Ready to be the CEO you were meant to be? Get ready to step up! Ep 12 Season 2

On an average day do you find yourself working ON your Business or IN your business?  When was the last time you had a “CEO” day?

Depending on what stage of business you are at, you may still be wearing all the hats and doing all the things, or maybe you are a bit further along and you have some help, and aren’t doing it all yourself anymore.

Either way, it’s important to stop and take stock of where you are spending your time and your focus, and evaluate how to use both more effectively.

As CEO, one of your most important jobs it to be the “visionary” and whether that’s where you get to spend most of your time or not, it’s critical that you spend some of your time in that space, and find ways to move more and more toward that role as your business grows.

Donna is a productivity expert and helps CEO’s do exactly that.  On this episode, she is helping us start with a simple strategy to figure out where we are actually spending our time each day.

It can’t be just me that gets to the end of the day and wonders where the heck all those hours went right?  Tell me that’s not just me. 

So using her strategy we are going to figure out where that time went and then classify each task and determine what bucket it falls in to.

And finally, we are going to determine which tasks can be streamlined, assigned or paused, based on priority and desired outcomes.

It’s a really simple, but smart strategy to help you be more productive, focused on your goals and really get back to growing your business, while actually creating MORE time and ease in your days, rather than less.

She’s even convinced me not to leave my inbox open all day!  

Are you ready to be the CEO you were meant to be?

Links from this episode: 

Free download "35 Ways to Streamline your Life as a Small Business Owner": CLICK HERE

Find Donna:   https://www.productivityplusva.ca/

Get your FREE SHEcoporated Magazine:  https://www.shecorporated.com/shecorporated-magazine

Visit SHEcorporated main site: https://www.shecorporated.com/

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Transcript

Kristy: [00:00:00] On an average day, do you find yourself working on your business or in your business? When was the last time you had a CEO day? Depending on what stage of business you're at. You may still be wearing all the hats and doing all the things, or maybe you're a bit further along and you have some help and you weren't doing it all yourself anymore. 

Either way it's important to stop and take stock of where you're spending your time and your focus and evaluate how to use both more effectively. As CEO, one of your most important jobs is to be the visionary and whether that's where you get to spend most of your time or not, it's critical that you spend some of your time in that space and find ways to move more and more towards that role as your business grows. 

Donna is a productivity expert and help CEOs do exactly that. On this episode, she's helping us start with a simple strategy to figure out where we're actually spending our time each day. He can't just be me that gets to the end of the day and wonders where the heck all those [00:01:00] hours went. Right. Tell me, that's not just me. 

So using her strategy, we're going to figure out where that time went and then classify each task to determine what bucket it falls into. And then finally, we're going to determine which tasks can be streamlined, assigned, or paused based on priority and desired outcomes. It's a really simple but smart strategy to help you be more productive, focused on your goals and really get back to growing your business will actually creating more time and ease in your days rather than less 

So, are you ready to be the CEO you were meant to be. Then let's get into it. 

it is such a pleasure to have with us today. Donna Donna is the founder of productivity. Plus is an operations expert who partners with online business owners to bring their business goals and dreams to life through strategy. And the trick to growing and scaling a business is through operations management.

And Donna's goal is to bring that to life through strategic planning. So today Donna is going to help us take a step back and take a minute to really look at our bills. [00:02:00] And how to be more strategic, streamline our processes and make it all make sense while helping us grow faster. And I need help with that, Donna.

I'm so glad you're 

Donna: here today. How are you? Good. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's so great to 

Kristy: have you here. So I gave a little introduction there as far as who you are and what you do, but I'd love to hear from you a little bit more about your journey here and what it is exactly that you do.

Donna: Yes. Great. Thanks. So I started in the online world now five or six years ago. I'm switching from homeschooling, my kids actually, which I did for a number of years, and then got back into the online world And I started as virtual. But I quickly found that, well, I enjoyed the online work.

I enjoyed helping and serving virtual assistants. Wasn't really my area of expertise. And so from there, I moved more into project management and operations. So for those who know the Kobe index, I am a high fact-finder and a [00:03:00] Quickstart. And so I love to research. I love to have my checklists. I love to plan.

You're not going to get me on a spontaneous vacation cause for sure. So now I help six figure entrepreneurs, break down that strategy and really think about what are their goals for the next six to 12 months and what pieces need to be put in place to make sure they meet those goals, at the end of the time, and try to step back and not get stuck in the weeds.

Kristy: Yeah. And, and focus on, running your business rather than, than being in your business all the time. Right. When you start out, everybody is doing all the things. Some point, if you want to grow, you've got to take those steps back and start being the visionary and not the task 

Donna: doers.

Yes, a hundred percent. And then it's natural that it happens that way because most of us start without a lot of capital and it's just us at the beginning. Right. And so we have to but I even found for myself, I ended up doing all of my client work and doing my work and my business and my family.

What happened to her? Where did she go? [00:04:00] You know, not as much time for my kids and not as much time for myself, I was dropping exercise, dropping, eating healthy, and it wasn't, it wasn't right. So at one point I'm like, no, this needs a time out and I need to reevaluate and, fix things so that I can continue and go forward because otherwise it's just not sustained.

Kristy: Yeah, absolutely. And you're right. It's, it's two sides of it. Isn't it? It's quality of life while you're running your business and it's allowing your business to grow. You're gonna hit a point where you just cannot grow. If you don't start to let go of the reins on some things. you've got some great processes that you're going to walk us through, which I'm really excited about, because I think I can probably use a few of these as well as well.

And, I think we can all agree, no matter what stage of business we're at, it's hard work, running a business, right. Being a CEO is, is hard work. And we think that as we grow, it's going to get easier, but it doesn't unless you make it get easier, unless you do the strategy planning, unless you, you outsource, unless you, delegate.

So, so maybe let's define what. Should the role of a CEO be once you've gotten yourself a [00:05:00] little bit out of the weeds and you know, you don't necessarily have to be doing all the things anymore. What should the role of the CEO 

Donna: be? Yeah. Excellent question. You know, I saw something the other day that, I mean, there's lots of acronyms for what CEO really means.

Right? So we've all felt those, uh, those different acronym. You know, between one day or another, but really the CEO means the visionary, the one who's looking forward three years, five years, maybe even 10 years, and you know, spend their time on that high level visionary work. So where are we going?

Not what task, what email has to be set today, but what's the big picture? Where are we? Where do I, what do I want this business to look like in three years? What do you want? I want my life to look like in three or five years, because it could be that in your personal life, something big is happening for you.

Maybe your kids are graduating, you're moving, you know, having a divorce unfortunately, or whatever that thing is. And so that has to be factored [00:06:00] into what's happening with your business over time as well. So as CEO you're right. You have to be not stuck in the weeds, but working on the big goals, big picture.

So for a lot of people, that's producing content, that's new products, being on webinars, challenges, summit speaking, all those types of things that you can't just replace with someone else, you are the name and the brand of your business. And so those are the kinds of things that, that the CEO needs to be working on that high level visionary.

Kristy: a lot of us, that's where we need to also look at what's our zone of genius. Right? what is it that you really enjoy doing? Because you want to enjoy your business. So if there's tasks that just are not here to zone of genius, like for me, we'll keeping, or other things that you don't enjoy, you're not particularly good at those are good things to delegate as well.

If you can 

Donna: definitely a hundred percent and that's going to be different for each business. Right. Like you just gave the example, someone else or business bestie might love doing the bookkeeping, but I can't stand the social media. Um, my 

Kristy: best friend actually does love [00:07:00] doing bookkeeping. I call her crazy all the time.

She's she really enjoys it when all the numbers add up at the bottom of the sheet, it's, it's a very strange thing to me. So if we're doing all the things. How do we start to step back? Or where do we start to step back 

Donna: first? Yeah. Good question. So I have a five step process to take CEOs through this, and really, like I said, it was a learning thing for me.

And so now I'm happy to be able to share with others, but the end of it is to be able to run your business with ease and joy. Right. And not feel that overwhelmed. Does that mean every be. No, of course not, but at least we want to have some ease and joy in there and say, yeah, you get up in the morning.

I want to do this instead of dreading what you're doing. 

So step number one is do a time tracking. And so it's really about auditing your time. And I know some of your listeners are going, I don't like the sound of this, and I know it's not an exciting process to go through, but [00:08:00] so.

So basically what you want to do is look at where you're spending your time, where do you see your results out of the time you're spending? So I want you to take a few minutes and write down everything you're doing in your business. Ideally, you can do this for two or three days. That would be wonderful And so literally, okay. 20 minutes, responding to customer service emails, half an hour. I spent. Scrolling Facebook twenty-five minutes. I spent preparing for my webinar, whatever it is that you are doing, half an hour, I spent fighting with a tech, whatever it is, write it down with the.

Beside it. And if you can do that for two or three days, it's really going to give you a picture of where you actually are spending your time while you're working in your business. So that's step one. That's so simple, but 

Kristy: that's genius because I don't know anybody that does that. And you're right. We absolutely, we get to the end of the day.

And we're like, what happened today? Where, where did all the time go? And it's something I know when people are in a tough spot in their business or they, the pipeline is kind of faded and they need to build up [00:09:00] some revenue quickly. I always tell them to sit down and look at what they're doing all day and then get rid of everything.

That's not bringing in sales. Anything, that's not going to move the needle and, but you have to look at your day first to do that, that's brilliant. Love it. 

Donna: Yes. So that leads right into step two and you're right on the, on the ball with it is you want to look at what is generating. And so I suggest you go through that same list, whether it's one day, three days, whatever it is, and put a dollar sign beside everything that you can identify that is directly generating revenue for you, because that's, what's really moving your business forward.

That's what's really going to create results and those things you don't want to get rid of, obviously those are important to, getting to that next. So put a dollar sign beside every activity that's generating revenue. That's step two. Then step three is go back through that list. One more time and put a star beside activities that are draining for you.[00:10:00] 

So you either don't enjoy doing them. They're taking too much time or energy. It's not something you want to keep. Now you could have activities that have both a dollar sign and a star, right? Because you could be doing something that's generating revenue, but it's not something you really enjoy. We're taking a lot of your time.

That's okay for now. Just put the star beside everything that is draining or taking energy or something you don't really enjoy. So that's step three, we're on a roll. Then step four is what I call apply the, this method. And so that stands for streamline assign and pots. So now we're going to look at everything that has either a dollar sign or a star beside it.

And we're going to ask ourselves, can the SAC method be applied? Can I streamline this activity? Can I assign it to someone else or can it be paused? So we'll just go through those a little bit in more detail. So for streamline mine is the [00:11:00] activity currently a manual process and taking too much time. You know, there's a lot of tech we have available today to help us.

you, as a CEO, don't necessarily have to know how to use all that tech. He doesn't have to know, wait a minute, there's gotta be an easier way to do this than me copying and pasting 15 times. And so, being able to identify those activities that you can say now there's an easier way. To do this process.

what I suggest you do is look, for example, at scheduler, lots of CEOs don't even have a scheduler. And so they're manually booking times in their calendar, use something like how many or acuity, whatever it makes the process so much easier and very professional 

Kristy: It's life-changing I finally got on gallon belly this year. and it's the same reason I just said, I'll get around to it. I'll get around to it. And honestly it makes all the difference 

Donna: So that's just an example of something that can make things easier.

So really start by defining the process and can you simplify it anymore? And that might mean [00:12:00] you have to hire somebody per time to help you set up a new. Whether that's a calendar system or whether you need a CRM or something to do your invoicing or something to automate your bookkeeping, you know, there's lots of areas, but if you pay someone to come in as a project, just to set that up for you and go, it's not a lone time investment that you're paying them, but it's a big investment in.

time savings. So really look at how you can make processes easier. 

Kristy: And we tend to put it off because we don't have time. I know I'm quite guilty of this. It's like, well, I don't have time to figure this out right now. I don't have time to sort this out right now, but you're never going to have time if you don't take the time to sort it out.

Right. It's it's going to pay off 

Donna: in the long run. So let's say you are manually invoicing for whatever reason. At the end of the month, you could easily spend an hour longer invoicing all your clients. Well, you could get that back if you had to automate it. Right. And then if you have to chase any clients for payments, again, you're spending more time manually when you could have that in an [00:13:00] automated posts.

Definitely. It's a big time saver. So the second piece of that is a sign or a point. So you're going to look again and think, do I have to be doing this activity? Can I delegate this activity to someone? caution though, before you go to delegate, because you'd probably be like, oh yeah, I can hear right with that.

But there's a few things you need to do to set up in place first, so that it's successful for the person you're delegating to, but also for you. you want to ensure you have a clear vision of what the process is. Right? So find. This doesn't have to be a big formal, project plan.

But even if you have a word doc with the steps that you do to do that task, or you make a quick loom video to say, okay, I go here, I copy this over there. Make sure that this says. Whatever and blue, whatever the steps are, but have that clearly laid out so that when you bring on a new person, they can start with the procedure that you've already laid out.

Instead of coming to you and saying, well, I don't know how to do this. [00:14:00] Where do I start? Because again, that's taking your time and you'll say, well, it's easier for me to just do it, then show them. Right. So make the video once or write it down once. And then the person you bring on has that to start. And then you can make it that person's role to update that process as needed because we all know tech doesn't stay the same and how we do things doesn't stay the same, but then whoever's responsible for that task should be responsible for updating the procedure as well.

Kristy: that's a great thing to do for any tasks in your business, one by one, doesn't have to be a big, big project. You could literally, when you do it next time, Film it, or write it down, don't try and sit down and do all of the tasks in one day. But next time you do it, make some notes and, get it written down because, that person may leave and the next person comes in.

As you said, you've got it all there and you don't have to start from scratch every time. 

Donna: The other thing you want to keep in mind is no. Before you start speaking with potential candidates, Because what'll end up [00:15:00] happening is you'll meet with someone. They're great. You get their five and you think, oh, this will be perfect.

And they're, three times the budget you were hoping to pay. And if you bring them on now, you've got some work to do to recap some of that. So really know your budget before you start and write a proper job description. Again, not an exciting task. I know, You know, we've all seen it before, when you, when you go on social media and someone says, I need a BA today help.

Right. And it's not even clear what exactly they need to do. And so the quality of the camp. You get will be based on the quality of the information that you gave that. So write a proper job description, have a way of vetting the candidates so that, you're not overwhelmed with thousands of applications, so that you can clearly pick out three or five and narrow it down.

Kristy: And check the references and do your homework as well. There's horror stories of somebody in a hurry that grabs whoever answers their post first, and then they're [00:16:00] surprised that things don't go well. 

Donna: Because you know, in this service provider industry that are no really, standards there's no legal thing to say. Okay. Yeah, you are qualified as a licensed, whatever it is. Right. So yes, their certifications, their courses, but you don't really know. Yes. It's good to, to really check the references.

And the other thing you can do is give them a paid tasks. That's. Right, right. Have them document how long it took them. And then you can see their quality of the work. Yep. Pay them for it. But at least you'll get an idea and then the third thing is paused for now. So we're looking at the activities and saying activity, really moving my business forward. And when I talk about this, I like to think of that Pareto principle where it's, or the 80 20 rule where it's 20% of your efforts will result in 80% of your results or your outcomes.

So there's probably lots of activities that we're all doing in our business today because [00:17:00] we heard we should be doing or someone else we know is doing them and having success with it. But really we have to look critically at what works for us because everybody's business is. 

Kristy: as entrepreneurs, most of us tend to have that shiny object syndrome.

want to try the next thing and this thing, and that thing sounds great. And why don't we do this? And you end up with this collection of all the things and really, they may not be necessary in your business right now. It might be something to put on the docket for later, after you get all of this sorted out.

but I think we're especially guilty of that. So that's really great to sit back and take a look at it. Yeah. What's what's really important right now. And what can we say? 

Donna: I had a colleague of mine who had her online business and. Were they having a hard time with social media?

She didn't like it. She was wondering whether she should pay someone and then she decided, you know what, I'm actually gonna pause social media, none of that posts anything for a month. see what happens. So she was still pitching to podcast. She was still doing speaking engagements and summit.

So it wasn't [00:18:00] like she didn't have any visibility. She was still networking, but social media just wasn't jiving with her and her business was fine. So. I can pause it for another two months and see what happened. Right. And so now she's back, but the truth of the matter is it didn't affect her revenue at all, but that could be different for everybody.

Other people's business comes a lot from social media. So you really have to look at what's happening for you and say, okay, what do I need to keep? And what don't I, and we have to remember to, you know, I'm guilty of this as well. I look at what some of the experts and they do and what they're doing, and I think, oh, I should be doing that.

But we have to remember, they have a team of 20, you know, some of you have a team of one. Yeah. You really need 

Kristy: to decide where you're going to put your energy. there's only so many hours in the day, you can't do all the things and you can't even manage all the things necessarily sometimes.

Donna: And then in the end, if you still, like, if you're feeling like, okay, I'd like to give some of this out, but not all of it, [00:19:00] then you can work out something with. You're still responsible for the vision and the strategy, but you have someone else doing the implementation, So let's say social media posts, for example, and you still want to be responsible for the content planning and the vision of how that's going to look for the next two months. So you keep that, but you pass that after you've planned it out, then you pass it on to someone to actually make the graphics and write a little captions and actually post them.

So then some of it is off your plate, but you're still keeping the higher level, the vision and the strategy, because I know I've heard business owners say before, well, I don't know if a social media person's gonna speak in my voice and get to know me and they don't really know where I'm going.

So if you're happy doing it, keep that part, but let someone else do the implementation, but the task, that's 

Kristy: a great idea because the implementation is yeah. 80% of the time on social media, isn't it that's a wonderful idea. Okay. 

Donna: And then the fifth step is to organize your weekly schedule. So now that we've got all the [00:20:00] activities that move the needle forward figured out, because they all have a dollar sign beside them, and we know which of those activities we're still doing as the CEO.

Now we want to front load our week, which means we want to put some of those activities at the beginning of our week to guarantee that we're going to get. Right. So for me personally, I like to meet with my clients near the beginning of the week because it sets up the week for success. I can know what their vision is for the next couple of months and what we're actually going to do this week and what the team is going to do this week.

So I like to meet with clients first thing in the week and get at sorted. But as the CEO, you might choose, I'm not having any meeting. Monday morning. I won't meet anyone until Monday afternoon, because Monday morning is my content time. That's when I'm spending time working on my course, working on my vision for social media, working on where I'm going to speak next and who I want to connect with and networking, whatever those tasks are.

But those things that are most [00:21:00] important for your business put them first. So then whatever disasters happen during the meek, you're still successful. You still moved your business forward. Those things at the beginning of the week. 

Kristy: And I found that just by blocking time, like you said, if this is going to be my strategy time, or this is going to be my, and because I have a couple of businesses that are very different and they require very different things from me.

I've started actually blocking, this is the day for this business this morning, I'm working just on this thing. And I find, I get a lot more done. I can be more productive because I'm in the right mindset. I'm not flipping back and forth between two different things. it makes a big difference to have that block of dedicated time.

And, and the other thing that, that has helped me a lot. just like, you're putting your meetings at the beginning of the week. If I have something that I know tomorrow, I need to get done, that's my primary objective. I'll put it at nine o'clock in the morning and I will not 

Donna: open my inbox until 

Kristy: that task is done.

Because as soon as I open my inbox, you know, and everybody does this, right. There's a million people [00:22:00] pulling you in a million different directions and a bunch of things that pop up that you need to do. So it doesn't, I don't even look at it until that task is done. And then I can kind of carry on with my day and do the admin 

Donna: or whatever I need to.

Yeah, that's excellent because the truth of the matter is whatever's in your inbox can wait three weeks. But it can wait two hours. Yep. Great. So, that sets you up for success because, you know, okay. I really needed to accomplish that this week and I got it done. The other things I can fit in, during my week.

The other thing I like to suggest is to have CEOs have one day a week where I call it CEO day. kind of like what you're talking about, where you just are working on those high-level tasks. Yeah. Again, it doesn't have to be a whole day. You can split it between a couple of days, if that works better for you, but really setting aside time in your calendar for working on those tasks.

And the reason I say put it in your calendar is because then you won't be tempted to book something during that time, because you're already busy and outside people [00:23:00] also can't book anything in that time because it's blocked off. And make it 

Kristy: non-negotiable I do business development days and I recommend that to.

It's as important as your meeting with your most important client, because this is how you're going to get more of those, you know, important clients. Right. So, and then if something comes up through the week, if I know that Thursday morning is my business development day and on Tuesday, I think of, oh, you know what?

I'd like to do this marketing thing, or I'd like to whatever it happens to be. I'll write it on day planner for Thursday morning, and then I can revisit it. I can let it go for now. Don't get distracted by it and come back to it on my business, developing. 

Donna: Nice. I like that idea. And so you have a spot to put those, you know, those ideas that pop up in your head at different times of the day, but like you said, they don't have to distract you.

They don't have to take you off the track. Right? And then the other thing is to look at your. So I like to have a morning routine. I'm a morning person. So I like to have a morning routine first and then get started in my day. but you have to look at yourself and say, okay, am I a morning person?

Am I an afternoon person your evening? However, [00:24:00] however your schedule goes and put the things that take the most energy for you at the time of the day when you have the most energy. So if you are not a morning person, Don't book a 9:00 AM meeting with your biggest client, or don't put that hardest task that you have to do at that time.

Move it to the afternoon if that's your, your better work time 

Kristy: So what do you mean by morning routine? What would a morning 

Donna: routine? So I like to have a few minutes of quiet time. I like to have breakfast with my family and a controlled, peaceful time. And so I purposely set my calendar that nothing's happening before 9:00 AM for me.

I'm up usually, but. 6 37, but I'm taking that time for me. So I'm exercising I'm with my kids. I'm spending time reading books or listening to podcasts that help me and help me grow. and then I started. 

 So I don't like to step on a bed, turn on the computer and see, like you said, the 50 emails.

No, that just sets me [00:25:00] off on the wrong tone. Right. So if I have a little bit of me time first in my day, I find my day runs a lot. And so it will be different for everybody. Some people will say, no, I like to exercise in the middle of the day, or I like to take a break in the middle of my day, whatever works for you, but spend some time looking at what does work for you and set a routine so that your you and your body knows what the plan is.

Okay. Excellent. Yeah, there's a saying that says, I forget who said it now, but eat the frog first. Right? Do the hardest things first. And that's sort of the overall picture here is that because we will, we will try and procrastinate that thing that we don't really want to do. But if we just put it on our calendar and for that at the beginning, and like you say, it's not negotiable, then that we'd be much more successful at.

Kristy: we did a podcast the other day on, video confidence. And I was laughing because I, I know I should be doing reels. I hate [00:26:00] doing reading reels and every day, because I don't eat the frog first. I don't do it. First thing in the morning. It works its way down to the end of my list. And I put it on my list for the next day.

And then there was, and if I actually went through my day planner to see how many times on here it says do reels, it's gotta be 60 times that I've moved to the next day and not done any reels. So get that done. First thing in the morning, it's it's done. 

Donna: And the other thing you can do with that just reminded me is you can do batching, like you were with your strategy, right?

So you can say, okay, I'm going to spend, because I don't know, like doing this, I'm going to organize myself, spend an hour and get five or six, you know, video content done. and then pass it on to someone, to, edit and organize and set up for you. But at least you're in recording mode. Yeah, right.

You've got your lights, whatever things you need set up, you've done your hair, you've done your makeup, all those things. So you're ready to go. I 

Kristy: can't even get myself there with real. I think I'm, I think I'm a lost, cause I've now [00:27:00] moved on to the point where I I've just said to myself, Some things you're going to love doing, and they're gonna work for you.

And some things are just not your thing. I think I moved on to the acceptance 

Donna: stage. Yeah. And that's okay. That's okay. Right. Again, we don't have to do it all. So 

Kristy: we've got the five steps, so let's run through them again really quickly. So we've got the time tracking. 

Donna: Number two was number two is put the dollar signs beside which things are generating revenue.

Okay. Number three. Time during the activities. So we put stars beside the activities that are draining you, or you don't enjoy doing. That'd be real for me. Got it. That's right. 

Kristy: And then number four was the SAP, right? 

Donna: You got it. And then number five is just organizing your weekly school. Okay, so that it fits with you.

And then the last little piece of that is really just [00:28:00] blocking off time to do those things. That can take a lot of time from us. So like you're saying inbox, if you're into DMS and that sort of thing set aside a couple of times in your day and actually set a timer, if you have to, to say, okay, I've got 15 minutes, I'm going in my.

Taking care of whatever needs to be taken care of, moving things to my task list. If it has to be a task for another day, and then you're out of there, don't leave your inbox open as you're saying, because as soon as it goes down, what is the human brain tempted to do? Oh, let me go see Right? So actually close your inbox. Only open it. Look at it a couple of times in the day and close it. And if you're concerned that goal that may be too long. If people don't know you can actually put an auto responder that says I checked my emails at 10 and two, I'll get back to you. 

Kristy: Oh, that's a great idea.

So as people are going through their list and they're finding things that they are willing to let go of, that they can outsource that they want to [00:29:00] have somebody come in. Do you have any suggestions on where they start to? And I know some people are gonna want to bring somebody on the team.

Some people are going to want to hire a VA. Some people are going to want to hire and you know, not necessarily all VA's can do all things. So maybe they need somebody that's going to do social media. Where do they start looking for that? Do you have any tips on kind of how they start sourcing those people and those services and that information?

Donna: Yeah, sure. So I would suggest first up, be really clear on what tasks you want the person to do, because it's so much easier for you to find the right person when you know exactly the things you want to do. And having that time tracking audit is going to help you because you've now identified these five tasks I don't want to do.

I want to outsource them. And then you look at those five tasks and say, Do those fit, can one person do those five things? Maybe they are all, , VA administrative roles. And so that's kind of telling you, what kind of person do you need if those five tasks are not all in the same bucket and you may need a couple of things.[00:30:00] 

But remember you can do contracts, you can do a few hours a week. It doesn't have to be, 35 hours a week with a full-time employee. Like you're saying. So what I like to do is organize what tasks I want someone else to do. And then how do those fit together? And how long is it taking me to do those tasks?

Now, granted, we're probably not the experts at doing those tasks. And so hopefully the person we hire will take less time to do it than us, but at least it gives you a guideline of, okay, if these tasks are taking me five hours a week, then maybe I can look at hiring someone for three to four hours a week.

And their position may grow With time, but that's sorta where I would start to speak clear and actually write the job description that says, I want someone here's the responsibilities. And if there's things about you or about your business that are really important, include those in there. So if you have certain values that are important to you and you want others on your team to also have those values, write that down there.

If you don't have any meetings with any team members before noon, [00:31:00] Put that on there. Right. or if you're the opposite and you want an 8:00 AM team meeting on one date, put that in there. So the more you can provide to the potential candidates on a little bit about you and how you work, it will help you find.

The right people 

Kristy: that time portion actually, I hadn't considered that, but of course, with so much of the help is going to be online. if you like doing all of your work late at night, then maybe you want to look for somebody that's in a specific time zone. That's going to be daytime for them, nighttime for you.

It's gonna work out a lot better than trying to find people in your time zone that want to work at eight o'clock at night. 

Donna: That's a great tip. Yeah. And of course put, you don't have to put an actual dollar amount, but you can put a range, I'm willing to pay between this and this based on. So then you're getting people who are actually, if they've read it are actually looking at it and saying, okay, yeah, I agree.

I can fit in that range. Rather than getting someone who's way above. and then it's wasting your time because you can't afford to pay them what they're looking for. Right. Just be really [00:32:00] clear up front, I think is, is very important. and then sure you can put that on your different social media channels that you're involved in.

There are different groups, like if you're looking for a VA there's groups for BAS, so you can put it in there and make sure you have a reasonable timeframe. By the time you make the job description to when you actually going to start working with the person, because it is going to take some time, Because you're going to get applications and you're going to have to look through those and then pick a few to do, an interview of some sort with, So allow, a good month for that process to take. And then, 

Kristy: even if you are not in a place where you can outsource or delegate right now, what I love about your, five steps is This, this helps everyone. if you are still in the weeds, if you're still not at the point where you have the budget to hand this off. And I know a lot of people listening, are you still want to sit down and track your. And see where your time is going and what you don't need to be doing.

Right? you still want to decide what is bringing in your revenue, because those are the things you absolutely want to be focusing on [00:33:00] and getting done. First. You want to identify what activities are dragging you down so that you can put those on your, to get rid of. First for when you can and maybe find if there's other ways you can streamline them.

Like all of these steps apply, whether you're going to actually outsource or not. These are important things to sit down and look at because you're still going to make more time in your business just by analyzing this and coming 

Donna: up with a plan. 

Kristy: So Donna has. this five step process that we talked through, she's got this on her site, so you can download it and go through it.

And I really, I challenge everybody to do that. and really find the time I'm going to do this. Some of this idea already, some of this I don't, and I have not been tracking my time and I'm going to do that starting tomorrow, Donna going, cause I lately have been getting to the end of the day and saying, where did it go?

so I think that's a great activity. And then you also have another free guide for everybody as well, 35 ways to streamline your business 

Donna: life. Yes, that's right. And so it's a little guide. What you do is you can pick a couple of them and work on them until they're habit for you. And then there's a little checkbox.

You [00:34:00] can check it off and say, okay, I'm doing that one. And then pick another one and work on it until it's a habit. Again, it's not going to happen overnight. habits take a little while to build, as we know, but with consistency, 

Kristy: Okay. And we're going to put that in the show notes, the, the direct link to it, but give us the, the website now verbally, just so that we've got 

Donna: it as well.

Yes. So my business name is productivity plus, and you can find it@wwwproductivityplusva.ca and then there's a resources tab up at the top and it's listed there 35 ways to streamline. 

Kristy: Perfect. we'll put it in the show notes. So if you're on a platform where you can see the show notes, that that's great.

It's there. If you can't, we're also going to put it on our site. So if you go to one step empire.com, we'll have all the shows and all the show notes and all the links and everything you need there as well. So you can get it there. One step empire. All right. Well, thank you so much, Donna. You gave us so much to think about today and, a lot of great actionable steps that we can [00:35:00] start taking to get rid of the overwhelm, stop doing all the things and start doing the things that really move the needle.

So I really appreciate you coming on 

Donna: today. Good. Thank you. I enjoyed it, Ch