Ep 31 Transcript: Profit Boosting Productivity Tips with Amber De La Garza

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today I am being joined by the productivity specialist, Amber De La Garza. And Amber and I have been crossing paths for a number of years. We hosted an event together in Las Vegas just a couple of months ago with the incredible LuAnn Nigara. And you know what?

This girl, this woman, she knows her stuff when it comes to productivity. If you've been listening to my podcast for a little while, you know that I am all about building a sustainable business without the stress and without the overwhelm. And a big part of that, of course, is building in productivity. But I got to tell you, I didn't earn the title of the productivity specialist. And this woman has she has been doing this for over a decade. She's been helping her clients to maximize their profits.

reduce their stress, gain more time in the day, gain more of their life back, get that work-life balance or integration is like to call it. And I am so excited to finally have her on this podcast. So Amber, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to chatting about probably both of our favorite topics. So it's going to be a good conversation. I feel like, know what, I can't talk enough about productivity and about time management, all these things, but I don't know if you find the same thing, but when I,

mention it to people, they almost like gloss over a little bit. Like you can tell they're starting to tune you out as soon as we start talking about time management and productivity. It's something that everyone knows that they need, but just feels just unattainable, unreachable. So how do you get that conversation started when you first start working with your clients or when you're first kind of introducing how you can help someone, how do you get that conversation started so that they stay engaged in it?

Yeah, so that is actually a big challenge. Like it's a marketing challenge. I have been marketing myself, the productivity specialist, as you said, for almost a decade. And nobody wakes up and says, you know what I need? I need a productivity coach. I need a productivity specialist. Like that's going to solve all of my challenges. And that is a challenge when you're offering and the way that you can help them is not the first thing they think of.

when they're waking up at night and they can't sleep and they're stressed out and they're overwhelmed, this is not always their first thought. So when I first started my business, the way that I did actually get my business going was speaking anywhere and everywhere, locally, every business luncheon. Then that went national, then now it's on podcasts because I think that if people hear my approach to productivity,

and then can connect the dots that their symptoms that they're having where they would not have necessarily tied it back to productivity or time management, that path seems more clear. So by the time someone's a client of mine or talking to me on a discovery call, there's not resistance of like, this is boring. This is like, my gosh, like I actually didn't know that this help was available. And I think my approach is really different than most people around productivity and time management.

This is not about shaming. It's not about changing who you are. This is really about finding out how you work best, how you show up best and doing that on purpose. And I can't think of anyone that doesn't want more of that in their business and in their life. absolutely. But I think that's so true though. I know that that's so key is ensuring that you're creating something, creating those habits that are sustainable for each individual. Because each one of us is different.

I've talked on this show previously about Charles Duhigg, Power of Habit and James Clear's Atomic Habits. And they talk about building habits. And these are something that like, whatever habit is that you're building, if it's not working, you've got to figure out a new way to approach it, a new way to do it. And the reality is that my productivity style is not necessarily going to be the same as the next person's productivity style, because we're living different lifestyles, we're living different lives. In general, we have different goals and objectives.

And so being able to individualize it, think is so key. And it sounds like you're focusing on the results of like, here's what you'll get out of it as opposed to like, I got this super sexy time management tip for you. Yeah. Yeah. I don't approach it that way. And I would say that I also approach it differently in my definition of productivity. So, yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people might have this resistance to it because they've heard like,

a productivity or time management strategy where they felt like, that's what it's supposed to look like in that book or that box or that method. And they've had repeat experiences with that. And so they're like, that's not for me. That's not me. That doesn't work for me. So there must be something wrong with me. Right. And so we don't like to feel that way. So now we're going to just kind of avoid it. My definition is not around, you know, what time you wake up in the morning or let's see, you know, what

particular superpower you have. Productivity for me is we are being our most productive selves when we're investing our best time into our best activities. And so less of a definition, more of a framework. And it's a framework that is customizable and unique as you and I and each listener here, because if we break that down and we say investing our best time, that is that distraction focused

energized, excited, you know, focused, that's our best time, into our best activities. And our activities are different based on our unique gifts and skills, but also more specifically, what are our goals? Because not all activity, not all tasks are created equal. And if we don't get this clear, then we start associating being busy.

as a badge of honor and that being busy and working all these hours is being productive. And I would raise the flag to say that is absolutely not the definition of productivity. I actually call that the productivity paradox because I find that so many people and women especially get kind of trapped in this state of busyness without actually getting anything productive done. It doesn't mean you didn't do things.

We've all looked up at the end of the day and thought like, did I actually do anything? If you sit down and you calculate things like, yeah, you got some things done, but did you move yourself closer towards a goal? Did you work on the tasks that were the highest level priority? Were you working on the things that really matter? And it's so frequent that we just have these miscellaneous task lists that have, like, these are all great tasks. These are all things that should get done, but do they need to be you doing those tasks for starters?

If they do need to be, you know, how urgent and important are they, you know, kind of looking at the whole Eisenhower matrix. I don't know if you ever use the Eisenhower matrix, but yeah, like that's kind of, you know, it's, amazing how many things that fall into the third and fourth quadrant of the Eisenhower matrix could really just be eliminated, either completely trashed or delegated to someone else. And really quickly for anyone who's not familiar with the Eisenhower matrix, this is where you are rating the level of urgency versus the level of importance. So

quadrants, it's four quadrants essentially. If you look at a little grid, your first quadrant is going to be those things that are both important and urgent. Your second quadrant are things that are urgent, a little less important and so on. So the idea is that you want to make sure that you're focusing on those first two quadrants kind of first and foremost. the quadrants three and four still have important things in them, of course. And they could get done at some point, but those are the ones you want to triage a little bit more.

so yeah, like I said, this productivity paradox though, of just that, that state of busyness, I think is something that probably everyone listening to this can attest to like, yeah, I know I looked up at the end of the day I was like, what the heck did I do today? Yeah. Yeah. And I think another way to just throw this as an example is we could work the same amount of hours. And at the end of the day, our head hits the pillow and we're absolutely exhausted or stressed out sometimes really defeated, but we worked our butts off.

Like we really worked hard and most of us have great intentions and it's not that we're not hard workers. Sure. Well, what if you put the same amount of time in, but on different activities that actually move the needle and we're of high value, you're going to hit the pillow tired, but not defeated, not stressed out, not overwhelmed. You're going to sleep better. And so this isn't about just time in time out, or it truly is about where you're focusing your energy.

and how that makes you feel at the end of the day. And at the end of the day then leads into how do you start the next day? And it's this whole cycle, but we can all relate to at the end of a long day, how do we feel? And it can be very different. And so if you're going to bed feeling overwhelmed, stressed out, defeated, I'm here to tell you that you can run a business that does not feel that way. And that's really my life's work.

because I feel like we all have a unique talent and skill set and gift to give to the world. And yet the lack of skill set or focus on productivity and time management is really like stifling out their flame. It's robbing the world of how they can show up their best. And none of us got into business saying,

I can't wait to do this thing and work all these hours and still feel exhausted. We didn't think that. And so for me, this is around learning the skillset of productivity and time management. And if you hear the words I'm using, I truly believe this is a skillset that can be learned, which implies this isn't genetic. This isn't a personality trait. There isn't someone that was anointed, you know, productive and great at time management.

Do certain personalities lean towards it versus others? Absolutely. But this was actually the question that I had when I was seeking out to start my business is that can time management and productivity be a skillset that's learned? And the answer was a resounding yes. And now actually nearly 15 years of doing this, I can tell you absolutely a skillset that when we focus on and we find that is important and can affect our business and our personal life,

it can be transformative. So how do you recommend someone get started with figuring out what are the tasks that I should be focusing on? Because I'm sure you get some pushback from your clients of, it's all important, but it all needs to get done. Or these people are relying on me. There's external commitments that they've made. So how do you get them started on identifying what those tasks are that they should be working on?

Yeah, so I actually do have a framework and I'll share that. I just want to speak to the number one thing that sabotages us investing our time in this framework that I'm going to share. the number one thing that sabotages it is fires in the business.

even outside of the business, right? My dog got sick, my kid got sick, the cat got sick, the internet went out. There's things that are outside of our control. There's customers that get mad. There's someone on the job site that needs your attention. But what I find is that we get, about talking about behaviors and habits, we get addicted to that firefighter mentality of like, I can put out the fire. I can solve the thing. I can show up. My clients, my vendors, everybody needs something. I'm gonna do this.

But if you really take a step back and you look at, okay, so let's just take you have a hundred fires in your business. How many of them are self-created fires? Ooh. Okay, so self-created fires are when you're taking accountability that you let something fall through the cracks. You don't have a system, you don't have a process. You're not working from a proactive place. You're working from a reactive place. There is a lot of different reasons why. There are a lot of fires that are

actually self-created. And so if we can get the root of a lot of those self-created fires, you've gone from, let's just say from a hundred to 50, now you're 50 % more likely to be able to show up consistently when you block schedule and you have a task list and you're saying, I'm going to work on my highest value activities that you don't feel like you're being, you know, sabotage left and right because those fall in oftentimes the urgent important

And while we do want to spend our time there, if that box, just to your analogy, is actually your entire day and your entire week, you never get to the three other areas. And the other box you were talking about is not urgent, but important. And that is actually where we're going to see our highest value activities that move the needle in the business. So some self-accountability.

self-leadership, looking and having a hard conversation in the mirror of, okay, so I really am putting out fires. That's my reality. Right. Checking yourself just a I focus on to reduce the number of fires so that I do have these blocks of time that are focused? And then I just want to say one more thing. I also believe that we are not meant to be productive all day, every day. Okay.

So what does that mean? This is literally my life's work. I have never seen anyone be productive all day, every day. There are lots of things in our businesses that are like have tos that get done. But what happens is, is that if we say we're trying to, we're trying to, you know, achieve this elusive, I'm productive all day, every day, what we start doing is diluting that definition and we throw in all the busy work, all the things. And so now we're right back to full circle moment of,

Now we're just equating being busy with productive. So if we're not trying to be productive all day, every day, what are we trying to do? We're trying to spend our time in the non-urgent important areas of our business for focused blocks of time. And you, honestly, you and the listeners is what I mean, like loosely you, not exactly you, Shauna. can point it at me. That's fine too. What our listeners is that if one of the questions you asked was how do you make this attainable?

Here's how, start with 30 minutes of focus time on a high value, very important activity a week, a week. Like if your whole week is putting out fires and being busy, can you protect 30 minutes and then an hour and then 90 minutes and then maybe 90 minutes, five days a week or four days a week. The way I approach behavior and habit change is that you start growing into it. You don't just suddenly wake up and to say, I'm gonna run a marathon and now.

you know, four hours a day I'm being productive, but last week I didn't squeeze in 30 minutes. So this is a bit of a training, so start somewhere. And then finally, to answer your original question of what your highest value activities are is I call them four buckets, but I call them buckets because I think of it as these buckets on our schedule that we want to fill up specific tasks in. But you know, if you were a corporation, these would be departments.

Okay, and as a small business owner, we wear a lot of different hats and we wish we had departments, but really we're head of all the departments. Right. So if you are a small business owner, no matter what industry you're in, no matter what level of business that you're at, the highest value activity is first and foremost going to be marketing and visibility. Okay. So letting the world know what it is you do and how you can help them.

And now with each of these departments, depending on what level of business you're in, I'm not saying you're the doer, but you might be the strategist. You might be the leader in that department. But when we get quote unquote busy, when there's these strategies and projects that are not time sensitive, that are not accountable to anybody else, we can often push out the marketing and visibility activities. And unfortunately, that's what starts

the whole cycle to profitability. Because if you're showing up inconsistently in marketing and visibility, then you're gonna show up to bucket number two, which are sales, right? And what kind of activities are in sales? This could be creating a new offer, writing the copy, doing discovery calls, consultations, depending on your business and your business model, that sales activity is gonna look a little different. It could be writing proposals, right? And so,

Those are high, high value activities. But if you didn't show up in the first bucket, guess what? It doesn't drip down to the second you don't get to be in that sales activity. I think what's crazy is that some people actually have a lot of leads and the leads are falling through the cracks and they're not being followed up on because they're quote unquote so busy. And where they're busy at generally while high value is bucket number three, which bucket number three can actually sabotage all else.

because we tell ourselves it's high value and it is high value, but not at the expense of everything else. And bucket number three is servicing our clients. I'll admit I'm guilty of that too. Yeah, trying to balance the marketing and visibility with servicing your clients. Yeah, because you want to show up for them. They've paid you good money. Those are the ones who have already given you those sales. Absolutely. Absolutely. you know, I specialize in service-based business owners, which just means that their skill set

is what is being sold, whether they have other people on their team that are providing that service, but we're not selling widgets, we're not in a restaurant. So really a lot of time is invested in delivering the service because that's what you have to sell in exchange for money. And if we're thinking of highest value, most profitable, of course, ching ching, like value for money and hours, like that is the highest value. But if you don't have a business model that...

is sustainable because all of your time is being invested in servicing the client. If you don't have great systems, if you're inefficient in the way that you're servicing your clients, if that bucket's not tightened up and cleaned up, it can actually sabotage you, like I said, showing up in those other areas. And what happens is what we see so frequently in small businesses is someone that is very well-intended,

head down, working super hard, servicing their client, they pop their head up and they're like, my gosh, what happened to my pipeline? And now they're stressed out and they're bringing that energy to marketing and visibility into sales. And then the cycle keeps going where it's like the yo-yo and now it affects cashflow and it's up and down. the place that I like to start is looking at exactly how you're servicing your clients.

And also I would argue that a lot of the fires that we're trying to put out are usually around the whole entire process from onboarding to offboarding and everything in between of servicing your clients. Right. Yeah. And then as your business grows and you start developing a team or maybe you already have a team, you're going to spend a majority of your time in bucket four and less time in

the other bucket or the first three, and that's leadership. And leadership is so important. And I got to tell you, when I created this model almost a decade ago, I didn't have a fourth bucket. I just thought they understood, meaning my clients and business owners, that leadership was important. But here's what I would hear, Shauna. If I have to have another meeting, if I have to do another hire,

if I have to slow down and delegate again, my gosh, this is such a waste of my time. I don't understand why I need to do this. I had this task list over here I need to be doing some version of that, right? And I thought, my gosh, where else can you invest time and actually get a multiplier on your time than being a leader that's investing in someone else so that they can invest in you and your business? Absolutely.

So leadership is incredibly high value and should not get squeezed out. We shouldn't be so busy. We have no time to meet with our team or to delegate or to review their work or give them feedback or coach them. But yet the reality is that often absolutely gets squeezed out when you're in stress and survival mode. Absolutely. Very high value activity. So those are the four buckets. And again, I gave some frameworks to them, but every business is going to be different.

But if you can think of all the tasks that you have to do, where did they fall? Do they fall in one of those four buckets or is it in the other bucket? Is it in the not squarely and it's also not the highest value in servicing the client, for example, right? Like we can almost tie anything to servicing the client. But if I'm saying what's the highest value activities in servicing your client, you're gonna be more.

diligent with how you define and categorize those activities in that bucket. Wow. That is so that's a lot to unpack. It's a beautiful framework. mean, you're so it's so true though. I mean, I think we think that, you know, being a small business owner, we've almost just been led to believe that, know, that just as chaos is overwhelmed, this is all just a part of life. And, you you hear the same, well, busy is good. And I always love to counter that. Well, sometimes, you know, like busy isn't always good.

Busy is only good if you're working on the right things. But to put it down, to be able to narrow that focus to four specific areas, I think it's really powerful because I think we think that there's 27 different areas in the business that we need to focus on. And really, they can all be summed up into those top four, those four buckets. so I really like how you're explaining that. You talked about

dedicating just like a small amount of time building that habit and, know, exercise that muscle a little bit. and, know, I know you talk about planning out your day. so, and, and I know that this is, I often hear people say, I don't have time to plan out my day. too busy trying to, you know, make money. And this is something you've already alluded to is, you know, talking about those first two buckets, you know, the sales and the marketing and visibility and such, you know, you spend so much of your time.

say like, well, I don't have time to actually like just sit down and plan things. I think that's one of the biggest things is I constantly hear people pushing back and saying, I don't have time to plan. Yeah. And I would argue you don't have time not to plan. Yeah. And I get that. And when they, and when people say that they truly are experiencing that, like they truly do feel that way. And so I don't, I don't want to make light of it, but I do want to say that there is such power in just taking 10 to 15 minutes a day.

to plan the day. And with that being said, I also have a framework for that. And so we'll discuss how to plan the day because I think it's important to have a framework and then customize it because when someone says plan our day, we're like, what does that actually mean? Like, what does that look like? You how much time is this going to take me? Yeah. Yeah. And then you have some people that are like, love planning and they're like, it takes an hour to plan the day. And you're like, no, no, no, no.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then you have someone that said they don't have time and I'm like, you don't have 10 minutes. You don't have 10 to 15 minutes to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks. You put yourself in the driver's seat. You're a better decision maker. You've decreased your stress and I can keep going on and on of the benefits of planning your day. And when you say it like that, they're like, okay, maybe I can do this. It's 10 minutes. I'll give it to you, Amber.

And one other thing I want to say too is that we don't plan our days because the day goes as planned. I'm say that one more time. We do not plan our days because the day goes as planned. Nearly 15 years, I plan my day every day, my clients plan their days. Girl, I have never seen a day go as planned. Not one, not in a one single. Now, maybe it's almost as planned. Maybe it was just fell off the whole rails.

That's not why we plan the day. We actually plan our day so that when the unexpected comes, we can handle that with efficiency without stressing ourselves out and we can get back on track quicker and faster. And when we understand how empowering it is to be able to handle anything that comes your way and still be in the driver's seat, for an investment of 10 to 15 minutes.

and not for the purpose of anything being perfect because it's not going to be, that seems more achievable. When I think, before you get into like what the whole framework looks like and such, I do want to kind of stress the whole, you know, making the time for this because I think that we can all admit to ourselves if we're being really honest, that we will make time for the things we want to make time for. As someone who is, you know, actively involved in fitness and training and things like that,

I recall there was a time in my life where I got out of my standard routine. I couldn't figure out how to get my workouts and my activity and my fitness back into my schedule. But the reality is that if I prioritize it, it became simple. I would work in it. My days are a little bit more structured now. I'm mostly behind a desk for a good chunk of the day. But back when I was the stager in my home staging business,

My days were running all over town, buying items, servicing clients, managing the warehouse, you all the things essentially. And so sometimes I was out of the house by 7 a.m. Some days I was not out of the house until one o'clock in the afternoon. It was just all varying. My days went long. They started early. And, you know, so trying to figure out a workout routine in there was was challenging. Again, I've got a bit more of a structured life now. But one thing that I did realize, though, is that if I really committed to making the time for it, it became a non-negotiable for me.

It was actually incredibly easy because I prioritized it over other things. And it was really easy to figure out which things to get rid of. And so, I mean, and I am someone who does get up ridiculously early, I will admit. And that is a solution sometimes. If you can't find the time, get up 15 minutes earlier. Like it's, it's, it is really that easy, but I know that it's not always that simple for everyone, especially, know, I live alone with a bunch of cats that is very different from someone like yourself.

who has a family and juggling all the demands of your business, your clients, all the different things. So I think it is important that we acknowledge that we are all living different lifestyles, but what did you make time for yesterday that maybe could have been eliminated? Where could some of this go to? And to your point of like not trying to be productive 24 seven necessarily either, you wanna allow for some flex time, some downtime, some social time. So I'm not saying,

you spent 15 minutes talking to your kids when they got home from school about how their day was. Yeah, don't eliminate that. But there are ways of navigating this. for it. But plan for it. the time my husband gets home. And if I'm not in a meeting, I know I'm catching up with him in the kitchen. Right. But that is a benefit of working from home. And why would I want to squeeze that out? Because I should or shouldn't do, quote unquote, shouldn't do that. Instead, why don't I plan for it so it's a feel good? And then

guess what? I'm not interrupted the rest of the afternoon. He gets home really early like at two. So I'm not interrupted the rest of the afternoon. I got to catch up without my kid around. It actually turns into something I look forward to instead of something where you're like, you're a distraction. I just built my schedule around it. Right. love that. Just reframing it that way too. Like for me, I look after my dad. My dad, I've talked on previous episodes.

He's disabled, he's got multiple sclerosis, has, he can't do anything for himself. So he needs full-time care. So I look after him when my mom goes to run errands, goes to her exercise classes and whatnot. And so I work remotely from my parents' house when I'm looking after him, but I have to plan for, I cannot bring the tasks that need like a solid hour, dedicated, focused, uninterrupted time.

to my remote work days there because I will get disrupted every once in a while to help him to adjust. I've got certain things I need to plan for in terms of his exercises and things like that. And so it's just planned for. And most days, not always perfect about it. I will admit there are days where like, was like, I really actually need to get some stuff done this afternoon and this is gonna be challenging. But most of the time I go there with the idea of kind of those feel good tasks that are mundane, easy to check off and don't require a whole lot of my brain power.

and I can plan for it so that can enjoy spending that time with my dad too. Yeah, absolutely. And that's where I'm saying putting yourself in the driver's seat, being proactive instead of reactive and understanding that. So when we plan our days, it actually creates the time to plan our days. Like I know this sounds so cliche, but like you're gonna plan to plan your day. Like I would wanna see that time on your schedule.

So one of the first things that I hear, Shauna, is, well, should I be planning my day at the end of the day or at the beginning of the day? And again, with everything that I teach, it depends. It depends on what works for you. So for me, I like to plan my day today for tomorrow, right? So at the end of my day, and I'm planning for tomorrow. But for someone that doesn't end their day at the same time or in the same location,

that's really hard to anchor that habit. And so you're kind of an uphill battle of like, well, I need to be at my desk or my computer or I've got to have quiet time. But if you're ending your day out in the field with a client and then you're going back home and you say, I'm going to do it after dinner or after the kids go to bed and then you're tired and then your favorite shows on, you've just set yourself up for a lot of failure. So then in that case, I'd be like, actually,

Just start your morning, your morning business routine with 10 to 15 minutes of planning the day. Now there are some pros and cons to it. For me, I don't know about you, Shauna, I don't wake up with the same attitude about going after my work the same way every day. Some days I'm gonna slay the day and other days I'm like, my gosh, I got the kid out of the house, that was hard, traffic was bad, got back. Like you're already kind of spinning.

And I don't like planning my day through that lens by any means because I want to stay as consistent as possible with my actions. And to do that, I like to leverage this phenomenon that when the day goes to crap, for most of us, we've all had crap days, everything good happens tomorrow. Right? Like this is the optimism. I want to leverage the optimism. So today I went to crap, okay, tomorrow.

Tomorrow is gonna be a better day. Tomorrow it's going to be different. Well, through that lens, I wanna plan my day through that optimism of like, tomorrow is going to be a good day. Let me plan my day and how it's going to do it. And I'm not taking into consideration how I feel or what I want to do or what I don't want to do. I'm making a list based on what my priorities are. And I say that loosely by the way, I am not saying.

never do what you feel inspired to do or anything like that. What I'm talking about is all that self-sabotaging inner talk that we have. Right. And so when we can separate ourselves from the decision-making from the doing, right? So today I'm deciding on what I'm going to do tomorrow, then tomorrow we just get to be our best employee that doesn't talk back.

Right? Like, if we gave a to-do list to a team member and they're like, actually, I had a rough morning. I don't really feel like doing that. I'm going to do this easy thing. I don't want to call that person. And I really don't feel like doing that big thing. They would not last. But that's how we approach our work sometimes. And so I like to separate those hats. The CEO, the strategic thinking is when we're planning our day. And the doer is like,

I'm gonna get a gold star. I am just my A plus employee and I'm gonna nail today. Right. will admit that I do my own version of this. It probably doesn't follow the same framework that you and your clients follow. But my big thing is what are the three things, if nothing else gets done, what are the three things that need to get done today? It doesn't mean that the other things that are on my list are not important. And there are even times where...

I have to tell team members, for example, that something that they want my eyes on, it's going to have to wait until the next day or perhaps even a couple of days sometimes, because I have evaluated that that's not urgent for me or for them as much as like, yes, they need to keep moving on it. It might not merit the same sort of attention that other things do. So I always have my, what are my top three things in my list of approximately 26 items on my daily basis, of course, but there's three things that I keep going back to, make sure like, okay, have I,

put at least a little bit of effort into this. I might not be able to complete the whole thing. And I do try to break things down, of course, into smaller achievable tasks, but can I try to get these three things done? And we talk about the different fires that come up in our lives. I've talked previously on this podcast as well about back in January of this year, I woke up one morning on my way to the gym, discovered that my car had been vandalized the night before, discovered it as I was driving. I have a convertible soft top.

And it was when I was driving. So keep in mind, like this is pitch black. It's like five o'clock in the morning. So it's pitch black outside. So I didn't notice when I got into the car that someone had burned a hole into the side of my soft top and then slashed it. And so now I'm dealing with insurance and auto body shop and the police and all these different things. I would say over the course of three days took probably 12 hours of time that I didn't have, you know, dealing with getting the rental car and driving.

from one place to another, all the different things that I was trying to navigate, the phone calls, the reports, all the different things. Can you sign this? Can you get on the call for this? And very much disruptive time too. And they're just calling at any time and I've got to answer the phone. Cause if I don't, I'm never gonna get them on the phone again. And I was actually hosting a webinar the following week and I put an email out to people who are attending. like, I got a special thing for you now. Cause I'm gonna show you how something crazy happened in my life last week.

it into my most productive week. So I lost a good 12 hours of time that I was planning on doing work. But because I had no choice but to triage my list and identify what is absolutely critical to getting done this week, I had my most productive and most profitable week I'd had in a very long time because I focused- Forced you to strip all the rest away, right? And it's amazing.

what that can look like. And it's a little uncomfortable, I think, for us to do it. Again, I think a big part of this is, well, other people are relying on me for things and you don't want to disappoint them. But sometimes we're creating an artificial urgency to things just because somebody else has put it on us. We feel like that means I need to give it my immediate attention. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And it's true for a lot of people. I mean, I hear people that have side hustles and side businesses.

I'll look at them and their business and their schedule. Like I get behind the scenes and sometimes they're far more productive than someone that's working 40, 50, 60 hours a week running a business. Because they understand how important that limited time is. And so it doesn't allow for that bloat. It doesn't allow for all that extra stuff to get in because there's just no time. What I think is difficult, know, most entrepreneurs are

creative in some sense, whether they are actually in a creative business like interior design or, or marketing, or whether or not they're just very strategic and they've got that kind of logical side of things. These are all creative skills. And the sort of side effect to all of that is your brain's not stopping. Your brain has a million great ideas in a nanosecond, but we've got to filter those out sometimes to identify which ones actually make sense to pursue, which ones just kind of go on the back burner.

and which ones to actually like run within the moment versus put them aside and come back to them too. And I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges for an entrepreneur is the ideas never turn off. We're constantly thinking of what is the next way that I'm going to grow my business and structure my business and the next hire I'm going to do in the next marketing campaign, the next product or service I'm going to offer. And it's just never ending. And so that's how we end up to your point creating what you call the bloat, that all those extra

things that are kind of sort of nice to have and maybe would be good to do, but doesn't necessarily mean that we're running a structured business and running a profitable business. And that's hard, I think too, because also a lot of times when people get into entrepreneurship, the thought is that I'm gonna do this really cool thing every day. And then they look up and be like, there's so much more to this running a business thing than I thought there was. Yeah, I I work with a lot of interior designers and

it's surprising how many times they have squeezed out design time at all, on any capacity, like on any meaningful capacity in a week. And so how, and yes, they're running a business and they're running a team and there's a lot to do, but if we're not very purposeful and understanding, like what are our best gifts to give the business and how do we have this creative outlet? How do we set intention and protect that time because it's the lifeblood of the business?

It can get squeezed out. We can be so busy that it gets pushed out. And this is not unique to interior designers. This is, mean, could you imagine going to your hairdresser and she's like, I'm so busy. I actually don't have time to do hair. I'm really running my business. Like I actually don't have time for this appointment. I'm on Instagram promoting the business and I have all these ideas and I am a hairdresser, but I have no time to, you know, do your hair. Right.

that wouldn't happen. But you get these other industries where it's like, well, I'm wearing all these other hats, but now I'm actually not even showing up in the thing that's generating the money. Of course. Yeah. And definitely can definitely happen. And, you know, all jokes aside, it happens over time so slowly that you almost don't even notice it's happening until it's really affecting, you know, profitability or even your stress because you want to and you know you need to. But now you have

accepted all of these other urgencies and responsibilities that there's, there feels as though there's not the time to do that currently. Well, and even, you you talked earlier about the leadership skills that, that entrepreneurs need in order to be able to grow their business and grow their team. You know, but one of the things I think that a lot of people end up finding themselves when they're getting so busy is they just throw people at it. And throwing people at a problem doesn't make you any more productive.

or profitable. multiplies the problem in my experience, like rapidly. Right. But in their head, they're like, I'm going to solve the problem. This is going to another body into here. And they hire what I like to call the warm body, as in like the first person to basically put up their hand and say, can help you. Like, yep, you, you're hired. I'm to put you to work. I don't care if it's your skill set. I don't care if you're actually a good employee. None of that matters. And so that's where balancing some of that leadership sometimes can also.

be a bit of a challenge in that you've just thrown a bunch of bodies at things and now you're completely ill-equipped to be able to navigate and handle it. And so yeah, now you're even more overwhelmed than you were before you hired those people, unfortunately. yeah. Yeah, for sure. So you talked about a daily R.A.P that you're reviewing your action plan. Is that what you're referring to with that planning your day? Is that your daily wrap? That's your... And it's like 15 minutes a day, basically.

Absolutely, so daily RAP stands for review and action plan. So in five steps, you want to review the current day, capture all the new tasks that are coming in and then plan for tomorrow. And so those five steps are you're reviewing today and today is gonna be what got done on your to do list, what didn't get done, who did you talk to, what meetings were you in? For many of us, we need to look at our texts that were like, we were gonna answer it, we didn't.

our call logs, maybe even DMs, your email. Where are, you think of this big funnel and this is the top of the funnel is like, where are all these tasks coming in? Because yesterday's task list and now at the end of today's task list does not look the same. New stuff has come into your world. And so do you have a way in which you've captured it and updated what I call your master task list? Like the full thing, not today's list, but the whole task list.

And then number two is gonna be to review tomorrow. Like what is your capacity? Are you in meetings all day? Are you out of the office? Is it an office day? What is your actual capacity? Because our capacity to do tasks impacts priority and what tasks actually can get done. And also, even if we're just looking at tomorrow, maybe there's a meeting tomorrow morning or in the afternoon.

that this is your chance, like, okay, actually I need to come in 30 minutes earlier. Here's what I need to do to make sure I'm ready for that meeting. Because you've glanced at looking at tomorrow to say, do I need to add anything to my to-do list as well? capacity and anything get added. Step number three is a mind sweep. So this is where we get all those good ideas. We talked to somebody in the break room and they said they were.

got engaged over the weekend and you're thinking, my gosh, I want to send them a gift or a congratulatory card. And it's all best of intentions. And that was at 10 in the morning. And now it's completely out of sight, out of mind because it wasn't captured. It could also just be like, I forgot the chicken broth for dinner tonight. a mind sweep can be anything. But what we're doing is giving ourselves that gift of a pause saying, what else gets on the list? What else is there?

Because when we don't capture it and we keep them in our heads, we can't actually properly prioritize. And then things fall through the cracks and then create fires. And now you see how we're right back to putting out fires and not actually working on our highest value activities. Your head is not a storage system. I say this all the time. Your head is not a storage system. This is not where you're supposed to be holding on to the things you need to do. Absolutely not.

And despite all evidence, we actually think that works. Like over and over again, we're gonna default to keeping it in our heads, but the evidence says that is not, it's not helpful for our stress. Things are, we forget things. We can't properly prioritize, cause we also have tasks living in our inbox and we have tasks on a list and tasks in our project management system and now in our heads. So the conversation we didn't have today is that the daily wrap or review,

is actually pulling all those pieces together to one central place to update one task list and not having these tasks live in all the different places, including our head. This is also beneficial on why I kind of like doing it the end of the day for tomorrow is because now that's like a hard stop for me. I'm not taking home the swirling ideas and tasks and open loops in my head. I'm able to put it to bed, capture it and make a plan for it.

So once we have captured all the new tasks in our world that have come to us today, we're going to then prioritize. Okay, so we've updated the master task list. And so tasks in relation to each other and in relation to how much time we have available to actually do the tasks tomorrow, we have to ask ourselves, what's the highest value? What's the most important? And sometimes that is gonna be urgent and important. Other times you're going to be able to pull things down that are important.

you're going to decide what your highest value. For you, Shauna, this might be those three. What are those three things? And yes, the list might be a little longer, but for right here, you're just picking your one, two, three of absolute priority. Doesn't mean other things aren't going to get done, but those are like filler items as opposed to my priority items. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then step number five is to take those tasks and actually schedule them on your calendar as appointments with yourself.

at an actual time and date. Look at that. Yes. And so what we're doing there is answering three questions that really helps take action. What am I specifically doing? Which is often you've verbalized it, meaning you've created an action. You're very specific. Right. Or you're focused on the outcome. Right. And by getting that clarity, you've then answered, how long do I think I need to do that? Is it a 10 minute task, 15, an hour, 90 minutes?

and exactly what time am I doing it for? And by just putting it on your calendar, you have to answer when, and you also have to answer for how long it's scheduled, and you have to fill in the description that says, what are you doing? And so when you've answered those three questions, there's no more guesswork. Now you go with your agenda and your schedule for the day, and maybe it's a task, and then you're in an appointment, and then you have an interview and a call, and then a meeting with a client, and then you have another block of time.

that you're working on your priority task. And those chunks of time are taking this huge task list, prioritizing it, and then being incredibly productive for these blocks of time on your schedule the next day. When it's so much easier to get those tasks done when you've outlined clearly what it is that needs to get done. And I think if you think about it as if I were to delegate this to someone else, what would they need?

to know in order to be successful completing this task. And if you can give yourself that information, imagine how much quicker you can get it done. But I think one of the reasons why tasks seem so daunting sometimes is because we've made them up to be bigger in our head because we haven't outlined the overall objective of it, the overall details of it. So like if I put on my task lists, for example, do your business plan, well, that's just too big.

You know, that was the exact example that was just in my head. That's funny. Okay, I want to hear this. This is so good. It's so funny. It's actually that it tends to be the example that I use all the time too, because you know, business plan. That is everything that is all the things about the business. But if instead of do business plan, create your business plan, you break that down to the smaller tasks and then you're specific about what that actually looks like. So while I need to figure out my financials and my budget, so therefore I'm going to pull my P&Ls I'm going to.

you know, review all of my expenses, I'm going to complete this worksheet here or whatever that looks like, and you're going to identify all those things and you know exactly what information you need to pull. And that's all going to be in your description of like, this is what I need to complete the task. And again, I think of it as, you know, I always say, whenever I'm assigning a task to myself, I think of it as if I was assigning that task to someone else. And there's a couple of reasons for this. One, it's going to make it easier for me to complete that task. But two, there are, if it is a task that I might need to do again, I don't like wasting time.

rethinking how to do something. So I've got my project management system, that task goes into my project management system. And then when it comes to doing that task a year later, I can just pull up all of the initial thoughts that I had from the previous year and kind of start from where I left off basically, without having to completely rethink things, without having to completely reinvent the wheel. like as an example,

we have a fiscal year end every year and every year there's a bunch of things that need to get done. Instead of me sitting down each year and saying it's fiscal year end, I wonder what I need for fiscal year end and then make a little checklist. Well, if I just use that same checklist next year because I already did it this year, it makes my life that much easier. So I like to capture that information to make it easier for my present self and my future self. My future self's always very happy about that. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that takes...

short, the lens in that, in those decisions is short term versus long term gain. And so in the short term, it's going to take you a little bit longer to break all that out instead of winging your way through it. But the long term is your future self. Thank you for that little bit of investment of creating the checklist, putting it in your project management system, and then reaping the ROI way down the road. And that is a great way of just auditing yourself and how you go through the day and make your decisions is

Is this through the lens of like short-term putting out of fire, solving an issue here and now, or can you zoom out and start making decisions with the way you're investing your time and the way you lead your team in what is the long-term benefit for the business? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think you nailed it right there. I mean, it's just, it's your short-term versus your long-term and your future self will thank you for it. Yeah. absolutely.

All right, so not to put you on the spot here, but based on everything that we've discussed today, if anyone who's listening to this is gonna take one thing away from today's discussion, what is the one thing you want them to take away or maybe one task item you want them to work on? Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the most powerful strategies that I get, uh-huh, uh-huh, but don't do, is taking the tasks from your task list and actually scheduling them on your calendar.

It helps in so many ways that we don't even have time to speak over here on this episode. But if you feel like your time blindness or you're over optimistic on how much can get done by doing this one exercise and quantifying time, like concretely, because time is so abstract. And when we look at a task list, they all look about equal because they all took one line on the task list. Sure. This is really going to help you be a better estimate how long things take.

and create more focus. It's also gonna start giving you data back over time with regards to how long things actually take because our brains are gonna say it should take 30 minutes and you do it over and over again. And you're like, why is it always an hour? And that's a great question to ask. Is it because there's interruptions, distractions, you don't have a process or a system? Or was it that you were incredibly focused and you need to be checked, your reality checked of it takes an hour.

Well then when we start scheduling an hour, we are not shaming ourselves and we didn't get to the other five things on our list because we took the time it actually needed to take to get it done. We weren't lying to ourselves. Those are just a couple of them, but that one strategy of blocking it out on your schedule is so impactful for sure.

And that is really impactful. You're absolutely right. I think that we're all very good at lying to ourselves about how much time things take is probably the number one lie that we tell ourselves. yeah. And we don't mean to and we're being optimistic and it's all the great things. It just doesn't serve us well when we're trying to schedule our day and make a plan and overcommit ourselves and all the things. Absolutely. I know people often ask, you know, we talk about

the podcast, you know, these episodes are usually anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes long or so. And then I try to explain to people, well, that's about six or seven hours of work that went into that one 20 minute episode. And people are amazed by it because it seems like it should take less time. But when you start breaking it down, you know, it's similar. You work with interior designers. If an interior designer takes that project and starts to itemize every single item you're going to purchase, every hour that you're going to spend, every minute that you're going to spend on things.

You know, when someone looks at the quote that you just gave them for 30, 40, $50,000, they're like, that seems like way too much. When you start breaking it down, it's like, that, all does make sense. So I think that, you know, the more clear that we can get, the more realistic that we can get on the time that things take, we start realizing like, yeah, this is the time that it takes. And if you're looking at your day in 15 minute, 30 minute or 60 minute increments, and you realize you only have so many of those to give and dedicate to different tasks, there's the reality is there's only so many you can get done.

So that list you started with at the start of the day that has 26 items on it, which is actually the number of items on my list of things to do when I started my day today. So that's why I'm using that as an example. When you look at those 26 items, well, if some of them take five minutes, if most of them take five minutes and a couple of them take an hour, you're probably okay. But if they're all really big items that actually take 45 to 60 minutes to complete, do the math on that. If you've got 26 of those on your list of things to do and you need to still sleep, eat and all other things,

things that just aren't gonna get done. It's just the reality of it. So yeah, we need to be realistic with ourselves. I just wanted to speak to that point about being more realistic and being profitable. No matter what industry you're in, when you're a service-based business, you are selling time. So whether you charge by the hour or your flat rate, you're selling time. That is what is on the shelves to buy. And when you are inaccurate with how long things take for you and your team and you're overly optimistic,

when you make that proposal and you do all the numbers and you're like, it's going to be 40,000. And you're like, well, I can't actually justify that. And that seems like a lot. So we're going to charge 30 and just like randomly, or you charge it by the hour and you start writing off hours because you're like, there's no way they're going to pay for all this. That is a misalignment with reality. Meaning that you, if you can be more accurate with time.

it empowers you to understand the value that you're giving for that time trade to charge accurately, thus affecting revenue and profitability. This is one of the major profitability leaks in businesses is writing off hours. Or if you're doing a bid and it's a flat fee is that you don't actually know all the hours. So you're essentially writing off hours too. And that can be, it can tank a business. And again,

going back to simplest scheduling these things on your schedule, you're like, so I'm not putting in the quote, this takes an hour. It's always taken my team three right there. You've just given yourself a raise. All because you got more accurate with understanding your own time. know that LuAnn talks about this, her top tips, things that CEOs, all CEOs do and are all successful CEOs do. And one the things that she talks about is if you have

proper systems and processes in place, you won't compromise on your value because you actually know what it takes to execute that service or create that product, whatever it is, you know what it actually takes behind the scenes. So you're not willing to compromise. that's so true 100%, right? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, she's pretty darn smart, isn't she? She's one of those hashtags smart ladies. Yes, for sure. If I can steal one of her own hashtags. Yes. Amazing. Well, listen, Amber, this has been an absolute

I've so enjoyed this. I know my audience is, I'm sure, just hanging on to every single word that you've been saying. So listen, if someone's looking to connect with you, what's the best way to find you? Yeah, you can find me over on my website, AmberDelaGarza.com, or I'm on Instagram, @Amber_DeLaGarza Wonderful. And you've got a fantastic quiz I'm going to put into the show notes. But if you want to discover what's been holding you back.

And it's a quick little three minute quiz that helps them to kind of get a handle on their own productivity. Am I saying that correctly? Yeah. Yeah. So it's a quiz that in three minutes, as you said, you can uncover what's most holding you back. And then you get a curated playlist of my podcast, Small Business Straight Talk, of specific episodes that address those challenges with actionable strategies that can be implemented right away. So a three minute investment.

You're not gonna listen to all the fluff and all the episodes. You're gonna go right to the episodes that actually will make an impact on your business. What a fantastic idea. I mean, that's yeah, to have that curated for you, that's amazing. That's perfect. Well, thank you so much, Amber. I've absolutely enjoyed this. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Amazing. So listen, if what we're saying here today resonates with you, you know the best way to support us. Simply share this episode with a fellow entrepreneur that you know can benefit from the tips that were provided here. And don't forget to...

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