If you’re like a lot of wedding professionals I speak to, you’re in a whirlwind of chaos where you never have enough time and you can never seem to get ahead. If that sounds familiar, let me ask you a question…
 

Are you sick and tired of this bullshit?

 
It’s exhausting! And the good news is, you don’t have to run your business that way.

SO many wedding professionals I speak to say they don’t have enough time to work on their business because they’re too busy working in their business.
 

That is a HUGE problem.

 
Working on your business is not an option, it’s a must. Let’s get clear on these terms though…

• Working on your business is working on things that drive growth and help you get clients like marketing, pricing, systems to make your business run smoother, etc.

• Working in your business is doing the work that you are hired to do.

The problem for a lot of wedding professionals is that they don’t see this distinction and they don’t realize that you can’t spend all your time working in your business if you want to attract more clients. Doing that is a great way to set yourself up for a feast or famine business cycle.

So how do you make more time available to work on your business?

First, you have to take stock of what you’re doing.

Time is like money, you can be poor in either and they are both resources that we can use in a million different ways. If you’ve ever tracked how you spend your money for a week you were probably shocked to find out how much you were spending on silly things like random lattes that you didn’t really think about.

It’s only when you realize how you’re spending that you can restructure the way you spend to align with your goals.
 

I challenge you to actually keep track of how you’re spending your time for a week.

 
I even made you a time tracking worksheet 🙂

You will be SHOCKED by how much time you waste and how much time you spend on things that don’t really matter or help you reach your goals.

Most business owners get pulled into spending time on things that don’t line up with their goals. It’s SO easy to do.

You get a notification from Facebook, you scroll and read things for 20 minutes, then you get an email notification and jump over to your email where you get lost reading emails that don’t help you, you think “Hey I wonder what’s happening on Instagram” and start scrolling and double tapping. Before you know it an hour and a half is gone. Sound familiar?

We all do it but the more you can prevent it from happening, the more time you’ll have for things that actually matter.

It’s so easy to do things that make you FEEL like you’re doing work like checking in on social media, like clearing your inbox, like messing with your website. But if you can’t connect these tasks to your goals, then why are you spending your time on them?

Doing actual focused work means doing the tasks that move you closer to your goals. So let’s say your goal is to generate more leads.

Those tasks would likely include things like…

• Learn how to better generate leads (like you can in The Wedding Business Collective)
• Review the leads you are generating and evaluating if they line up with who you want to be attracting (If not, you need to refine your ideal client)
• Add calls to action to your website to drive more visitors to become leads
• Create an email list and set up a lead magnet to generate leads
• Promote your lead magnet across your social media profiles
• Get the done for you autoresponder in The Wedding Business Collective and use it to warm up cold leads
• Track where your leads are coming from with Google Analytics and spend more of your time on what’s working (and drop what isn’t)

Notice that these tasks on this list all directly tie to the goal of getting more leads.

Now of course you have to do things in your business that won’t tie directly to your goals like bookkeeping, posting regularly on social media and admin that goes along with working with your clients like scheduling appointments, sending and getting your contract signed, etc.

But here’s the thing, these don’t have to take a lot of your time if you batch and automate as many of them as possible.
 

Batching

 
Batching is simple and amazing. It’s just grouping similar tasks together so that you can use momentum to get through all of them. I do this with a lot of things including writing, scheduling social media updates, recording podcasts, and it makes my life a LOT easier.

Often times the hardest part of completing any task is just getting started and batching allows you to avoid that hurdle. Batching can also be applied to things like client meetings, phone calls, accounting, etc.
 

Automating

 
We’re living in a time of endless distractions but we’re also living in a time of endless tools to make our lives easier.

There are tools that can help automate nearly everything for you. I use Edgar to automate my social media posting. I use Calendly to automate the way people schedule appointments with me. I use HelloSign to automate sending contracts and getting them signed. If you’re on the lookout for some kickass tools, click here for some great ones I’ve written about.
 

Put ’em together and what have you got?

 
Bibbity bobbity boo?

Absolutely ninja systems that allow you to get things done WITHOUT spending all your precious time on them.

For instance, I set aside a block of time each month in my Google Calendar to go through my expenses in my favorite accounting tool and categorize and verify them. I don’t have to manually enter them because I use Wave Accounting (which is free) and it pulls everything in from my business bank account without me having to lift a finger. This simple system saves me a TON of time that I can then use to work on my business.

This is such an important topic that I’m giving you homework. That’s right. It’s not enough to just read a post, you have to take action.
 

Here’s what to do now…

 

1. Track how you spend your time for 1 week. Let me know how it goes in the Facebook group! I even made you a time tracking worksheet to help you get started.
 

 
2. Invest the time now (and it doesn’t take long) to set up your batches and the tools that will pay you back tenfold in time you can spend ON your business. Now that’s a smart investment!