Hi there,

Are you ready for a brutal truth? Without a strong foundation that protects time, energy and costs, a business will struggle to succeed in the long term. These three pillars, time, energy and costs, are the cornerstone to sustainability. The impact of each, individually and collectively, can’t be underestimated and often it’s an issue with one (or all!) of the three pillars that lead to people reaching out to me for support with their business.

While all three pillars form a cornerstone, I think it will be most helpful within the context of this blog post to somewhat separate them with the recognition that time and money have an impact on energy, as I really want this piece to be one in which you can take direct action and reap the benefits, in some cases immediately!

Let’s kick off with time, the ultimate of finite resources.

Do you ever get that feeling at the end of another busy day that you’ve been flat chat, but you don’t actually feel like you achieved anything? You’ve certainly filled your day and jumped from meeting to meeting, from task to task, but haven’t actually moved the needle on your goals? That’s not unusual, and it’s super-easy to get stuck with the unimportant, non-urgent busy work. In fact, it’s well recognised as a procrastination tool for the perfectionists among us, but let’s put that on ice, shall we? We want you running the day, not the other way around.

Before we can change how we manage our time, we need a baseline. Enter the time audit, which is a little exercise I sometimes ask clients to complete as part of my 30 day accelerator program as well as my 3 month program. I want to know how their work days are being spent, by the minute in some cases! From knowledge, comes action. From this knowledge and awareness of how we spend our days we can make decisions moving forward about how to maximise the time we have.

First things first - what is your ideal day? Do you want to start work after you’ve exercised? Have you built in natural transition times into your day to clearly delineate between work time and life time, providing the perfect opportunity for a simple pleasure or two? Does your work day include a clear block of time for deep thinking? Is there time locked in for lunch (aka manage your nutrition for energy!) or do you have a non-negotiable time in your early afternoon for a walk around the block as a bit of fuel for your afternoon? On that - do you want to change your discovery conversation process to kill two birds, so to speak and combine a discovery chat with a walking meeting? This is something that’s worked beautifully for one of my clients - every Wednesday morning without fail, she ‘walks and talks’ with a potential client or two, where she shares the value she brings through her expertise, and the potential client shares their key problem area.

Once you have a beautifully articulated ideal day, you can put technology to work for you and set up your calendar for success by way of time blocking and scheduling for both maximum productivity but also energy management. Identify time for your creative, deep thinking against your goals and schedule it. Side note - if you’re a Google user, make sure you tick that little box that says ‘mark as busy’ as it is incredibly dispiriting to have an appointment pop up in the time you’ve anticipated as being all yours for big picture dreaming!

Speaking of technology - I’m a huge fan of the ‘do not disturb’ feature on my phone. It puts others, and just as importantly, myself on notice that I’m not to be disturbed! Simple, but oh so effective!

As they say, time is money, and that is naturally the next part of the process:

Have crystal-clear expectations of deliverables. I recently worked with a client who worked against a retainer model, which is perfectly fine in theory. In practice, however? This client was contracted to 15 hours per month but after her time audit we discovered she was actually providing services that equated to 15 hours per week! This obviously has an impact financially (underpayment to say the very least!) but also time - these extra hours, unpaid, represented time she could be generating income elsewhere.

Added to this clarity of expectations - communication and responsiveness can also blow out and costs. Clarify and confirm how you’d like to manage communication with your clients. Is it via email? What’s the appropriate response time? Is it via telephone, recognising that what could take you one hour to draft via email could be resolved in a five minute phone conversation?

We’ve all seen that twee/trite meme along the lines of ‘charge your worth and add tax’. Like most cliches it comes from an emblematic truth. Don’t underprice yourself! Instead, sit down with a trusted advisor who knows their stuff - ie me - and nut this out properly. Work out all of the costs involved in bringing a service to market and ensure the price you’re charging makes sense.

I know Zoom is pretty much ubiquitous these days, but long before ‘you’re on mute’ I had clients who made the call to limit in person meetings. She valued the extra productivity in terms of time and costs that virtual provided - rather than drive for 30 minutes, park, meet for an hour, drive for an hour back to work, spend another hour following up on all the deliverables, sharing resources, doing the ‘work’ promised, instead she could log on to zoom at the agreed time, have the meeting, then deliver the work immediately. Why wouldn’t you?

One of the best ways to explore costs is to say no to projects that don’t bring value, either monetarily or energetically. Qualify leads as a basic first step. Not every lead that comes into your business will be appropriate, so let’s make it easy for them to self-select. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with shopping around, in fact I believe that we all should do our due diligence when working with people, but tyre kicking doesn’t have to come at your expense. One of my clients discovered via her time audit that she was losing a ton of time to discovery chats, where she spent time discussing her services, benefits and value against a potential client’s specific problems, only to discover after providing a quote that the client didn’t have near enough of a budget to commit. Now, she has prices for her services on her website, and before anyone can book into a scheduled discovery session with her, she provides them with a services guide which details her costs.

You can also reduce cost inefficiencies through activities like delegation, automation and outsourcing. The process described above, where a potential client receives a services guide ahead of a meeting? It’s all automated across each step which means no emailing back and forth to find a mutually agreed time to meet.

Also a review of services in terms of performance metrics and cost effectiveness is an excellent way to remove cost inefficiencies. If it’s not making you money, it’s costing you money!

Speaking of reviews - when was the last time you looked through your business bank statement? A client did recently, and discovered she was paying for two bookkeeping programs when she was only using one. And in US dollars! Another client had been on the top tier of a market research program, you know the one, rhymes with ‘chunky’ but her CRM allowed her to collect client data within her selected package. Those 21 day free trials can be fabulous for trying out new automations and software but they can also pack a (costly!) punch. Check your subscriptions regularly - monthly is ideal to see what you’re actually using in your business, what is essential, what you can live without, what can be replaced by a more cost-effective product. Of course, do your research, but a CRM product may also provide adequate bookkeeping data to satisfy your accountant’s needs.

Time, energy and costs are all dependent on one overarching factor: boundaries! Remember who is steering this ship - ie you - and keep this as the core lens though which you approach your days.

For more information about my programs and coaching more specifically, please reach out - I’d love to speak with you!

To your success…