Mastering the Entrepreneurial Clock: Time Management Tactics and Tools for Business Efficiency

Struggling to keep up with the relentless pace of your business ventures? Join Mary Fain Brandt and myself, Laura Bashore, as we crack the code to impeccable time management, vital for any entrepreneur juggling a myriad of tasks. Get ready to discover Mary's and my own experiences with the weekly grind and how we triage what's urgent from what's not, all while savoring that essential downtime. We're peeling back the curtain on 'CEO days' and divulging our game-changing strategies for farming out the energy-drainers to those who can handle them best.

It's time to say goodbye to the tedious back-and-forth of scheduling and hello to the magic of tools that do it for you. I'll let you in on how I moved from an AppSumo aficionado to a scheduling software savant, finding the program that fits like a glove. We're talking about everything from Calendly to social media powerhouses like Metricool—all designed to streamline your online game. And because we're all about community, we're eager for you to throw in your two cents about the business tools you can't live without. Tune in, rate, review, and don't forget to hit subscribe—your entrepreneurial journey is about to get a whole lot smoother, with a side of caffeine-charged banter, naturally.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

You're listening to Scale Up Strategies, the business growth podcast for coaches, consultants and speakers. We're your hosts and business coach experts Mary Fane Grant and Laura Bay Shore.

Speaker 2: 0:16

We're sharing all our insider tips from 20 plus years in business, including how we successfully scaled our businesses without losing our minds or our husbands.

Speaker 1: 0:27

Sure, you can piece it together and try to DIY your way to success. Or you can listen to us every week and learn the shortcuts, because we promise they're really awesome.

Speaker 2: 0:38

So grab your favorite cup of coffee, tune in and let's start the show.

Speaker 1: 0:43

This episode is all about managing your time and how not to go down the rabbit hole. What do we mean by that? Stop wasting your time on tasks that are not aligned with your skills. Laura, this last week, let me tell you I had some 12 hour days and, as a business owner, I have a choice right how many hours I'm working every day. I typically don't do anything over eight hours, to be honest, but there were some amazing, right? Oh no, I'm like, very like. Six hours is six, hours is my average. I like to work six hours, but there were all these networking events that I really wanted to attend that all came at the same time. I did four networking events in three days.

Speaker 2: 1:31

One was an all-day summer but that's how it always is. Is it feels like these things come in spurs of like three or four? You go from like cricket to like everything's happening this week on this day. So how did you manage all of that?

Speaker 1: 1:49

Well, a couple of things is the week before. I always look at my calendar. I look at it like for over the month, but then things you know clients, book calls, consultations and things come up. So I look at my calendar the week before. So we're recording this on a Friday. You know what I'm going to do later. I'm looking at next week. What client calls do I have? What networking events have I overpacked my week again. So I knew I had this crazy week and so what did I do? Well, I'm going to be honest. I reached out to you and I said, laura, I need to move our podcast recordings to the end of the week because I wasn't going to be any good yesterday. I um, I had two consultation calls that I had to bump. And I had to bump some personal stuff too, because after three 12 hour days and four networking events, thursday was just about client work and kind of regrouping and taking some rest. So, to be honest, after those kind of days, I took Thursday night off and I binged Netflix because you guys might.

Speaker 1: 2:54

people that know me are like oh, you're an extrovert, which I am, but I'm actually an omnivore, which means I can go, go, go, but then I have to recharge my batteries and so the same way and I love that, because when we were traveling together earlier in January for work we both had the same thing.

Speaker 2: 3:13

You know we're like is it OK if after our day at the conference, we just go back and and chill?

Speaker 1: 3:19

out.

Speaker 2: 3:19

And both of us were on the same page and I really appreciated that of us were on the same page and I really appreciated that. And then, you know, this week for me was getting back into work after celebrating my birthday last week. And when you reached out and said we needed to reschedule, I was like thank goodness, because my kid also needed to get some. He's getting braces soon, so we started that process and so I was going to have to be rushing around and then I had training for AI afterwards. And so when you said that, I was like yes, my Friday was open, because I left it open this week intentionally, because I knew I had a lot going on and I might need a place saver for things that needed to go into that Friday space. So we have it done. And same thing next week.

Speaker 2: 4:08

I have two speaking engagements on Friday, or on next Thursday and on Friday. So what do I do? I have my first three days in the week. I'm getting all my admin stuff done, all of the consultations. I need all of that so that that Thursday and Friday I can dedicate to that time, because one of the mistakes I see a lot of business owners make is they just show up for, like their timed event. If they're at a conference, it will just show up for when they're going to be on stage. You're missing out, right, you're missing out on the whole point of being there and getting in front of that audience. I'm really excited with today's episode. I think it's so important because we can't just be go, go, go or waste our time going down the rabbit hole on things that don't make sense.

Speaker 1: 4:57

You have to learn how to manage your time. We're going to have a whole episode on something called CEO days and why you need one. I love my CEO day. It doesn't happen every week because speaking engagements, right, things like that, you know something comes up, but it's really important to have a CEO day. We're going to talk about that in a future episode.

Speaker 1: 5:17

But I really want to talk about managing your time as a business owner, because as a business owner, you're typically wearing more than one hat. There's something called we wear 17 hats. There's a couple things with that, laura. First, as I said earlier, if you're doing a task that you know is taking you two or three times longer than it should and it's not in your skillset, outsource that Now. We're going to have a whole episode on outsourcing, but I learned certain things are not up my alley, they're not in my skillset and it's not even worth my time learning how to do it. Let me work with my clients and do what I'm good at and let me get rid of the things that really give me a headache and literally suck up so much of my time. So we'll talk about outsourcing later, but I think that is like pro tip Number one don't do the things that give you pain and that you don't do well.

Speaker 2: 6:21

And I really want to talk about, then, something that I think I could still get better with, but it's something that we have to remind ourselves to keep doing, which is time blocking. So why? Don't we talk a little bit about how you approach that.

Speaker 1: 6:39

Oh, I love time blocking and I wish I had learned this like from the get go actually in my professional world life too.

Speaker 1: 6:47

So, time blocking is when you're working on, you know, the same, the same tasks. So here's and I'm going to read this cause I want to make sure I read this right it's scientifically proven that switching tasks likely discreet decreases the quality of our work, resulting in time wasting. So multitasking and I learned this in college from an amazing professor, helen Ekman, in my leadership classes there is no such thing as multitasking. You can't be like doing this podcast and taking notes or on social. You can really only do one thing at a time and do it well. So quit saying that you're a multitasker, getting more done, because that's not true. Focus on the task at hand.

Speaker 1: 7:32

20% of the cognitive capacity is lost. Okay, I'm going to say that again 20% of the cognitive capacity is lost when context switching. So it takes over 20 minutes for your brain to get back on track. You know when you're switching from. Let's say, you're writing social, social media, your content, and then you have a client call, or you're doing you're working on a talk, you're working on your big talk for a stage next Friday, and then you start working on content. So it's two different things and it actually takes you 20 minutes for your brain to adjust and get in that new mode, and so I think it's really important yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:21

Sorry, I was just going to add in something that I've been doing or starting to implement which has been working for me. So sometimes putting out full time blocks might feel overwhelming. So what I've been doing to start to ease myself into it more is, I have been timing myself for 45 minutes at a time and in that 45 minutes did you see that? Yeah, you put it on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 8:50

Who wants to join me? I love that.

Speaker 2: 8:53

Yeah, I'm going to do it again next week. And the reason why I'm sharing it is because I get so much time done or so much work done in that 45 minutes that would have taken me hours. Because I'm like oh look, something shiny happened over here, or somebody sent me an email and I feel that pull, that I have to answer, but really don't.

Speaker 2: 9:15

So, I put on the timer and I'm like, okay, what can I get done here? And I just focus in and go through what I'm going down, and that's really helped me too. So I just wanted to share that, because sometimes starting easy will help you to see the benefit of if you really start implementing something like time blocking. And then you said you have two things you wanted to share about it.

Speaker 1: 9:40

Well, because you mentioned two things right there, one is email. I'm gonna go with that. We tend to think we have to answer every email right away or we might lose an opportunity so, and I'm guilty of this?

Speaker 1: 9:56

I am guilty of this. But it's best if you can set times that you're going to answer email. Unless you're working on a project, you're working with a client, you're got a proposal in for a speaking gig. You know that's a different basket. But for your everyday emails like, okay, I'm going to check them at seven in the morning, I'm going to check them again at 11, maybe one o'clock, maybe three o'clock, maybe one o'clock, maybe three o'clock, but hey, you know something, something to add into that One of my colleagues he's really bad about that.

Speaker 2: 10:32

He feels he needs to answer things immediately, so he actually added that to his email signature. He added the times of the day that he will be answering his emails. He feels so much better. He's like now they all know and it's really been helping him. So I love that and that is a great solution.

Speaker 1: 10:52

I know other people that do that. I actually, and I actually, when I work with clients, they have a. I give them a sheet that says how I work and it tells them the response time that they can expect. It's not immediate, it's 24 hours. So I think that we have to train not only ourselves but our clients and our referral partners, just everyone that we deal with. So you know, setting a time when you're answering emails and I love that idea, laura, of putting that in your signature line I will respond by 3 PM today or or whatever it is for you. Respond within 24 hours. If it's urgent, text me, um. So I think that that is really important.

Speaker 1: 11:34

So you said email and then, um 45 minutes. You said 45 minutes. Did everybody hear that? Laura didn't say that she set a timer for an hour? You said 45 minutes. And why that is so important is because people think you have to block an entire hour. And I'm going to go back to meetings. In my corporate day, everybody blocked an hour. Well, you know what 15 minutes of that was just chitter chatter. When you reduce the time, you actually get more work done. Hello, ding ding ding. So you don't always need an hour to get as much work done, so I love that you said I set a timer for 45 minutes and you got a lot done.

Speaker 2: 12:19

Yeah, I did, and it was actually for that very reason. An hour sounds like too much, 45 minutes sounds perfect, yeah. And then I'm like oh, now I have a 15 minute break. What am I going to do now?

Speaker 1: 12:33

So you don't always have to work for a straight hour or if you're doing meetings, they don't have to be for an hour. My intake sessions for LinkedIn profiles is 50 minutes five zero. It's not a full hour. Why that? 10 minutes is for me to like gather all the notes and kind of organize a few things and send a follow-up email, right? So do you need a full hour every time? I'm going to challenge you to change your mindset that you don't just like Laura did.

Speaker 2: 13:07

Why? Thank you, yeah, I you know. To add onto that to my, my consultations, when I do a consultation with a client is 20 minutes.

Speaker 1: 14:27

And I'm guilty. I used to do 30. I used to do 30 minutes. I want to ask you this question as a consultant, coach, right, and speaker. We do a lot of consultation calls. So 20 minutes, I think that's great. I think that is something that we should all be doing, or I've even heard 15. If you do your prep work, how you handle laura when you have a consultation call and they just want to keep talking? How do you?

Speaker 2: 14:59

like well yeah uh, are we? Let's see, here we okay how do you manage that?

Speaker 2: 15:06

time. Well, I actually book all my consultations through Calendly and the reason why I do that is because in there you can put. You know what you're going to cover. You also can have pre-qualifying questions. So when somebody books with me they answer specific questions that I need so that I can prep for them. And it's not a lot because you don't want it to be overwhelming. You know it's finding that right space of what you should have in there but also my consultation. So my link says 20 minute consultation. Call my clients know in advance that this is what we're signing up for. So it link says 20 minute consultation. Call my clients know in advance that this is what we're signing up for. So it's funny because my clients who get close to the 20 because sometimes it's only 15 minutes, honestly but when they're pushing?

Speaker 2: 15:57

to the 20, they will tell me. They'll say oh, I know we're coming up to our time, so let me just get this done. So, if you position yourself correctly, you don't have to have that uncomfortable conversation now once in a while I have and I will just let them know. I'll say well, I've gathered everything that I need currently and if you have more questions, you can follow up in the email after you see my proposal. But let me get this over to you so that you can start to take a look at it and then see if we're on the same page I love it.

Speaker 1: 16:30

I love calenly um, I use that. Um, I use blab book like a boss. Same concept my products and and the only reason I switched is because, um, I'm an app sumo junkie. Hi, I'm mary fane brandt. I app Sumo Junkie. If you guys don't know what that is, yeah, send me, send me a note. So it's where they have these specials for different apps and SAS programs and products. So I have a lifetime deal, so I'm never going to leave them because it works really good. But you know, having how to save time is having a calendar, a scheduling tool that allows people to schedule different types of calls with you consultation, client call, linkedin call, career call.

Speaker 2: 17:14

Um, my, I have my ai call because that's 90 yeah, versus a 50 minute well, you know, I get so frustrated when somebody wants to book with me and so they send me an email and they're like hey, let's set up a time. I'm like, do you have a link? No, I don't have a link. I'm like, okay, but we got to use mine because, oh my gosh, can you remember before you were using one of these tools and all the back and forth emails?

Speaker 1: 17:42

Well, and Zoom integrate.

Speaker 2: 17:44

This doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 17:45

Yeah, zoom, integrate emails well, and check your calendar. This doesn't work. Yeah, yeah, zoom integrate. So I'm not setting up zoom. My, my scheduling tool is and it says that it sends the reminder. And if you're not using a scheduling tool, how do you remind people? I'm not doing scheduling the other great tool that we haven't even talked about so managing your time.

Speaker 1: 18:15

Let's review what we talked about. We talked about time blocking, why it works and that you don't need 60 minutes 45 minutes is amazing and how it's called the toggling tax. When you have, when you toggle from one project right From one application to another, don't toggle back and forth, stay focused. So set your 45 minute alarm, work on one task and then move to a different one so that you're saving time. We talked about scheduling tools Calendly and Blab. There's a bunch out there. And then let's talk about social media, because I don't know, raise your hand. If back in the day when you first started your business, you manually scheduled everything, that's me, I would get up, you guys, I would get up. I'd tell my husband oh my God, it's 630.

Speaker 1: 19:06

I got to get up and I'm gonna get a post out today yeah, stressing about it, oh my god, I gotta get there to get this post out on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn, and literally every morning. Who was I? Why did I do that? Well, because I didn't have a scheduling tool yet, and even I have a client that only um, he's only on LinkedIn. I was like you still need a scheduling tool because some of this stuff can just be scheduled out. Why?

Speaker 2: 19:40

why do you know? I was just gonna say. I was just gonna say that because back in the, linkedin wasn't a part of most of these, and so if you looked at a scheduling tool like five, six years ago, you might think, oh, I only use LinkedIn and so I can't even use a scheduling tool. Not the case anymore, right, right.

Speaker 1: 20:05

Well, and also, let's you know you're not gonna get the scheduling tool. Let's say, you are only on linkedin. You can schedule your posts on linkedin. You could go in and schedule a month's of posts, that. That. I think that feature was released last year, like early last year. It's been around for a while. Yeah yeah, people still don't know about it. It cracks me up.

Speaker 2: 20:27

Well. But I'm like why is that important? Because when you're out and you're doing networking events or you're going to be speaking somewhere, which is also a networking event right Anytime. But when you're out you can already have that post going out and then in the downtime that you have at those events you can quickly pull up your phone on your app and respond and comment to anybody who's been interacting with you. But the main goal is get the schedule set up so that it's already there and then you know what time it's coming out.

Speaker 1: 21:02

So then pay attention when it comes out right and it really helps you be consistent and strategize, because you're thinking about what is the next month? What am I focusing on? What am I launching? What do I want to be known for? Have I pivoted? Do I have new services? Right? So scheduling that out a month and I'm not saying all my posts are pre-scheduled, I'm saying 90% of them are. I'm not going to lie and it's okay.

Speaker 2: 21:29

I need to get to that point. I need to be right now I'm probably like 30% of my stuff is scheduled and so I just need to get back to get everything scheduled out.

Speaker 1: 21:43

It doesn't hurt the algorithm, doesn't hate you because you're using a scheduling tool.

Speaker 2: 21:47

That was like 2017.

Speaker 1: 21:49

So don't worry about that. We are going to drop some scheduling tools, right, any tool that we mentioned on the show. We're going to drop those links in the show notes because there's things like Metro cool. Is it Metro cool? Cause that's not one I use.

Speaker 2: 22:05

Yeah, it's a new um, it's featured in and it has ai features in it. It's really good.

Speaker 1: 22:11

I just started looking into it it's amazing there's agora pulse, which is I, I want to say the big daddy, because it has uh, they call it inbox zero, where you can actually look at all the comments and everything on all of your social platforms that you use Agora Pulse for and you can reply right there, which is kind of cool. Promo Republic is one that I used in the past. I use with my clients. It actually gives you ideas and has AI built in. There's things like Hootsuite, so we'll share all of those, but get a scheduling tool for your calendar, get a scheduling tool for your content, get a scheduling tool for your content and the lap. You know, there's two more areas where you save time, laura. One is productivity tools, which project management? Right, so your Trello, your ClickUp, your Airtable, your Monday. What's the other ones? Um?

Speaker 2: 23:05

and I would just say on that, use one that works for you. Like you need to be able to understand what you're doing, don't just like grab a tool there's so many out there that you can use. So, like for me, trello is like like post post notes gone nuts. And when I first tried to use Trello herself, I was like Whoa, my brain is just my brain cannot keep up with that ClickUp. I can keep up with.

Speaker 1: 23:37

But Trello. I was like, oh my God, it just looks like-. Trello is where I started, but I grew into ClickUp. I've used Airtable for content, which was pretty cool. There's Monday and there's Asana. But you're absolutely right Explore the different platforms, talk to people that are in a similar business as you and see what they're using, because that's important, like I get why jello works for those who are like um in crafting and um I don't know it was like and it worked for me when I started, right when I started, that's what we were using, but I outgrew it.

Speaker 1: 24:11

So, to be honest, it would have been better to have everything in one program from day one, but that probably typically doesn't happen. You start your business, you try some tools as you grow your business, as you learn more, as you pivot. Then you're like, oh, these tools don't work anymore and it's okay to leave those tools and go to a different tool. Especially with the fast pace of technology and advancements and AI. I would say to you that you should be using a tool that has AI built into it. I mean almost every.

Speaker 2: 24:42

I think so too, and that's really kind of and this is a bit more than we were going to dive into but, like looking at a sub stack, like you need to figure out tools that all work together so that your integration flows smoothly. So really pay attention to that, especially if you have a couple of things that you've already purchased and things aren't just smoothly working together. Reevaluate, see what works together. Things aren't just smoothly working together. Reevaluate, see what works together and, to your point, mary, make sure that there's some form of AI or that they are in the process of adding it in, because you're going to need that. You're going to need that moving forward.

Speaker 1: 25:18

Let's talk about one more tool that really can help save time. It's called Zapier. I'd love to know who's using it.

Speaker 1: 25:27

I don't zap everything, but my VA does. Someone schedules an appointment, then this happens, or I can't even remember all the zaps that we have, but I actually ran out and I had to upgrade at one point. I think it was on the free plan. But Zapier is an amazing tool. You can zap just about everything and it means exactly what it sounds like. If this, then that, if this happens, I want this to happen. If someone books an appointment, send them this form. That's the easiest way for me to explain it. Do you use Zapier in your business, laura?

Speaker 2: 26:03

I don't personally, but yeah, my assistant uses it Well that's what I mean.

Speaker 1: 26:10

I said in your business, I don't do the zaps my VA does. So, yeah, I think it would be great, Laura, let's make a list for our listeners, like a sub stack, what you said of these tools and how to integrate. Um, I think that would be something valuable. And if you're listening watching this on YouTube, drop us a DM, you know, put a comment down there that, yes, I'd love a list of tools. Or if you have a tool that you're like, I cannot run my business without this because it does save me time We'd love to hear what tool it is that you're using. Save me time. We'd love to hear what tool it is that you're using. If you enjoyed the podcast, show us some love. Please rate, review and subscribe to our podcast, and if you have any feedback, go ahead and share that with us too, because we want to hear from you. Until then, stay focused, stay motivated and stay caffeinated.