Too Busy to Grow Your Business? How to Stop Spinning and Find More Time in Your Day to Reach the Next Level

After reading about the six-figure strategy I shared a few weeks ago, Amy wrote in with a question:

“What you said makes a lot of sense, but I’m so swamped with running my business (keeping my blog and social media up-to-date, serving clients, etc.). How can I find the time to implement the strategy to grow my business?”

Great question! And if you’re consistently making $3k, $5k, or $7k a month, you’re probably asking the same thing.

After all, just because you know what to do to take your business to the next level doesn’t mean you suddenly have the time to do it!

So how do you find the time?

If Amy were my client, here’s exactly what I’d tell her to do.

It’s Normal to Feel Stuck

First, know that the transition phase you go through when you want to uplevel is a tricky one. It’s common to feel stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Every time you’re ready to take a leap to the next level in your business, you’ll have to balance keeping things running (clients served, blogs written) with executing your next level strategy.

So while this might be the first time you or Amy runs into this challenge, it most certainly won’t be the last.

The good news is, there’s a way through it.

Figure Out How You Want to Tackle Your Growth

You have a few options when it comes to growing your business to the next level.

You can:

• Work more for a few months
• Find ways to eek out bits of time during your day (meaning improve your daily productivity)
• Make a gradual change over a much longer duration of time

There’s no magic pill. Growth takes work. And time.

Click to TweetThere’s no magic pill. Growing your business takes work. And time. Find more time in your day with help from Jenny Shih.

Most of my clients choose a combination of the first two options: They work a little more for a short period of time AND they find extra time in their workday to focus on growth.

Finding the Time

First, choose how many more extra hours you’re willing to work each week. These extra hours should be devoted to business growth tasks only (more on what I mean by that in a minute).

Next, make your workday more efficient. You probably know where you’re being inefficient with your time (ahem, Facebook), so start owning it and choose not to dilly-dally on activities that don’t contribute to the growth of your business.

Lastly, ask yourself what you can put off. What are you working on that you could NOT do for the next few months?

For example, instead of writing new blogs posts you could recycle old content every other week. Or you could stop working on projects that aren’t directly related to upleveling your business.

Here’s how to prioritize your tasks when you’re in growth mode. Everything you work on right now for the next 2 months should be:

• Keeping the ship running
• Serving clients
• Helping you make upleveling shifts in your business

If you’re doing anything that doesn’t fall into those three categories, stop doing it! Shaving off those projects and tasks could buy you an additional 5 hours (or more) each week.

We now found you 5 more hours PLUS the time you’re willing to set aside to work a bit more.

With this extra time, you can go to work putting in place the six-figure strategy I shared a couple of weeks ago.

Your Next Steps

If you want to take your business to the next level, it means you’ll have to be purposeful and intentional about how you’re using your time.

You must think like a real business owner.

Most business owners get sidetracked by tasks and projects that aren’t contributing to their business growth.

But you’re different. (Right?!)

Schedule extra time for your business, make over your to-do list, and press pause on the projects that aren’t contributing to your growth.

Here’s a tip: Remember to stay uncompromising when it comes to serving your current clients. Growth is great but the customers you have now matter more than the ones you’ll have someday.

Make sense?

Fantastic, now get to work and grow your business.