Episode 206: 3 Tips To Put Family First As An Entrepreneur & Create More Time Freedom – with April Beach

You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business, mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate. Hi, you guys. And welcome to episode number 206 of the sweet life entrepreneur podcast, and Merry Christmas to those of you who are listening to this live and happy holidays to everybody, regardless of what you celebrate here,

we are celebrating family, and I just hope that this show reaches you and that you’re blessed by what we talk about today. Thank you so much for tuning in with us over the holidays. We’ve never missed an episode so far. And this year with all that’s happened in 2020 is no exception. And so today we are talking about three simple ways to put family first as an entrepreneur and create more time.

So whether you’re listening to this live and it is Christmas week here in 2020, or you’re listening to this down the road, everything we’re talking about is a proven business strategy that you’re going to be able to take to the bank and create more time in your life, whatever you want your life to look like. I know that many of you who’ve listened to this show for years.

You know, that half of the time my teenage boys are walking in and out of the door. On the other side of, of my office recording here, you know, with their friends or to the skate park, you know, wherever it is that you are doing life, we need to create a business model, a lifestyle around enabling that. And so this show fits really well into what we’re talking about right now with the holidays,

with, you know, really cherishing life. I think the one thing that for us, it was just such a hidden blessing that came out of 2020 is just really loving being together at home and cherishing time. The one thing that money can’t buy is a second of time. And so a lot of things we’re talking about here on the show we’ve been talking about for years,

but in this episode is all strategies to control time into a create as much time so that you are enabling family first in your business. This episode is for those of you guys who are in any phase of my start to scale up system. And so that’s phase one through five, whether you’re just thinking about starting a business, or you are a seasoned entrepreneur,

that’s making a huge impact this show. And what we’re talking about here applies to all of you guys who are looking to gain control of time and manage family and company growth. Because the reality is, is a growing a company and raising a family is a lot of work. And oftentimes we as entrepreneurs feel super maxed out right in that song, cats in the cradle,

I’d sing it to you, but I’ve a really terrible voice that song comes on and it’s like heartbreaking. And, and I was actually just listening to it last week with my boys. And one of my kids asked guys, you know, I love song, but what does it actually mean? And I was like, ah, you know, it’s about this dad that worked so hard that he never had time for his kid and he regretted it.

And it was like, Oh, that through the gut, I know we feel that as entrepreneurs. So that’s how we were talking about some strategies here on the show. At the end of this episode, this is what you’re going to know. So you are going to see how you can tweak your current business model right now to create more time like instantly right now,

as you’re listening to the show, we are going to talk about the power of messy days, how you can schedule them and why you will love messy days. And I’m going to share with you some behind the scenes about how I schedule these types of things. And you are going to know more creative ways that you can connect with your number one team,

which is your family. And if you don’t have kids in your listening to this show, this family, your family is your support system, your network, whatever that looks like to you, all of our lives are beautifully different. And so whatever that looks like to you, you’re going to be able to take the strategies that we talk about here on this episode and apply them right away to your business and for all the show notes and the resources we mentioned here in the show,

cruise over to Sweetlife co.com. Again, that Sweetlife co.com click on podcast. And this is episode number two, zero six. Okay. Let’s dive into today’s strategies. It’s going to be a real quick show cause it’s a holiday week, but really powerful. So stick with me.<inaudible> Step number one, in order to create more time in your business for family and lifestyle freedom,

we need to look at your business model. So your business model can either bury you or save you. So the first thing I want you to look at is really how you’re serving clients. How much of that time does that of your time, does that take within a week and understand the demands of delivering certain projects or services places on your time, energy and your ability to focus.

First of all, what do you do? Take a look at what you do. Just kind of picture your, your week and how you’re working with clients. Do you work with people? One-on-one do you work with people, one on group? How does that really look in your life? And right now I want you to assess that. And I want you to understand the time that’s required,

that you are spending currently working with your clients and take a look at this current business model that you have. What does that look like? How do you work with people? Is it one-on-one? Is it one on group? How frequently in the first thing you want to do is you want to ask yourself, you know, Hey, is this working for me or is the actual amount of time that I’m spending with my clients taking away time from family?

Now one might say, well, wow, isn’t that great? You know, you’re, you’re so busy. Your business is so busy. You have so many clients. Yes, that is true, but busy doesn’t equal. Good. So we’re going to give you some tips here to take a look at turning busy-ness into profit and time. And so the first thing I want you to do is I want you to ask yourself,

what can I change right now? So that would be, are you seeing clients five days a week? You and these are just some suggestions for you. Can you block and tackle your client days as an example, I only work with clients privately on Thursdays and Fridays. And I’ve shared this with you guys on the show before, and I’ll share with you again,

because I just get great feedback from this time. Number one, I think, I think best when I consolidate my work. So if I know that Thursdays and Fridays are, or my business coaching days, when I work with entrepreneurs and small businesses, then I get in that mindset and I know what I’m doing. I also then can look at my business model and I can say,

okay, all of these businesses are in this same type of need, this same type of area. And so now I’m going to create groups and I actually scale my business model and I always do this again, reassess it. So I have, if I have five clients that are in the same place and need the same things, I actually will offer a group strategy call for those clients.

It’s great for me, it’s great for them to network with other people and everybody gets the same results. So I want you to look at your business right now and ask yourself, can I number one block and tackle my days. And then within those days, what sort of smart scaling can I do for my business model? So can you create group offers?

Can you create some on-demand content that your clients or your customers might want to absorb, instead of saying the same thing to different people? One-on-one can you create maybe an online resource center for your clients to tap into some of your more, more frequently asked questions to help save some of that time or even create a course or an actual program for them to go through online.

Other strategies for you are creating maybe a membership committee, unity, or an online forum this year can be done with Slack or something easily with boxer, where you create a group of people that you want to connect with and you want to help them Connect with each other, but you don’t want to launch a full-blown membership site because that might not really work with your actual business model.

So those are some suggestions of things that you can look at right now in your business, so that you can say, Hey, listen, what can I actually change immediately? What can I actually group together to save my time? And what are the dates phase where I would like to serve my clients? Another reason I haven’t mentioned it here, but why I serve clients on Thursdays and Fridays is because of the entire beginning of my week is on business building content creation and actual strategy.

And so I take care of the business building inside in the beginning of my week, when my mind is fresh. For example, I’m recording this podcast episode on a Monday, usually record on Mondays or Tuesdays. When I know that I can put really powerful, highly impacting content. And then I take care of serving my clients because once I go in and I start immersing myself in my client’s businesses,

it fully takes over all my thought processes. So that’s one of the reasons why I serve clients towards the end of the week. And then I have that weekend break in between. So action item. Number one is take a look at your current business model. Can you group together the days that you serve your customers, serve your clients, and can you make some changes to how you’re serving your clients?

Creating group offers a membership community, or even just an online forum and really take a look at controlling instead of spreading yourself out throughout the week, consolidating your work into different types of work that you were doing at a time. That’s really strategy. Number one, within that same strategy. We talked about this a few episodes ago on the show within that same strategy,

you should be planning your year in advance. So planning what you’re selling when you’re selling it. So, you know, we have a big macro plan and then we have a micro plan week by week. So you really should be taking a look at what’s happening for the year to come. Regardless of when you’re listening to this episode, you can do this at any point in time and really know what you’re selling when you’re selling it and what demands that’s going to put on your life and your family,

okay. Strategy, or I should say, tip number two is my favorite. And I call it for the love of messy days. This is what a messy day is. A messy day is a day that I have scheduled in the middle of my week. My messy day is always Wednesday. And that day is a break between my strategy and my content creation at the beginning of the week.

And my client service at the end of the week, messy days are totally to be spontaneous. And this is an amazing thing. It’s especially amazing if you have teenagers like I do. So on my messy days, I really don’t schedule any client meetings, but this is the day I schedule like the kids’ teeth cleaning, or if I need to stop by the grocery store or any appointments like I would have for myself,

like going to get my eyelashes glued on or a haircut, all of those things are always scheduled on a Wednesday. This is also the day where I am completely able to be spontaneous with my kids. Do I have to get work done? Yes. I still work on messy days. So Wednesday is my favorite day to be this day. But it’s also the day that,

you know, if my kids just want to sit down and, and have a cup of coffee and hang out where I always don’t have somewhere to be, I always can make sure that that is in that day. And they literally throw the plan out the window again. Do you have a list of things you have to get done on messages? Yes.

Are they so regimented and scheduled? Not at all is one of the things I love doing with my kids on messy days is we have this taco wagon down the street and it’s just this amazing Mexican food that’s here in Lafayette, Colorado love taco wagon, and the kids will just be hungry. I’ll say, Hey, let’s, let’s go to taco wagon and grab some tacos and it’s super spontaneous and they love it.

We listen to music. We play music messy days are the days where I can just stop and walk out of my office and share songs with the kids and listening to what they’re listening to, or watch YouTube videos or sit down and play call of duty, which by the way I suck at on Xbox. But I try, you know, those are the things we do on messy days.

And so messy days are a day sometime in your week, if you can’t fit it in every single week, maybe plan and schedule a messy day every two weeks. And again, this is the time for you to know this is when you can fit in your haircuts teeth, cleaning, having to run an errand, maybe go to the post office. But it’s also the day where you can totally stop and have a cup of coffee with a friend who just might really need you call your aunt on the phone,

who you haven’t talked to in forever. And all those things that get scheduled out because the schedule is too regimented. Messy days is totally to not be regimented, but you will love it because you’ll actually get more work done in the other days. When you know, you have your messy day, wherever that may land in your week. And then the third tip I have for you is to really over communicate with your family over communicate with your team.

Again, whoever that is, it can be, you know, young, old, it can be your dog. You know, I used to communicate with my toddlers, my boys, when I was working from home and say, okay, you know, mommy really has a lot of work to do for the next two hours. But after that, we’ll sit down and we’ll watch Mickey mouse together or whatever.

And so as long as you’re over communicating, what’s about to happen with your team. Then everybody is going into that with open eyes and they understand how they can support you in that process. Again, it doesn’t matter if they’re three or if they’re 35, they all understand that. So some suggestions on how to over communicate with everybody, but in a way,

that’s not going to take you too much time because that’s would be against the point of this whole entire episode is number one. Every single Sunday night, just have a quick weekly powwow. We do this all the time. We go through the week, we look at our calendars, see what’s coming up and everybody’s just on the same page. It literally takes five minutes and that’s for a family of five to do,

but it helps to just communicate and what’s to come. It also helps us all mentally prepare for the week ahead and how we want to show up in that week. We also have a nightly pregame. And so a nightly pregame again, literally takes like one minute saying, okay, this is what the morning is going to look like. This is what I have today.

This is what you know, you have going on this next day. This is what this looks like for our family. Let’s again, have everybody be on the same page. It’s also the place where I can take a minute. If my kids need to talk about school or things they’re struggling with and help them strategize a plan to, you know, maybe make up some schoolwork,

which frankly has been a lot since everybody’s doing online school and it’s a freaking mess. I won’t go down that rabbit hole, but it’s a time for me to really connect with my boys and hear like, yeah, I just have this, I have this math test tomorrow. I have no clue what I’m doing and really be able to focus in on them.

And I know that they really appreciate this nightly pre-game as well. Couple of things we also do and we’ve done for years and years and years is we calendar share. We’ve also taught our boys how to add things to our family calendar. So we have one Gmail address where we manage all of our kid and family things. And so anytime one of our kids has something they want to do.

They want to ride to the skate park or they want to go sleep over with a friend or whatever it may be. My boys can add that event and share it to our family calendar. So without even talking, we all know what everybody wants and needs over a period of time. And so everybody’s on the same page without taking any time whatsoever. And you might be asking like,

okay, how do I do this? My kids are five. Well, of course this is age appropriate, but I will say that we started teaching our boys to add things to our family, shared Gmail calendar when they were as young as nine years old. So these kids can do anything with tech, right? So you would be very surprised at the wishes we receive on our family calendar.

And it’s really cool. That’s how our kids get to do things because it’s planned in a way that works for everybody. And then the last suggestion that I would have for you is a family chat or a family WhatsApp channel or family Voxer. If you’ve never tried any of that, those are all awesome places to create a group chat where everybody’s on the same page.

And you as the business owner can even just shoot, instead of calling this person and telling this person to pick up that person, you can just get on your boxer and just say, okay, you know, I’m running 10 minutes late from this meeting. We’re having chicken for dinner. I’ll see you soon, whatever it is that you need to say,

you can, you can put in a box or chat to your family. And it’s a really efficient way to actually create more time. Again, if your family is, is a roommate, if your family is, you know, your other business team, or if it’s friends, whoever your people are, these are three simple ways to put those people,

to put your family first as an entrepreneur and create more time in your business. And so here’s what we talked about today. We talked about how does your current business model and know how to group your days together and what you can tweak and scale and your business model right now, in order to create more time each week, we also talked about messy days,

why you need messy days, why you’ll love them, why your family will love your messy days and really why it just frankly, it’s going to make you think, wow, I’m so glad I’m an entrepreneur instead of wow, crap. This is way harder than I thought it would be. Is there ever going to be a light at the end of this,

you know, constant tunnel of demands, messy days, fix that, like in an instant. So if any of these things I can say, I love my messy days the most. And then the third thing is think of more creative ways to connect with your family, whether it’s calendar share or Voxer and different ways to communicate, whether it’s a weekly powwow or a nightly powwow.

We talked about that as well. I hope you found some of these suggestions helpful to you and your team, your people, all the people that love you. And you know what it’s really special to have people in your life that love you so much. They just want more of you and they need more of you. That’s a gift. And you know,

I know we’re also grateful for that. So it’s really important as small business owners that we take strategies like this business model, calendar share and more practical lifestyle strategies in order to create this time and in life freedom, I’m here to help. I’m here to support you. It’s what I do here on the show. I’m a business strategist, but I’ve built multiple companies with kids.

I think I launched my first business when my youngest was six weeks old. So I totally get it. Whatever phase you’re in of parenting. Thank you so much for listening to this show. Again, happy holidays. Happy new year, let’s kick 2020, like to the curb behind us. And I’m so excited to start 2021 with you. We have a lot of amazing things coming up on the show,

including commitment week 20, 21, five days. I’m only 10 minutes a day to completely lay out your entire 20, 21 business plan coming up here next week. And so I dive into commitment week 2021 with us next week’s episode number 207. All right, you guys, I will talk to you soon. Have an awesome day.