3 Tips to Get Back Your Time (and Grow Your Sales)

Transcript of Short 36

“We all want to get back more time but we are business owners and so we need to generate revenue!“

On today’s Thursday short, we are going to talk about three super simple tips to get back your time and to grow your revenue.

Yes, we all want to get back more time but we are business owners and so we need to generate revenue!

So here are some reminders and if you don’t already do these things, these are great things to put into place now so that you get back some of your precious time and focus on things that drive revenue for your business

“Just because someone sends you an email does not mean they get access to your time.“

The first one is to get out of your inbox.

I can’t say this enough.

It’s the thing I tell people most often that they DO NOT do.

When you are working on a project, on a timeline, on editing, creating playlists or floral recipes… whatever it is that you do that you need to focus on getting done that day, you need to turn off your inbox. Close your email.

If you’re on a Mac, you have focus mode. You can put it on for an hour and deep dive work.

Just because someone sends you an email does not mean they get access to your time.

I absolutely do not respond to emails in real time.

That kind of sounds like,” Oh, but I want to make sure I get back to my clients right away.”

But, because you’re constantly in your inbox, you’re not actually getting any work done.

And so the problem is you have squirrel brain. (We all do.) we have the attention span of a nat.

“You need to schedule very specific times to check your email throughout the day. I personally check mine from my phone before I sit down to my computer.“

We see an email, we think we need to answer it.

It either messes with our mindset or it takes us out of our workflow, our deep dive.

You need to schedule very specific times to check your email throughout the day. I personally check mine from my phone before I sit down to my computer.

Usually between getting the girls out the door in the morning, I quickly scan my inbox and I delete all the spam.

I read any of like the newsletter emails that I get that I want to read from other educators.

If there’s anything that I can forward, quickly, to a team member that needs to be done by them.

Then I know by the time I sit down to my desk, the only things that have to be handled are what’s left in my inbox.

I’ll set aside about 30 to 40 minutes to actually do the things that are there in my inbox.

Then I turn it (the inblox) off and I start working on whatever it is I need to work on for the day.

I do not go back to my inbox until around lunchtime.

Then I’ll do the exact same thing, same process, and then I’ll go back to it at the end of the day.

“Stop letting your inbox control you.“

I do not check my emails after I turn my computer off for the day. Now, I don’t always turn my computer off at five o’clock. (I’m not telling you to work banker’s hours)

Do not check your email from your phone.

If you’re hanging out with your kids or you’re out to dinner with friends, no one needs your time, that bad.

Email is meant to be answered within 24 hours. It is not meant to be answered in real time.

Stop letting your inbox control you.

How does this grow your revenue?

It gives you back TIME to think about new revenue streams, looking at your numbers to see how profitable you are, building your team, mentoring and coaching your team, working with clients, selling more clients, having more sales time on your calendar.

It’s a sanity saver more than anything.

Number two is to outsource ONE thing.

Some of you may be listening (and reading) and you’re like, “Brandee, I can’t, I don’t have the revenue to outsource one thing.”

I totally get it.

Budgets are real no matter what level of business that you’re in.

However, I want you to really think about what is your billable hourly rate,

If you’ve listened to/read to this podcast recently or done my budget course, you know what your billable hourly rate is.

For easy math your billable hourly rate is a hundred dollars an hour.

So for every hour that you are working on client focused work, you’re making a hundred dollars.

Now, let’s say that you could outsource a VA (Virtual Assistant) for $20 an hour that could handle, scanning your inbox, replying to basic emails, creating social media for you or writing blogs for you.

If you could pay someone $20 an hour to get back your time, which you could bill out for a hundred dollars an hour, do you see how that’s actually a high return on your investment?

It’s not an expense. You need to stop thinking about outsourcing as an expense. It’s actually an investment.

“If you do not know your billable hourly rate, I want you to go back and listen to episode 153, and then I want you to join my budgeting class, right, My six figure roadmap class.“

Think about two things.

One, what is your billable hourly rate?

If you do not know your billable hourly rate, I want you to go back and listen to episode 153.

You have to know what your billable hourly rate is.

The second thing I want you to do is to think about what do you do every single week in your business or you don’t do and you feel guilty about it and you need to do it like blog writing.

What is something that could really grow your revenue or grow your brand recognition online if you paid someone else to do it?

If you could pay them $20 an hour, how much would you get back? And how much more revenue producing activity could you do if you weren’t stuck, writing blogs or you weren’t stuck, creating timelines.

“Stop letting your client’s Scope creep.“

Number three, and the last one is stop letting your client’s Scope creep.

Scope Creep is a term that’s created by Sam Jacobson, you can hear him on Megan Gilligan’s podcast, Weddings For Real. He is awesome when it comes to talking about scope creep.

Basically what scope creep is, is it means that your clients, let’s say, book your Event Management Package, but somehow they call you every single week and they ask you things like, “Could you review my floral proposal?” or, “Here’s my design board. Where do you think I should get these rentals from?”

All these things that they didn’t pay for, because really all they paid for was for you to execute their event, not to review contracts. No, no, no.

But you do it because you don’t know how to tell them, No. Right?

“If you spend 30 minutes helping a client review her floor proposal that she did not pay you for, and your billable hourly rate is a hundred dollars, you just gave that client $50, you might as well have just handed her $50 bill, which I know you wouldn’t do“

What I want you to focus on is really thinking about, did this client pay for my time?

Because your time is so important.

Think about, again, going back to your billable hourly rate.

What is your billable hourly rate?

If you spend 30 minutes helping a client review her floor proposal that she did not pay you for, and your billable hourly rate is a hundred dollars, you just gave that client $50, you might as well have just handed her $50 bill, which I know you wouldn’t do.

Don’t let them take your time either.

Remember, that our clients don’t always realize that they’re doing it.

It’s not fair to them to make it seem like, they’re just stealing our time. We’re allowing it.

We’re gifting it to them.

I just recently worked with a contractor. We worked on a project for months.

She was helping me to build some things on my back end of my coaching business.

I often would say to her, Hey, can you do this as well? Can you do this as well?

Honestly, I didn’t genuinely know what all went into what she was building for me. I would always say, If that’s not included, let me know.

But our clients don’t always know. I wasn’t trying to steal time by any means. I always wanted to understand, is this something that’s included or is it not something that’s included?

She was really, good about saying, “Hey, that would be an additional fee.” Or “This is definitely included, Send it over to me.”

And so it’s important that we do the same as if your client is continuously reaching out and saying,” Hey, I would love this.” Or “Can you help me with this?”

It’s important to be able to say to them, “I would absolutely love to review your floor proposal. That’s actually included in our next service up. maybe it’s your partial planning) and I’d love to go ahead and send over an invoice for that upgrade if you’d like for me to.”

Last week in my CEO mastermind group, one of my students came on and she was literally having this exact problem.

She had a client that had booked her event management service and they said that they had everything done. The wedding was in like two months.

Come to find out, they just had like a lot of vendors they’d talked to, but no contracts had been executed. The design was all over the place.

She was like, “I don’t know what to do. I’m not sure how I’m going to pull this wedding together because they only booked me for event management.”

I said, you need to go to her, call her and say, “Hey, your wedding is going to be amazing. I’m so excited to be part of it, but I can see that you’re overwhelmed and there’s a lot still to be done. So I would actually really love to be able to step in and kind of take some of this stress off your plate and wrap this all up in a bow for you. But to do that I would need you to upgrade to our Partial Planning Service and here’s how much it would be, then I can take all of this over for you and I can just wrap it up in a pretty little bow.”

And she was like, Okay. And so she did it and literally like an hour later she told me that it worked and the client loved it. And the client was so appreciative.

Yeah, she still has a lot of work to do for this wedding, but at least she’s getting compensated for it, right?

If a client says, “Well, no, I just wanted you to do it, then you could say, I am so sorry, but that’s actually not included in the service that you purchased. But if at any time you want to upgrade, please let me know. I’m happy to send over that upgrade.”

You don’t have to be mean. It doesn’t have to create a weird relationship with your clients. It’s super, super simple.

So (to recap) our three tips to get back our time and to grow your revenue.

1. Get out of your inbox, shut it off. Only check it throughout the day, at specific times.
2. Outsource one thing, just one thing. I want you to outsource for less money than you charge for your billable hourly rate.
3. Stop letting your clients take more time from you than they paid for. Make sure that you’re only giving them the amount of service that they actually paid for.

This was a fun episode. Will you just screenshot this episode real quick and send it to a friend or share on your story and tag me? I’m @BrandeeGaar on Instagram.

Share one tip that you got out of this episode so that more CEOs can get the same education out of this podcast.

Thank you so much for being here every single week, and I will see you next time.

Bye for now.

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