School Hours or Less: Time and Productivity for Mums & Moms In Business – Details, episodes & analysis

Ever wonder how some mums actually manage to build a six figure business whilst juggling a full-time job, kids, and life, without completely burning out?

This week I'm chatting with Sam Hoyle, founder of Harmony Accounting, who did exactly that. She shares honestly what it took, the late nights after bedtime, the focused use of every spare moment, and the systems that kept her sane whilst running a business while working full time.

We talk about practical time management for business owners: doing the hard tasks first, using Asana as your external brain, and why finishing yesterday's unfinished work first thing today changes everything. Sam went from working evenings and weekends to handing in her notice within six months, without taking a pay cut.

It's a proper, grounded look at mum entrepreneur strategies that actually work when you're growing a service based business around all the other demands on your time. If you've been wondering whether it's actually possible, this episode will show you it is.

Check out the full show notes and the resources mentioned in this episode at 

https://kirstyknightcoaching.com/episode-178-how-she-built-a-six-figure-business-after-bedtime-with-sam-hoyle/

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Mum guilt for entrepreneurs can feel relentless, like you're failing at both business and parenting, no matter how hard you try. Between school holidays, sick days, and constant interruptions, it's easy to lose momentum or feel torn in two.

In this episode, I share two proven approaches to handling mum guilt, keep your business aligned with your values, and stay productive even when the kids are home. You'll learn how to tell when guilt is a signal for change, when it's just an unhelpful thought, and how to reframe it so you can grow your business and be present with your family without the constant tug-of-war.

Check out the full show notes and the resources mentioned in this episode at http://www.kirstyknightcoaching.com/episode-168-overcoming-mum-guilt-for-entrepreneurs-running-a-business

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So today we are talking about people-pleasing. Because people-pleasing is often, you've guessed it, one of the reasons as to why you might be struggling to fit it all into your week. 

And the trouble with people-pleasing is that it shows up in both areas - your personal life and within your business. The good news with this, however, is that if you learn how to overcome it in one area, it will be easy to apply it to the other area. 

So there are two things that perfectionism does that impact what you are fitting into your week. 

The first is it puts you off from starting, so the task or project ends up just being sneakily moved, to the following week, and then the next week, and then the next week after that…etc. until you actually are able to force yourself to start it. So really you do have time to fit it in, but you end up choosing to swap it out for something else. 

And then the second thing that perfectionism does, is that it makes you take longer on the tasks you do start. Longer than it is necessary to. So that has a knock-on effect on what time is left for everything else. So that is why that impacts your ability to fit it all in. 

Let's talk it over this week and I will walk you through what to do to get past it!

So last week we looked at the reasons why you keep starting new projects, before you have finished the ones you've already committed to. I gave you some examples of what that probably looks like in your business and I talked about the problems associated with that habit too. 

This week - we are going to be focused on the solutions available to you, and the process you have to go through in order to implement the solution I recommend. 

This episode I am talking to you about the urge to start new projects, before you have finished the ones you currently have got. 

So one of the things a lot of my clients have in common when they come to me, is that most of them have a million things on their to do list, and they feel they simply aren't getting to enough of them during the week. And the reason why they have a million things on their to-do list is because they have a lot of open projects on their to-do list. 

By this, I mean, they have started numerous different projects or they've started to work on many different ideas for their business, all at the same time. Or maybe they started with a core few, but over the past few months, they have been adding in more and more new projects and tasks, yet none of the projects are actually being completed. 

There are more and more unfinished projects on the to-do list. It's a little bit like a nightclub gone wrong. Instead of having a one-in, one-out policy when the nightclub is at max capacity. It is more like a one-in, none-out policy. Where new projects are added on a regular basis, yet none of them are being completed and so are therefore never removed from the to-do list, despite our capacity for executing them in the time we have available being maxed out.

This episode I will talk about how I shifted this and how I helped my clients to do the same.

I want to talk to you briefly about knowing your client's journey within your marketing strategy. Because not knowing what that looks like, and not being intentional with what we want it to look like - is one of the reasons why a lot of my clients find themselves doing ALL the things to get in front of people, to sign more clients - and why all those things are not fitting into their week. 

So this week is going to be an important one. It's going to be all about giving yourself permission. 

Because one of the reasons that you might not be fitting it all in - is that you might not be giving yourself permission to do your business YOUR way. This could mean potentially the offers you are selling, the ways you are marketing and selling those offers, the price points of your offers, the type of clients, the ways of delivering your offers, even your whole business model - they might not actually be the things you truly want to be doing, in the way you are currently doing them. But you aren't giving yourself permission to really do it your way.

And this is a problem because it does end up impacting on the time you have available each week. So in this episode I'm going to talk about why it affects your time, then tell you why you might be battling with this, and then I'll talk about the process that you have to go through in order to make the changes required. 

So last week I talked about all the areas where you might be resistant to constraining and what that is likely costing you. And today I want to talk to you about the reasons why you are resistant in those areas, and then I'm going to share with you the process through which I take my clients through, to help them become the person who is able to exercise constraint.