Work Less, Earn More

Speaker 1: [Music] I really am on a mission to help business owners become more efficient and productive so they can get the stuff done that has to be done faster so they can actually spend time doing the things they like to do in their business and have time for their personal lives hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the shiled experience with Melanie join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it the career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from Having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech Innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let's dive in thank you for joining us Britney you are the chief efficiency officer of Britney inco share with us what led you to launch your business and how you help clients build Business Without burnout yeah I essentially moved into my own business doing home organization and productivity and then it just came full circle and I went into the business space uh I became an accidental entrepreneur really just using my planning and type a natural tendencies using those gifts I really am on a mission to help business owners become more efficient and productive so they can get the stuff done that has to be done faster so they can actually spend time doing the things they like to do do in their business and have time for their personal lives take off Fridays have vacation we all started businesses for freedom and I see way to me entrepreneurs working more than nine to- five jobs so my a mission to end that hustle so true and I can see how the home organization would translate into the business World cuz if you're someone that has that mindset it's a natural transition yeah it's a lot of the same types of things it was really funny because I actually had this aha moment I was in the hospitality space when I was in food service and I was always that person that was like moving things to make them more efficient and make it make sense so it all came full circle but yeah just helping you get stuff done quicker so you can get back to doing what you love and Friday's off sounds great yes if you are someone who is just starting a business or growing one what are the bare minimum Sops needed to start a business if you don't have a team yeah want to start off defining what an sop is so an so is a standard operating procedure it is really just the step by step of how you do something and this could be something as small as writing a blog or it could be something as big as like bringing on a team they are just checklists of how you do things and it's explained in explicit detail so that basically a 5-year-old could read it and do it you've got to start get getting it out of your head because that's when you can start bringing on team members so let's say for example you love writing but that whole creating a Blog process takes so long if you can pull how you do that out of your head and document it you're going to be able to pass it off to a virtual assistant once you're ready to start hiring they're going to do it the exact same way that you want it done because you've given explicit instructions so systems and Sops don't need to be scary it's getting it out of your head and getting it onto paper or somewhere digitally so that someone else can do it the same way and that's such a good point because we go through the process of doing things we don't always and we put it down on paper or we put it down in a tech platform but not always as detailed as we should in order to get the results yeah and the biggest thing I hear from people is they're like oh I don't have time to stop to document it but what they don't realize is if they just spend that little bit of extra time to stop and document every detail it saves them hours and hours because now someone else can take that over it is hard especially when you're by yourself to think about that but if you have Vision to grow start with that mindset so that you make sure you're setting yourself up for success and that's true and I think that translates into no matter what size business you have because you can be in a very large business and still not take the time to put down those details in order to pass off the corporate structure that you're looking to achieve yeah there's a lot of big businesses that do not document any anything trust me I've started solo preneur all the way up to large teams and it's all the same problems how do you maximize your time by managing your calendar using a Days by Design method oh yes I love this so I've created this Days by Design because again my end goal is to get people to not work as much I created this Days by Design method because I saw too many people doing all the business stuff first and then not spending time for Life stuff taking time off taking Friday off vacations I see too many people working during vacation what I really did was I told people to map out their ideal week and to make sure they put personal stuff first so make sure you put time for lunch make sure you put an end time for work so that it's personal time put your morning routine on there self-care time with kids I know for us one of the big things we're huge board gamers and we like were're not playing board games and we have so many of them so I finally put it on the calendar every single Thursday and what do you know we started playing board games more so it's really filling your calendar with those personal things first and then from a business perspective what I see is a lot of entrepreneurs will fill their calendar with appointments and things but they don't put time for admin and they also don't put time for sales and marketing and they don't put time for client admin work and what happens is you fill your calendar and that stuff still has to happen so I also like to have people put those blocks of time in on reoccurrence so that you make sure you have time for that so it's building an ideal perfect week for yourself based on how many hours you're working what you're doing those types of things but if people can step back and slow down a little bit build that it's going to be easier to to work less for sure and I like that you suggest starting with yourself and then building the business around you because when we get into growth and scaling those things can slip away and we put the business before ourselves and you're so right when we put ourselves first we show up as our best selves within our business that's where you see a lot of burnout right is if you're just doing business stuff and you're not taking time for lunch and you're not taking time for self-care or you're working until 11 o'clock at night and then doing it all over again the next day so one thing for me I actually implement this back in 2022 in 21 I kept telling myself I'm like I want to take Fridays off I want three-day weekends but every single time somebody would say hey I want to book on Friday I'm like okay yeah sure let's do it so what I did for 2022 is I literally on my calendar blocked out from 8 to 5: I said time block like do not book anything and I'm not saying that I took every Friday off but I would say I probably took 50% of them completely off of work and did personal stuff but what this allowed me to do is actually tangibly see that in my calendar and kind of set bumpers for myself to say like oh yeah I'm trying to take Fridays off so I'm not going to book that so I'm just being a lot more intentional with it when you can do that and put the Tactical calendar pieces together it just allows you to see the the big picture and it's also setting a boundary for yourself and boundaries can be really great things they can be hard to do but they can also be really great there is a mindset piece and there's the T iCal piece right so there's the Tactical piece of me actually blocking out Fridays but there's the mindset piece of if I have the scarcity mindset I'm like oh never mind I'm not going to take Fridays off I'm still gonna take calls so it it's both sides of it that it's a struggle sometimes because I love what I do so sometimes I'm like I want to work on Friday but I have that option to not work because it's blocked off so is the intentionality behind it and just preventing burnout I see too many preneur is burning out I know there's a way to fix it and even 50% of Fridays would be good doesn't have to be 100% I know right and taking vacation without working on your laptop that's the other thing people are like oh I'm going on vacation and they come back and like what' you do and they're like I worked and then I was by the beach and that's great right I love that flexibility but you also have to take time completely off of work or you're going to burn out so true yeah what tools are important to use for information management so everyone on your team is on the same page and I know this is a question for so many people because there are so many different platforms so many platforms yes so I'm going to preface this conversation with the tool is not the magic end all be all first off they are trying to compete with each other so they are all going to have the same or very similar bells and whistles and if you're not using it consistent on a regular basis and have a good system set up within the software and the tool it's not going to do anything for you so I know that's not what anyone wants to hear they're like tell me the magic tool that does everything so I would say from a task management information management standpoint you've got to have some sort of project task management tool in place our favorite is aana so I'm a aana Ambassador I've been using it for years it's got the Simplicity and also can be complex if you want to be but not too many bells and whistles like some of them have but you've got to have a place for all of the action items that you need to pass off to team members for yourself I even use it for like home and life and business and everything if it's an action it goes into a sauna or it's not happening as a twin mom which I know you are and I am too organization is key I joke that when the Twins were born I had pretty good organization skills going into it but they got even better when the Twins were born because our lives are pretty predictable but when the twins came in less predictable yeah it it's not a luxury at that point it's a necessity a twin mom that you have to have your stuff together it's the same with life right now for me is really crazy we're moving into an RV we're about to travel for a year across the country we're homeschooling the kids we're renting out our house there is no way I would be able to function without some sort of task management tool that's important and then like we were talking about Sops earlier having some sort of central Hub where you're keeping all of the how-tos training videos checklists and bullet points of how to do different things within the business you need those two hubs and a lot of times you can find tools that talk together we actually use notion to capture all of our Sops and it will talk with aana and you can link the specific process to the task so the task is the action and then inside of that it gives you the description and the videos of how to do it so there's a lot of tools out there what I will say is find something that works for you and just stick with it don't do the shiny object when your friend tells you to go check out another one find something that works stick with it be consistent and just always improve you have helped clients create a sixf figure business in four days a week how have you been able to do that yeah so I go through this road to scalability process is what I call it it stands for recognize optimize automate document and delegate so the first piece you've got to go through is really figuring out what's working what's not working go through a Time audit look at your schedule look at what tasks you should be working on in your business and shouldn't be they really have to set back and I think that's the hardest part for people is because when you're in it you're like I don't have time to slow down but every time you slow down you can speed up so that first piece I'll go through that audit with them then we decide what needs optimized whether that is tools softwares Sops their schedule 90% of the clients I work with it doesn't matter what tools we're putting in place it all comes back to time management almost every time we really go through and optimize all of that and then we look at what could be automated because there's a lot of tools out there that can do things for you now at this point' got chat GPT and all these Bots and Ai and even before that zap year would do things between tools so what can we automate first before we go and Outsource because then you can save your save yourself money Outsourcing but we look at that and then we really look at what needs documented so that we can give it to someone else so I walk them through that whole process and depending on where you're at in business it takes a different amount of time right like it didn't get like this in a day so it's not going to be fixed in a day but we look through all of those different pieces and then we start to build and be more intentional with what we actually want our business to look like you believe in business minimalism and simplicity how does this thinking help your clients so I use the minimalism piece from my clutter control organization days I just see too many business coaches people more more strategies more tools more software more people more projects more everything it all sounds great but we only have so much capacity to do all the things and still have a life and not burn out so I use in my home my life obviously I just moved into an RV we had to get rid of a lot of stuff but I look at businesses when I'm going through the optimization phase and we look and see what software can we get rid of so that you have logins to go into less places to go into less places to do training videos on less places to train people when they come on the least amount of places you're scattered the more effective you're going to be so I take that philosophy all the way through when I'm looking at a business schedule timing everything it's so true because we can over complicate things really easily and usually it's focusing on those few things that will make make your business successful instead of trying to over complicate it in so many ways yeah it's normally the things that are working really well that we don't go all in on because somebody else told us to do something else and then we try and spread ourselves too thin and we miss out on opportunities because we're trying to do everything that we really could scale and do big things if we just Runk everything up magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what is one way that you make sure to find and live your joy yeah so I constantly re-evaluate the things that make me happy in life and business I do audits quarterly but even when I look at my monthly goals I look through and I'm like what is actually making me happy that I'm doing my business what is making me happy in life and do I have those things in my calendar because if I don't then there's something off right so one big thing for me I just started reading recently and I have specifically made time for that and put that on my calendar and it's not business books it's actually fiction and fun that's what I've been reading too and I joke with the twins it only took me nine years to start reading books again because I read I know so many books before they were born and then just could not until they reached a certain age yeah no that's real and I think I was forcing myself to read a lot of business books last year and the year before that and I wasn't reading fun books either so this year here I've already read like 40 it's been amazing I know I'm doing the same thing I'm flying through them who are you reading so I loving Freedom M faten I've read five of hers I love Thrillers I actually just started reading a court of thorn of roses I'm not in my fantasy era yet but I'm trying to get there yeah but yeah constantly re-evaluating and saying is it working and if it's not working what changes can I make to fix it and that's life in business right life and business we've got to make sure that you're happy both sides so true and I love that you're putting the things that you love to do and the personal things into your calendar I joke that if it's not in my calendar it doesn't happen but you know what if it's in there you'll make sure to take that time for you and give yourself what you need or at least know that you skipped it and if you skip it too many times there's something off there time to go back and reevaluate yes thank you so much for joining us Britney please tell us how and where we can find you yeah my website bcq doco and then it's Britney and co.

Speaker 1: Consulting on all the social platforms and then I was telling you before we're actually documenting our entire RV Journey so you can follow that at the Dixon dour and Dixon is Dix it should be super fun all the Misadventures and everything from RV life thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello.com on our she built it website or @ she built it on social thank you to my editor Rich draino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and