What does a normal workweek look like for an entrepreneur?

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Ever feel like you’re working too much–or not enough in your business? Ever wonder what successful entrepreneurs are doing, and how many hours they’re putting in?

That’s exactly what we’re diving into in today’s episode! Tune in, or hit the transcript below to find out what a typical workweek looks like for this season’s experts!

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

Erin Flynn helps creative entrepreneurs design profitable and sustainable businesses that are simple and streamlined so that they can work less and live more. She’s the founder of Successfully Simple™ and is on a mission to help other creatives slash their work hours, earn more, and enjoy their lives.

Visit Erin: Website | Instagram | Shortcut

Transcript:

Erin Flynn:

Hey there, Erin here, and today’s question is, what does a typical work week look like for you? How long do you work and how do you balance your time? Let’s let the experts answer.

Alisha Robertson:

Hey, you guys, it’s Alisha Robertson, founder of livingoverexisting.com where I help women entrepreneurs like you to build a successful business around the life that you desire. So a typical work week for me really looks like either digging into client work and helping the members inside of my membership community, recording podcast episodes, or really just digging into the back end of like my business, so working on marketing or working on creating content.

So typically, during my work week, I really try to work about five hours per day, so usually between the hours of 11:00 AM and either from four or 5:00 PM. Thankfully my daughter is now back in daycare, so my days have a little bit more structure to them. But yeah, I try to work only about five hours per day, because I feel like that’s the amount that my mind can handle at one time.

And also, it forces me to do a lot of focus work, which means I’m spending less time on social media, in most cases, and I’m also spending less time in my inbox or doing things that won’t necessarily contribute to the growth of my brand.

So for podcast episodes and things like that, if either I’m doing a solo episode or if I am working with someone who I’m interviewing, I try to get those scheduled about mid-week, so I say around Wednesdays or Thursdays. I do that because I really want to focus the beginning of my week on my most important tasks or things that absolutely need to get done.

So I do that because, typically at the beginning of the week, I am a lot more refreshed, I’m more wide awake, and I’m more likely to be willing and ready to tackle those harder projects versus me trying to work on Friday when my brain is just fried.

So I really do try to plan out those big tasks at the beginning of my week, so that could mean doing any type of marketing plans for my business, or planning out my content. That could also look like doing any type of coaching calls, so every month in my community, I do a live coaching call that takes place at the beginning of the month.

I also create different content themes within my community as well, so usually I have to take some time out to plan out what that looks like for the month, and then create that content for each week of the month as well.

So for me, a typical week really does just look like getting all of those important tasks done first to make sure that I actually get those done, and then also spending the rest of the week, once I get to a Thursday or Friday, that’s usually when I tackle my inbox, or when I can spend a little bit more time on social media, or do some other smaller tasks in my business that are important, but won’t necessarily make an immediate impact on what I’m doing within my business.

So that’s what a typical work week really looks like for me. I think my biggest takeaway, when it comes to just balancing your time, is to make sure that you are writing out in a planner, or a to-do list, or if you’re using a digital program, is writing out what is most important for you, starting with your top priority tasks, and then working your way down.

Also, when it comes to balancing that life and business aspect, make sure you’re always writing down how you’re going to take care of yourself and try to knock that out first. So for me, no matter how much I have to do throughout the day or throughout the week, I’m always going to get in a 20 minute yoga session, or I’m going to do a 10 minute meditation, or I’m going to take some time to journal.

So definitely, self-care can sometimes be something that we skip over, but when it comes to sitting down for the week, that should be the very first task that you put on your to-do list for each day. So definitely knock out the things that are most important to you first, so that you can coast through the rest of the week.

All right, you guys, if you would like to connect with me, again, I’m Alisha Robertson and you can find me over at livingoverexisting.com

Jordan Gill:

Hi, I’m Jordan Gill from Systems Saved Me. So a typical work week has adjusted dramatically since COVID, however, I would say the, I guess, boundaries, have stayed similarly. So I tend to work five to six hours a day, generally in the afternoons, but with virtual learning, I’ve had to adjust to the evenings so that I could help support my six year old son with his first grade class at home.

And so, yeah, five to six hours a day max, from just an energetic level, ideally is, again, from 11 to five or 12 to six-ish. I do not like to work in the mornings. It’s not when I’m awake, it’s not when I’m alert. And I do my best thinking in the afternoons. That’s when I have the height of my energy, afternoons or evenings. And I really look to balance my time by making sure that at least one full day a week, I am not working.

The tricky part about this is I love my work, so it can be hard to pull away from it because it feels like I’m pulling away from something that I love, but I think when you also find equally pleasurable hobbies or other activities, then it doesn’t feel so different, I guess, to not be working.

So I definitely have struggled with this, as somebody who enjoys their business, but the bigger my team gets and the less items that are on my to-do list, that much more simple it’s become. So yeah, if you want to hang out or connect, you can go to systemssavedme.com, or come and find me on Instagram @SystemsSavedMe.

Katelyn Hamilton:

Hey there, this is Katelyn Hamilton, and I’m an online business manager where I help you get organized and create efficiencies in your business. A typical work week is very different for me every single week. I work mostly from eight or 9:00 AM until about five or 6:00 PM, Monday through Friday. I try to take Fridays off or, if anything, those are my, what I call CEO days, where I spend time focused inward on my business and really try to use those days to create efficiencies in my own business, whether I’m setting up systems, or I’m editing my website, or things like that.

But Monday through Thursday are my client-focused days, and sometimes that spills over into Friday. That’s the benefit of being your own boss and working your own hours. You can create your own schedule. So I would say a typical work week for me starts with Monday, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, I have client calls between the hours of 9:00 AM and 1:00 PM.

That allows me to be the most efficient in my business because I can then spend the afternoons on Mondays, and Tuesdays, and Thursdays getting stuff done. So action items from those calls that I had earlier in the day, putting the stuff in Asana, my project management software, to assign out to my team or my client’s teams.

And then, Wednesdays are my really big workdays, so I spend all day on Wednesdays really cranking out that work for my clients, and then I don’t have any distractions. I don’t have phone calls, and things like that.

I am currently pregnant, delivering a baby mid-2021, and I should say the first to second quarter of 2021, and my plan is to work in a similar way. I’ll take client calls Monday, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and Wednesdays and Fridays will be more geared towards either catching up on client work, or CEO work, or being off and spending time with my baby because I plan on having childcare on Monday, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.

So I think, for me, that’s what I’ve determined works. It allows me to be a little bit more efficient with my time and my business. And then I can block out chunks of time on those other days to work on specific clients or projects and get stuff done.

This is a way that allows me to manage my time well and not bounce back and forth between clients or calls, because what I was finding was that I was spending a lot of time if I had calls spaced throughout the day, just being inefficient.

I would have a 30 minute break here, an hour break there, and it wasn’t allowing me to get stuff done in an efficient way for my clients. This gives me the ability to really just time block better and saves time to get more done throughout the day.

So that is how I balance my time. For you, I would suggest looking at where you can create that space in your schedule to just take calls, and then just do client work and block that off. I use time blocking to block off specific client work I’m going to work on and specific calls, and that is what helps me stay efficient, and I highly recommend you look at your calendar and do the same.

So if you are interested in more content from me, you can find me on my website at www.katelyn, K-A-T-E-L-Y-N, E Hamilton, H-A-M-I-L-T-O-N, dot com, or on Instagram, I spend a lot of time on there @KatelynEHamilton.

Megan Minns:

Hey, there, it’s Megan from meganmins.com, and I’m a life and business coach that specializes in helping online business owners learn how to run their business in a way that is scalable, sustainable, and most importantly, enjoyable.

When it comes to a typical workweek for me, I am usually working Monday through Thursdays consistently, with Fridays being left open as a flex day. So I never have any meetings, or calls, or tasks assigned to me for Fridays, so that way I can use it to either take a long weekend, do personal errands, take care of my personal life, or if I’m really inspired and it feels good, I will take that time to maybe do some creative projects for work, but at least there’s no actual tasks or deadlines happening on Fridays, which has been really, really nice.

Another structure in my typical work week that I think is really helpful is that I don’t have any calls or meetings until after lunchtime. That allows me to have a really flexible morning schedule. I think one of the things that makes me feel the best is having that spaciousness in the morning. I am pregnant as I’m recording this, so some days I get a lot of sleep and I feel great in the morning, and other days I really need to sleep in or take it easy to take care of my body right now, so being able to have this flexibility in the morning is amazing and feels really supportive for me.

So when I wake up and I feel great, I can get started working as soon as I want to, eight or 9:00 AM, but on the days where I really need to take it easier, take care of some personal stuff, or just sleep in and take care of myself, I can wait to get started until 10:00 AM, 11:00 AM, or even until my first meeting, so that really, really helps me.

You’ll notice I have a lot of structure in place, don’t I? Another thing I do is that Monday afternoon is when I have my team meeting every single week, and then Wednesday afternoons are when I do any type of client-facing calls. So our weekly coaching call for Empowered CEO, if I do any type of one-on-one coaching, it’s happening in that Wednesday afternoon slot, and those are my main blocks for calls and meetings throughout the week.

So that is really helpful because that means I have lots of time for focused work where I can actually get things done, which is so helpful. And when it comes to my work schedule on a daily basis, I’m usually done by about four to 5:00 PM, just depending on what my calls looked like or what my deliverables were for that week, but I never really work into the evenings anymore.

And I think that one thing that makes that really easy for me to disconnect is that my husband does work in a traditional nine to five job, so when he comes home from work, it’s just really nice to disconnect and spend time together. And that transition of him coming home makes that really easy for me, compared to when I lived alone and I had to regulate that myself. So that really helps.

So that means in the evenings and in the weekends, we’re spending a lot of time doing personal stuff, fixing the house or getting ready for our baby coming, and not feeling tempted to work.

And then throughout the day, I make sure to take a lot of breaks, and I always plan my breaks in advance. Of course, I take some extra ones if I need to in the moment, but I usually plan to have an hour-long lunch break. I plan breaks within my schedule to make sure I have buffer time to just do whatever I need to in the moment, whether that’s standing outside with the dogs, letting them run around in the yard, or getting a snack, or taking a nap, I incorporate breaks into my day, which is so helpful.

And I think that when it comes to creating your own work week and finding a way to balance this that feels supportive for you, the biggest tip I have is to have a type of block schedule like I just explained that I have. So having key time when you are going to be on calls or meetings, and then key time where you’re open for focused time, where you’re not getting distracted.

Having that balance and having those boundaries is critical. So if you don’t have any type of structure or block schedule in place right now, I would love for you to sit down, take 15 to 30 minutes, look at your week, and identify when you want to have availability for meetings and calls, and then dedicated, protected time for you to do focused work. I hope that helps.

I would love to connect with you over on Instagram. You can find me @Megan_Mins, and I hope to see you there.

Quinn Tempest:

Hey, everybody Quinn Tempest here. And yes, if you’re wondering, that is my real name. I’ve been told, I sound like Marvel’s next superhero who could control the weather. For now, my only super powers really are helping female founders create more purpose and profit in their businesses and in their entire lives.

So how do I really spend my time during the week? What does a typical work week look like for me? Honestly, I think I used to love the idea of being an entrepreneur who could do anything at any time that they wanted. And so, for a long time, I used to work at night. I used to work on the weekends, and after a while I found that I didn’t like it, especially when I met my husband, which was maybe about three years into running my own business.

He worked normal hours and I decided it’s more important to me that I spend time with him, that we have a quality time together where I’m actually focused on us in the moment and not on the emails I need to respond to, and the designs I need designs I need to send, and all of these things that I need to do in my business, but instead actually enjoying his presence and being with him.

And so really, that changed my whole mindset around how I spend my time during the week, and so honestly, my schedule is pretty much nine to five, Monday through Friday. I like to map what he does in his time with my schedule. I even, because I don’t have time off as an entrepreneur, I take off his vacation days as well, and it just makes it nice so that I have the flexibility that, yeah, if I do need to work at night or on the weekend, I can, but more and more, I guess as I’ve gotten older, it feels good to have a solid routine and a solid schedule that prioritizes my values, both in and out of my business.

But what I found that has been working for me a lot in the past year is theming my days during the week. Now, some people call this batching, I think of batching as blocks of time within your days, but for me, theming your days is a broad picture for how you want to spend your time and where you want to focus your energy on each single day.

So for example, Mondays, I call those my big picture days. That is a day where I don’t take any calls, whether it’s in-person or Zoom, and it’s all about the big picture stuff. Planning ahead, thinking strategically, even doing some admin stuff I just want to get out of the way, like accounting and bookkeeping that I don’t want to worry about during the week.

Also, this is the time when I spend time on my own marketing. And this was really key for me because for the longest time I was working in my business, but I was never working on it. So I was never actually moving the needle. I was focusing on what I called these bread and butter actions, the things that just put the food on the plate, at the end of the day, but I wasn’t actually making time for what I call magic maker actions.

Those things that help you grow, those things that help you progress, and in a business sense, the things that help you move forward towards the vision that you have, and the thing that you want to create, and the impact that you want to have. So theming my days, my Mondays as big picture day and focusing on working on my business was a game changer.

Then, I like to use the meat of my week, typically Tuesday and Wednesdays, and a little bit of Thursdays, for client work. So I still do a little bit of service-based work: design, branding, strategy, and I also run a membership community. So Tuesdays are really devoted to client work in my collective. So that’s when I’m going to be creating content for my members, I’m going to be showing up in the group live, and I know that that’s what’s coming for my day.

Wednesdays are similar, and then Thursdays are really devoted to networking and PR. Of course, I might have some things linger from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday into Thursday, but I like to use those days to really create relationships, cultivate opportunities, and do things like that.

Then there’s Friday, that’s my growth and creativity day. It’s where I try mostly to focus on content creation, intentional learning, and growth. And of course I don’t take meetings. I also do themings on the weekends, but really this idea is just to help you be more intentional about where your time and your energy goes during the week, and for me, it has made all the difference.

So that’s how I spend my time. It’s a little bit of different every single week, and I don’t stick hard and fast to these things, but it has really helped me hone in and harness my energy and my time with intention.

If you want to connect further on this, just find me over on the Gram. I am there way too much. I am @Quinn.Tempest. You’re going to find a lot of colorful photos and I’d love to connect with you.

Erin Flynn:

Hey there, it’s Erin. I’m back to tell you about what my typical work week looks like.

Things have changed a lot around here, not just because of covid, but because I had a baby during covid.

I used to work about 4 hours a day, and since coming back from maternity leave, I now work one to two. Or sometimes none. On average though I get in about 5-7 hours a week.

You would think this would have a really negative effect on my business, but in reality, I just lean in really hard to the 80/20 rule and I’m able to still hit all of my goals. If you’re not familiar with that, it’s basically a rule that states that 20% of your efforts give you  80% of your results. The other 80% of your efforts don’t do much to move the needle, so I just don’t really bother with them. I’d rather be spending time with my baby!

The 20% for me that gives me the results I want to see really boil down to just a few things:

Connecting.

Creating.

Calls to action.

And Calibrating.

Don’t worry, I’ll tell you what all those mean!

Connecting means connecting with current and potential customers, as well as connecting with my peers for support. That might mean popping in the Shortcut community and answering questions, sending valuable emails to potential customers, and hopping on a mastermind call once a week. Connections are VITAL to running an online business, and you have to stay in touch to stay top of mind, so I make sure that I make connections DAILY.

Creating means making things! Whether it’s writing emails, recording podcast episodes, making social media posts, or chiseling away at a training for members of the Shortcut, I try to spend time creating every single day. Fortunately, this also often overlaps with connecting! 

Calls to action mean telling people how to take the next step with me! No one can join your email list or buy from you  if they don’t know what you’re offering or why it’s important to them. It’s important to ask for a sign up or sale to some segment of your audience every single day. It doesn’t always have to be a hard sell, but I make sure I’m telling someone EVERY DAY about what I have for them.Again this often overlaps with creating and connecting, as I try to offer value with every pitch.

Calibrating means planning and tracking my progress–and course correcting if things aren’t working out the way I want them to. I would have no idea what is giving me the best results if I didn’t first set goals, then break down the goals into manageable chunks, and finally take action on a nearly daily basis (even if it’s just for 15 minutes!) towards those goals and track my progress.

Doing this allows me to still hit my goals, on an EXTREMELY limited timeframe and spend more time soaking up baby snuggles.

My takeaway for you is to figure out what YOUR 20% is, and focus on that. Then you’ll be able to work less and still see great results. You’ll be able to slash your work hours and spend more time doing what you love.

I teach exactly how I do all of this inside my program, The Successfully Simple Shortcut, so if you’re interested in working less and living more, join us at outofofficeentrepreneur.com/shortcut