Andrea Nordling 00:00
Welcome back to the profitable nutritionist podcast, my friend, oh my goodness, it is 2020 for
what is happening. I mean, it’s not 2024 when I’m recording this for you, but it’s 2024 when
you’re getting it and that is so exciting. So to start off this fresh year and this clean slate, I am
going to tell you about how I have been lying to my team for over a year. And it cost me a lot of
money in 2023. And as you can hear my voice is a little bit scratchy, I am recovering from a
little holiday, something something in mid December that got me I lost my voice it got weird.
So I’m just on the tail end of that. But coming in today to talk about this big lie. Okay, it’s the
perfect time to talk about time management and starting a new routine because like I said, it is
a fresh year, it’s a clean slate. It’s January. So exciting. Time management is one of my favorite
things to talk about, honestly, because I think that it is such a massively overlooked skill for
entrepreneurs. So if you are a health and wellness business owner, you are an entrepreneur, my friend, you are a business owner. And you maybe have never done this before, maybe you
have, and you’re great at it. But if you’re like most of the students that I work with, you really
probably struggle in some key areas in how to manage your time as someone that is not
getting paid for their time. So there’s, there’s employee thinking, and there’s the CEO thinking
and employee thinking means when I work, I get paid, I get paid for my time I get paid for
showing up. And you quickly realize, when you are a business owner that nobody is paying you
for showing up, you are only paid if your time is spent well. And if it’s efficiently used, and it’s
spent on the right things, and that you’re not going to get a trophy just for showing up. So
welcome. This is a very, very important skill to talk about. And it is a skill. It’s something that
you can learn if you’ve never done this before. Or if you feel like you’re struggling in your
business right now and how to manage your time how to have the right priorities and how to
figure out what’s what you are not alone. This is a skill that you can learn. No big deal, okay,
just like everything else in business is just a skill. So in the profitable nutritionist program, I
teach a basic time management system for figuring out how to manage your workload, what to
prioritize, especially when you’re getting your business started and you’re getting going in that
system. It don’t get you to about six figures a year easily. But when you’re growing beyond
that, you’re and you’re hiring support, and you’re hiring a team. And you’re there are other
people that are dependent on you for things and there’s more moving pieces in your business,
you do need a more advanced approach to time management. And that is what you’re going to
learn today. So if you have taken any time management training from me in the past, it likely
A
was my foundational total calendar mastery system that I teach inside TPN. But today, we are
going to the next level, much more advanced system and event and, and an advanced
approach, that probably isn’t going to be helpful for you in the beginning. Although if your brain
works better this way. I mean, by all means you can audit your time, the way I’m going to teach
you today, it just probably isn’t necessary until you have more moving parts in your business.
And that will become obvious, the more that we talk through this process. Okay, so back to how
I’ve just been lying to my team and myself to be honest. Not anymore, but I was for quite a bit
of 2023. And it caused me so much money. Now, to be fair, this big lie that I told my team last
year, it wasn’t intentional, but you are likely unintentionally lying to yourself or your team
about the same thing. And probably also wasting lots of money in your business. So we’ve got
to talk about it. The Big Lie, by the way, was about how I was spending a lot of time on one
particular weekly task in my business that I thought wasn’t really a big deal. So I had had been
telling my team I wasn’t spending very much time on it turns out that I was spending three to
four hours a week on this one thing that someone else on my team could easily be handling for
less than $100 a week, like easily be doing it. And when I stopped doing that task, I recovered
four hours a week at least to dedicate to high level activities in the business that only I can do
that make way more than $100 when I’m really focusing for four hours a week, so probably
more like $10,000 is what comes into the business when I have uninterrupted focus time in the
amount of four hours a week. So not knowing how much time I was spending on this one
recurring task on my to do list was probably costing me around 40k a month. And I bet that
you’re doing the same thing doesn’t matter what the numbers are, the point is the same. So to
save you from yourself like I wish I had done a year ago I am going to share my three step
process for gaining huge efficiency in your work week so that you can reduce your workload a
of all B of all you can spend your time on the high level activities that make your business more
money and that you love to do so that you can delegate it to your team without worrying that
You won’t be able to pay them, we’re gonna talk all about that. And you can actually start
taking Friday’s off, or taking any time off or shutting off your brain in any capacity. Doesn’t
matter what day of the week it is, Okay, deal deal. So the process that I’m sharing with you is
incredibly simple, it’s really just requires you to track your time in a specific way, and then
evaluate the results of this time audit properly. So doing a dedicated time audit this way allows
me when I do it, to see exactly where I’m spending my time, so that I can confidently delegate
and hire for those tasks. I really want to dive into this for a second about how important this is.
So for a lot of my High Level Mastermind students, they really struggle with wanting to
delegate wanting to bring on team members wanting to have people help them in their
business, but they’re constantly wobbling with that hiring decision, because they aren’t sure if
they’ll be able to continue to afford to pay the higher and like, well, what if the money dries up?
What if they’re not really worth it? What if they take too long? What if they’re not efficient? Like
what if I could just do it better and faster, all of the thoughts, right. And that keeps people stuck
for a really long time wondering if it’s the right hire to make right now. And when you’re
following this process, I’m going to teach you today, it’s going to be really, really helpful to
clear all of that up for you. Because you’re going to be able to see how much time is actually
spent on the tasks that you’re looking to delegate and you’re going to be able to very clearly
calculate what would the return on investment be for you if you outsource that to somebody
else. So for me, and my recent $40,000 Lie per month, by the way, it was emails, emails was
the task. That was something I was lying to myself and my team about unintentionally, which
I’m going to explain more about in a minute. But before we get into the nuts and bolts of this
process, I want to touch on another component of time management, which is context
switching. So if you’re unfamiliar with that term, context, switching means the time and energy
that is lost when you’re switching your brainpower between unrelated tasks. For example, when
you are checking your phone in the middle of doing things and you’re focusing on your phone,
you’re focusing on the task at hand, you’re focusing on your phone, you’re checking email, your
did did it did it bouncing all around like a ping pong ball, okay, there’s a lot of mental fortitude
that is required to refocus and refocus and refocus on all of the things. And when you’re
context switching like that constantly, you’re very, very inefficient because your brain gets
tired. So for example, when your workday has on it a list of 10 different things that you need to
do including write and schedule a marketing email, and respond to a client question in an email
and send a follow up email to a client with recommendations from a session yesterday, and
then send another email to a potential referral partner that wants to set a meeting. And then
you have two client sessions in between all of these emails, it seems doable on paper, because
none of these things are really that time consuming. None of them are really that hard on their
own. But you’re actually and you might even trick yourself and say you’re doing emails for the
most part, but you’re actually doing five very different types of activities that require different
parts of your brain. So writing a marketing email, and scheduling that is much different skill and
uses a different part of your brain, then following up with a client with recommendations on a
session, okay, so switching between these tasks and going one thing to the next thing to the
next thing, or worse yet, trying to do several of them at once, oh my gosh, just the agony
switching between them is overwhelming. It’s taxing to your mental fuel tank for sure. Because
you have to recalibrate and you have to refocus for each activity, super inefficient, very
tiresome, and leads to really dreading your work days if your to do list is set up that day. So the
remedy for that last efficiency and for that mental fatigue that you feel and you totally know if
you are guilty of this, if you look at your to do list for the day, when you sit down in the
morning, and you’re like Oh man, that’s that’s a lot of one off type things, right? If you just
know. Or if you really look forward to your days, because you know that there’s just a few
things you need to do and you can crank them out. And you can focus and just be done much
better feeling much better for productivity. So the remedy for all of this is to batch activities
together on the same day as during focused Sprint’s and then freakin rest. And do not work
activities the rest of the time, I know that you thought that I was going to tell you that we were
going to be super efficient with your work time so that you could get even more work done.
That’s not actually it. We want to turn off that brain of yours and actually recharge it and
actually rest and enjoy your life like outside of your work outside of any to do list that you have
enjoy yourself. That’s a healthy life. That’s a healthy healthy balance. That’s probably what you
want for your clients to write is for them to have less chronic stress and be less activated with
their nervous system all the time, but you have to do the same thing. So how do you do that
with your time? First of all, I have not been great at this at different parts and different times.
Ames. In my business, I can go through seasons when I’m really diligent about it. And then I can
get into times like I have been recently, in the last six months in my business, where we had a
ton of unexpected tech issues happening over and over and over again, we had some software
that was breaking some system. And I was having to put out fires with lots of nine one ones on
tech issues, and had a ton of unrelated tasks on my to do list each day. Like just, I just felt like I
was constantly on meetings and meeting with this person and proofing this and trying to figure
out that like a different thing. And it was like a lot of different stuff that just needed my
attention every single day. And I definitely got out of the habit of batching my content, the way
I’m going to suggest that you do it. And the way that I am now suggesting to myself that I will
be doing it, because I know how chaotic and how just just stressful it feels in the business when
you’re operating this way. So the way to do it is to create what are called free days, focus days
and buffer days. And if you are familiar with that structure, it comes from the book 10x is easier
than to x by Dan Sullivan, fabulous book. And it basically is this you are going to establish free
days in your business where you don’t think about work at all, you’re going to have focus days
where you are focusing on high level production of whatever your zone of genius is. We’ll talk
about that in a minute. And then you have buffer days that are the Kegels, where you’re
meeting with clients, and you’re doing some of those one off tasks, but you’re not going to be
creating or using a large amount of brain power during those days. So that is the way that you
and we’ll gonna go dive into this in a little bit more detail in a second. But ultimately, you want
to spread out the tasks on your calendar into batch days situated this way, it just is going to be
so helpful for you mentally. And like I said, I have really gotten out of that habit, the last six
months, I could make excuses about all of our tech issues. And I got into some bad habits
because I did need to be very on call for a lot of things. But I know even if that happens again,
I’m going to have some safeguards in place so that I don’t feel like the focus time. And there’s
the things that only I can do like creating this podcast and writing emails, and coaching my
clients and creating content for them and new coaching tools and helping them get better
results of those things. That is that’s my zone of genius. I need to be prioritizing that first before
the other 100 things on the to do list. So anyway, the last six months has been a great
reminder of that for me, and just candidly wanted to say I have been feeling much more worn
out mentally than I want to. And that has led to me pushing off the big things like this podcast.
So typically, I would work ahead on the podcast, I would have each week’s episode outlined and
recorded in advance. And it’s something that I really enjoyed doing. I love it, I kind of look
forward to it. It’s great. That’s my preferred system. But in the last six months, I have gotten
out of that habit because of all of the other things that needed my attention urgently. And it
would be the thing on the to do list that would get pushed to the very last minute before my
Podcast Producer would need to have the next week’s episode. So for us, we we like she needs
to have it by Sunday night. So instead of working an entire week ahead, or a few weeks ahead,
which is the ideal, and that’s what I prefer. It was like Sunday night that I would be doing the
podcast recording, which I absolutely hate, I do not where I don’t want to work on the
weekends, I don’t want to think about my business on the weekends, I want to do other life
things on the weekends and recharge. But what would happen and I was consistently seeing
this happening in my pattern was I would get very tied up all week long, putting out fires and
doing other nine one ones as they were coming up. And by the end of the day, I just did not
have the mental bandwidth to outline a podcast, or create the podcast is just like, oh my gosh, I
can’t even focus on that right now. Because I’m so exhausted mentally from every other
unrelated thing, context switching all of everything I’ve done so far today has zapped me. I’ll
have to do it tomorrow. And then same thing would happen the next day and I have to do it
tomorrow. Now I know that there is no world where I’m not going to record the podcast episode
for the week. So I know I’ll do it. I just took advantage of myself knowing I will put it off to the
weekend. I do not like that. Because here’s what I would do all weekend. And you might know
this pattern too. I would say I’m going to do this on Saturday morning, like right away on
Saturday morning before we get into anything else for the weekend. As a family. I am going to
record the podcast episode. And then inevitably, on Saturday morning, I would want to do
something else and I would say Ah, it’s totally fine. I’m just gonna do that later today. I would
not do it later today. But all day long. I would be feeling guilty about the fact that the podcast
episode isn’t done. So it isn’t that I’m actually resting on Saturday if I’m doing this to myself
because I still feel I just feel gross. I don’t I don’t like that feeling I don’t like Having that loose
end hanging out. And so I’m like punishing myself all day basically and feeling guilty, like I
should be doing something that I should know I’m not going to do because if history is any
indication, I should know that I’m going to put this off until Sunday night, which inevitably
happens. And then I’m doing it on Sunday night. And the entire weekend, I had been stressed
about it. So I basically was working without actually working on Saturday and Sunday, because
I was thinking about work. I was ruminating about it. I was like, oh, I should go do that. Do I
have time? And I’m like, thinking, Am I should I do this? Should I put off this next thing to go do
that. So all weekend, I’m kinda like, in that place. Even you know, it’s a terrible feeling. And
then I’m still working on Sunday night getting the podcast done. I hate to that this was a
pattern that I was doing wasn’t all the time. But it was often enough that I’m like, Oh, I have to
change this, okay. Because we have to have free days where we have no work. And we
completely check out. For me, I want that to at least be the weekends, if not another day
during the week. So telling myself I’m going to work on the weekends is already violating that
boundary for myself. And then like kind of suffering the whole weekend long when I’m not even
doing it right away. Terrible, terrible, terrible idea. Just awful. So that pattern alerted me to
needing to really re implement the buffer days, free days and focus days. As you’re going to be
going through the three step process that I’m going to bring you through here in a second, I
want you to think about how you could also be working towards free days, buffer days and
focus days. All right. So when you batching your work this this way, it just frees up your brain
so much, because on the free days, you are not working at all, and you’re letting your brain
totally recharge, okay, like it’s the you’re not reading workbooks, you’re not listening to work
podcasts, you’re not planning at, you’re not planning anything, you’re just living your life and
not thinking about your business, it’s kind of hard to do sometimes some of us really like
thinking about our business, I’m I’m one of them. But it is so important to let your brain rest
and to have other things in your life to so having those free days, super important. And then
focus days is where you put your head down and you do the big creation stuff, okay, that’s the
stuff that only you can do, that you’re great at, that you enjoy doing that lights you up. And
then I mean, unbutton focus days, sometimes you’re doing things that don’t make you up, let’s
be real. But for the most part, you want to be looking forward to the stuff that you’re doing on
the focus days. And then on buffer days, you’re doing meetings, you’re doing one off tasks,
you’re meeting with clients, whatever that is, but there’s no mental creation type tasks on your
calendar on a buffer day. So you can kind of do the more of the context switching where you’re
doing a little of this, and then you’re moving on to that and you’re checking things off the list.
And they may not all be the same type of items. But that’s okay, if you’re a little bit exhausted
by the end of the day, because you’re not also then trying to focus on creating something
you’re not writing copy, you’re not creating content, anything like that. Okay, so free days,
focus days and buffer days, think about how you can be batching some of your your time better
into those buckets. And if you’ve heard that before, it’s just a good reminder, because believe
me, I’ve heard it before too. But I can feel when I get out of that habit. And I feel it by being
exhausted, doesn’t feel good. So if that was a good reminder that you needed, perfect, I’m glad
that it landed. But now what I’m going to teach you in this time audit process is also going to
give you data for these hiring decisions. I gotta circle back to that. So not only is it going to be
really helpful for you to see where your time is being spent, so that you can think of how can I
better batch similar activities together into buffer days, and focus days. But also, this is going
to show you when we do the evaluation phase, what to prioritize hiring for first and then how
much of your time is actually going to free up when you find someone to take over those tasks.
So that’s what we’re going to be evaluating in this process. Are you ready for our time audit?
Step one, you are going to track your time for two weeks, at least now I gotta tell you, I
intended to do this for two weeks. But I this has been months and months and months. And I
just am not stopping because of everything I’m about to tell you. So if you get a little bit
addicted to this process, don’t be surprised. The software that we use, which is a free software,
and I highly recommend it. I’m sure there are others but this is what I have used is called
toggle T O GGL. And in toggle, there’s a lot of functionality in there. But basically all you’re
going to use it for and all I use it for is tracking my time to see what I’m actually working on. So
this is just a browser tab that is open on my computer. I just opened it right now and realized
that I hadn’t logged the fact that I’m recording this podcast right now. So that’s very meta. But
anyway, you’re going to type in to toggle what you’re working on. And then you categorize
what you’re working on, so I’m going to talk more about that in a second. But if you are going
to do this quarterly, which I highly recommend, at the very least two weeks, every quarter, I
want you to put a reminder in your project management system with a recurring date to do this
quarterly. Okay? Like I said, to be honest, I started with a two week intention, like I was just
going to do this for two weeks. And I was going to see what how much time I was spending on
what, and that was going to be great. But I’ve never stopped. It’s been months and months and
months. Now, what you’re doing here is you are going to be categorizing your time into kind of
the big categories based on who else could be doing these things. So here’s what I mean by
that. In my company, we have three departments. So every hire in my company goes into one
of these three departments. They’re either a marketing hire, an operations hire, or a fulfillment
hire. fulfillment means actually fulfilling on the offer to our clients. Okay. So for me, I wear hats
in all of these departments, I do things that are marketing and sales related, I do operations,
activities, and I do a lot of fulfillment activities. But as our company grows, and as your
company grows, you need to start delegating and hiring for people that can do those things.
Even better than you can do that. Some people would say you want to replace yourself, I’m
over here like, no, no, no, I don’t want to replace myself in some of these. I want someone that
can do it way better. I want to keep the stuff that I love to do for now. But I there’s plenty on
here in marketing operations and fulfillment that I don’t love to do, that someone else does
enjoy and does way, way, way better than me. So that’s who I want, wearing that hat in the
long term. But to figure out how to do that, I need to know what are those activities and how
much time am I currently spending on them. So then I can look at that what makes sense for
me to start delegating, I think that probably makes sense for you. But when you start tracking
and toggle, and you can do this on a paper and pencil too, if you want to do but oh my gosh,
your life would just be so much harder if you did that. So please don’t just use toggle, it’s just
so much better, you’re going to log your time. And then you have the ability to tag it with with
certain like any tags like labels, if you want to for each task that you do, you just like start a
little timer you start time entry, and then you just end it when you’re done. And it automatically
tracks it. You also are able to categorize it as a project if they say like project, task or client. So
that’s where I have a lot of different buckets of things that I commonly do. So I’ll put the task
and I’ll like type in the task I’m working on. And then I’ll select the bucket of activity that it is
which is correlating to one of those three departments, marketing operations and fulfillment,
I’m going to explain more of that in a second. I just push play. And then when I’m done doing
that task, I end it and I move on to the next task and I track that one. So it’s just tracking in the
background on my computer. While I’m working very, very simple, I thought I was going to
have a real hard time remembering to start and stop. And the truth is I haven’t like I actually
really liked this data. I like how much clarity has given me so it’s something I prioritize I just got
into habit very quickly. And it has not been a problem for me to remember to start and stop the
timer. With over 100 episodes of the profitable nutritionist podcast at this point, my team asked
if we could create a podcast and roadmap quick guide to the most popular episodes, which I
thought was a fabulous idea. They’re so smart. We ended up categorizing 30 ish of the top
episodes into a few different lists and categories. So you can easily find the most useful content
for exactly where you’re at in your business right now. To get the podcast roadmap download,
just go to the profitable nutritionist.com/roadmap One word, you’re more than welcome to
binge all of the episodes, of course. But if you’d like the shortcut guide, this roadmap is going
to be gold for navigating to the exact episodes that you need right now. Again, download the
PDF at the profitable nutritionist.com/roadmap. When you do this, what it will tell you is how
much time you have worked that day, it will tell you how much time you have worked all week,
it will also give you a nice little graph that goes color coded across the top of the screen that
shows you how much time you’re spending on each of these buckets that you have set up for
yourself. So I can tell you as I’m looking at the screen right now that I have spent 6.14 hours on
Content Creation this week, I can tell you that I have spent two hours and 55 minutes on admin
activities, I can tell you that I have spent drumroll drumroll two hours and 44 minutes on
external meetings, etc, etc cetera, et cetera. So this is really, really great data. Because when I
am looking for someone to come in and do some of the admin work or some of the website
setup, stuff that we do some of the marketing, all of those things, I know how much time I’m
currently spending on them. And I have an idea of how much time would be freed up if I started
delegating it. You can do this for everybody on your team, by the way. So we actually have
internally as a company we have the standard that people track their time so Even though we
work with contractors, we don’t actually have in house employees at this point, contractors are
still willing to track their time, it’s very helpful for us to see what they’re working on, and how
much time tasks are taking the most contractors are very used to doing that anyway, because
that’s how they build. So it works really well. Okay, so I want to like give you some clarity on
how you will identify these buckets. I know that if we were having a conversation on this, that
would be the next question that would be asked like, okay, but like, what are those categories
that you have your time set up as? So here’s what was a good kind of guideposts for me and
you can change these at any time. You’re not it’s not set in stone. But I thought if I had these
things on a job description, what would they be called? Okay, so that those are the kinds of
labels that I’m calling things like, what would they what would this task be on a job description.
Also, side note, as a bonus, your team can see each other’s time tracking, depending on how
you set this up. So Raven, who’s my Director of Operations, has this setup. And she can see I
don’t even know how or what she does, but she can see how I’m spending my time because
that’s how we want it to be I’m sure it could easily be the other way around, I’m sure where I
could see how she’s spending her time. But that’s not how we’re using it. She is watching how
I’m spending my time and then keeping me accountable based on what she sees. So this is
where this this big lie comes in my friend. Within the first week, of me tracking my time on
Toggle and her watching my time and what what I was spending my time on, she was like, Oh
my gosh, 911, we are getting you out of at least two of the inboxes that you are currently
responding to emails in. Because she could see that it was taking it was clear as day that it was
taking three to four hours each week for me to manage those inboxes. These are company
inboxes that we have. So it’s like emails coming in. Some of them junk emails, some of them
important emails, some of them from clients, some of them from people that want to be clients,
there’s a lot going on on these in these inboxes. And it was taking a lot of time for me to
manage them. I had told her that it wasn’t taking me that much time. Because I honestly
thought that it wasn’t it was spread out. Throughout the day, it was not I mean, I wasn’t even
doing a great job of only checking email once a day, I was like doing it here I was doing it there
a little of this a little of that breaking all of my own rules, let’s be real. And I was fully convinced
that this wasn’t taking me that much time. But within two weeks of her seeing how much time
this was actually taking on in black and white as I was like diligently tracking my time. She’s
like, Oh, my gosh, we have to get you out of there. That’s a 911. We’re gonna focus on that
next. So within two weeks, I was out of those two most time consuming inboxes completely.
And I felt like my entire work week was shortened and a huge weight had been lifted. Now that
was great. And that was a really fast turnaround, because I have support within my company of
somebody else that can do that. So it took about two weeks to train up on how I want emails
responded to how I want them looked at when to tell me that I need to look at one when to just
respond to it, there was a pretty short learning curve there because my team like already
understands kind of how my brain works. So that may take a little bit longer in other instances.
But still, I felt like oh my gosh, I have just gotten back so much bandwidth and so much time on
my calendar from this thing that I would have told you wasn’t even something I was spending
that much time on. So I’m going to circle back here to what you would call these categories. So
things that are admin related, like in I would say admin, inbox management, or marketing,
content creation, or fulfillment, client coaching, or fulfillment, written coaching in the lounge
that’s in our program. So I want to know what department marketing fulfillment operations or
admin admin as a section of operations, but in my brain, I like to just separate out the two,
what would I be like, if I was hiring someone for this job? What department would they be in is
kind of how I want to look at this, because that does really help me to figure out when we are
going to be hiring for the next person for support and fulfillment, or the next person that’s
going to be doing admin tests in our operations department, what things can they take off my
plate? And how much time am I currently spending on that? So how much time like what’s
going to be the ROI of me not doing that anymore? It’s very, very clear to see, you will get the
hang of this as you start doing it and figuring out how granular you want to be. Or if you want
to be more broad in the way that you track your time. It just depends on on what your goal is.
Do you want to be hiring for these? Do you want to be really, really nitty gritty on exactly what
it is? Do you want to know exactly how much time you’re spending per client that might be
really helpful to start tracking if you have never done that before. So you might want to be
really specific, you might want to be more broad, there’s no right or wrong as long as you are
doing it so that you can see where your time is being spent. Okay, then you can get even more
specific with those tasks if you want to. You can say like for me, I have content creation, marketing emails. Now I could want to know how much time do I spend on Friday broadcast
emails? How much time do I spend on Tuesday podcast announcement emails, how much time
do I spend on upcoming launch emails, maybe I want to break down the emails and know, like,
on a much more granular level where that time is being spent for me right now, I don’t really
need to. So I don’t do that. But you could do it. Okay, just some examples. After the two weeks,
so that was step one for two weeks, check your time in toggle or something similar, then after
two weeks, look at the proportion of time spent, and evaluate it. Before we go into this step,
though, I’m feeling compelled to tell you, I have done other time tracking methods where I had
to enter numbers into a spreadsheet. And that is not accurate. And that is also not fun. And you
will not want to do that. So using something like toggle that you just push, play and pause in
your browser, much, much, much more compliance and accurate and easier to read the data.
So highly recommend that versus making your own janky system, I’ve totally done that. Don’t
do zero stars do not recommend. Alright, so it’s up to you. After two weeks, look at the
proportion of time spent on the things that you’re doing and then evaluate, here’s what we
want to know very simple evaluation. What went well, in the last two weeks, likely, something
that’s going to be going well for you is that you’re doing less context switching just because
you’re tracking your time. This is a phenomenon that we all know where we eat a little bit
better if we are tracking our food on a food journal, just because we’re writing it down, and
we’re accountable to it like we do, right? When I have my continuous glucose monitor on, I
definitely don’t have the same dessert after dinner that I do if I don’t have that on. So probably
something that’s gonna go well for you, as you’re tracking your time is you’re going to be using
your time a little bit more wisely, you’re probably going to just naturally be more efficient,
because you’re more cognizant of it, which is great. I think that that’s a huge one. But find out
what else went well, like what have you learned here? What’s going well, then, we want to find
out what didn’t go? Well, we always start with the what went well, first than what didn’t go well.
So how have you been feeling every day? I think in this part of the evaluation, I want to know
how is your body keeping score? With how you’re managing your time? How are you? How are
you feeling? How’s your energy feeling? How is your motivation? Feeling? Like? How do you
typically get headaches and you’re not getting headaches? Are you getting more headaches? Is
there something going on in your body? How is that feeling? Let’s like really check in. If there’s
something that’s not going well, we want to know about it here. And then the third part of that
evaluation is what are we going to do differently? So specifically, what are you doing now that
you don’t want to keep doing? This is where we’re going to drill into Okay, what did we learn
about where your time is being spent, and how you want to change that. And then third, third
step, after you do your valuation, you’re going to make a plan to actually change what you
want to change. Okay, so here’s how we do that. This 90 day plan is going to be where you are
going to very diligently figure out what you want to either eliminate delegate or automate over
the next 90 days. Okay, we make a luxuriously long timeline of 90 days to implement this
change, because these small changes really do add up to huge, huge momentum. And you are
like really reclaiming a lot of your bandwidth and your time coming back. So it will make a big
difference. But you don’t want to try to make huge changes overnight or within one week in
your business. It’s just too stressful. What we’re trying to do here is remove the stress and
make it less stressful. So give yourself a luxuriously long timeline of 90 days to eliminate
delegate or automate some of these tasks, at least one, maybe one to two, that you don’t want
to keep doing long term. So how are you going to figure out what tasks you should eliminate
delegate or automate? Well, I have a system for that, my friend. Remember, I do this and my
brain works in a way where it what kind of wants a rating system. So in all of your tasks that
you do on a recurring basis, every single week, I want you to look at the ones, we’ll look at all
of them, and I want you to actually rate each of them with something you either like to do or
you dislike to do very simple, like it or you dislike it, give one of those two to every single task
that you have been doing the last two weeks, then I want you to go through that list again. And
rate each of those tasks as either easy, or inexpensive to outsource or difficult or inexpensive
to outsource. Okay. Easy or inexpensive is one difficult or expensive is the other one. Okay?
Give everything a rating. So you either like to do it or you don’t. And it’s easy or inexpensive to
outsource or it’s difficult or hard. Those aren’t four different things. By the way, those are two
different categories. So each thing on your list is going to have to have those tags next to it.
Okay, now very simply, anything that you both dislike to do, and it’s inexpensive or easy to
outsource is what you’re going to focus on outsourcing right away. That’s an easy yes. If you
don’t like it, and it’s easy or inexpensive to get rid of, then we’re going to just get rid of that
first. Okay, so you’re going to make your plan for over the next 90 days to first Get rid of that,
whether it means that you are going to eliminate it altogether, you’re going to delegate it to
somebody else, hire somebody or delegate to someone you already have helping you to take
that over. Or you could, in a lot of instances, use a software or a system to automate that task.
Okay? So if you dislike it, and it’s inexpensive or easy to delegate, boom, out, now, we have to
look at the things that are expensive or hard to outsource. And that you like those are things
you’re going to keep, probably going to keep for long term, but for sure, you’re going to keep
them for now. So if it has both you like to do it, and it’s expensive or difficult to outsource,
you’re keeping that on your list, nothing to do with that. But then we have this middle ground
here, case by case that you need to revisit, if there were plenty of things on your list that you
dislike, and they’re inexpensive or easy to automate or delegate, you just start with that for the
next 90 days, and then come back to this and revisit 90 days from now when you do your time
audit again, and see what you’re still doing. And then we’ll revisit it. So if you don’t have any of
those things, we have to look at things that are you may be disliked to do you dislike doing
them. But they are difficult or expensive to outsource. And then it’s like, okay, well, there’s a
trade off here, like what are we going to do? Are we going to spend time or effort outsourcing
them? Or are we just going to keep doing something that we don’t like to do, or something that
you like to do, but it’s easy or inexpensive to outsource? I tend to think that maybe you should
get rid of those. Because it still will save you time whether you like it or not, there are a lot of
things I like to do that someone else could do way better than me. And that doesn’t mean I
should do it. So I think that that’s an easy yes, to let go of. But what I don’t want you to do is
end up with a calendar of only tasks on it that you dislike, so we have to have a balance here.
That’s why this is kind of case by case. And you need to look at where your time is being spent.
And what are some things that you could be either eliminating, delegating or automating over
the next 90 days, make a realistic plan for that. And then you are going to actually do it. That’s
it, they doing a CEO time audit, at least quarterly is going to show you where your time is
currently being spent, with the ultimate goal of you being more efficient in your time batching
your time better, but also, so you have a baseline and then your brain is going to stop making
up stories like mine was and telling you that you aren’t spending as much time as you’re
spending. What I also found is that there were weeks where I was working a lot more hours
than I thought I was when I really added it all up. But I was spreading it out over like such a
large portion of the day because I get up really early. So I was able to lie to myself and say I
wasn’t working as much as I was, but then I couldn’t anymore. When I started doing this
tracking, and I had the data. So when you have the data on how much of your time or your
team’s time is being spent on these individual recurring tasks, you’re going to be able to
confidently make hiring decisions feels so much better. Because you’re going to know what
you’re gonna prioritize hiring for first, we just had of criteria for that, okay, you’re just going to
go off of what you’re doing, how you tagged those items, and figuring out what couple of them
you can take off in the next quarter. Okay, so great, you’re gonna prioritize what to hire for
first, and then you’re going to know how much of your time is actually going to free up when
you find someone else to take those tests over, or a different software or a different system or
eliminate it altogether, whatever that’s going to be, but it’s going to show you a return on that
investment either on the person that’s bringing in more revenue directly. If you’re going to hire
somebody to do a task that you’re currently doing, and they’re going to be able to do it and it
directly brings in money. Like if this is a marketing activity or a sales activity, holy cow, that’s a
no brainer. But you’re going to know how much does that have to bring in to make it worth your
while to not be doing any more, you’re gonna have this in black and white. Or a lot of times we
are hiring for people that are not necessarily going to be bringing in revenue directly. So
they’re not paying for themselves overtly, but they are going to be freeing up you or someone
else on your team to bring in more revenue. It’s equally productive and lucrative to be doing it
that way. So I want you to be able to see how valuable it is when you have this information. So
you can make better hiring decisions and just better decisions for yourself and how you’re
spending your time. The bonus being, you’ll be able to start taking those Friday’s off or
whatever the time is that you want to be taking off that you’re currently not taking off. I mean,
we have to start with weekends first. No working on the weekend. No Sunday nights squeaking
in client notes and trying to get ahead on the week I see you, I see you where you’re going to
be able to actually take that time off. And when you streamline your calendar to be batching
your time into the highest return on investment activities that you love ideally on the same day
as you open up that space to not work but your business doesn’t suffer so you’re not working
you don’t feel like you have to be working all the time. But then it feeds the cycle of you
realizing no I really don’t have to work all the time. Because when I give my brain a break
actually make more money. me, in my business when I come back, so your business doesn’t
suffer at all. In fact, productivity is going to go up because you’re recharged, you’re healthier,
you have other people carrying the load with you. And that’s the name of the game. And 2024,
I am committed, I’m saying it right here right now on this first episode of the year, I’m
committed to sticking to my free days, my focus stays in my buffer days for the entire year as
the number one KPI that I am tracking for myself. So KPI, if you’re not familiar, is a key
performance indicator, we have three to five KPIs that each person on my team is responsible
for tracking. And that’s how we know what winning looks like for every person on the team. We
know, if you’re doing your job, well, this is what winning looks like you’re meeting these
metrics. And these are measurable things. Now for me, my big KPI is the revenue that we’re
bringing in, that’s what I am responsible for, among other things, but I’m actually putting
sticking to this calendar above that for myself as the number one KPI for myself in 2024, it is so
important to work towards a calendar in your business that you look forward to. And our brains
are not meant to be on all the time switching from task to task. And I definitely have found
myself getting into some bad habits around that, that I am for sure going to be breaking this
year, very, very excited about. So for you batch those client dates, and then don’t do marketing
or other business growth activities on client days, those are your buffer days, those are the
days where you’re not going to be doing things that require a ton of brainpower in creation, you
like you will do your client tasks only on client days. And then on a focus day, it’s all marketing
and business growth focused activities without any interruptions from your team or your
clients. So here’s very important thing on focus days, you are a ghost, no one can talk to you.
Nobody can expect to hear from you. Your sole focus on those days is the high level business
activities that you need to focus on for the week that are going to support your big quarterly
goals. And you’re actually working ahead ahead, can you imagine ahead. So for me, that means
multiple days a week, where I am only writing emails, I’m only creating client content and
coaching tools for the clients in the profitable nutritionist and in the mastermind, and I’m
outlining future podcast episodes in batches, which is a huge change from doing just a little of
these things every week, which I then put off to the 11th hour on Sunday night, I told you all
about that already. Instead, I’m now working far in advance, I’m actually really ahead right
now. And I’m batching everything, which is proving to be a huge boost for my business.
Because my focus is improved, meaning I’m feeling more rested, I’m feeling much more clear,
I’m further ahead, which means my team is able to actually work ahead because they’re not
waiting on me as the bottleneck for any of these tasks or content. Like with the 11th hour
podcast episodes, for example, which is better for everybody so much more efficient. And all in
all, it just feels better. So I want that for you too. This is definitely an episode where I’m like I’m
in it. And I this is a change I needed to make for myself. So I figured we had to talk about it
here. And you’re probably having some of the same struggles I would imagine. So as a
reminder, the time audit process is just three easy steps do this at least quarterly. First of all,
track your time for two weeks, at least. And then after two weeks evaluate what went well,
what didn’t go well, and what are you going to do differently. And then step three is to make a
90 day gameplan, where you are going to actually implement the elimination delegation or
automation of a few of those things that need to come off of your list and then rinse and repeat
the next quarter, you do the same thing, a few more things come off. And you’re moving
towards much more streamlined and focused workweeks that you look forward to where you
just love your days. Because you aren’t, you aren’t looking at an endless to do list full of really
hard things. You know, that feeling where you just sit down and you look at the what’s in store
for the day and think, oh, man, this is going to be a grind, we don’t want that, we definitely
don’t want that you are going to get so much more efficient just from tracking your time and
seeing where it’s actually being spent. It is so wild. Just like I said, like with our clients same
thing, when they start doing a food journal, all of a sudden, they’re eating a lot better, your
time will be no different. In no time, you’re going to be spending most of what you are working
on during the week, most of your time currency, which is I think, our most valuable currency,
you’re going to be spending that on the high level activities that make your business more
money. It’s the things that you love to do that you are great at which you could just get lost in
like Time just flies when you’re doing those things. And you’re going to be delegating to your
team without worrying that you won’t be able to pay them because you know exactly how
much time is spent on their tasks, what the return on investment is on that time. And you’re
going to feel so relieved knowing that they’re paying for themselves. And then you’re going to
actually start taking Friday’s off or whatever day you want to be taking off. You’re going to
actually do it because we have a plan for that. So fun. This is the work that we do in the
streamline and scale mastermind if you haven’t heard about the mastermind, you probably
should check it out. Now that you Have the framework for setting your business up to bring on
some new hires that are both going to increase the bottom line for you and make your life
easier. Joining the mastermind waitlist for more content specifically about that is a great next
step. So when you are on the waitlist for the mastermind, you are going to get content
specifically targeted at streamlining and scaling your growing wellness business from six
figures onward. And you get that sent directly to your inbox. You also new this year are getting
a waitlist only opportunity to ask your high level business questions directly to me, which will
also be emailed to you when you join the waitlist. So you can sign up for the mastermind
waitlist at the profitable nutritionist.com/mastermind. All of the details about the mastermind
also included on that page. But this is what we do in that room. This is higher level strategy for
growing and scaling. And in the profitable nutritionist program my other program that is
foundational strategy. So that’s getting you started getting momentum getting you to 10k
months, that’s what we want to do in the TPN program. And then in the mastermind, we
unlearn a few of the things that got you to 100k and then we relearn or newly learn. I don’t
know if that’s how I want to say that. But I get a you know what I’m saying you learned some
new things to replace a few of those other strategies like this time management, and how to
hire and how to delegate, and how to do all of these things for bigger growth in your business
to six figures, multiple six figures and beyond. And that’s a little bit different skill set, but still
builds on what you learned in the foundational process in the profitable nutritionist. Okay, so
my voice is about God. And I do have on my list that I’m going to batch a few more podcast
episodes, but I might just I’m just gonna let you know I might break my own rule on that only
because my voice doesn’t want a podcast anymore today. Hopefully in the next episode, I will
sound like myself again, thank you for putting up with it for the last 46 minutes. But I’m so
grateful to be here podcasting for you and creating this content. It really is a joy for me. I look
so forward to the days when it’s podcast day. And it’s podcast time, because I know that this is
just what I love to do. So if my calendar was full of podcasting all the time, I would be so happy
with that. Maybe that’s a goal for 2025 We’ll see what that looks like. All right, my friend,
kicking off so much more content coming for you in this new year. I’m so glad that you’re here
and I will see you next week.
