You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 175.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove Podcast, your calm space for practical help to get your dream business up and running while being authentically you and taking care of your mental health. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. I'm so glad you're here!

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Hi My Strong Friends. 

Wow, we are at the end of September already. 

Are you wondering where the year went? 

Or are you thinking, Wow, look at everything I got done this year. 

I tend to be in that last one. And y'all I'm a bit tired. 

I've gone on six major trips this year. And five of them were for business. And I've decided that I am done going on trips for the rest of the year, and probably until March of next year. 

It takes a lot to do all of the travel and run a business and coach other people on all of their businesses, and be COO in another person's business. There's just a lot of stuff going on. 

HOW AM I EVER GOING TO GET ALL THIS DONE?

So you might find yourself also having a lot of stuff going on in your life. Because not only do you have a business, you have a family, you have a home that you have to take care of. You might have a car that needs repair. I know I've got a headlight out right now and like I don't have time to go get that headlight changed. 

But anyway, you may find that you start to wonder:

How am I going to get it all done? 

Overwhelm can feel so real and so pressing at times. And you don't really need that. Right? 

Because if you start to feel overwhelmed, your brain starts coming up with more thoughts about you feeling overwhelmed. And then you just start feeling even more overwhelmed because of how you're thinking about your overwhelm. 

So let's just look at tasks instead. Because it's a lot easier to just think about tasks and which ones need to get done. Instead of thinking, 

I've got a lot of overwhelm. 

How am I going to get everything done? 

Oh, I feel so overwhelmed. 

When you think about your tasks, these are the tasks that need to get done here, these are the tasks that need to get done there. Then you can just start ticking them off one at a time. 

I'm gonna go over five big things that will help you to relieve your business overwhelm, so that you can get it all done. 

Okay, quickly five things

1. Make a map of your business
2. Prioritize
3. Create project plans
4. Create time estimates
5. Schedule it 

And then of course, we know that you need to resolve any scheduled crashes or obstacles. But that's a whole different episode. 

FIRST, MAKE A MAP FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Let's talk about mapping first, what the heck does that mean? 

In the easiest terms, we're looking at the critical path of your business. What is the way that you get customers to notice you? Find out about you? Engage with you? Become interested in your products and services? Purchase those products and services? And then you deliver them? 

Now you may have more than one product or service. So you need to have that too. 

A map includes all of those different pieces. And all the way through the fulfillment and even having customers repurchase. Again, when you can map out all of those individual pieces and look at some numbers that go with it to see How well am I doing? Then you have an idea of where you need to do other work. 

By other work. I mean, if you have pieces that are not fully built yet, or they're just missing altogether, you know that that's a focus area. If you have something where you're doing a ton of stuff, a lot of activity, a lot of hours, and yet you're not seeing the benefit from that, like people are not advancing to the next part of what you're doing. 

It doesn't mean add on a whole new layer, whole new product or service line, it means fix the one that you have first, optimize it before you start adding on because if you're just going to add on extra product lines, you're creating a whole lot of work to get a little bit out of each one. 

It can get really exhausting. And so when you map it out, you have an idea of how much do you really have on your plate And what do you need to do which things need your focus? 

NEXT, DECIDE WHAT IS #1 PRIORITY

Once you have that done, now you can prioritize. Because each of those things that you need to do, it's going to involve a whole bunch of little tiny things and a whole lot of time. You can't do everything all at once. 

You need to be able to prioritize. One of the things that I like to use is a prioritization grid. And I have it, it's a nine box grid. The top part is impact, and along the side is urgency. I'll give you a diagram of this in the show notes, so that you can see what this looks like. 

Across the top, we have impact, high impact, meaning that if you don't get this thing done or resolve this obstacle, you're not going to be able to make any money in your business, like none.

Medium impact means that you can still make some money, but you're not making your sustainable goal money. And then a low impact means that you can make your sustainable goal money, but you can't make your bold goal money. 

Then urgency goes down the other side. And it starts at the top with high, meaning that if you don't take care of this right now, you could completely shut down your whole business. And so that means it could be a process obstacle or something not done, it could be a compliance thing. It could be a mental health thing. Like if you're having full-on panic attacks, that could shut down your whole business. So those are things that could be a high urgency. 

A medium urgency means that there's a workaround for it. So you can still do the thing. But it's taking you a little bit longer, or it's a little bit more expensive, because you haven't resolved the main thing. That's a medium urgency. 

Then a low urgency just means that it's something that kind of annoys you, it's something that you wish could be a little bit different, but it's not really pressing on you. What you do with this urgency and impact grid, is you have all of those different big level projects. 

And you're going to look to see which square does this go into. 

Is it a high impact, high urgency? 

Is it a medium impact, medium urgency?

Low impact, low urgency? 

And all of the different combinations in between. 

And then the top quadrant, the top three boxes, if it forms an L at the top, you've got your high highs, your medium high, and your high mediums. And again, when you go and look at the image, it'll make a lot more sense. 

Those become your first priority. 

Now, sometimes it really sucks when you look at this, because the things that you really wanted to do, you're gonna find are actually either a priority two or priority three, you're like, Oh, but I really wanted to do those. 

Yeah, that's why it was important to use the prioritization matrix, because it lets you know what's really going to have a significant impact in your business. That was prioritization. The next thing is coming up with a project plan.

NOW, MAKE A PLAN

 Now that you know what your first urgency things are, now you're going to create a project plan. 

And this means getting down into the nitty gritty, because sometimes people just be like, Okay, I'm gonna do this, and then they just go out and they do it. And they miss a whole lot of the pieces, or they don't anticipate these different pieces. And then all of a sudden, you hit a deadline, and realize, oh, no, I forgot to do this, that the other thing. 

So that's where taking the time to sit down, flush out every single thing that you have to do, is very important. And one thing that I like to do is get extra granular. 

Now, this can sometimes cause some of my clients a little overwhelm, as they're looking at their list, and it's three hundred things long. Okay, well, maybe it's not three hundred, but it looks like three hundred. But it's because I use an agile method. 

So there's lean, which is doing everything like the least amount of effort for the biggest payoff. And then agile is where you break things up into the tiniest pieces, so that you can do them even out of sequence if you need to. 

With a goal of it being as fast as possible. What is the easiest, fastest way that you can get this thing done? 

So when you break things down into nitty-gritty details, you might be doing some of those things out of order, or you might see where you can batch things together. 

And I'll give a quick example.  

When I'm designing a product, and I have to build a product in a website, one of the things that I will do first is go and create all of the different images. I have project plans that list out in detail all of the different images that are needed for the whole thing. 

Because sometimes we don't realize how many it actually takes, it could be anywhere from thirty to forty images. We're talking checkout pages, sales pages, the products themselves, all of the little modules, everything, there are gonna be a lot. Since I have those all broken out, I can go into Canva, sit down, and create all of them all at one time. 

This also helps me to find, Is there an easy repeatable image that I can use and just make small modifications? So that I can create all of these really fast? If I was doing this differently, where it was doing, let's say one piece of the product at a time, and then going and creating a couple of the images, it's actually going to slow me down overall. 

In your project plans, if you can break it out into the tiniest pieces, then you can decide, 

Okay, today I feel like doing graphics. 

Oh today I feel like writing out some copy. 

Today, I feel like working on some worksheets. 

Or today I feel like doing some of the tech part. 

It helps to break it all down. And then you can plan it out appropriately for the hours that you have, because that's another piece and we'll get into more into the schedule part. 

You may not have a full eight hours a day, blocked out and available for you to create and do all of your projects. Having it broken out into little tiny pieces, you can fit it in to all of those time openings. 

LET’S TALK TIME

Number four is coming up with time estimates. This has to be one of the trickiest ones, especially if you've never done the task before coming up with time estimates. It's really just a best guess. And if you're anything like me, you'll come up with an estimate, you'll do the thing and realize that it takes way longer than you thought it would. And you might get a little frustrated.

I've had this way too many times. That's why once I figured out how long it actually took me, I make sure that I go back and I update my time estimates. Because it's like going to that food buffet. Your eyes are bigger than your stomach. 

In business, your eyes are bigger than your mental and time bandwidth. So you'll want to do all of the things under the sun. But if you were to actually list them all out and come up with the accurate time estimates, you realize that you might have said yes to one hundred twenty hours worth of work to fit all into one week worth of your time. And that's not going to be good for your mental health nor your business sustainability. 

Time estimates, come up with them. Don't get upset if once you do it you realize that your time estimate was off. Of course, it's going to be off, you've never done it before. So go back, update your project plans with the correct time so that next time you do it, you have a better idea of your time estimates. 

Another watch-out with time estimates is, don't get upset if once you put all of the times in and you start to look at where that all fits in, that you're not going to hit the deadline that you actually wanted to. 

Again, if you've never done it before, it seems like it should be really super easy and super fast. It's just because you don't realize all of the little nitty-gritty pieces that are involved and how long it actually takes. 

Sometimes the unexpected happens, like tech glitches or power outages. So you also need to consider having a little bit of a cushion in there. In case something goes wrong. It always feels better to get something done early than to scramble trying to get it done way past your due date. 

FINALLY, POP OPEN THAT PLANNER

This is a good time to talk about the schedule. 

So once you have all of those different pieces. Now take an honest look at your schedule. So many of us have a “Driver” personality of just,go and get it all done. We might take our fifteen hours worth of work and try to cram it into six hours in a day. Okay, that's not being kind to yourself. 

It's also not realistic. It's also not kind to plan out a whole day without giving yourself any breaks. I mean there's a reason why there are laws in place that give employees break time. You're supposed to have at least a fifteen minute break for every four hours that you work. If you work an eight hour shift, you're supposed to have two fifteen minute breaks and at least a half hour lunch break. 

As an entrepreneur, you're just like, go, go, go, go, go. And sometimes you're not giving yourself a break. You're so excited about getting all of the work done, that you're thinking

Okay, I'm just going to push through, none of this matters I'll eat at my desk. 

Well, what you might start to notice is that your energy gets depleted, you're running on fumes, you don't know why you're not getting things done as fast as you were before. 

And it's because your body only has so much energy. It needs to get replenished, your brain needs to have a break. And those of you that just decide

Okay, I'm just gonna keep pushing through and work through the weekend. 

If you keep doing that weekend, after weekend after weekend, your brain is never going to have a chance to rest, and your body's never going to have a chance to rest. 

And even worse, your customers are going to start to expect that that's your normal so that when you do actually take a full weekend off, people start to think that you're slacking off on your job. When really you're just being a normal human and having a weekend. 

So, build that into your schedule, honor it as best as you can, I know that sometimes you're going to have that urgency thinking, well I need to make money, I need to make money, I don't have the revenue coming in. That's because you're doing everything a little bit too fast and not looking at it.

Being strategic as to what you do and what priority that's going to make the biggest impact for your business. When you're scheduling, look at it realistically, put in your breaks first. Put in your beginning time, and your end time of your day. 

Now look at how much time, think about, Are you going to have any times during that work day where you're gonna get pulled away? 

One, you got to put your breaks in there. But two, are you going to have things come up with your kids where you're going to have to run and go get them from school? Or that maybe they're already living out of the house, but all of a sudden they have a last minute request of, Mom, Dad, can you help me with this, that or the other thing? 

You get to plan ahead how you want to respond to those. And if you're going to make time for those during your workday, or if you're going to have that be an after work or weekend thing. 

Sometimes you might even have parents that need your help. And you know, our parents are getting older. So of course, they're going to need our help. Are you going to have that as part of your work day or is that something that you can do to help outside of those work hours? 

And how do we help the people in our lives to respect our work time, especially if you work from home? It's a little bit too easy for people to think, Oh, well, since you're home, you can do this. And you can do that, and that. 

No, when you're working from home, your home office is the same as if you were working at some other office, you're not available to do your home things. This is your work hours. And especially if you're looking at all of the work that you have, and it's fifteen hours, and you're trying to cram it into six hours worth of work. 

And then people are like, Oh, well, but can you do this? And can you do that? And can you do this thing? 

All of a sudden, if you're saying yes to those, you only have three hours of work hours available, and you still have fifteen hours worth of work you wanted to get done. 

Getting realistic with what hours you actually have available. You might not have forty hours available for your work. What are you going to modify? Looking at your prioritization matrix and your project plans, what are the things that you can realistically get done that are going to have the biggest bang for your buck in your business? 

And then start to plug those in and get really good at being that gatekeeper on your time. There's going to be requests that come up. It's okay to say no or to say, Yes, I can do that. But I can't do that for about three weeks, because I'm booked out for that long. 

It's not easy. I know. You're a strong person, you're used to doing not only your stuff, but helping everybody else with their stuff because you're fully capable and you're really good at getting all this stuff done. 

But you already have enough on your list. And just because someone doesn't have enough time to get their stuff done doesn't mean that it needs to come on to yours, you already have plenty. That's kind of one of those issues with the world is that we're all trying to do way too much. And we're forgetting the basics of just being on the planet and living. 

Sometimes that's driven by really big money goals. And that's something that we can reevaluate. What is the most important to us? Do we need to have the huge money goals? If it means you're going to do tons and tons and tons of stuff and miss out on actually living and enjoying your life, just so that, yeah, at some point, you can make these huge money goals? 

Or do you figure out how to have a smaller financial footprint, so that you can balance out the amount of work that you have, and you still have enough money to live the life that you actually enjoy, without burning yourself out. 

GET IT ALL DONE AND LIVE THE LIFE YOU WANT!

All of that is possible for you. You can get it all done. You just change what's getting done, you prioritize it, you break it all down, come up with those time estimates, and you put it on your realistic schedule that's balanced so that you take breaks, you breathe in and out, you enjoy the space around you, you enjoy your life.

You can get it all done, you really can.

I'm here to help you so that you can get it all done. 

This is going to be the last week that the Unshakable Business Co-Lab membership is open for enrollment in 2023. 

It's time for me to start taking a little bit of a break too. So I want to make sure that you know that I'm here to help you. But if you want in, this is your last chance for this year. 

Inside the Unshakable Business Co-Lab, I help you with all of it with your products and services, your sales funnels, visualizing all of those pieces, making sure that you're getting everything all done. Coming up with your connection ability so that you're able to go out and talk with strangers and have them want to work with you, that's either online or in person. I help you with your schedules. 

And most importantly, I help you with your mental health, so that we keep you happy and healthy, so that you can be around helping all the people that need you. 

I would love for you to join me inside the Unshakable Business Co-Lab. You can join by going to my website, and it has an Unshakable tab that you can click on to go right to it.  Or you can just go to my myfreedomgrove.com/join. Again, that is open for enrollment through the end of September. And after that, you'll have to wait until 2024. 

All right, my friends. I hope that you have a great week and I'll talk with you soon. Bye bye. 

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Thank you for listening to My Freedom Grove Podcast. When you are ready to make your dream business a reality and take care of your mental health, I invite you to join the Unshakable Business Co-Lab. This is the mastermind membership you've been waiting for. There's no limits on your imagination, nor your timeline. We're with you every step of the way. To learn more, please visit www.myfreedomgrove.com/join. I'll see you there!