Well, hello friends, it's Kimberly and I'm so excited that you are here today because we are talking about how much time you should be spending on your business every day or every week. I think this is a big problem. It's funny because my son, who's traveling abroad right now, but he is trying to create an online business and he is, you know, working on things and he's like, how much time should I actually be doing this? Um, I find myself wanting to do this, you know, 15 hours a day, and I get it. And it's hard, but we have to have life balance. So how do we do this? And we're going to talk about this today, the things that you can think through so you can find that perfect amount of time to be able to work on your business every day or every week, but still have the things that you want in life, to be able to have the friends and family and fun and all that good stuff. You have to have a balanced life. We know this. You can't just do this. Like, you can't. Like, and many of you can't. You have other commitments. A lot of you are just doing this part-time. So, how do you figure this out? We're going to talk about it today. If you're new here, welcome. I'm so glad that you found this podcast. I have no doubt it's going to help you along your business journey. I share all kinds of things from my last 25 years running businesses from my home. I left technology sales 25 years ago and I haven't looked back. It's been amazing, been able to raise my children from home, be present, and pursue my dream. So it's awesome. And I'm so happy you're here. I have free resources for you. If you're new, I have a 16-step checklist if you're starting your business. I also have my ultimate spreadsheet that has like all the tools and apps and software and credit card recommendations and all that stuff. So make sure you click the link down below and you get access to those things because this is going to help speed up your whole journey. And I'm so excited for you. Okay. And if you've been listening a while, thank you so much to all my loyal listeners. Y'all are wonderful and awesome. And I'm so proud of you. I'm so, so proud of you. And I want everyone to know right now, if you find yourself second guessing things, overthinking things, getting kind of stalled or stuck here at the beginning, trying to piece your business together, maybe even start your podcast. And you're like, I just need to talk to someone for like an hour and like go through this and make sure I'm doing it right. And what am I not seeing? What are my blind spots? I can help you. I offer one-on-one coaching. All you have to do is scroll down in the show notes right now. And you can set up a time where we can just email back and forth and see if like this could even work for you, if I can help you share your situation, or we can even jump on a just super quick, like 10-minute call and let's just meet and say hi and let me hear what you're doing. And I'll tell you, I'll be honest, whether I can help you or not. I'm not afraid to say no and recommend someone else if I don't think I'm the person. But I know if you're starting a product or a service business, maybe even starting a podcast, that I can help you, most likely. So, anyways, that's it. Okay, on to the episode. Well, hello, friends. I am so happy that you're here today. This is going to be a fun episode. Talk about how you're going to figure out how much time you should be working on your business every day or every week, however, you're trying to plan it. Yo, this can be a big struggle. I know it was for me too. And here's the funny thing is that when many of you start, you get so excited. You find yourself like thinking about your business at night when you're in bed and when you're on a walk or when you're doing other things. Like it doesn't leave your mind. It's like an OCD thing. Like you just have this rush, right? This rush of ideas and things you should be doing. And then also things that you like feel like you're compelled to do and you need to do. There's all these things, all these emotions. Yet you're trying to balance family or friends and fun and fitness. I like to say that, all these different Fs, right? That are super important to your life, but you want to be working on your business. But then here's what happens, y'all. This is what I see with a lot of new owners. You get all excited, you spend umpteen hours. Is umpteen a word? I'm not sure. Umpteen billions of hours working on your business, taking away time from everything. And when you're not quite making the money yet, like you're not seeing it back yet because you're still just trying to get everything rolling and ready and figure out your rhythm. It can get draining. It can get very draining because you're working hard and you're educating yourself and you're doing all the things, and you're like, this is now taking over my life. And you can kind of see that it's taking away time from other things that are important to you. And you're wondering, like, am I working too much? Am I not working enough? Have a lot of business owners say, Do I need to go away for like two weeks and stay in a hotel or at a friend's house or something and work on this stuff every day or leave every day and work on this? And and that is very tempting. It's tempting to want to spend all of your waking hours working on your business in the beginning. It really is because you see this whole new world ahead of you. It's so exciting. But I want to warn you that spending too much time on your business in the beginning can be very draining and not a good return on your time. It it really can. And it's funny because my son is traveling overseas right now and he's around other online entrepreneurs and he's working on what he wants to be his business right now. And, you know, he was texting me and he's like, how do I figure out how much time I should be working? Because he has time. He's single and he likes to work out and do other things, but he's got plenty of time to be working on the business and he has some set hours. And, you know, I think we all like to think that that it's a direct correlation. Like the more hours we work, automatically we're going to reach success faster and we're gonna get to money faster. And I think you can defend that in some scenarios. But I also think that too many hours on your business is not a good return on your investment. It's just not. Here's why when you work too many hours on your business, you get tired, you get a little sloppy, you start sacrificing time away from family, from friends, from your fitness. And when I say fitness, I'm not just talking about physical fitness, I'm talking about mental fitness. It starts draining on you. Okay, it makes you tired, it makes you grumpy, it can just make you what's the word? Like you just get burnt out. You just get burnt out because you're probably not making the money you need to make yet, anyways, right? And you are missing out on fun. You can start resenting this business that you were so excited about starting. I've seen this happen. You start getting really frustrated. And worst of all, you may even start doubting yourself because maybe things aren't going in that linear path that you thought more hours equals, you know, more money, and I'm gonna reach success right away. Oftentimes, y'all, it doesn't happen. Our brains can only function a certain amount today, you know, in a day. And our brains need breaks. We know this. We need happy things going on, family, friends, fun, fitness, all these things, right? I I say the F's. I you can remember that. Faith, family, friends, fitness and fun. Those are five things you need to make time for. So if you're trying to schedule out your day, what I want you to do is put your business into this, but don't fit all of those five things into your business. Like don't use your business as the very first thing, right? Because I think you can look at these things, faith, family, friends, fitness, and fun. And it's not a ton of time, right? I think you're still gonna have time for your business. I think people put business first and say, okay, business, I have to work 10 hours. And then they try to fit in faith, family, friends, fitness, and fun, and it it becomes very hard. And I would challenge you to try to do it the reverse. Like say, okay, you know, for my faith, what am I doing weekly? Am I going to church? Do I go to Bible study? What do I do? What do I do each day? Right. Okay, think about that. And really write out the minutes of that and go, how many minutes actually is that? Okay. Let's be reasonable about all of this too, when you're doing it with your family. How much time do you want to spend with your family? I think you've got to think about if you have kids, if you have a spouse, if you're, you know, you have elderly parents, whatever it is, or maybe you're just like dating and you're hoping to build a family. How much per week do you really need to work on that? And so I want you to think about it. Like, be realistic. Like, is it on the weekends? Is it a few nights a week you want to do things? For your friends, how often do you need to see your friends? Like, what kind of person are you? Do you need to see them every day, a couple of days a week, just on the weekends? Like, let's start mapping this out. What about your fitness, your mental and physical health? Like, are you doing things to take care of yourself? How many hours a day do you need to work on your fitness? Y'all know I go on a walk most of the mornings. I do play pickleball too at night now, because I have to fit in at night, but I do go on a walk and I, you know, take my dog for a little while of that walk and then I walk by myself. So it's important to me. So that gets scheduled. And then what about fun? What are the things that we do that are fun, whether it be brain rotting, even on social media? I know we shouldn't be doing that. Or if it's brain rotting, watching Netflix, or if it's going to hang out with friends, going to play pickleball. Like I think if you actually map this stuff out, you would see that it's not some exorbitant amount. And I think then that can be a starting point for the hours then that's left that you should be, you know, working on your business. Now, in that fitness comes sleep as well. I should have said that. I said physical and mental fitness. I think you got to figure out what kind of person are you. Are you a six hour a night person? Are you an eight hour? I'm an eight to nine hour person. Like I have to. So you can literally start backing into this and go, okay, I have five solid hours every day to work on my business, or I have one solid hour a day. If you don't have it per day, then could you fit it in on the week, you know, on the weekends or sometime at night, right? And you start there. Because I guarantee you, if you start with a lesser amount of time, you will be more focused on your business than if the world is your oyster and you have 20 hours a day to work on your business. Like you will be very focused. And this is kind of how I look at it when I'm looking at my business. Number one, what are the essentials that need to get done? So if you figure out your hours and you're like, okay, I have three hours a day, I have two hours a day, what are the essentials that have to get done every day in my business? And I want you to think about it like shipping product, taking orders, doing consult calls, what are the things that have to happen so you can bring in business every day? And then once we look at the essentials like that just have to happen, okay, in order to keep it going, to keep it moving. Number two is to look at what are the things that I can be doing to maximize my profits? Okay, so people skip this. This is actually an important part of figuring out your timing. Number one is the essentials that have to get done. Websites running, process orders, reply to emails. What are the essentials? And then number two is maximizing your profit. So maybe you have, you should be working on like upsells or a current promotion. Okay. So maybe that involves email marketing. Maybe it involves social media marketing. What are you doing? When people are checking out on your website, do you have an upsell? Or maybe if you have a service-based business, if you want to maximize your profit, are there upsells to what you're doing? Are there things that can be saving you time so that you maximize your profit? Are you looking at your pricing and making sure like it's good? Like, you know, some people I know will give away certain things, especially service providers. They'll be like, oh, the first hour, you know, I do free. And sometimes that can be a great marketing tool. But do people, do people book you just because of that? Like, I just I want you to analyze all of this. Your business has to be smart and you have to think about it. Even like I told y'all in past episodes, my my decorator Laura, like she had to raise her prices. She had to analyze that to maximize her profits. So you have to be doing this. This is a part of your work. Like, am I maximizing my profits? Do I have upsells or am I, am I doing the things like pricing correctly? And I think you should be analyzing that each week. Okay. Then and and dealing with your email marketing to your current clients, figuring out how you make the most of the money that is on the table. There's money on the table that people are not buying your stuff yet, and you've left it there. And so what can you be doing? So number one is to look at the essentials. Number two is to make sure that you are maximizing profit, okay, assessing your pricing, upsells, all of that. Number three is proactive marketing. What are you doing? Once you have all the essentials in place, the, you know, your engine is running smooth, you've maximized your profits, everything is ideal. How now are you proactively going out to bring in new clients? What are you doing? Okay, to get new people. Okay. Again, social media marketing, email marketing, maybe. Maybe you have people that haven't bought before, um, showing up at an event, public speaking, sponsoring something, going to a networking event. What are you doing as far as your marketing? And I think you kind of have to look at this and have a starting point and say, okay, my essentials every day I'm noticing are taking me one hour. And then maximizing my profit per week, you know, maybe that only takes me 30 minutes. Okay, that's great, but that's an important task. So you got to fit that in. I can't think sometimes we think that because something doesn't take very long, it's not an important task. And that couldn't be further from the truth. And number three is proactive marketing. So this is what is going to take a lot of time, probably, probably coming up with ways to gather new clients. It could be, again, advertising, networking, sponsoring something, public speaking, social media, whatever it may be, reaching out to people, DMing people. What can you do? This may take hours, and you're not going to know yet how much time you have for that, but you're going to just start. So maybe it's, you know, five hours a week, four hours a week, right? And then number four is educating yourself, staying relevant in your niche. I think we have to look at this every week. Is there anything that you needed to learn this week? I think a lot of new business owners get stuck in learning mode and they end up not taking action on things. So that's why I put that as number four, because I think getting stuck in this mode can be very dangerous. It's a trap that you can get in because there are so many ways to learn online through YouTube, Chat GBT, Google, everything, social media, even, right? I do not want you getting stuck in this trap. I think you do have to learn, but I think you have to keep it at a minimum because us as business owners, we're creative, we're looking for innovative things, we we want to be good. We're doing it out of good intentions, but it can actually cannibalize our time. So I think education and staying relevant in your niche doesn't have to be that much per week. It can be an hour. It can be an hour of research, right? So when you start adding that up, that's how much time you need to be spending on your business per day or week. Again, the essentials, maximizing your profit, whether it be upsells, your pricing, all of that, marketing, proactive marketing, trying to get people in, that's going to take a lot of time. And education may not be that much time per week. So I think you kind of start somewhere. So once you did faith, family, friends, fitness, and fun, and you figured out how many hours a week and hours a week you have left, now you can say, okay, I've got 10 hours a week. And you can start looking at these essentials and maximizing your profit and realize that you may only need 10 hours a week. When before you might have been thinking, oh my gosh, I need 40 hours. Where am I gonna find 40 hours a week? Do you see what I'm saying? So everyone today know that this is how you figure it out if you want a balanced life. If you do not want a balanced life, you can just say, I'm going to work 15 hours a day, and I'm gonna eat and take breaks in between, and then I'm gonna go to bed and get up and do it again. But what kind of quality of life is that? That is not the life you're looking for. That is not the fulfilling and impactful life, that is not a fun life, that is not using the gifts that God has given you in all the important ways. It's just existing. It's just existing. I think when you take an approach like this, where we go, okay, these are the important things in my life, and business is going to fit into those hours because you may have a full-time job and you don't have that many hours left. Okay. And then you're gonna start seeing, like, okay, if I only have three hours in a week, this is gonna be hard, but I'm doing it anyways because I want to right now, or you have to assess, is this the right season for my life? I mean, is this the right season to have a business? Am I making sense? Like, I think this is a reality check here to look at this and go, okay, how am I gonna fit this in? If I only have four hours a week, well, I'm gonna do the essentials that have to get done, and I'm gonna work on maximizing profit. And I may not have that much time to do proactive marketing and education. But then as my season gets more open to me having more time, I could do way more proactive marketing. I think you're gonna have to do some proactive marketing. You're gonna have to do some things, but maybe you just don't have a ton of time, right? Because you've got to do the essentials that have to keep the business running. But maybe you don't have that many essentials right now. And that's the good news is that you can spend more time on proactive marketing. Does that make sense? Like you can start figuring this out. Everyone's business is a little bit different on how you put this together and how this fits in. I think everyone wants to think this is one size fits all. It's this many hours, work on this as essentials, work on this on maximizing profits, work on, you know, this many hours for marketing. And I think it's different for every business. It's different for every single one of you. So I'd love to tell you that there's a magic formula, but I can't. But the good news is today, now you have the tools to look at what's really important for your life, which was those five F's that I talked about. And then we go into what needs to get done in your business. What are the things that I can be looking at? And this is how you start figuring out. It's gonna be a little bit of a trial and error. You may just go, okay, this week I'm gonna put in 10 hours and then you're gonna assess and say, you know what? It's actually gonna have to be 12 because I need more time for the essentials, or because my marketing is working and I need to do more proactive marketing, and so I need to spend more time marketing. Or I need to hire somebody to do the essentials so that I can start doing the marketing. Or I need to do the essentials and I can hire someone to help me with the marketing. Does that make sense? I hope that y'all really take this to heart because so many new business owners just go into it blindly and again, just think it's one size fits all and it's this many hours. And they don't really divide it up into what is important. So, again, if you want a balanced life, you need to look at these things because I think it's very important that you have faith in your life, that you keep your family unit together, that you have time with friends, that you take care of yourself in terms of fitness, mental fitness, physical fitness in your sleep, and that you also have fun and you have extra time for fun. Otherwise, you are going to turn into a resentful, grumpy business owner who has no fun. And you have to have fun in life, whatever that it means for you, whatever that is for you, right? I think you have to look at your business essentials that have to get done. I think you always have to be assessing how how I can make more profit on each order that actually comes in. What can I do? I mean, gas stations do it. They put bubblegum and things right up at the register. They do things like that. You can too. Um, I think you have to look at your proactive marketing. Maybe that's where you need to spend your most time right now. If you don't have much business coming in, then this may be your many hours, is proactive marketing. And I think education and relevancy in your market is important, but it doesn't take as much time as you would like to think that it would. It doesn't take that much time each week. So I hope this helps. Y'all are amazing and reach out to me. You can DM me and start with some really broad questions, or maybe we want to talk about how I might be able to help you if you feel like you're overthinking things, things are going slow, you're not knowing how to balance your time, what you should be focusing on, and I can help you look at that, whether you're starting a podcast or business. So I'm so excited for you. That's it. Y'all have a great day. Until next time. Now, this episode may be over, but our relationship does not have to end here. Head on over to Kimberlybrock.com, and yes, you can get more valuable information for your journey. And you know what? You don't need to go through this alone. I would love to help. Thank you so much and have a great day. Bye.