How to Identify Your Biggest Time Leaks in Business

Courtney Elmer - 00:00
Welcome back my friend, you are listening to the AntiFragile Entrepreneurship™ podcast and today we are talking about why taking action is the least scalable asset in your business.
That's all coming up next, so stay tuned.
Globally ranked among the top shows in business and education, we're known for helping overworked online business owners navigate the ups and downs on the way to seven figures.
Each week you're going to learn how to get the right systems, structure and support in place so you can build a self-sustaining business that thrives in a rapidly changing digital environment and grow through what you go through to create greater income, influence and impact you deserve. This is AntiFragile Entrepreneurship™. The other day I was interviewed on a podcast and the host had some really interesting questions for me and I'm so glad that she sent these questions to me ahead of time so that I could prepare my answers and think about them because she said, you know, Courtney, something that you've said through the years is, taking action is not scalable as a small business owner.

Courtney Elmer- 01:06
Why is that the case? And it's funny because I hadn't talked about this topic in a while and so I sat down and I jotted down my thoughts on that and I said, you know, this is a really interesting question because As business owners, we all have several resources from which we can work to bring about results. And some of the most common of these resources are time and money.
But there's a resource that often gets overlooked. And that resource is your physical energy, your capacity. And that's why I wanted to turn this into a podcast episode for you because it is too important of a point to ignore as entrepreneurs, particularly if you're a multi-six figure, seven-figure business owner. Chances are you already know to a large degree that you have to be good at managing your energy and managing your capacity because that is a limited resource.

Courtney Elmer - 02:05
But the problem is when you're just getting started out in business, Your energy and your capacity is one of the main resources that you rely on because we all know time is limited.
We only have 24 hours on the clock. And especially in the early days of a startup, money is pretty limited too. You're out there hustling, trying to make money so that you can start buying back your time. And the reality is that there always is and always will be only so much time, money and energy or capacity to go around. Now it's true that these resources are renewable, meaning that you'll have another 24 hours on the clock tomorrow.
And you'll have more money in your bank account when you sign that next client.

Courtney Elmer - 02:55
And you'll have more physical energy after a good night's sleep.
But the problem is that renewable doesn't mean unlimited. And when you try to grow a business, depending solely on limited resources, then your results will be limited. So the other day, I'm working out with my personal trainer, who's also a client of mine, and he is in the process of creating an online component of his offline business. And so a lot of this feels new to him, even though he's been running a business for years now, offline, all the online stuff feels totally new. And he said, oh my gosh, Courtney, I was in Canva the other day and I'm trying to create this PDF and I'm thinking to myself, this is taking me three times as long as it would have taken someone else who knows Canva, who has already gone through the learning curve of Canva. And I just don't want to be spending my time on this.

Courtney Elmer - 03:54
This is a stupid PDF. Why am I spending so much time trying to create this? But in the early days of business, we often develop the habit of doing it ourselves. Because there is no one else to do it for us, and we often don't have the money or the revenue flowing in to justify hiring someone from day one. So we often wear all the hats ourselves. And the danger there is that you can develop the habit of wearing all the hats yourself. So that when you do finally start making money, and the revenue is flowing in, you are reaching your capacity.

Courtney Elmer -04:30
You're bumping up against the limitations of your time management. You're bumping up against the limitations of your physical energy. You still believe that it's easier and quicker and cheaper to do it yourself so you continue to do it yourself. And you wind up bottlenecking your business.
So if you're listening to this right now and you're really resonating, then it probably means you're in that stage of business where you are acutely experiencing this, where you know there's no more time in the day to get to what you need to get to, but that you can't get to what you need to get to because it's beyond your capacity to get to it, and it can really create a conundrum for us as business owners. Now if you're further along in business, The chances are you have learned how to hire, you have learned how to delegate, but there are still times when you recognize you're bumping up against the physical limitations of your energy and of your capacity.

Courtney Elmer- 05:27
And one of the things that I have really been paying attention to this year in my own business is being mindful of when I'm bumping up against those limitations. And I know now to look for that, and when I see it, to hire, to delegate, to offload, to outsource, But the reality is, and the bottom line of it all is, that you cannot grow a business beyond you if it's too dependent on you.
So to scale to your next level in business, whether that's six figures, multiple six figures, or seven figures, it will always require a shift in your focus, from focusing on utilizing limited resources to utilizing unlimited resources. Because there's no limit to the number of systems that you can build into your business. There is no limit to how you structure your business and how you structure your time management to streamline your operations. And truthfully, there's not really a limit to the support that you can put in place in your business either because as you generate revenue and you're able to add support, you essentially buy back your time that you can leverage to create more revenue and add more support and buy back more time and you create more revenue and so on.

Courtney Elmer - 06:49
Dan Martel wrote the book on how to buy back your time. He literally gives you the playbook on how to do this. Highly recommend his book. But here's the thing. You open up your Instagram and you see every influencer there telling you to take action. Take massive action. Take action when you're scared.

Courtney Elmer- 07:09
Just do Alex Hormozi, who I have much respect for and follow, It's usually telling you, you just gotta do the work. And it's true, there is work to be done.
Nike will tell you the same thing, just do it. But as business owners, you gotta be smart about what you're just doing. You gotta be smart about the action that you're taking.
Because action, in and of itself, taking action It's one of the least scalable things as a business owner because it is a limited resource. It is dependent on your energy and your time management and your capacity.

Courtney Elmer - 07:53
And yes, those things are renewable, but they are limited. So the first step to better leveraging the limited resources, because we still need to use them to grow our businesses.
We still need time. We still need money. We're going to have to have some energy if we want to grow a business. But the first step to being able to better utilize the limited resources that we have is to protect those resources in the first place. Figure out where you're sending those resources right now.

Courtney Elmer - 08:25
I just completed a mid-year financial audit of our business. I got rid of a lot of stuff that we were buying and spending money on every month, all these little subscriptions and things that add up through the years that we weren't using, that I got rid of. And just like you would do a financial audit in your business to assess the financial health of your business, To cut expenses to see where you can increase profits, you gotta do the same with your time management. When was the last time you audited your time management? If it's been a year or more since your last time audit, then it's time for a time management audit. The method I follow is also thanks to Dan Martell, which he spells out in his book. Again, I highly recommend it.

Courtney Elmer- 09:08
I'll put it in the show notes for you. Go grab a copy of it on Amazon. It's a very straightforward method and I like it because it's so simple. So what you're going to do for the next two weeks is you're going to set a 15-minute timer when you sit down to work. I literally open up a new tab on my computer screen. I type in Google 15-minute timer and I let it run in the background.
And then every 15 minutes, when that timer goes off, you're going to write down what you spent those 15 minutes on.

Courtney Elmer- 09:39
Now I know this seems maybe tedious, but you'd be like 15 minutes, oh my gosh, that's going to be so time-consuming to sit there and write down everything I did in 15 minutes.
You'll be amazed how quickly those 15 minutes go by and you'll be amazed that being aware that you've got 15 minutes before you get to write down what you did, actually holds you more accountable to doing what you need to do. You can track this for two weeks.
I like to use a simple spreadsheet. I write the date. I write down the times 9-9-15, 9-15-9-30, 9-30-9-45, and so on for my working window for that day. I track what I did in those 15 minutes.

Courtney Elmer - 10:16
Because what this allows you to do, rather than haphazardly moving through your day, jumping between your inbox, over to Kajabi, working on the back end of your program, over to your email service provider to send an email, over to social media to put that post out, and jumping back and forth between all of these things is going to allow you to see where you actually spent your time in a day and give you the opportunity to go back and highlight in red the things that are consuming your time, maybe without even realizing it. When I did this, a couple of months back, I was astonished at how much time I was spending in my inbox. I knew I was spending a lot of time there, but I was astonished at actually how much. Hours. Every day.
And my work schedule follows my son's schedule, so my work day is about five hours long.

Courtney Elmer- 11:11
There was a lot I need to do in those five hours, and my inbox was consuming more than 50% of my available working hours, two to three hours on any given day. So here's what you're going to notice when you do this time management, the tasks that you're spending your time on are going to fall into one of four categories. You can literally draw a quadrant on a piece of paper, or draw a big plus sign, One of those categories is going to be the things that you dread. The things you hate, the things that you just feel the energy draining out of you, just to think about.
My inbox was one of those things. Chances are you've got those things too. So that's quadrant number one.

Courtney Elmer - 11:56
Quadrant number two is the things that you can do, and maybe you even do them fairly well, but eventually, you'd like to outsource them.
Quadrant number three is things that you love that don't make you money immediately, but you do them because you love them. And then quadrant number four is the things that you love and that make you money immediately. So if you were to draw this out on a sheet of paper, which is really helpful to do, by the way, I highly recommend it, you're going to just draw a giant cross on the sheet of your paper, a big plus sign, and in the lower left quadrant, you're going to label it things I dread. In the upper left quadrant, you're going to label it things I can do but want to outsource. In the upper right quadrant, you're going to label things I love to do that make me money. And then in the lower right quadrant, things I love to do that don't make me money immediately.

Courtney Elmer - 13:01
In Dan's book, he labels this the drip matrix. Things that you dread. Things that you want to replace yourself in doing. Things that are an investment of your time management. That's the lower right quadrant. That you love to do it. It'll yield a return eventually but it won't make money immediately.

Courtney Elmer - 13:23
And then the P is that upper right quadrant for profit. Things you love that will make you money.
The goal is to eliminate all the things you dread as soon as possible by outsourcing and automating, which is going to free up some of your time and capacity and energy to focus on the other three categories. When you look at your time management on it, you are going to map out those things into those four quadrants. What are the things you spent your time on that you dread?
What are the things you spent your time on that you want to eventually replace yourself in doing? What are the things that you spent your time on that you actually enjoy doing but that aren't bringing you an immediate payoff?

Courtney Elmer - 14:07
And then what are the things that you spent your time on that you love doing and that pay you?
That makes you money. And then as you grow and you get ready to make your next hire, Your goal is to simply work yourself out of the left side of that matrix. You want to work yourself out of the things you'd eventually like to outsource. So for me, the things in that upper left quadrant are things like marketing, content direction, and sales calls. Can I do them? Yes.

Courtney Elmer - 14:42
Am I the only one who really can do them effectively in my business right now? Yeah.
Do I want to be doing them forever? No. So outsourcing those things, it'll effectively free up your time management to focus on the two categories that you should be focusing on as an entrepreneur.
The things that are a worthwhile investment of your time that you enjoy, maybe they don't make you money immediately, these would be things like investing in a mentorship, joining a mastermind, podcasting, writing a book, and Spending time on the things that you do love that make you money immediately.

Courtney Elmer - 15:21
For me, that's teaching workshops. If you're a speaker, this would be giving a talk on a stage you've been hired to give. For example. And then you're going to rinse and repeat this process on a regular basis to make sure that you're always able to identify the areas that are draining your energetic capacity. Because sure, taking action might have served you in the early days of your business, but you will reach a point where you can take no more action. You're taking as much action as you could possibly take. And that's when we got to get smart and not wish for more time and complain about, oh gosh, if only I had more time.

Courtney Elmer- 16:03
No, how are you utilizing the time management that you do have? We're going to flip the script.
So, to quickly recap, over the next two weeks, You're going to open up a new tab as you're working. When you sit down to work, you're going to type into Google 15-minute timer and you're going to let that timer run and write down every 15 minutes what you did in those 15 minutes. Track it for two weeks and then after you do that, after those two weeks are up, you're going to go back and highlight in red the things that are consuming your time. And then you're going to map it into one of those four categories. You're going to draw out that matrix If it helps to remember, drip, D for things you dread, R for things you eventually want to replace, I for things that are an investment of your time but that don't yield an immediate return, and P for things that make you money.

Courtney Elmer- 16:57
And you are going to do everything in your power to outsource and automate.
The lower left quadrant, the things that you dread. Maybe it means hiring a VA. Maybe it means utilizing some of these cool new AI tools like mailwiz. This is a new one that I just discovered which we're testing right now and actually, our whole team really likes. It's actually pretty cool and it responds to emails in your inbox for you. You get a chance to review it obviously before that email actually sins but it writes it for you in your tone of voice and you can just go in and tweak it however you want and hit the send button. So even if you're in the early days of your business, you can't afford a VA. Maybe something like that, that's like seven bucks a month or something, can help you save some time management.

Courtney Elmer - 17:44

So do whatever it takes to outsource and automate that category of things that you dread.
And then focus on Up-leveling from there, your next hire should be to outsource things that you want to replace yourself in doing. And like I said, for me that's marketing, content, direction, sales calls, that sort of thing. And then your goal in business is to get to a place where you have systems and support established. For everything that falls on the left side of that matrix, you are free to spend your time on the right side of that matrix, doing the things that you love that will make you money now and in the future. I like to do this audit once a quarter. At a minimum, you should be doing it once a year.

Courtney Elmer - 18:37
It is a very simple process, but it's one that few people will actually take the time to do.
But I believe you're different. You're still listening to this episode right now because you know that this is a problem for you and your business. You know that you're not utilizing your time management as well as you could be. You know you're running up against the limitations of your time and your energetic capacity right now. And this is a very tangible, practical way to help you break out of the habit of Taking action of doing it yourself, of not even being aware of where you're spending your time and how it could be slowing you down and costing you money. So that's it for today.

Courtney Elmer - 19:22
This is an episode I hope you come back to again and again. Because it is an exercise that has truly been impactful for me, even in these last three months as I have noticed where my time has been going. And it will help you clean up the back end of your business, essentially, so that you can stop bottlenecking your growth and actually start to see and experience forward momentum. So thank you, as always, for joining me here for another episode of AntiFragile Entrepreneurship™. And I hope you come to connect with me personally. You can find me on Instagram @thecourtneyelmer. And if this episode was helpful for you, and someone came to mind as you were listening to this episode, who this episode would be great for, maybe a colleague, maybe a client of yours, I hope that you share with them.

Courtney Elmer - 20:12
And if you love listening to this show week after week, it would mean a lot to me, if you haven't already done so, scroll down in your Apple app, tap the five stars, And write a short review.
Even just a sentence lets other people know that this show is worth listening to. Next week we're going to be talking about a familiar topic, but from a very unusual and exciting angle, which is how to determine the kind of first impression that you and your brand make when someone meets you online for the first time. Are you commanding attention?
Or, are you unknowingly repelling people? Join me back here next week to find out how your visual identity impacts not just your ability to attract clients, but your ability to charge higher rates and be seen as a respected thought leader in your niche. Alright, I'll see you back here next time and until then, let's go out and grow through what we go through together.