Episode 260: How I take off 6 weeks in my business each year
A lot of time, people start their own businesses to give themselves freedom. In today's episode, Fiona shares how she manages to take 6 weeks off her business every year. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
On Fiona's work experience
How Fiona takes 6 weeks off
On setting goals
New Revenue Streams
Sidestep the Hustle Group Coaching
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
We all need a break from time to time, but we also started a business to give ourselves more freedom. A lot of the time, that is a reason why people start. Make sure that we're actually putting that into the plan, the plan isn't just about necessarily making money or doing this or doing that, but if we are talking about making money, we have an incentive, like a reason I want to make the money because then I will be able to do X, Y.
Welcome to episode 260 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today you're listening to a coaching episode, and this is my response to a question that I have been asked so many times and it's coming up to this thing happening for me as it does pretty much most years. And people are always surprised that I do this and wonder how I do this. I will go through all of that in a second. In today's coaching episode, two things I wanted to mention. One is we are going to be rebranding soon. In a little while, not too soon, but in a little while, you may find that the name of this podcast is changing slightly, very slightly. Just be aware of that. We also have new artwork and we will tell you a lot more about that when it's happening.
But just be aware that it will be changing. Well, we don't have an exact date in mind, but it will be changing. Just keep in mind that the name will be changing. It'll look a little bit different as well, but all of the kinds of content will be the same. We'll have the same format, the usual small business tips on Tuesday, the longer episodes like today's, either a coaching episode with me or an interview with an amazing creative small business owner from around the world every Thursday. The actual helpful stuff for you will not change. But what will change is the design. If you're looking at the visual design that is, if you're looking at it on your app or you're used to looking for the little yellow square, that might change. And also the name will change slightly, but just keep that in mind. It is coming up probably in the next couple of months. The other thing is I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the beautiful land on which we record this podcast, and that is the Wurundjeri and Wurrung people of the Kulin nation. And I pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's episode.
If you're listening to this in real-time, it is Thursday, the 1st of December, and how did we get here? How are we on the 1st of December 2022? Honestly, the last few years have been such a blur, and the older I get, I just realize and notice how quickly life is going. It is just flying by. Today I wanted to acknowledge that we are at the end of the year and I wanted to share something that I have managed to do in my business for quite a few years now. And that is to take off a huge amount of time at the end of the year. Now, if you are in retail and you're like, this does not apply to me. I have a shop, or I have a store, or maybe you've got a hairdresser or something else like that, please keep listening because yes, I'm a service-based business and I do not have a shop front.
However, a lot of the stuff that I work through in order to figure out how much time I can take off and how to actually take that time off and really take it off, not just sit on my computer and just not see clients, I think a lot of that stuff still applies to you regardless of what type of business that you have. I tend to take off six weeks at the end of every year. I also am the primary caregiver for our two children. I tend to take off time in the school holidays outside of the big break at the end of the year as well. I'm in the southern hemisphere, I'm in Australia. We have the end of our year at the same as the end of the calendar year. I know if you're listening in the Northern Hemisphere and we have a lot of people listening in the Northern hemisphere, hello.
I know that you get your big break in the middle of the year during summer, we have the end of the year, the calendar, the year, and our summer break at the same time. In Australia at least most schools will break up sometime early to mid-December and then they will go through until the start of February or late January. And universities, if people at university, they tend to break up, around October, November, and then they have this huge break until February or even later. It's massive. I just think back then and I go, I should have really enjoyed that time that I had off at uni at the end of the year. because it's like a quarter of the year or a third of the year or something they have off. That's how things work over here.
Now I started this business seven years ago, this is my seventh year. And prior to that, I was head of marketing for a large jewelry and accessories shoe wear kind of brand here in Australia. It's also in South Africa and New Zealand. I worked there and was retail. And because I was head of marketing, I couldn't take a huge amount of time off. I mean, yes, I could take the time between kind of Christmas and New Year off. Sometimes I could take a little bit of time off in January as well. But I definitely was not able to take the whole break like a lot of people can because when you're working in head office retail, I mean, and if you're working in retail as well, it could be very difficult to get time off. Everybody wants time off at the same time regardless of what industry you work in.
But as somebody working in the head of marketing, you had to be there to look at what's happening with our sales. I mean, it's a very busy time of year for retail, so it is unlikely that you're going to get this huge break. Prior to that, I was working in a digital agency with a few retailers, and then prior to that, I was working at Audible and Amazon in the UK. Again, big retailers, they're having big sales, they're having lots of activity happening at that time of year. It was always quite difficult to get a huge break. I mean I was working in the UK as well, and that's much like a lot of Europe. It doesn't take a huge break. People don't take a massive break at that time of year. You tend to take a break in the summer.
However, for me, when I started my business I thought, what is something that's really going to drive me to achieve the goals that I want to achieve? And one of the things is the incentive was to take time off. To get that time back, a huge part of the reason I started my business was to have more freedom and more time. I wanted to be able to take off a chunk of time in the summer and know that it was not going to impact super negatively my income, it was not going to super negatively impact the business. Today I wanted to talk about how have I managed to take that amount of time off. I take six weeks off at this time of year around December or January. I try and take most of January off. And then as I'm the primary caregiver for our two beautiful children, tend to take off time during the year as well with the other three school holidays.
I probably take 10 to 11 weeks off as well as I only work part-time in this business. Now I'm not saying that to boast or to be like, “Look at me,l but I'm saying that this is something I've had to really work on and figure out how can it happen in Australia, the average time that you get off if you're working in a full-time employed role is four weeks. You get four weeks' holiday pay. Now obviously people know that if you work for yourself, you don't get all these benefits like holiday pay, compassionate leave, and sick leave. If people are in an employed full-time job, they are not only getting that four weeks off, but they're also getting a bunch of other things that we just don't get as small business owners. I didn't want it to turn into a business when I started it.
That meant if I'm not open, if I'm not seeing clients, then I'm not earning money. This is why a few years ago I was going to say, but the years are flying by. I developed courses and online products that I could sell as well, but a huge part of my money still comes from coaching group coaching and one-on-one, side note, group coaching is now open for the waitlist. If you're interested in that, we'll actually be starting in March next year. And we've already got a bunch of people on the waitlist. It's kind of a first come first serve. Once we have people on the waitlist, then we open it up, but the people on the waitlist get seen first and we look at doing interviews with everyone who has applied, and then we kind of cap it at 10.
If you're interested in that, please get in touch or you can find the waitlist just over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/ group coaching. We'll link to that in the show notes. But I digress. A predominantly big chunk of my money comes from group coaching and one-on-one coaching. And then I also have speaking gigs. I have collaborations, I do partnerships with different brands and I have e-commerce like we have accessories, templates, courses, that sort of stuff. When I came up with, this is ideally what I'd love for my business, I would love to be able to have time off, and I was also looking at my son starting school. Now he is midway through primary school, my other son is in childcare a couple of days a week and I wanted to make sure that with my eldest, I could actually take some time off and I wasn't going to be kind of, I'm partly on holidays but I'm really on my laptop or my phone 24/7.
The first thing that I wanted to discuss today in kind of this how do I make that happen is to go back to like, what am I trying to do here? I always say to people, if you have a business, try and think of just three goals, three things that you're trying to achieve in the next 12 months. And then you may have things that you're trying to achieve in like five years, three years, all of that. But for the next 12 months, what are you trying to achieve? I look at any year, so say we're in 2022, right now we're going into 2023, I have planned out for 2023, what are my three goals? And with those goals, I like to use a framework that comes from a great book called The Four Disciplines of Execution. And it talks about each goal that you should have set up in this framework from our current state to our future state by when and “so that.”
That is really the most important. Honestly, I read this book so long ago that I don't know if the “so that” is actually from that book or if I just made that up. But definitely, the first part of the framework from X to Y by when, but the so that is really the incentive. For me, if I can hit a certain goal then I will go “so that” I can take those six weeks off in January, and December. That is a huge driving force for me. Sometimes the goal itself is because it's like, I can get to that number financially or this can happen like writing a book. But the big driving force is that if I hit that number, I can get that time off because I don't have to work to make up that number if that makes sense.
The first thing that I do is figure out what am I trying to achieve in these 12 months and which of those goals if it gets hit, gives me the incentive and the result that I can take time off. Most of the time it's the financial goal. And the second is pure because to take time off I need to have made a certain amount of money so that I don't have to work. Because as lots of people know in a small business, if you don't work, you don't get paid a lot of the time. I can't just go saying I'm going to take six months off a year, maybe one day when the passive income products get up to a certain standard. But right now the passive income product does bring in a good amount of income, but they're not bringing in the bulk of my income.
I have to figure out what are my three goals first and then which one of those allows me that if I hit it I get that time off. I don't just get the time off, I have to hit the goals to get the time off. It's a really big driving force because I'll be looking at that the whole way along and be like, am I going to get my time off? Am I not? Am I going to get my time off? I would still take time off because as I said, we've got two young children, one of whom is in primary school, but I wouldn't necessarily maybe take the entire time off. The entire time is really a reward for hitting one of my goals. That's the first thing, I go back then I figure out what am I trying to do.
Then once I have those goals in mind, then I look at my year. I look at when am I going to achieve those goals and for me to be able to take not just the time off at the end of the year, but the time off in the school holidays as well means that roughly I have to achieve those goals within 40 weeks of a year rather than 52 weeks because I'm just not working 52 weeks a year. Now, this is where people can kind of turn off or think, well I've got a business that does have to be on 52 weeks a year. That's fine, that's great and amazing. You may well be able to have other people work in that business for a certain amount of time so you can take time off. It may be that that business shuts down for a day, a week, or half a day a week over a certain period.
It could be that you have set up your systems and processes. Things are automated a lot more so that you can take time off. It could be that you look at different categories that are selling things like subscription boxes or something else that's going to bring in recurrent revenue that allows you to then close part of the business for a certain amount of time. One of the best reviews for my work came from a woman a few years ago, probably like six years ago, who came to a workshop of mine and she emailed afterward saying, I just wanted to let that we've been working through everything that you talked about in that workshop. For the first time in seven years, we're able to take time off and go for a holiday and go overseas.
She wouldn't have been able to do that if she hadn't mapped out everything. I get goosebumps because that's a huge thing for a company to be able to do to say, we've planned things out, we can actually take some time off because time off and memories that you make with that time off, I mean they're the things that keep you going when things are tough and tired. When you're overwhelmed and you think back to those incredible times that you had and you want to have those, like part of running a business is that you have the freedom to be able to take time off. I know that a lot of people, especially right now will be like, “Time off feels so far away.”
It's really not. It's really about getting serious and focusing on what you need to do to get the time off. For me, I've figured out the goals. The next thing, as I said, is to figure out how much time I have to achieve those. For me, it's roughly about 40 weeks a year. Then I go back to my money mapping, which is a framework I work with every single client on, and figure out how much money I need to earn. For example, one of the goals that I need to hit is financial, like a financial goal to hit a certain number. If I hit that, then I get the time off. Well, I've got that number in mind, I go into my money mapping and I figure out, okay, with that amount of money that I need to earn this year, where is it going to come from?
As I said, I have one-on-one coaching, and group coaching that's open now go to the waitlist. But I have one-on-one coaching, group coaching, online e-commerce products like courses, templates, and a whole bunch of things coming next year. That's exciting. Then I have speaking gigs that I have partnerships and workshops and things that I do for other companies and a few other things. I look at those revenue streams, for example, one-on-one coaching or group coaching, let's say one-on-one coaching, I can only see a certain amount of people per week. And because I've worked it out, I can only see them over 40 weeks of the year. I can't see them every single week. I have to figure out how much am I charging. If I have those all full and they're full for the whole 40 weeks, will I hit the number that I need to hit for that particular revenue stream?
Likewise, with group coaching, if I can do group coaching over 40 weeks of the year and people are paying this amount of money per month, how many people do I need in the groups? Currently, I always have two groups going and we actually go for a full 12 months. It's not just 40 weeks, everyone just has a break. When I have a break, they have a break, which is nice as well. Especially at this time of year when everyone's so busy, they've got that time to go through everything they've learned and then come back again in February and get cracking into it. I look at, these are the goals I wanted to achieve in order to take that time off, how much time do I have to achieve those? And then what specifically do I need to accomplish in that 40 weeks?
For me, if I look at those different revenue streams, I can start then reverse engineering it and going, “Okay, I need to get this many clients to book this much coaching to hit that coaching goal,” or I need to book this many speaking gigs and I can only do them in those 40 weeks and they can't clash with the time that I'm going coaching. It's all about kind of pieces of the puzzle, putting them all together and figuring out this is the goal, this goal if I achieve it will give me the reward of having time off. How can I achieve it? And that starts with looking at a calendar and looking at my money mapping and looking at things like, is my pricing strategy correct? How could I create a product or an offer that is more profitable but gives as much value or more value to my audience, looking at the audience that I have, is there something that has changed for them and that's something that they're really seeking and I'm not offering that right now.
Looking at all of that, sometimes I'll create new revenue streams or new offers, but let's just say I keep them the same. Then I know exactly how many of each revenue stream I'm trying to get. How many people am I trying to get into coaching? How many people are in one-on-one coaching? How many people are buying courses? I have a few benchmarks and goals for each of these speaking gigs. What's the average speaking gig cost? Like the fee that I'm charging, how many of them do I need? Am I proactively seeking them? Are people coming to me? If people have come to me in the past, am I chasing them up again for the next year and being like, hey, do you want to book that in again so that I can sort of chip away at this puzzle so I can go, I can have my time off because everything's being covered financially and everything's being covered from a time management perspective as well.
I hope this all makes sense. I'm literally just riffing. There are no notes. You may be able to tell like, “Fiona it's not really making sense,” but hopefully, it is. You've got goals, you've got a calendar, then you've got your money mapping. If you were in a retail business and you decided, okay, I really want to take time off, you may well go, one thing I'm going to do is to look at our profitability and look at the margins of the brands that I'm stocking right now and look at which ones are not bringing in a strong margin. Why am I selling them or do I need to go back, and have a chat with the supplier? Do I need to have a look at other brands that I could be bringing in? Am I doing everything in my power to utilize my email list to get those sales happening and those sales up so that if we did want to close, it's not going to ruin the business?
Likewise, if you got those sales up and you thought, well actually we've got those sales up and things are really profitable, we're going to run some workshops or we're going to do some other stuff on the side, that money that we get from that will actually help us hire somebody who could work over that period that we need them to work. Maybe you've already got somebody that's working in your store, but you could ask if they're interested in getting more hours over a certain amount of time. It doesn't have to be that you're shutting the shop, for example, for the whole six weeks. You might just shut the shop two days a week over that time, or not even shut the shop. You might ask your staff member if they're able to work two extra days during that time, you may like, it's summer and I can actually go out and enjoy myself on these two or three days a week every week over that period.
There are so many ways to do this and it doesn't matter if you're in retail or service base, but we all need a break. Break from time to time. But we also started a business to give ourselves more freedom. A lot of the time that is the reason that people start. Making sure that we're actually putting that into the plan, that the plan isn't just about necessarily making money or doing this or doing that, but if we are talking about making money, we have an incentive, like a reason I want to make the money because then I will be able to do X, Y, Z. I'm hoping this will make sense for you so far. The next thing that I do in my business, once I really fully understand my money mapping, I understand how much money I'm trying to make.
I understand the different revenue streams for each of those and I know how much of each product or service I need to sell to get the goal in that particular revenue stream. Let's say I have a goal for one-on-one coaching. I know how much I need to sell, but I also know how much time I have to do it, which is really the next step, which is really where I go, if I'm going to plan out the year and I've got 40 weeks and I want to make this amount of money from this particular revenue stream, what does that actually look like in my calendar? I'll use one-on-one coaching as an example. With one-on-one coaching I might go, I've got six slots that I could do an hour of coaching on a Thursday, Thursday's my long day. That's where my husband looks after the kids and picks them up and does the running around and everything else.
On Thursday, I tend to do one-on-one coaching sessions back to back. If I am back to back, I have a break in between each one, very important. But I will have a session, a break, a session, a break, and I'll have six of those. I can do six of those and I could maybe do another two during another time of the week, that's a total of eight that I can do. Eight times whatever, I'm going to charge for them times 40 weeks, not 52 because I don't work 52 weeks and I want to have that time off and I also don't want to map people in that then I have to change and rearrange. I take that amount and I can go, what does that look like for the tools that I use for the systems and the processes?
What systems and processes are going to support this company? For us, we use Calendly. We will soon be changing to 7.1 Squarespace, which is amazing. I love Squarespace, we've used them for years and years and years, but they recently bought Acuity, and the scheduling within Squarespace is going to be even more seamless. We will be doing away with Calendly and using the scheduling on Squarespace. But the next thing I would do is I would say, the revenue stream for one on one coaching is this. I have figured out with my time available how many sessions I could do and then what time those sessions are, and I literally input that in the back end, or Yricka my assistant does it into Calendly, which is a scheduling tool. I've got the system to support me so people can't book in whenever they want, we know exactly how many sessions are in Calendly and we need to sell those sessions.
I get the tools to support the plan, if that makes sense in that as well, I start having a look at the year as it overhauls, which parts of the year are we going to be talking about one-on-one coaching, which parts of the year will we be talking about group coaching? Which parts of the year might I be really honing in on doing more speaking gigs? And particularly for my audience, there are certain parts of the year that are very heavily focused on trade shows and events that I'm speaking at. I map this all in and then I look at things like the school holidays outside of the six weeks, at the end of the year, and the other school holidays that happen and I figure out if am I overloading myself so that I actually can't take that time off during the school holidays or I could technically take the time off, but I'd really be on my phone looking at everything.
I'm really trying to do like a bird's eye view of what this year looks like and down to the detail of how many of each thing am I trying to sell and then where am I talking about that in my marketing and which programs like Calendly, like a scheduling tool, are there to support what I'm trying to do. I should pause and say all of this might sound like, “That's so much work.” It actually isn't. If you sit down and focus, you could probably get this done in two hours, and two hours to then buy you two 12 weeks off is massive and it may not even be 12 weeks off. As I said, it could be a couple of weeks off, it could be a couple of days off maybe right now you are like, I would just be thankful to have a day or two off right now.
This system really does work figuring out what are you trying to do, figuring out how much time you have to do it, and then how can you do it. Usually starting with a financial viewpoint with money mapping. Now if you have never done money mapping and you're interested, we have a course on Money Mapping, you can find that at mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop. That course has helped so many people. We've had hundreds of people do that course and we get so much feedback like, “I had never thought of my revenue streams like this.” I'd never broken it down like this. Because once you break it down once and you learn how to do that, trust me, you'll be doing it all the time. I do this twice a year every year in my business. I look at my own money mapping.
I look at what I'm trying to achieve and how much of each thing I need to sell in order for the business to be successful and sustainably successful, something that I can keep carrying on. As I mentioned, we use Calendly, we will soon use Acuity, which was recently acquired by Squarespace. The other tool that really helps us, there's a couple. One is At a Glance Calendar, and you can find a free version of that over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/freestuff. But then At a Glance Calendar, it's literally 12 boxes on a page and we have one, I have a big whiteboard I'm looking at at the moment, but I also have this in a Google Slide document. I share that with people that I need to share it with. And that has everything that we kind of have planned in from speaking gigs through to when are we starting to promote this and this and when am I taking time off.
It also has things like holidays for Yricka, my assistant, her birthday, and my birthday, it has all the school holidays mapped in. That is a great tool and At a Glance Calendar is one of the most simple. You can literally do it yourself on a piece of paper, just create 12 boxes and put in the months, and start looking at where is the overflow, and where is it going to be impossible to take time off. Because like I said, I take time off at this time of year, at the end of the year, however, you might decide if you're in a retail business, maybe it really works for you to be able to take time off in the middle of the year and go to the Northern Hemisphere or Croatia and have a beautiful time in the summer there, or go through London or wherever you want to go and just take time off, maybe just stay at home and have a staycation
.
That really works. That framework is a really big tool that we use for mapping all of this out. The other thing that works for us is Asana. We use Asana for a lot of things in our business. We use Trello for clients and we use Asana for our own business. The reason that I use them separately is, there is much of a muchness between them, but I think Trello is easier to understand for people. I might be working with people who've never used any of these kinds of software systems. Asana we have used for years. I know there are many other newer versions that look shinier and more fun like Notion and Monday and all the things, but I dislike them. Asana, yes, it's old school, but I like it. One of the things that Asana really helps us with is content creation and batching content.
It helps me with it. When it comes to taking time off, if you are the only person working in your business or you've got a very small team like myself, you can't necessarily just take time off without disappearing, it seems from your marketing. What you want to do is batch, create and schedule. We have a lot of content that comes out from this business and a huge part of it drives our sales. We don't spend much money on advertising at all. Never have. And purely we use other channels like this here podcast and we use content marketing in emails. Sunday email, we have a website with the podcast show notes. We have a blog on the website. We have this podcast and we have social media. Social media supports the core content that we do. So if you are thinking, well, I'd love to go on holiday, but then what happens to my social media account or what happens to my emails, or what happens to this or that these things can be scheduled.
We batch create content, a lot of content and we repurpose content quite a bit. Now, this is not a content episode. Content is a huge part of my background. I have been a journalist, I've been a writer and I've been working in brand content for 22 years. I know a lot about content plans and content calendars and making content strategic. a huge part of being able to take time off is that the content is created ahead of time so that you can actually take time off. Now, I should add a caveat here that even if you take time off, you may still want to share things on your email or social media. Taking time off isn't necessarily like, you can never open your laptop or your iPhone or anything while you're on holiday, but it's about saying if you didn't want to, you don't have to.
I might still share things from my holidays, I might share where I've gone or something I ate or the beautiful surroundings that I might be in if I'm lucky enough or a book I'm reading, or I might celebrate a client who's had a huge win or maybe the government has just announced something that I think is relevant for small business owners. it's not to say you have to completely become a hermit during that time, although of course, that is also amazing, it's to say that if you wanted to, you have things set up. Another thing that helps us really hugely, I can't get my words out ever since I had covid, my brain and my mouth don't seem to work together as well as they used to.
But one thing that helps us is to batch create and map that all out in Asana. I have a content calendar at Asana. We also have a podcast tracklist. Everyone that is associated with the podcast from my VA through to this agency we use for transcribing through to Scott from Soundmind Editing, who edits this podcast. They all have access to that and they can see what's coming up. We have a color-coded system to see where things are at. Right now as I'm recording this, I have a red mark next to a bunch of episodes that need to be created by myself in order for me to take a big time off. Yricka also takes some time off. I imagine that Scott takes some time off. I'm not sure. I hope that he does.
He works really hard. I have literally numbered how many episodes need to be created in order for me to not have to create any episodes between the time that I finish up in mid-December through to, I actually have put them all the way through to the end of February 2023. That is not to say that if things change, I might go in and change the intro or the outro or add something to it. But it's to say that if I didn't touch anything, they would all still keep being scheduled on time. People would still get this podcast twice a week every week, and we don't kind of disappear. Now you can choose not to do that. You could say, “Hey, we are just closing down and we're just going to stop.” But if you wanted to and you wanted to keep your content getting out there and the communications getting out there, then batch create.
For us, we batch-create Sunday emails, and we batch-create this podcast. I look at, looking at that timeline again, how many of everything do I need to create? What's my business-as-usual marketing? And for business, as usual, that is the stuff that you're doing every single day. And then you've got campaign marketing. We tend not to do any campaigns during this time except for promoting, and group coaching starting. Now, that is something that I have looked at changing the group coaching start date, changing things so that I don't have to think about promoting it whilst I'm on holiday. However, the way that it works best for us is that we start a group toward the start of the year. We will start this group in March and then we have another group that finishes up kind of halfway through the year, and then we start the next round of group coaching.
I'm literally looking at my plan that starts in July or August next year. Those tend to work best for us. that is when we launch things. Outside of group coaching, we really not pushing anything else throughout that time that I'm on holiday. We look at just the business-as-usual marketing, which is two podcasts a week, one Sunday, email, social media, and some other stuff that we do. And we look at what does that look like for the time that I'm away? If I'm away for six to eight weeks, then there need to be eight emails written for the Sunday weekly email. There need to be 16 episodes of this podcast recorded, edited, and everything done, and what does that look like? How can I start batch-creating that content? Even though it may not seem like it to you when you're listening to some of the episodes, we've already recorded a bunch of interviews for January and February.
We have already recorded some of the tip episodes, you are hearing it when you need to hear it, but we have about created that content so that I can take time off, and my staff can take time off as well. That is a huge part of it, mapping that stuff out in Asana in the different content plans and calendars that we have and making sure that we are really aware of it and we're not rushing like, it's Saturday and I'm on holiday and I forgot to write an email and now I'm going to have to scribble something together. What we don't want is actually to have that last-minute scramble, but to have this strategic thought-out approach and to have batch created that content. Now you can do that for any platform that you have. There are pretty much scheduling tools for everything.
We use ConvertKit for our emails, we have scheduling tools for podcasts, and we have scheduling tools for all social media. Again, as I said, it's not to say that I'm not on social media, I definitely am on social media. I have a limit. I limit myself to 15 minutes a day on Instagram and Facebook and Facebook Messenger. But I like sharing what I'm doing. And for all the things and all the crap that I give social media, I do enjoy social media quite a bit as well. I will still probably be on there sharing things, especially if we go away sharing where we're staying or sharing the beach or whatever it is. But it means that if I didn't, things would be there and I would still be sort of staying in front of mine and still connecting with people.
Because even if I've batch-created content, people might listen to the podcast and then share it or send your DM or tag us. I still see that you're still catching up with people, but it's doing it in a way that also allows you to have these other things in your life like freedom and time off. That is how I am able to take the time off. I start with what are my goals? How much time do I have? Or where on the calendar am I going to achieve them? How much time do I have to achieve them? And then I look at things like money mapping, look at my different revenue streams. Have I really thought out everything so that I'm not then taking the time off but super strapped for cash because we haven't got the revenue streams making the money that we need them to make?
I then look at ensuring that everyone in my team is aware of this, everyone's aware of when people are off, and then look at the tools that can support us to actually make this happen. In our case, we use Calendly and Asana, and we use At a Glance Calendar in Google Drive. All of those things combined can allow me to have that time off. Now, this isn't a perfect science, it works really well, but of course, there might be something that comes up. Maybe I will get a call from Parkwood, which is Beyonce's company to do some consulting. I mean one can dream, but if something came up that I was like, “I really want to do that,” of course, I would talk to my husband, I would talk to the kids, I would look at different avenues for working if I really wanted to take that on.
But if I don't have to take things on or if I something comes up that I'm not that excited by, I can have that time off and I can give myself that as a reward for all the hard work that I do and we all do as small business owners. And like I said, I've said it quite a few times in this episode, a lot of us start a business to get more time back. What are we doing if we are not actually strategically planning when that time happens? When do we get that time? And the time is not just I started off by talking about my children. I love my kids, I love them so much. I'm incredibly lucky to have them went through a lot to have them. And you can hear all about my story at Australian Birth Stories because the lovely Sophie interviewed me for Australian Birth Stories a while ago.
But that time off is not just for my kids, that time is for me to read, see friends, and catch up with people. Something that I've probably really not done a great job of in the last few years, especially with all the lockdowns. But it's also to just silly things go and see a movie with my sister, go for walks with some friends, to have that breathing space. That is my time as well. And I deserve it as well. I do spend a chunk of the holidays with my beautiful children and my husband, but I also spend a lot of it on things that I'd really like to do. That's not just the end of the year holidays, that's during the school holidays as well. And like I said, I only work part-time, so it's not like I don't get any time to myself anyway.
But the holidays are really a chance to reset, to think about where am I going in my life, not just my business, but am I where I want to be in life. Am I being a great sister, am I being a great friend? Am I being a great wife? Those things are just as important as am I being good at what I do in my job. That is it for today's coaching episode. Just looking at how do I take that time off. I get asked that a lot by people saying, “Wow, how do you take that much time off?” And I do work hard, but I also really believe in taking that time off and getting that time back. That is why I started a business. I didn't want to work in corporate where I never had any time and I couldn't take time off during the beautiful part of the year in the summer.
That is a gift to myself and it's something I will keep doing as long as I can keep hitting my goals and as long as I keep having this business. I feel that continues for a long time. As I said, group coaching is now open for the waitlist. If you are keen to get on that, you can go to mydailybusinesscoach.com/groupcoaching and you can just fill in the form there and then somebody will be in touch with you probably another couple of weeks just before we finish up to arrange a time if you would like to chat about things. Then the process is you fill in an application form and we go through the interviews and then we announce it in February. I am really excited about this. We've got quite a few people on the wait list already and I've had a bit of a sticky beak at their businesses many amazing people.
I love group coaching. I think it is just one of the best things that I do. And just love the groups that I get to meet and love seeing them learn and become friends. We've got somebody in Amsterdam at the moment doing one of them and she's a buddy with one of the people here in Melbourne. I just love seeing their friendship blossom and these connections being made. I know for myself, I was in a group coaching program and I made a best friend literally on the other side of the world who I will go and meet next year in Europe. There are so many things that you can get from a group coaching program and I just love it. If you are interested in that, make sure you get on the waitlist. I also should have mentioned that if you're on the waitlist, you get all these extra goodies.
If you actually then go ahead and join the group, including more one-on-one time with me. You can find that at mydailybusinesscoach.com/groupcoaching. We'll link to that in the show notes. In the show notes today. We'll also link to all the other things that we mentioned, including some of those tools. You can find the show notes over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/260. I look forward to hearing how you might change your year next year and how much time you might be able to get back for yourself or to find those pockets of freedom, those pockets of peace and stillness that we all need and deserve as small business owners. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this useful, I would love it so much. If you could take two seconds and leave a review, you can do that on Apple or Spotify. It just really helps us get found by other small business owners and I'm sure a lot of small business owners need to hear this episode to figure out how much time and when they can take that time off and how they can take that time, time off next year. Thank you so much for listening, I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram @mydailybusinesscoach.
