best way to support this podcast is by subscribing, telling a friend, and leaving a review. Also, you can get more tips by following me on Instagram terryrice or follow me on LinkedIn. This episode was produced by Josh Wilcox of Brooklyn Podcasting Studio and edited by Dan Lardy. Special thanks to my wife, Dominique, for keeping our kids relatively quiet as I record it. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time.