How to run your creative business on limited time
This post contains affiliate links. Read the full disclosure here.
Subscribe on: Email | YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Amazon Music
Sometimes, life gets busy. And as creative business owners, we end up having to cut our work hours drastically in order to fit all of life in. While it may seem impossible, it’s actually not! In today’s episode we’re breaking down how our experts would spend their time in their business with just ONE hour a day to dedicate to work. Let’s dive in!
This season’s experts:
Alisha Robertson is an author, business coach and the founder of Living Over Existing; a podcast, newsletter and community for women entrepreneurs who want to run a successful business without sacrificing the life she desires.
After experiencing severe burnout, Alisha tore down everything she thought she knew about becoming a successful entrepreneur and decided to build a brand that helped women to focus on building their business and life with intention. Through her work, Alisha strives to not only help women entrepreneurs to launch, grow and scale their brands but also help them to prioritize themselves in the process.
Visit Alisha: Website | LOE Collective | LOE Instagram
Jordan Gill, operations consultant and founder of Systems Saved Me, helps overworked one-woman shows become streamlined solopreneurs. Her jam is creating a cohesive operating system for managing your tasks, files and inbox. She’s been on podcasts like What Works and CEO Vibes sharing her love of replacing monthly retainers with one day virtual intensives. She currently lives in Dallas TX with her cavapoo Vivienne and collection of 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles.
Visit Jordan: Website | Instagram | Facebook
Katelyn began her career in marketing and public relations in Nashville, Tennessee. After working in the agency world for six years, she decided to pursue the entrepreneurship route to create more freedom and flexibility in her life. Now, Katelyn works as an Online Business Manager where she helps entrepreneurs organize, strategize and prioritize the backend of their business to go from overwhelmed to out-in-front. A Georgia grad, she bleeds red and black and is a diehard Georgia football fan, dog mom and outdoor enthusiast.
Visit Katelyn: Website | Instagram
Megan is a Life and Business Coach that specializes in helping online course creators, coaches, and service providers build a scalable, sustainable, and enjoyable business… without sacrificing their personal life!
She does this through her coaching program, Empowered CEO™, and her weekly live show, The Productive Life.
Megan has a Master’s Degree in Organizational and Human Resource Development, corporate Human Resources and Recruiting experience, and has been helping online business owners streamline and systemize their businesses since 2015.
Visit Megan: Website | Empowered CEO |Facebook Group
Quinn Tempest is a business strategist and coach who helps females founders create more purpose + profit in their business *without* burning out. She’s the founder of Create Your Purpose®, a community of global entrepreneurs dedicated to building impactful businesses with intention. Her professional expertise is in branding and holistic digital marketing strategy and she is a frequent speaker at events and organizations around the country.
Visit Quinn: Website | Instagram
Transcript
Erin Flynn:
Hey, there, Erin here, and today’s question is such a good one, and I asked it very selfishly because I personally am only spending about one to two hours per day on my business. And I wanted to know what our experts would do if they had as limited a time as I do. My question for them today was if you could only work one hour a day on your business, what would you focus on and why? I can’t wait to hear what they have to say.
Alisha Robertson:
It’s Alisha Robertson. I am the founder of livingoverexisting.com, where I serve as a business coach to women entrepreneurs who are looking to grow a successful business without completely sacrificing the life that they desire. If I only had one hour in my day to work on my business, I would absolutely work on creating content. Not only do I love creating content, like it’s kind of my jam, but because content for my business does serve as a big marketing tool.
My podcast is a huge way of how I get new clients and how I get new business. My newsletter is another way of how I directly connect with my audience and how I get them to really respond to either the content I’m creating or the offers that I’m putting out there. So if I only had one hour a day, I would definitely put it into creating content. I fully believe in the power of content creation and how it can really propel your business forward, especially if you are creating content that people need and you are actually creating good, valuable pieces of content. People love to learn. People love quick consumable content that they can get one quick win from, or they can get a few things that they can implement into their own life or into their own business. For me, being able to kind of show off my expertise in the form of content has always served as a great marketing tool.
And if I can just continue creating that and spend my time creating that consistently and finding new ways to use my content to connect with my audience, to provide them with the value that they need to help them see a quick win, then essentially that’ll continue to help me to get more clients and to successfully grow my business as well. If I only had one hour a day, I would definitely put my focus into creating that great, solid piece of content that I know is either going to help me to grow my email list, or it’s going to bring in new members into my membership community, or sign up for my accelerator program. That would definitely be where I would focus my time on. I’m Alisha Robertson. You can find me over at livingoverexisting.com if you want to see more of the content that I have been creating.
Jordan Gill:
Hi, I’m Jordan from Systems Saved Me. For me, I would focus on actually connecting with people. And the reason for that is I do enjoy a good system. I would love to work on the systems of my business. However, as the CEO, there’s a balance that has to happen, and I probably could more easily find somebody to create those systems and keep the engine going, then somebody who could connect and relate and network like I do. I think that my networking abilities are pretty strong and is a competency that I have really focused on for the majority of my business. And I think that, for me, while I would love to be in systems land all day long if I had my choice, I think if I could only work one hour a day, that was actually going to help grow my business and help sustain it, I would need to focus on the relationship side.
So whether that was finding affiliates or speakers for our virtual conference or finding podcasts to be on or connecting with live training opportunities, all that sort of stuff, that’s what I would work on one hour a day in my business. I really enjoy the growth side. I enjoy the fulfillment side as well and the coaching side of my program. And I think that I just really believe in the power of relationships. If you’ve heard my answers to all of these questions, it really comes back to that’s how my business has grown is through relationships more than anything else, hands down. If you want to connect, then it go to www.systemssavedme.com or find me on Instagram @systemssavedme.
Katelyn Hamilton:
Hey, this is Katelyn Hamilton, and I’m an online business manager, helping you get organized and create efficiencies in your business. If I only had one hour a day to work on my business, I would focus on only the things that I can do, that I can bring in from an income standpoint, or serving my clients in a way that my team can’t support me. So sort of that strategy role is what I look at in terms of support, whether that be for my clients or my own business, and checking in with them, checking with myself, and then assigning out those tasks to my team for execution support. So you really have to look at your priority list and see where you’re at, whether it be a focus on a launch that you have coming up, or you focus on supporting your clients that have immediate needs.
And I kind of do this every day. I prioritize what needs to happen that day based on due dates, and what’s going on in my client’s businesses, as well as my business. I figure out, okay, this is what has to happen. I create a strategy around that, then figure out those two do’s, assign out what needs to get done, or take care of what only I can do, because when you’re focused on your business, on being really efficient, you have to see, okay, what works for me? What can only I do? That is really the main question that you have to ask yourself is what are those business building activities that only you can do? So, for example, maybe it’s creating one piece of content and then your team can break that down into other pieces of content. So you create a video, your team can turn that into a blog post.
They can turn that into social content. They can turn that into an email, but you don’t have to do all of those things. You just create that one piece of content, if that makes sense. So I encourage you to kind of look at your day, and I do this every day, and figure out those things that only you can do, and then where you can outsource the rest of those things. If you want to stay connected with me, you can follow me @KatelynEHamilton on Instagram or on my website at www.KatelynEHamilton.
Megan Minns:
Hi, this is MeganMinns.com and I help online course creators, coaches, and service providers learn how to run and grow a scalable and sustainable and enjoyable online business. And if I could only work one hour a day on my business, and I’m going to assume I can do this across the week, so I work four days a week.
If I could work one hour a day, four days a week, I would do different things on each of those days. And so one of the days, I would make sure I spend that hour hosting a live stream to my Facebook community and our online community. And I would choose to do that because we’re currently doing a weekly live show and it has been such an incredible way for me to practice using my voice and not try to have perfectly curated content, connect with people in a really meaningful way. But it’s also such a powerful way for me to show up once for less than an hour, for usually less than 30 minutes, and create such an incredible and impactful piece of content that gets repurposed by my team. So that one live stream is getting streamed onto YouTube or doing it on Instagram.
It gets turned into an IGTV. It gets split up into a bunch of different Instagram posts. It gets turned into an email. And so this one 15 to 30 minute video that I do live allows me to not only make an authentic connection with people live, but also provides my team with tons of content to repurpose so that they can do that on their time. I think on day two, I would spend the one hour coaching clients. I have run a high-level group coaching program called Empowered CEO, where we do a weekly group coaching call. And that is my favorite day of the week. It’s my favorite call. I love it so much. And I would absolutely make sure that I have that one hour dedicated purely to supporting my clients and helping answer their questions, get them the momentum and inspiration and excitement and clarity that they need to move forward, because that is so fulfilling for me.
And that’s ultimately why we’re running our business. So it absolutely would be one of them. I would make sure that on the third day, I am spending that hour supporting my team. I am growing a team to help me coach and support our clients, to help do our sales and our marketing and our operations. My team runs the business in a lot of ways. I want to make sure there’s absolutely dedicated time for a team meeting to answer their questions, to support them, and help them thrive. And then on the fourth day we have one hour, I would probably spend that mostly on something I need to create. There’s usually something that I’m working on behind the scenes, a new resource, either for clients or the team, a new piece of content, something for an upcoming promotion or a launch. And I just really love creating.
It’s really fun. So I think that’s how I would spend those four hours. Now I don’t know if I interpreted this question the correct way at all, but that is how I would approach one hour a day to use my time as efficiently as possible. And so for you, regardless of whether you’re working one hour a day, or way more, or whatever you’re doing, I think the biggest thing you could do is to identify what your biggest levers are that you can be pulling in your business. You’ll notice that every single thing I just mentioned is having more than one purpose. Live stream fills like a hundred purposes. But even coaching my clients, that can get repurposed into valuable content. New clients can go back and search that. There’s a replay. It helps my team and the other coaches learn better. So every single thing I’m doing has multiple purposes, and I’m leveraging my team to do the rest.
So for you, I would make sure you understand where those biggest things that you can be doing that only you can do, that you can make sure you prioritize and start to build a team around you who can take care of everything else, because that is the magic. It makes a huge difference when you start building out virtual assistants and contractors, and eventually employees who can really help you stay in your zone of genius and they can take care of everything that’s in their zone of genius. I specialize a lot in hiring and I’m talking a lot about hiring. So I would love for you to join our free Facebook group. You can go to MeghanMinns.com/community to join the empowered entrepreneurs community, where I do a weekly live show in there. And we talk a lot about hiring and team building. This would be a great place for you to get some extra support, if that is something you are looking to do. So hopefully I see you in our Facebook group.
Quinn Tempest:
Hey, there I am back. It is Quinn Tempest, and I am the founder of Create Your Purpose, and a company of one. If I could only work one hour a day in my business, what would I focus on and why? Content, definitely content. Why? Because I love it. I can literally spend all day capturing content, creating content, writing emails, creating and curating Instagram stories. Seriously, I love it, but I also think it is, and it has been, the biggest reason my business has grown. So I started really putting myself out there on Instagram about three and a half years ago. I didn’t even know what an Instagram story was at the time. I still remember asking my friend, what are these circles at the top of Instagram now? Because I didn’t even know how to add one, which is now similar to how I feel with Tik Tok. I won’t even go there.
But I started just experimenting. I wasn’t yet comfortable kind of putting my face out there, but I loved photography. And so I started just sharing some more about my life and snippets and snapshots. And I started just really enjoying creating content. Over the years have found that being active on Instagram and email and all of these new platforms is really important, because it is the starting point of a relationship with your target audience. And if it’s not even a starting point, it then becomes a nurturing point. It’s where you nurture relationships that you already have. And that is where you build trust. That is where you build likeability and that is where you build loyalty. And that is where you can then ask for people to buy something, to join something, to actually have a call to action, to have them take action.
So I think I would spend my one hour on content because it is the thing that has moved the needle so much for me over the years. It’s built my brand. It’s built my list. And it’s really built my own confidence in my message by sharing it and getting feedback, which is sometimes hard. But for the most part, it’s positive, if you can look at it constructively. And also I would choose it just because I love it. So if you want to see what I do, I share a lot on Instagram, so you can follow me @Quinn.Tempest. And one of the things I really enjoy doing is my tip Tuesday series. So every week I do a different kind of tactical or mindset tip geared for entrepreneurs. Just this week I talked about, it’s kind of funny, how star jasmine can teach us really the lesson of entrepreneurship because the plant needs at least a year to grow roots before it shows any top growth.
And I was, oh my gosh, this is the perfect metaphor for entrepreneurship. So I had a lot of fun at creating a creative Instagram story to talk about the time and nurturing and energy that entrepreneurship takes. And you might not see growth right away, but eventually you will. So come over. I am @Quinn.Tempest and you can see how I would love to spend more time of my day.
Erin Flynn:
Hey, Erin here. And before we wrap up, I wanted to touch on how I spend my one to two hours per day working because that’s what I’m at right now. Now, if you don’t know, I had a baby last year and we don’t have childcare thanks to the pandemic, and I’m sharing an office with my husband. So things are very loud in this house and having any actual brainpower to do work is a struggle.
So it’s really important for me to focus on the things that only I can do and that move my business forward. So I’ve done an audit on my business. I’ve looked at the things that really make a difference and move me in the direction that I want to go, and I focus on those things. But I also focus on me spending my time where only I can do the thing.
So for example, there’s some content rattling around in my brain that I want to get out and it’s best for me to spend my time creating that content and getting it out there. However, that doesn’t mean that I have to be the one doing things like mixing podcast episodes. I recently hired someone to do it. The quality is better and it’s a better experience for the listeners as well as it frees up my time to do other things. I also spend a bit of my time doing some delegating, getting in experts who are going to contribute in great ways to my business, whether it’s mixing a podcast or doing customer service or creating additional content for the blog or the YouTube channel.
And having such a limited amount of time, I have to really be clear on what I want for the business as well as what’s really going to make a difference, because I could delegate things all day long, but if they don’t help the business really grow or move in the direction that I want, then it’s not a really good use of my time. So having that clarity is very important. And so I spend most of my time doing content creation, planning and delegating for the business, and that’s about it at this stage. And it makes me really thrilled that I do get to spend a lot of time with my baby and I don’t have to stress nearly as much about my business.
But now I want to hear from you. How much time do you have to work on your business? And if you only had one hour, what would you spend that hour doing? Find us on Instagram @successfullysimple so that we can hear from you. I will see you over there.
