Unleashing the Power of Time: Why You Can’t Afford to Waste a Single Minute in Your Business!

Katie Bell: 1:14

Welcome to another thought provoking episode of the treat your business podcast. I’m your host, Katie Bell, thank you so much for listening, we are going to be talking about why you can’t afford not to, on this episode, and this episode has been, I guess created in thought through from a recent conversation I’ve had with quite a few of our clients and on when we run our business and marketing audit calls, I get to speak to lots and lots and lots of clinic owners and business owners. And I’m always, I guess, astounded and slightly shocked on how people choose to spend their time. And it’s not always intentional in that they are choosing to spend their time on certain activities, because that’s their choice. It’s just that they don’t know how else to use their time. And sometimes we can be so wrapped up in our businesses and spinning so many plates, and so busy with patients and on that patient treadmill, that until we stop and take a moment and really understand how we are using our time, we can’t stop and reflect on what we should be spending our time on. Instead, we because we kind of think we should be doing it or like I have got all this to do anyway. So I’m just I’m just busy being really, really busy. So are you a very busy person? Do you constantly say that you’re busy? Do you constantly feel like you’re running from one thing to the next. And this is looking into when you’re making decisions in your business around spending money on getting people to do things for you? Why you often when people say to me, but I can’t afford it. And I say but you can’t afford not to? I hear it all the time. I can’t afford it. I’ve not got the money to do that. When I can afford it, then I will do it. And I always flip it around and say but can you afford not to? Because what impact is it having in your on your growth, on your finances and on your health and well being. So time is the most valuable currency we have. People say money is the most valuable thing. It’s not time. But it’s also completely non renewable. And science scarily it’s constantly ticking away. So imagine that you’ve got an unlimited a very limited amount of money in your bank account. Okay. You can never get any more of it. And it can’t be renewed. Once it’s gone. It’s gone. Would you do would you spend without any thoughts? No. But we often just pass away our time without realising its true worth. So valuing your time is going to be one of the biggest keys for you to achieving, and opening that door to achieving your goals and living your life on purpose. Because every time you make a choice, every choice you make comes with an opportunity cost. I always say whenever I say yes to something, have to say no to something else. In every choice that you make. If you say yes to the pizza, you saying no to the size eight jeans, for example. Okay. You can have pizza, every piece is all about balance. But what I’m saying here is when we are constantly saying yes to lots of things in our business, that are not making a difference in our business or not driving our business forward and are consuming us in terms of time and energy. We are saying no to something else. So whether it’s watching TV, scrolling social media, being in a really boring and productive meeting, spending hours in a one to one with your, with your members of your team, trying to figure out how to set pieces of software up trying to figure out how to work out the Instagram insights, how to figure out how to start your podcast. There’s always something that you could be doing that is in your zone of genius that is going to it’s going to make the biggest difference quickly, to your business, to your income to your time to your energy to your freedom. So I want you to think all the time every time I say yes to squeezing that client in what am I saying no to so we can be empowered, in what decisions we actually make. When we’re intentional about our choices, we are then directing our energy towards what It really matters. So I like to do a four box exercise. And what we do in the four box exercises, we take a piece of a4, put a line down the middle and a line across the centre. Okay, so you’ve got four equal boxes. And in the top left hand box, as you look at that piece of paper, you can do this now as you’re listening, you’re going to write, I used to say 10 pounds. And then I’ve realised inflation means that actually, nobody works for 10 pounds anymore, I’m gonna save 15 pounds, okay, you’ve got 15 pounds, the top right box in the corner, you’re gonna get 25 pounds, bottom left, 50 pounds, and bottom right 250 pounds. And here’s what we do, you are going to write down for one day, and you are going to write every task that you do in your business and in your life in one of those boxes, and those boxes represent what you would have to pay somebody else to do that job for you. Roughly give or take, okay, it is not saying that 50 pound an hour and 100 pound an hour, 75 pound an hour, one’s better than the other, okay, they’re just different jobs, and they just have a different monetary value against them. So I want you to start thinking about now everything that you’ve done today or done in the last week, and where you think most of your time has been spent. Now, I said at the beginning for equal boxes. And every time that people do this exercise within our coaching programme, they’re 15 pounds. Now a box is completely cluttered and full and packed, and like scribbling it into tiny little gaps. And what they realise is that their 250 pound an hour jobs, there’s very, very few of them. Now, what this means, and what this shows is that most of us are spending time on those 15 pound an hour, 25 pound an hour jobs, they are consuming us, but yet they’re not moving our business forwards your zone of genius, the things that you are, like amazing at doing your unique brilliance are going to be in those bottom boxes, definitely in the bottom right box. So when we’re looking at how we’re spending our time, do that exercise first. And then we first of all start in the 15 pound an hour box and we say okay, of those tasks there, what can I get rid of? Who can who can I delegate those tasks to. Because whether you are a clinician that knows you need to give up as much clinical, your clinical work and do less of it. And you need to work on your business, or whether you’ve already done that. And you’re now working on the business and not in the business, your time is valued at a certain level. So clinically, when you’re in your business, your time will be valued less. Because unless you’re charging 250 500 pound 1000 pound an hour, which if you are fabulous, then your clinical time is actually going to be a limiter to the growth of your business. Because you will soon hit a ceiling of I can see eight patients a day I charged the 800 pound session, my limits my income is 800 pound in that day. And that’s it. You’re never gonna make any more money. Because you have no time then to go and work on your business. But if you had four hours of the day that you were seeing clients, you make 400 quid great. If you then go and spend four hours working on your business in those zones of genius exercises in that bottom right box, where your worth is 250 plus an hour. You’re going to you’re going to make your business more money. Now, okay, people say to me, yeah, but when I do that task at a don’t instantly get 250 Pound Drop into my bank account. You can’t look at it like that. You’ve got to start thinking about if I spend time putting a social media post together and running around on Instagram trying to post it What could I have done with my time instead? Could I have gone to the local NCT group and run a workshop where there is 30 of my ideal clients out there and I’ve given them a hot or a lead magnet. That’s meaning 20 of those 30 people are now coming into the clinic next week on a consultative free consultation. And of those 20 people 10 of them are going to join my birth and baby ready programme and the birth of baby ready programme is 500 pounds. So that 500 pounds times 10 is 5000 pound income typically avec. So I have gone and delivered a free workshop in an NCT clinic. And as a result of that free workshop, I’ve brought the ink the business five grand of income in. If I spent that hour in my clinic, I’d have made 100 pounds 100 versus 5000, which are you going to take? So it’s really, really important that this this opportunity cost and trade off cost is looked at, always in your business, whether you are just starting out, I had a business a marketing audit called Just this morning, actually with a lovely lady who runs a Skin Clinic. And she is very new into her business. And one of the biggest challenges is being visible and getting herself out there. She was spending quite a large amount of time on Instagram and on Facebook organically trying to build her audience. Okay, and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, if you want to do that great fine. Knock yourself out. But actually what we talked about is where Who does she want to work with? And where are they? She runs a bricks and mortar clinic in a local community? Where are those people? And how can we go and reach those people? How can we think outside the box? So one of the things we talked about today was that one of her ideal clients is going to be people who want amazing skin for their wedding. So not only do they want amazing skin, because that’s the solution. What they don’t want is to look like an old bag on their wedding day. Okay, they don’t want acne, they don’t want rotation. They don’t want breakouts, they want to feel the best version of themselves. So I said okay, go and find every wedding dress shop within five miles of your Sim clinic and go to them with a voucher exclusive beautiful looking voucher that you can get printed probably for about 50 quid, probably designed for about 50 quid and have it look, I’ve lovely card bit shiny bits to it or make it look really exclusive. And every time somebody buys a wedding dress from that, that wedding dress shop owner, they get a beautiful voucher for a skin, wedding, skin ready, whatever skin wedding ready, whatever you want to call that. Free Consultation with you. Every single time. How many dresses to sell in a day. How many clients are you going to get in front of all it’s cost you is the design time and the print time? Could you give the wedding dress owner? A Course of Hydrafacials okay, what’s the cost to you? While Katie the costume is three Hydrafacials is 400 pounds? What does it cost you to deliver? Okay, it cost me 40 pounds and products 120 pounds. That is a marketing strategy, a marketing spend 420 quid, the wedding dress owner, shop owner has amazing skin. She feels great. She has trust in you she likes you she knows you she trusts you is she now going to give all of her beautiful brides something added value. Yeah, she is. So we spent one hour brainstorming all these amazing ideas for this lady on this podcast. Now she’d spent an hour on her social media, putting a probably average posts out there, there’s no judgement, just what most of them are, she will probably have had zero people ringing to book. Whereas giving a one hour of her time to get on a call with me meant that we have now just leverage that time. And we have come up with so many strategies that she can now go and put into place and be visible and be able to take action and grow her clinic and her you know her business. So I’m asking you the question, What things are you spending time on in your business that you should not and I don’t care whether you tell me that you have not got any money to do it. If it’s if it’s important enough, you will find the money to do it. I had a lady yesterday on a coaching call. And I said to her what’s the biggest challenge? What’s the thing that’s getting in your way? She said I can’t figure out how to set stripe up and I said why you figure it out? Because I have to and I won’t Okay, give me one second. When Google went on people, Brower found somebody for 15 quid for one hour of work that will set up her Stripe account for her. I said so what’s getting in the way now? She said nothing. I said Okay, move forward with it. That has been on her mind for weeks and weeks and weeks. So use people per hour. Use fibre. Use your VAs, use your pas, but you must stop and take a moment to reflect on what is where am I spending all this time and if you listen to my podcast a few weeks ago, I talked about buying some clothes for my flowerbed. So I could save myself 10 minutes every day of having to water the blowing garden. Some people might think that’s really anal and really over the top for me, my time is sacred. It’s precious. I, I am a natural action taker and high achiever. That is, I am hardwired to always want to be doing something. So it’s important that I just don’t be busy all the time, but I’m productive with what I do. So I look at my tasks, and I, I look at and I get, okay, all of these things that I’ve got that I feel like I’ve got to do. And the other day I sat with in my clinic, and I had, we’ve got massive projects happening in our clinic at the moment. It’s so exciting lots and lots of stuff to do. And I decided I was like, Okay, who can do this, and I just put initials next to every single one of them. And there was about two or three things then at the list of 25 that needed me. Now I can oversee them, I can direct, I can power them forwards. But it doesn’t need to be me that has to be the integrator it doesn’t need to be the me that has to do it. I should not be the one running my business on a day to day basis. So in summary, ask yourself this whenever you say something like I can’t afford to do that, or I can’t afford to get help in my business, or I can’t afford to take on a receptionist or can’t afford to pay somebody to do my social media posting, or I can’t afford to get help with it in from a business coach can you afford not to you got to see the ripple effect on your life, every aspect of your life and your career, your relationships, your health, your well being optimising your time allocation will instantly make you more productive, it will improve your relationships, it will reduce your stress, you will have a greater sense of fulfilment, every moment you spend it as an investment in your future. Time does not wait for you. It does not wait for anyone and the choices that you are making today. Shape the life that you are going to lead tomorrow. So you can’t afford to not make conscious decisions on how you spend your time. It’s not just always about doing more. It’s about doing what really, really matters. I hope you found this episode super valuable. And if you do nothing else as a result of listening to my voice for the last 20 minutes, go and get yourself a piece of a4 paper two or four boxes, write whatever figures you want in those in those boxes, and stop just putting down everything that you do for the next 24 hours. It’s one of those boxes. It will blow your mind about where you are spending your time. Thank you for listening and I look forward to you all tuning in to the next episode.