How to save four hours in your working week

Transcript

In this episode, I’m going to help you save four hours in your working week and I’m going to give you the tool that I use to help you get there. So today I want to talk to you about what it means to actually cut down and understand what you’re actually working on in your business.

I am an utter process nerd. So get used to me talking about processes to you because.

And this is probably my most valuable asset that I’m going to give to you and I’m giving it to you in the first episode, which is probably not a good idea. But anyway, here we are. Process first. So your business is made up of a series of processes.

That is everything that needs to get done in your business. And all those things that need to get done in your business take time. It’s the processing of pay runs for yourself.

There’s the admin, there’s the emails, there’s the looking after clients, there’s onboarding clients, there’s looking after them and serving them, there’s doing the whole delivery thing to them, there’s offboarding clients, there’s billing clients. Everything is something to be done in your business and it takes time.

And when you start out, every single one of those things is manual and you have to do everything. You’re a solo operator. You are the CEO, you are the janitor. I’m talking to you right now with dirty dishes on my desk. You do everything.

And the reason why solopreneurs get into the position where they’re running 60 hour weeks and they feel like they’re trapped. It’s the golden handcuffs, right? You’re earning this money, you’re doing great, you’ve got your revenue, but you’re spending all this time.

It’s because you’re not scaling, you’re throwing your body at the problem, you’re throwing people at the problem. And that people in this circumstance is you. I’ve worked with businesses that do this.

Their philosophy is, we have this problem, we’re just going to throw people at it. You know what they do? They onboard entire teams, they do all this sort of stuff.

And you just end up with loads of teams sort of spinning their wheels. They’re not doing anything.

And labor is actually the most expensive resource that you have, especially in your business, because you’re the only labor. Think about that. You’re the only person who can deliver and you don’t want to hire and that’s fine.

But if you want to really get used to the idea of taking time off in your business and not losing that revenue. You’re going to have to get used to really looking at what you’re doing every day. So this is where process comes in.

There’s two ways that we can tackle the problem of freeing up time in your day. Number one is you can just list out everything in your calendar that you could do every day and you can order that.

And I’m going to have a resource on my website that you can go to and you can download that and you’ll be able to see everything that you do throughout the week that takes up time and how much time it takes.

And that’s going to start to get you to think about, oh, maybe this is something that I shouldn’t be doing anymore, or I don’t have a good purpose of doing that, or I can actually start to think about outsourcing that or automating it. The second one is, is looking at your end to end processes.

So I’ve got my processes documented in my little Obsidian app and my managed content process is here and I have every step of that process listed out and how I do it. Now what this means is I can be very clear now about every single activ that I need to do to deliver.

And if I’m doing something out of that scope, it means that I should not be doing it. I stop myself immediately and go, maybe this is not something for today or ever. Does this add value to my business? No. Yes. No.

I can list it out and I can get it down on the page. There’s a good reason for every single activity on that process map to be there.

So I’m a little bit of a process mapping whiz and I can normally do this sort of stuff within half an hour. It might take you a little bit more time to think about the types of things and the order of doing things.

I’m going to walk you through now how to actually do that for yourself now. And then we can circle back and we can break it down to see how that actually works. So here we go.

So we’re going to look at how breaking down your process in your business. Now the most important one for you right now is your client management process.

So we’re going to be looking at the time from the time that a lead signs a contract or signs on with you to the time that they’re not with you anymore. Okay, so let’s make an assumption here that you’ve done your sale and you’ve signed a lead on and now they’re a customer. What do you do now?

Just take a moment to think about that. Are you writing the contract or are you filing that contract somewhere or are you calling the client to say thank you?

I, with my clients, I send a gift box with candles in it and I say thank you for your business. I really appreciate it. I’m looking forward to working with you, et cetera. That’s my first step, is I organize that to be sent to them.

What do you do next? Do you set up their dates? Do you establish what other stakeholders you’ll be working with? With this client, are you going to be doing xyz?

Okay, list it out in order. Think about every single thing that you need to be doing to be able to deliver the value to that customer.

And now as you go, you’re going to have a list of tasks. So you can list this out either in a big list or you can draw little boxes on a page with arrows between them to show how it all flows.

Now against each one of those tasks, you can put in there. Well, this is going to be easy for you because you’re a solopreneur. Who does it? You do. So you’re going to put your name against all those tasks.

Normally in a corporate setting, I’ve been working with a team recently in a really large organization. They have 17,000 employees. And I have to put down a role for every single task that’s involved in that process. Right?

So they have a series of, you know, 20 tasks within a process and there’ll be different lanes with different roles, the responsibility for doing that.

And there’s going to be like other things built into our racy matrix which is, you know, responsible, accountable, consulted, informed, and there’s going to be relationships between all these different things. Your business is not that complex, right? You’ve got a series of things done by you.

The second thing that you’re going to put against each one of these steps is any systems that you use and any documents that you might be using. So if you’re sending an email, what you’re going to do is you’re going to list those documents and artifacts against each task.

Now what we’re doing here is we’re building up a library in a scope. If you’re working 60 hour weeks and you want to get that down to 30, there’s a lot of stuff that we need to streamline here. Every minute counts.

This is like budgeting. Budgeting your time is like budgeting your money. If you’re not budgeting your money, you don’t know where it’s going.

The Same thing is with your time. If you don’t budget your time, you don’t know where it’s going. So now we have each of our steps. We have down who is performing it. That’s you.

And then we’re going to have the artifacts and the systems that we’re using, right? So we’re very clear now on our scope of what it means to actually complete that task.

The other thing to keep in mind when documenting down is how long each step takes you. So I might ask a stakeholder in any one of my workshops. So you’re doing this activity, you’re organizing the gift box.

How long will that typically take you? I’m not asking for exact metrics here. I’m asking for just a good idea. Be pragmatic here.

We’re not trying to collect data on every single task right now. We’re just trying to get an idea about what might be the best place to start. So now you got every step, who does it, which is you.

You’ve got your artifacts, you’ve got your documents, you’ve got your templates, all that sort of stuff, and how long each one is taking you. Now you can really start to be targeting which place might have the most benefit in improving.

That’s a process map and all of its artifacts sort of outlined for you in five to 10 minutes. Now you can ask yourself the question, when I’m delivering to a client, am I doing things that are outside of this scope?

And if I am, I either need to add them to the model or I need to cut it completely. And you can cut your time down immediately by not doing those things.

This is why process first is the most important sort of thing that you can be doing in your business. A lot of businesses have different approaches. You know, we’re seeing people first or process first or culture first, or now we’re seeing AI first.

Thanks, Duolingo for a solopreneur.

The biggest thing that you can be looking for in your business is process first, because everything that you do in your business is done by you, and it has to be done by you. So start having a think about that. The second approach is doing the calendar audit.

So you can take all the tasks that you sort of do, paint your day into your calendar, do that for two weeks, and then do a review on what each activity is. You’ll be able to really start to see where you’re spending your time. That’s a really quick win that you can get.

I’ve used these different tactics with a general manager at A manufacturing plant. She was responsible for sales. The business is our only team at the time of around 24. This approach saved her two hours a day.

So my question to you is, what would you do with two extra hours a day? You know, this customer, they turned around and use that two extra hours a day to make more sales. Those sales turned into a million dollars.

What does that mean for you? How would you spend that two hours?

You can either spend it working more on other, more higher value adding things or you can do it with things that actually add more value to your life. Time with friends, going for a walk more exercise, a hobby of some kind, getting out on the golf course, driving up a mountain.

It doesn’t really matter what. Have a think about what your primary aim is. Right. There’s a great book out there, it’s called the E. Myth.

Michael Gerber wrote that book and he has this thing in there about the primary aim. The primary aim is why you decide to start a business. And it’s not business focused. Why did you start your business? You started a business.

I’m going to guess you started your business thinking, I’m going to start this thing and I’m going to make the money and I’m really good at what I do. And because I’m so good at what I do, I’m going to do it in less time than all these other suckers have to do it in.

And that means that, you know, I can take the time off and have the freedom and all of a sudden, oh crap, I’m, I’m working 70 hour weeks and I’m stuck in this thing and I’m the worst boss ever and what am I going to do? And I can’t turn back now because my pride will be too damaged.

You started a successful business business, you’ve got your revenue, now it’s time to work on the other side of the equation. That’s your costs and your biggest cost right now to you is your time. What could you do with that?

I’m going to talk to you now about another process that I’ve covered. This is with the same client as before, but I was working with their marketing person.

You know, being a small business, you know that they do have a team and things like that, but you sort of have people who are sort of doing cross jobs. You know, they don’t have a dedicated role.

So this particular person was on reception and doing marketing work and, and having to like log in after hours to do like checks of social media and all sorts of stuff and it’s just, you know, we’ve got new laws in Australia here that have, you know, the right to disconnect after hours. So I’m sitting here going, it’s probably not the best thing that you’re logging in after hours. Like you should have the option to not do that.

I appreciate that some people like what they do and things like that, but you’re not always going to have people in those roles that sort of are happy to do that.

So one of the things that she was doing was she was throwing her copy through ChatGPT and then having to use other tools to try to change the formatting for specific social media tools and things like that. It was probably a two hour turnaround on each one of their social posts, which is just absolutely insane.

Sitting down and working with her, I started to realize, oh, you’re actually doubling up steps because there’s capability in these other tools to do what you’re doing across all these other different tools.

What we were able to do is we formed up a custom GPT prompt based on about five of their previous social posts and we just trained a GPT to conform their post to that format. And then when she got her copy, she would just throw it through that and it would automatically format.

She would then be able to just straightaway copy that into her social posts and upload her file that she’d done through Capcut and she was done. So we’ve turned a two hour content making process down into about 20 to 30 minutes. That’s writing the copy, that’s running it through ChatGPT.

It’s getting ideas, it’s getting approval, it’s all that sort of, it’s end to end. We’ve done that and now she’s saved an hour and a half and she’s doing that three times a week. How much time have we saved us?

4 and a half hours a week on one simple process. Think about now, the content that you do for your business. What sort of marketing activities do you do?

What could you do with four and a half extra hours of marketing activity or not? Use that four and a half hours for business at all. Use it for something else.

For this client, they’ve now had a person who can spend four and a half extra hours they’re employed regardless of how much time they saved and so are you. Technically she can now work on other things in the business that are meaningful to that business.

They’ve had a whole bunch of backlog of other stuff that they would like to work on, you know, including like manuals for their product and all sorts of other stuff. She can now dedicate her time to doing that, which is actually ultimately going to support their customers better.

You got one side, which is focusing on leads and trying to, you know, get social presence and branding and things like that.

And there’s the other side of the equation where she’s actually going to be working on something that is tangibly going to make a difference to their existing clientele. It means that their existing clientele are going to be happier. They’re going to come back and they’re going to go, I want another product.

And the chances of them landing repeat work is going to go up, which means that their sales cycle is going to reduce and things like that. So it ultimately means that there’s going to be more revenue for this business over the coming years.

Since I started working with them, they’re at $6.5 million a year. Right now, they’re on track for 8.7. And I’ve only been working with them for two years.

So there’s great benefit in looking at the different processes that your people are running to have benefits like this just across two people. This is before we get to automation, this is before we get to outsourcing. Right.

This is just looking at smarter ways of working and being intentional about what we’re looking at, what we’re working on. Being disciplined enough to say no to the things that don’t add value. Be intentional about the things that you’re working on.

If you’re really, really serious about saving time in your business, budgeting your time, being intentional is going to be the thing that makes the biggest difference. And this is before we even get to technology. Are we going to talk about technology on this podcast? Absolutely, we are.

We are going to be talking about different tools, we’re going to be talking about different IR bros and why they’re wrong. The best thing you can do today is to not worry about technology. There’s a big overhead that comes with learning it and implementing it.

The biggest benefit you can get today is by looking at what you’re working on today in your business and being intentional about what you’re doing in that space. So there you go. We’ve covered off on how to do your first process map. You can do it now for every sale.

Okay, so from the time a lead is made to the time that you get the contract, how do you do the sale? How do you do your client management, client delivery? From the time that you get your contracts, the time you off board, the client?

How do you do your marketing, how you do your finances? All of those are processes. Start to document. Write down the things that you do. You can record yourself doing stuff.

You know, narrate what you’re doing. Take the transcription of what you’re doing, throw it through ChatGPT and ask, how can I do this better?

Your business I hate to break this to you, but your business is not that unique.

Your business has problems other people have solved before, so there’s no reason why you can’t go through and do these activities and get immediate benefit out of it. So have a go at that today. If you’re interested in doing the calendar audit that I mentioned earlier in this episode, you can get that in your inbox.

Lonewolfunleashed.com for forward slash Calendar. Thank you for listening to this episode, and we’ll see you next time.