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What you’ll learn in this episode:
There is a way to work less and make bank.
No, it’s not a “get-rich-quick-scheme, and you don’t wave a magic wand and it magically appears.
It’s a formula that’s made of up of knowing what you want and where you want to end up, knowing how much money you want to make, and having a business that’s optimized to get you there (including what you’re selling and how to engineer your business around it so it makes money consistently).
Today I’m going to share with you the five steps you need to take to make this a reality for you.
And not someday…right now.
After listening to this episode, you can get started kicking off your summer in a way you’ve never experienced, all while being confident that you’ve got what it takes to keep your business going and money coming in.
Here’s a glance at this episode:
- There are five key steps every business owner needs to work through to have their desired work schedule this summer and keep money coming in.
- You do not need to trade more of your time to make more money.
- The more that you can honor your boundaries and your commitments that you make to yourself (including to have the summer you want and making the money you want), the more successful you will be
- Discover a way that you can take everything you’ve learned today and dive deeper to take your results to the next level right now.
Mentioned in this episode:
7 Habit Of Highly Successful People
Summer Business Success Challenge
Work/Connect with me:
Consults That Convert FREE Training
[00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the practical mindset Podcast. I’m Jess Miller, and I’m so excited to be here today to talk to you about summertime. What do you want to do this summer? Are you excited that it is right around the corner? I know I am. I love the change in the seasons. And I love the freedom that summer sort of brings with it. And it’s feel and it’s, you know, the way that we design it. And I love talking to people about how to optimize their business around the things that they want to do, especially around their summer. If you’re someone who has children, or maybe you work in an industry where things tend to sort of dial down a little bit in the summertime, you are one of these people who has this opening of your schedule or this change in your schedule that allows you to think about your time and your business differently. And how do you want to construct this, to really make your heart sing to do all the things that summer has to offer, while also maintaining your business, your sanity and your momentum. There is this horrible like rhetoric out there that we need to be sacrificing all the things in our life that we enjoy, to make money in our business, and that we need to be working all the time to do it. And that is just not true. And so many of you who have been listening to the podcast have heard me talk about this topic in some fashion, you know, before in other ways. But today, I’m going to talk to you about how you can work 20 hours this summer, and make bank and I mean that you can work the hours that you want to and make money. As long as you follow these five things I’m about to share with you today. Many people walk through, especially this time in the early June timeframe. They walk around, almost like dreading like what am I going to do this summer, when my schedule is changing, or my kids are going to be home and I need to work my business. And they get this sense of dread, they need to trade off one thing for the other. Well, I’m here to offer that if you want to work 20 hours or fill in the blank number of hours this summer and make money, you need to have a clear plan and a clear vision about what it is that you want to create and how you’re going to get there. And so today, we’re going to talk about this. And this is going to be a little bit rapid fire. So get out your pencils and your pens and your notebooks because we’re going to just jump right into it.
[02:39] So number one, the first thing that you need to do, if you want to change your schedule this summer, and for the sake of this podcast, I’m going to use 20 hours. If you want to work 20 hours this summer, and make bank the first thing that you need to do is you need to get clear on what you want your summer, your weeks to look like. Okay, I think you have probably heard me say this about a gazillion times on this podcast. But one of the most important things you could ever do in your business in your life in anything, any goal you said, anything you ever want to do, is you need to get clear. And I have always been a proponent of you need to start with the end in mind. Where do you want to go? What is the final thing that you actually want? So again, for this example, you’re going to navigate into your summer thinking about 20 hours a week. Okay? So you want to work 20 hours a week? And you’re going to get clear on what does that look like for you? Does it mean? I’m going to work four hours a day for five days? Does it look like maybe I want to take my Friday’s off? Does it look like I want to work only three days? Is that Monday through Wednesday? Is it Tuesday through Thursday? What do you want your summer and your weeks to look like? Okay, in this example, I’m going to pretend that we decided that we’re only working Tuesday through Thursday. And I will share with all of you that my work week consists of really putting the bulk of my work is especially externally facing work into those three days of my week into my Tuesday through Thursday. So for the sake of this example, we’re gonna say 20 hours a week, Tuesday through Thursday, and we’re gonna work you know, six hours each day, six and a half hours each day. So to get us to around that 20 hours number, okay, so six and a half hours each day, seven hours each day, which would look like nine to four each day. 9am to 4pm each day. Okay, so first, what do you want your summer to look like? Get clear for this example. We’re gonna do Tuesday through Thursday. We’re going to do nine to four. Okay.
[04:52] The second thing is, you need to block your time and schedule in the priorities or the meetings or the thing They are non negotiable. Okay? So going to our example, that would mean that I’m going to go in, and I am going to block everything before nine o’clock in the morning, and everything after 4pm In the afternoon, on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, then I’m going to also go and block my Monday and Friday, because we’re only working nine to four, Tuesday through Thursday. So I’d go in and block that time. The next thing I would do is I would start scheduling in the things that need to be scheduled, starting with the priorities. So if any of you have ever listened to Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he talks about this idea of big rocks and little rocks, I would schedule in these big rocks. So what does that look like for you? What are the priorities in your life? What is the priority? I always start with my personal life? What are the things that are non negotiable? That might need to go into that timeframe? Do my kids need to get picked up at a certain time? Is there a camp? Is there something that’s happening around my house that needs to happen on one of those days? What are those big rocks that are the priority in my personal life, schedule those in, and then I do that for my business, those big rocks, I also then go to what needs to happen on those days to keep my business going. So meetings with clients, my accelerator group, if there’s some sort of personal development that I’m doing, I would schedule those in next. And so I would get really specific on what needs to go where how long it’s going to take, and what is going to need to be in there first. Now here’s what I want to say as a caveat, some of you might have your brain going wait, but what if it doesn’t, you know, I’ll fit in there. So if we just use this example, right now, we’re working 20 hours a week, and we’re going to work Tuesday through Thursday. If you schedule your time, from nine to four, you’re actually over your 20 hours, right, you’re over your 20 hours is actually 21 hours. And so I would recommend doing that. Because if something needs to shift, or don’t tweak or spill over, you’ve got a tiny little bit of padding. And you could also, if there was going to be an exception to the rule. And we’ll get through this, too. We’ll get to this in the next steps. Like, is there an overflow spot where you could put that person, so maybe it would be like, for very extenuating circumstances, I’m going to schedule a call at 430 on Tuesday, as an example. So there’s some like wiggle room in that, because let’s face it, life happens. You we have no control over certain things. So giving that little bit of flex is really important. But you want to block your time, and you want to schedule in your priorities, and then you sprinkle in the other things. Okay?
[07:55] Third, is you need to communicate your plan your intentions to the people that you need to communicate with, maybe it’s your clients, maybe it’s vendors that you’ve been working with, where you’re saying, hey, come June 25, I’m making this up, you, we’re going to be switching our schedule to look like this. And here’s what that means for you. And here’s how we’re going to accommodate you. And here’s how we’re going to make sure we’re continuing to move forward, do the things that we need to do. And we want to explain that to you. And here’s why that’s really great for you. And this is crucial. You want to always put your, your perspective in the mind of the person you’re talking to. So when you tell them this, what are they going to care about? Why is this important to them? Why do they care about it? And why is this a good thing for them? And why is it going to be okay? So you want to communicate this, and you want to make sure that you can explain to people how these pieces are fitting together and why it’s okay or a good thing for them or why it’s going to be fine, that you’re basically saying to them, you can trust me, I’m a serious business owner, I am focused on, you know, moving things forward. And here’s how I’m going to do it. And for some of you, depending on who your clients are, you can share with them your why, why are you doing this, you could say I’ve always wanted to spend, you know, more time with my kids in the summer, I wanted to really prioritize my health and I don’t want to be working around the clock all the time, or it’s been a really long year in COVID. And we’re finally getting to come out of it. And this is why I’m doing this. But rest assured that you are a priority for me. And we are taking all the measures to make sure that what we agreed to were doing, for example, so always think of that person in that communication process when you’re communicating this and make sure that you do communicate, don’t just, you know, change things and nobody knows and no one says anything and then it gets really discombobulated. So you want to make sure you communicate to people that you need to communicate with what you’re doing, what your plan is, and what your schedule looks like.
[09:52] The fourth thing is you need to hold your boundaries. You need to really double down on why are you doing this? What was that summer that you fleshed out that you had that vision of in the first step of this podcast. And you need to hold yourself and remind yourself as to why you’re doing this when your boundaries get pushed. Because as I mentioned earlier, it is almost inevitable that life happens and certain things push on other things. And it’s very easy to be like, oh, you know what, I’ll just work until eight o’clock at night. What you really want to do is you want to double down on why are you doing this? What does it mean for you? How have you set yourself up for success and put in the structure to create those results and be successful, that you can lean on and now support yourself. And I really do believe that the more that we can stay true and honor our boundaries and the commitments that we make to ourselves, the more successful we will be. And I’m going to repeat that the more that you can honor, your boundaries and your commitments that you make to yourself, the more successful you will be, the road to your dream is paved with a bunch of choices that you make in service to the person and the life you want to become. It is in those tiny steps in those moments where we decide to hold our boundaries, to not blow through our boundaries to honor what it is that we said we were going to do, and stay fast on that path to where we want to go that long term goal. It’s in those moments that we cast a vote for our future self, and our future life. And so it’s really important that you honor those boundaries, you hold those boundaries.
[11:45] And number five, which is last but not least, is that you have a support system that helps to move you through this, that knows your desires, that knows what you have set up, that is going to be there to help you tweak it and navigate through it and cheer you on when you’re doing it, that you can send those pictures and those selfies from the beach this summer, or from the time that you’re spending with your children, or when you’re sitting in bed with your cup of coffee because you got to sleep in, or that bestie trip that you’re taking with your girlfriends or significant others that you got to take because you honored your schedule, and you are able to make your work work for you versus the other way around. And so that support network is really, really important. Can you do it alone? Yes. Will it be as fun and as easy? No, I promise you, you want to surround yourself with the people who I say this all the time, they get it and they get you. And you want to make sure that you have a guide and people around you that have gone before you and done this that can help save you so much time and energy and frankly, Saturday by sharing their best practices with you, and helping you move toward your dream of your summer and these weeks and that cadence that you really want. So you need to support yourself with those people who get it and get you.
[13:06] So in summary, number one, get clear on what you want your week to look like. If you want to have a summer where you’re working 20 hours per week and making bank the summer where you’re not sacrificing your profits, your business growth, your momentum for your joy, you need to follow these five steps. So again, one, get clear on what you want your week and your summer to look like and reverse engineer that.
[13:32] Once you get clear on that. You want to to block your time and schedule in your priorities. As I mentioned your big rocks, start with your personal priorities first, and then your business priorities and make sure that you get creative on how do you get those on your schedule within the timeframes that you want to be working within those 20 hours. Number three, communicate to the people you need to communicate with. Make sure you let people know how your schedule is changing why this is really important for them how it’s going to be better, why you’re so excited to do this. Let people into your world and communicate I think over communicating is key. It’s okay if you say it more than once to okay, if you tell them a lot of stuff, your clients and your comrades are really going to appreciate that. And they’re going to know exactly how to work with you and exactly what you’re doing so that it’s the best of all worlds. Number four is once you decide all that, you need to hold your boundaries, you need to have your own back. You need to make sure that you honor your boundaries and the things that you committed to. It is so important that we really have our own backs. And as I mentioned, every time you do this every time you honor your boundaries and honor the decisions that you made, you cast a vote for your future self and the future life that you want, because those dreams and that future is made one decision At a time, it’s those tiny steps. It’s those moments where you decide not to blow through your boundary, you decide to honor the decision that you made and honor what you’re doing in that time where you’re not working, for example, that really brings you down that path to success and things that you want. And five is you want to surround yourself with a support structure, you want to be with those people that are cheering you on, you want to be with those people that can help you navigate through it and support you, when you hit those bumps or when you’re questioning those boundaries.
[15:33] Or when your mind drama shows up and tells you that you can’t do it in 20 hours, when actually you can and you have a whole plan that you planned out, and that you’re surrounded also with the people that can help guide you, they can share their expertise, they can tell you how to do this in a way that saves you tons of time and money and sanity. So you don’t have to figure this all out on your own, you can actually save that time and put it into the things that really matter the most for you. And in this case, it is putting that time and energy into your most incredible summer into that time, both within the 20 hours where you are setting those boundaries. And you’re setting the intention of putting all that energy into your business. And also in the time where you are outside of that time and you’re putting your time and energy into other things. I promise you that you will come out of going through this exercise, feeling amazing getting so much energy, and frankly getting so much more done in your amazing summer in 20 weeks than you ever imagined, while still making all the money that you want.
