S1: Welcome to business and the podcast for people making it
S1: all happen. Running a successful business completely takes over your life,
S1: but I'm a believer that there is still room for
S1: some ands like health, wealth, beauty, and maybe even some fashion.
S1: On this podcast, I'll share with you what's working for
S1: scaling my nine figure business while keeping you up to
S1: date on the latest trends, news and fun finds. This
S1: is a place for business and let's dive in! Welcome
S1: back to business. And I like today's episode because it
S1: is my short and easy process for how I look
S1: at time, how I become more effective, and the systems
S1: that I use in order to create the life that
S1: I want. For those of you who've listened to this
S1: podcast for a while, you have seen many iterations of
S1: Natalie over the last six years. From when I first
S1: started this podcast. I am literally not the same person
S1: today as I was back then. And for people who
S1: know me, they ask me, how do you do this
S1: the way I do? This is the process that I
S1: lay out in this episode. It is the framework that
S1: I use and I am disciplined about using this and
S1: implementing it every single week because I know where I
S1: want to go and it's just a matter of what
S1: do I need to change, and where do I need
S1: to spend my time in order to get there? I
S1: am relentless about this, and to the extent that you
S1: are relentless about this, you can have the life that
S1: you want to. I hope you enjoy. These are the
S1: systems that turn my chaotic schedule into a life I
S1: actually control. These systems help me go from overwhelmed, making
S1: no money in a job that I hated, to co-founding
S1: my dream business and getting married to the love of
S1: my life. So let's dive in to the frameworks that
S1: actually work. The first system to help you accomplish anything
S1: is to start using a calendar to control. You and
S1: Beyonce have the same 24 hours in a day. I
S1: read that quote on a card once and my mind
S1: was instantly blown. At the time, I was 19 years old,
S1: juggling all of the things, not creating any sort of success.
S1: Still a student and thinking about the fact that Beyonce
S1: and me have the exact same amount of time. And
S1: yet look at what she's doing. She's an actress. She's
S1: a dancer, she's a singer. She's a mom. Beyonce was
S1: doing all of the things, and she was not that
S1: much older than me. So when I realized I started
S1: trying to figure out how do I find tools to
S1: help me use my time better, and my go to
S1: tool that I recommend every business owner, every future entrepreneur,
S1: or everybody who just wants to make more money uses
S1: is a Google Calendar. Now, you could really use any calendar.
S1: If you're not a fan of Google, that's fine, but
S1: you have to use a calendar to track where you're
S1: spending your time. Because let's face it, if you don't
S1: have the results that you want, it literally means that
S1: you are not spending your time on the right activities.
S1: If you don't have the amount of money you want
S1: to make, it means that you haven't learned how to
S1: make money, which means you haven't spent the time to
S1: learn the right skills. If you don't have the husband
S1: of your dreams, how are you spending your time in
S1: order to become the type of person that your future
S1: husband would actually want to date and hopefully marry? So
S1: tracking where you spend your time is the first step.
S1: If you don't know where you're spending your time, you
S1: will always feel like you are not in control of time.
S1: And one of my mottos that I remind my team
S1: of almost on a daily basis is I create time.
S1: I say that all the time, so there is never
S1: a reason for me to say I don't have time.
S1: I'm too busy. Those are not real excuses because I remember, hey,
S1: wait a second, I create time. That means that I
S1: can make time for the things that matter most. I'm
S1: going to get to where I want to go, but
S1: if I don't make time, I feel like I'm a
S1: victim of time. I don't use my calendar to structure
S1: my time. Everything feels chaotic and like I can never
S1: get ahead. I can never get what I want done.
S1: This is a fallacy, and this is one of my
S1: strategies for actually being effective. Use your calendar to track
S1: where you're spending your time. What you need is a
S1: tool that is so simple for you to use that
S1: isn't perfect. It doesn't have to be beautiful. You don't
S1: have to convince yourself. It needs to be this color coded,
S1: nicely organized with good handwriting planner. Throw all of that out.
S1: I used to get caught in this trap where I
S1: would want to get organized, and I would want to
S1: be successful. So I would buy a planner and then
S1: I would spend four hours planning everything perfectly. But when
S1: it came to using that planner and making tweaks to
S1: my schedule the next day, I had already stopped using
S1: the planner and I never picked it up again. And
S1: I would keep buying these planners every 2 or 3
S1: months in order to start the process all over again.
S1: You do not need some perfect process. You're using a
S1: tool that is effective for tracking where you're spending your time,
S1: because this is the foundation in order for these next
S1: four steps to actually work. This next system is my
S1: four step framework. And the first step is to look
S1: at your calendar and see what you can entirely stop doing.
S1: What's wild about this idea of creating time means that
S1: you can actually stop doing things that you currently do.
S1: A lot of people just start adding more, adding more,
S1: adding more. And yes, in order to be more effective,
S1: in order to expand your business, in order to learn
S1: new skills, you are adding something. But the first step
S1: is actually to figure out what you need to stop
S1: doing for me back in the day before I created
S1: real success. I was confused about where I spent my time,
S1: and I would think that I needed to do all
S1: of these things and create these never ending to do
S1: lists of things that were of medium or low importance.
S1: So instead of doing something that would actually move my
S1: career forward, I would use this idea of going to
S1: target as being effective and being busy. But I didn't
S1: need to go to target, when really what would have
S1: moved the needle in that one day was to move
S1: the one email forward that I was avoiding. So before
S1: you even use a Google calendar, this is easy to implement.
S1: What are things that I'm doing that I don't actually
S1: need to do? So some examples of things that you
S1: don't need to be doing. Taking on the project to
S1: clean out your garage, or going to the grocery store
S1: when Amazon could deliver it. Instead, these little things that
S1: we add to our to do list are the things
S1: that stop us from doing the most important things. So
S1: moving forward, we're going to stop doing the unimportant things
S1: so we can make time for the things that matter most. Now,
S1: don't even get me started on how much time you
S1: are likely wasting on things like YouTube, Netflix, Instagram, TikTok,
S1: all of those things. Could you stop doing that so
S1: that you are able to create time in the short
S1: run to get closer to your goals and be more productive?
S1: Now the next step is learning how to delegate. Look
S1: at your life and decide what can you delegate to
S1: other people? So in some situations, you can't entirely stop
S1: doing something. Let's say you can't entirely stop going to
S1: the grocery store because you are responsible for feeding your family. However,
S1: how can you delegate this to Amazon? Amazon can effectively
S1: deliver your groceries to your house without you spending a
S1: whole hour picking out everything, searching through aisles, checking out driving.
S1: They're driving home. They could just deliver all these things.
S1: And better yet, you would now have a system because
S1: it could just go on repeat order. So you get
S1: exactly what you need inside your house. This is just
S1: one idea of delegation that can totally transform how you
S1: think about making more time because most of the things
S1: that you do, you might actually still need to have
S1: those things done in your life. You can't just stop
S1: them entirely. But who else in your life or in
S1: your business could effectively take those things off of your plate?
S1: You train them. You duplicate yourself so that they take
S1: on that responsibility, which allows you to spend more time
S1: marketing your business, promoting your products and services, fixing your
S1: sales cycle because your salespeople aren't converting in the way
S1: that they used to when you were overseeing the department.
S1: When you think about the process of delegation, you have
S1: to ask yourself this question what is important that needs
S1: to get done but that I don't have to do myself?
S1: The lack of delegation is why most businesses stay small.
S1: The business owner thinks that they have to sell the customer.
S1: They have to market why their business is the best
S1: they have to fulfill on the services for the customer.
S1: They have to be the customer success arm. Many business
S1: owners just hold on to every part of their business
S1: because they think that they are the best at doing it,
S1: and that nobody can do it like them. But if
S1: you really dive into the way that you duplicate yourself
S1: in a business, you can remove yourself from certain activities
S1: that don't need you, so you can focus on more
S1: important things. And the question then that you have to
S1: ask yourself is, is my business growing? Because if your
S1: business isn't growing, it's likely that you are the bottleneck
S1: and you don't know how to delegate effectively. The next
S1: step is to look at your calendar and decide what
S1: you need to continue doing. You need to track what
S1: you're doing every day to make sure that those things
S1: are actually working for you. I think of the continue
S1: bucket as this is my job description. This is what
S1: I am responsible for. What is my primary function to
S1: move our business forward? And my job description today with
S1: a $100 million plus business, is very different from the
S1: job description that I had when our business was doing
S1: $12 million. What's weird about this, though, for a business owner,
S1: is that your title stays the same. So how are
S1: you updating your job description based on the most important
S1: problems in your business today? I believe that productivity spans
S1: into all aspects of life, including your relationships. If your
S1: relationships aren't doing so well, your marriage is struggling. You're
S1: having difficult times with your kids. You can use the
S1: same framework. These four steps allow you to identify exactly
S1: what you need to change, so you can make those changes.
S1: Implement that time on your calendar and then watch to
S1: see are those changes working? And if they're not working
S1: over a period of time, you can fix it. You
S1: can change out one task that you thought was important,
S1: no longer important. You've now put it in the stop category,
S1: or you recognize that your relationships and your business or
S1: your income is improving. So you're going to continue to
S1: do those things until it makes sense to delegate them.
S1: So you can now target new areas of growth. But
S1: all of this is connected to how do I become
S1: more productive with the 24 hours that I have to drive,
S1: the impact that I want to create? What I do
S1: with the business owners I work with is I have
S1: them pull out their calendar, share with me where they're
S1: spending their time so I can better assess what they
S1: need to stop doing altogether, what they should delegate to
S1: somebody else and what they should continue to do. Oftentimes
S1: those three buckets are very confused and they're struggling because
S1: the whole point of looking at these areas is to
S1: actually identify what you need to start doing to have
S1: your business grow so that the wheels don't fall off
S1: your business. While you are also pursuing this new expansion
S1: and growth related opportunity. When it comes to the continues,
S1: if you are a leader in a business, what would
S1: always stay the same is you continuing to lead and
S1: develop your team members. For me, that looks like having
S1: consistent one on ones every other week with my team members,
S1: doing performance reviews with them and also ensuring that they
S1: send me end of week reports so I can remove
S1: any roadblocks or barriers that are in their way of
S1: being successful in their role. I have done this for
S1: the last six years with every team member who reports
S1: to me, and that is the reason that we've been
S1: able to grow as fast as we've grown, because we
S1: have a system in place that is productive, that allows
S1: leaders to help their team members flourish and prosper inside
S1: an environment. The last step in my framework is asking
S1: yourself what you should start doing. I like to get
S1: really creative with the things that I need to start doing,
S1: because I'm oftentimes just dissatisfied. I see other people doing
S1: cool big things and I'm like, I want to do
S1: that too. And it's frustrating to me that I'm not
S1: able to do those things. And so if you do
S1: have this mindset where you could have what you want
S1: in life, you just need to figure out how you
S1: use your time to actually go get those things. One
S1: of the most impactful decisions that I made in my
S1: career was deciding that I needed to learn how to
S1: publicly speak. I had a very embarrassing experience early on
S1: in my career that made me get stage fright, and
S1: made me get incredibly nervous whenever I would speak to
S1: a group of more than 3 or 4 people. And
S1: this held me back for years. But then I thought
S1: about in 20 years from now, in 30 years from now,
S1: in 60 years from now, Natalie has, of course, figured
S1: out how to publicly speak. Like I'm going to be
S1: able to articulate myself at some point in the future.
S1: So I have to start getting better at that right
S1: now in order to eventually get to where I want
S1: to go. So what did I start doing? I started
S1: giving mini speeches every single day, whether that was in
S1: a team meeting or a toast at dinner. I started
S1: to incorporate this skill set that I needed to learn,
S1: which was learning how to speak in front of people.
S1: And I would literally add this into my calendar, make
S1: toast at dinner, or kick off all team meeting so
S1: that it forced me to get over this very uncomfortable
S1: thing that was holding me back from where I wanted
S1: to go. So you use your calendar to identify how
S1: you're going to start doing the things that you want
S1: to be doing in the future with ease. And when
S1: it comes to starting new things, you have to be
S1: very careful that the things that you start are measured,
S1: because you don't just want a list of things that
S1: aren't making an impact, but are wasting your time. If
S1: you're going to start making public speeches, if you're going
S1: to spend time looking at new businesses to buy, if
S1: you're going to learn sales skills, don't just invest your
S1: time in those areas. Measure your effectiveness in those areas.
S1: Make measurement senior to you doing the activity because the
S1: measurement is going to dictate to you whether or not
S1: you are improving. And if it's a good use of
S1: your time, if you're not improving and it's not a
S1: good use of your time, you should start doing something
S1: else that is going to get you closer to your goal.
S1: You need to start doing things that will make your
S1: life better, that will allow you to achieve your goals.
S1: If you enjoyed this podcast, you are going to definitely
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S1: up to speed on fashion, beauty, wellness.
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