Canadian Small Business Women

Connection, Synergy, Community

Time Sucker Alert: No Prioritization System

As you begin to plan for the year to come, I want you to be sure to take some time to plan out how exactly you are going to get it all done. I have spoken before about the biggest time sucker I see time and again. Now let me walk you through the biggest prioritization issue I see with my clients, working on the WRONG stuff, and what you can do about it.

 

How do I know what the right stuff is?

To answer that, I’m going to share with you the highlights of my Plan to Grow process.

  1. Have a business plan: You wouldn’t go on a road trip without a map complete with rest stops and check-ins all mapped out, and you shouldn’t do that with your business. Having a business plan allows you to layout where you want your business to go over a certain period of time (i.e five years). When you know where you are going, you can set goals and say yes or no to interrupters and shiny objects with confidence. And most importantly, you can stop spinning your wheels on things that aren’t serving you or your business.
  2. Set goals that are going to result in significant growth in your business: With a destination point all set out, you can start building backwards, setting goals and taking on the projects that are going to progressively move your business towards where to be years from now. For this, I usually use the SMART goal setting methodwith my business and my clients.
  3. Create a roadmap for your goals by breaking the goal down into small, manageable tasks: Once you’ve decided on the goals that you need to take on to move your business where you want it to go, it’s time to create a roadmap for each goal you’ve set. This involves breaking the goal down into small, manageable tasks through a process of starting at where you want to be and then work backwards, listing everything you are going to need to do to get to the end.
  4. Get real about your schedule: This means figuring out where your time is going and how much time you actually have. Why? So you’re managing your own expectations and not putting unrealistic demands on yourself. When you are deciding which goals to take on and assigning them timelines, you need to have a true understanding of all the other things vying for your time. Without that knowledge, you’re going to feel overwhelmed and overextended and nothing is really going to get done.
  5. Find someone to hold you accountable: There is nothing more powerful than having someone waiting for me to tell them about my progress to make sure I actually make some progress.

 

Why you need to put in this work:

When you don’t know where you are going to get the biggest return on your time investment, you end up spinning your wheels without even noticing it. It’s like throwing a bunch of spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks. While it may be the easier  route, successful businesses just aren’t built that way. So as you begin to plan for the new year, be clear about what you want, what needs to be done to get you there, and how you’re going to do it.

Samantha King is a busy mompreneur and homeschooler with two young children and a couple of businesses at home. When Samantha’s daughter was diagnosed with autism, she had to learn how to keep her priorities aligned within her family, while operating her business at the same time. She is excited to share her knowledge to empower entrepreneurs by giving them the tools they need to do something they love while building sustainable, profitable businesses.  

Contact Samantha:

Tel: 416-885-6841

Email: samantha@fempirebuilders.com

Facebook: @FempireBuilders

Twitter: @FempireBuilders

Instagram: @Fempire_Builders

Get Creative: Who can you lean on?

I often say that as women we are pulled in a million different directions based on whatever is screaming the loudest. More times than I’d like to admit, it has left me running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Between my business, my two special needs children, my marriage and general household duties, some days there is a lot vying for my attention.

I learned a long time ago, the hard way, that I was going to need to lean on people in order to get it all done. Not someone who finds it easy to ask for help, over the years I’ve gotten pretty good about finding creative ways to manage everything I need to get done in the limited amount of time I have.

My biggest tip for those looking to do the same is: You need to outsource.

 

A creative way to manage your time and To-Do List

In order to have profitable businesses, we should be spending most of our time each day doing what we are great. The tasks and skill set that makes up our Zone of Excellence is what our clients pay us for, after all. But what about all of the other things that need to be done as part of running our business?

It can be hard to strike the right balance between working IN your business (completing the job your clients hire you for) and working ON your business (think administration, marketing and business development) – especially when it’s just you wearing all of the hats. Not yet quite ready to hire an employee, in years past, business owners had to tough it out in this land of limbo until budget caught up with work load.

However, that’s not the norm anymore. With the rise of remote working, more business owners are opting to run their business out of their homes and outsource the overflow work wherever possible; freeing up more time to work in their Zone of Excellence and saving on overhead costs.

 

If you’re just outsourcing business tasks, you’re not doing it right

When we think of outsourcing, our minds generally go straight to business tasks. During a discussion with anyone of my busy boss-mom clients, they can list off a number of business tasks they feel they should be sending to someone else to complete. I get it. As a mompreneur, who is homeschooling her children while running a business, my kitchen table often doubles as my office, and I have some remote contractors and virtual assistants helping me as I go.

But to stop at business tasks is to do yourself a disservice. In my business, I can’t outsource much; I’m the business strategist. I am the business. So I had to begin to think outside of my business tasks and start taking a closer look at the tasks in my personal life that could be handled by others.

The usual ones came up (i.e. housekeeping), but I pushed myself to dig deeper.

 

Here are a few others that I found:

  1. Shop for groceries online and utilize ‘in the parking lot’ pick-up options now

offered by stores like Zehrs.

  1. Make the local play place your office for the morning so you can work while you children are entertained
  2. List of chores that can be done by your children with some training (i.e. my daughter has been putting her own laundry away since she was three)
  3. Kid friendly meetings where mompreneurs can network and collaborate while our children play
  4. Laundry services that will take your laundry, wash it and bring it back dry and folded
  5. Because I am a night owl, I outsourced bedtime routine to Dad so that I could work uninterrupted from shortly after dinner until my bedtime.


Samantha King is a busy mompreneur and homeschooler with two young children and a couple of businesses at home. When Samantha’s daughter was diagnosed with autism, she had to learn how to keep her priorities aligned within her family, while operating her business at the same time. She is excited to share her knowledge to empower entrepreneurs by giving them the tools they need to do something they love while building sustainable, profitable businesses.  

Contact Samantha:

Tel: 416-885-6841

Email: samantha@fempirebuilders.com

Facebook: @FempireBuilders

Twitter: @FempireBuilders

Instagram: @Fempire_Builders

5 things to consider before pairing up with an Accountability Partner

 

I think we can all agree that accountability is a HUGE tool in our success tool bag, and, as we go into the last quarter of the year, it’s one I want you to take out and use NOW.

None of us are strangers to the idea of peer pressure. As children, we tended to think of it as something to avoid. I’m going to ask you to put that concept aside and imagine for a moment:

What could would it mean for you and your business to feel a little positive pressure from someone in the same boots as you? A woman who gets it and pushes you from a place of love, respect and a genuine desire to see you succeed?

That’s the power of an Accountability Partner.

However, I don’t want you not to pick just anyone. This should be an extremely selective process. Treat it as if you were choosing a daycare provider for your child. This is your business baby after all.

Here are some things I encourage my clients to consider:

  1. Your prospective partner must be motivated.This goes above and beyond what they are telling you in your discussions with them about a partnership. Are they someone you know to be intentional and focused in their day-to-day lives? When you check their social media accounts, are they consistently representing themselves as a business owner? These are just a few of the ways you as an outsider can tell if they are seriously working their business.
  2. Where are they in their business?I like to surround myself with people who are, for the most part, a few steps ahead of me. That way I am fortunate to have people who have already been through the stage I am currently at. If they aren’t a few steps ahead in their business, then they should at least possess a skill set that is complimentary to yours. Where do you struggle? Are they strong it that area?
  3. Are they invested in you and the Accountability Partner process?This is probably the most important question to answer because, if the answer is no, then you’re wasting your time. You partner needs to be willing to make time for you in their schedule. If they are giving you all kinds of reasons why they can’t schedule your sessions on this date or that, move on. They should be a good listener and have a genuine interest in getting to know you in a meaningful way. If they aren’t willing to put in the work to get to know you, how are they going to know when to push you and when you hold back?
  4. They need to have a concrete understanding of how your business runs and generates revenue.The truth is that there is no ‘one size fits all’ business model. Some are very intricate. Some industries are much different than others. Your partner needs to understand, and preferably have some experience in, your business model to be able to successfully help you during your time together.
  5. You must be able to trust your partner.Like Fight Club, what happens in your sessions needs to stay in your sessions. If you can’t trust your partner, you won’t be able to open up and the process will inevitably fall flat.

BONUS: You need to care about not letting them down. If you’re not worried about this, then they either aren’t the right fit for you or you’re not ready for the process. Either way, this partnership won’t end well.

 

Curious if there are personality types to avoid? There absolutely are. Check out this post.

Samantha King is a busy mompreneur and homeschooler with two young children and a couple of businesses at home. When Samantha’s daughter was diagnosed with autism, she had to learn how to keep her priorities aligned within her family, while operating her business at the same time. She is excited to share her knowledge to empower entrepreneurs by giving them the tools they need to do something they love while building sustainable, profitable businesses.  

Contact Samantha:

Tel: 416-885-6841

Email: samantha@fempirebuilders.com

Facebook: @FempireBuilders

Twitter: @FempireBuilders

Instagram: @Fempire_Builders

3 actions to take today to make the last quarter your best quarter yet

At the beginning of the year, we spend time dreaming, planning and goal setting for the coming year. If you’ve worked with me, you know that involves mapping out each of those goals and what it’s going to take for you to achieve them. You also know that we follow that up with assigning deadlines spread throughout the year in daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly increments.

It may sound like a lot of work at the outset, but it’s instrumental to the overall health of your business. It ensures that you always have a complete roadmap to refer back to and keep you on track as you go along your way balancing these goals with the demands in all the other areas of your life.

But even with all the planning and road mapping in the world, we all know that life can still creep up. New opportunities can present themselves that, while beneficial at the time, take you a smidge off course from your goals for this year. Detours may need to be called as an unexpected roadblock jumps into your path. These things happen!

And, knowing that these things happen, I encourage all of my clients to book a check-in with themselves and their business at the end of each quarter. By getting these sessions into your calendar in January, you are making a commitment to your business to check-in on your progress and make sure that the goals you’ve set happen.

So what do you do in this session? As we go into the last quarter of the year, here are the three steps I want you to take:

Check-in and assess where you are

The big question to answer here is: Where are you in relation to your plans for the year? How far have you come, or strayed, from the goals you set out to achieve in January?

  • Sales are the lifeline of our business: Are you at least 75% of the way towards your revenue targets? If you aren’t, do you have some solid sales initiatives in place to get you there? Are there any natural busy sales season for your industry that you are planning on capitalizing on this quarter? Without sales, you don’t have a business. You have a hobby, which is why this is a MUST area to check-in on during your session.
  • Spending time planning and taking on goals that will level up your business is critical to its growth and ongoing success: Where do you stand on these goals? Was this the year you were going to create an online course? How is that coming along? Maybe you wanted to implement systems to help you streamline the administrative side of your business. By this point in time, you should be executing the system you’ve designed, and thinking about what kinks need to be worked out in order to finalize.

 

Evaluate your efforts so far

This step is all about answering the questions: What have you been spending your time doing? What’s worked? What has fallen flat? What do you need to do more of or stop doing?

 

Plan for the rest of the year

Once you know where you’ve been, it’s time to make some hard choices. What do you have to do to get you to your goals for the year? Some of the answers may push you outside of your comfort zone, and maybe that’s why you’ve been reluctant to ask these questions. But the hard truth: is that by not asking, it’s likely you’ve been holding both you and your business back.

Take the answers to these questions and start outlining what your next steps need to be. Break those tasks down, map out the steps to complete them, and assign deadlines in daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly increments.

And, most importantly, do these two things: Put a system in place that works for you to consistently TRACK YOUR EFFORTS, and book time in your calendar to FREQUENTLY CHECK-IN on your progress.REMEMBER: You can’t change what you don’t know about or lose sight of. That’s why we track.


Samantha King is a busy mompreneur and homeschooler with two young children and a couple of businesses at home. When Samantha’s daughter was diagnosed with autism, she had to learn how to keep her priorities aligned within her family, while operating her business at the same time. She is excited to share her knowledge to empower entrepreneurs by giving them the tools they need to do something they love while building sustainable, profitable businesses.  

Contact Samantha:

Tel: 416-885-6841

Email: samantha@fempirebuilders.com

Facebook: @FempireBuilders

Twitter: @FempireBuilders

Instagram: @Fempire_Builders

I work from home, but I am not a stay-at-home mom

With the summer well underway, many of us are juggling business and children or family expectations. Whether it’s trying to work while the kids are home during the week they don’t have camp or family who want to spend time with you while they are vacation during the week you have the most deadlines, you’re might be starting to feel some frustration or guilt each time you have to say no or set boundaries in order to continue the activities that you need to do to grow your business. Likely these boundary setting efforts come with some push back. I mean you’re home aren’t you?

When the frustration, guilt or push back occur, I have to remind myself that while I have worked from home for the better part of two years, I am not a stay-at-home mom.

Not only do I work from home, but last July, we decided that I would also homeschool my daughter, now seven years old, and have my have my now almost three year old son home as well. So I would be building my business while having my children home with me, and take on the responsibility of educating my daughter too boot. Many thought me crazy, but we’ve worked those parts out.

I love what I do. I also love homeschooling my children. I do not love cooking, cleaning or grocery shopping, which is why I avoid it all costs.

And that was the part of our lives that was still struggling to work itself out. Since I was home all day, my husband expected that, in all of the other stuff I was doing, I should also be taking care of the house.

Now, please don’t think that I am taking this opportunity to complain about my spouse. I have lucked out in the husband department. He is my rock. But he also works around the clock (and he likes to keep that schedule), which leaves me functioning as a single parent a lot of the time.

I also don’t think he even realized he had that expectation at the time.

 

This is not a comparison of work-from-home mamas and stay-at-home mamas.

Not only am I against these kinds of comparisons, but I am part of the camp that believes that being a stay at home is a full time job. There’s a reason why in 2011 Forbes pinpointed the annual salary of a stay-at-home mom at over six figure. You Mamas are the chef and the teacher, the cheerleader and the warden, and the cleaning company and CEO. All at the same time. You wear all the hats, and I respect you the heck out of you for it.

My truth was a little bit different to that, yet, I think, my husband wasn’t seeing that. He truly hadn’t even thought about it, and it was causing friction in our day-to-day lives.

Since we couldn’t seem to talk about it and actually get anywhere on it, I do what I always do when work and home seem to collide. I asked my mastermind group, who are all busy boss-moms like me, for their insight. Yes, I dedicated an entire hot seat to this, and it was worth it.

They too were working from home, and, some of them, had already been through this phase of the journey. By listening to their stories, I found the words to explain to my husband that the same amount of work was getting done around the house that would be getting done if the kids were at school/daycare and I working a 9-5 office job. If the dishes didn’t get done that night, they weren’t going to magically get done in the day.

Not only did he begin to understand my point of view, but I found that I had also given myself the permission to start saying:

I work from home. I homeschool my kiddos. But I am not a stay-at-home mom.

And I have been living this truth ever since. Now, I share it with you. It was a truth I needed to hear, and I know that there are other women in business out there who need to hear it too. We’re all in this together after all, aren’t we?

 

Samantha King is a busy mompreneur and homeschooler with two young children and a couple of businesses at home. When Samantha’s daughter was diagnosed with autism, she had to learn how to keep her priorities aligned within her family, while operating her business at the same time. She is excited to share her knowledge to empower entrepreneurs by giving them the tools they need to do something they love while building sustainable, profitable businesses.  

Contact Samantha:

Tel: 416-885-6841

Email: samantha@fempirebuilders.com

Facebook: @FempireBuilders

Twitter: @FempireBuilders

Instagram: @Fempire_Builders

What to do about Interruptions from Interrupters so you can reclaim your time

As an Accountability Coach, I probably deal with time management and prioritizing the most. The biggest time sucker I see ALL. THE. TIME. is Interruptions from Interrupters. So what can you do about it? Here’s what I recommend to my clients and 3 tips to help you implement it. For the sake of clarity, I’m going to walk you through my day-to-day life as your example.

Identify your biggest interruptors and begin managing their expectations

For me, my biggest interrupters are my family. I love those guys, but when you work from home and you homeschool your children, you spend a lot of time together. As a result, it can be hard for them to recognize when I am trying to work and need some uninterrupted time to get stuff done.

I’ve been on a journey of personal development, and, as part of my learnings, I resolved to make some changes in my approach to trying to reach the Holy Grail we call work/life balance. So naturally, I dug into my own bag of tips and tricks that I would give my clients to begin to figure out what these changes would look like in my own day-to-day balancing act.

 

Set clear Work, Play and Me Time hours

My typical day looks like this:

  • 8-12:30-1pm: Homeschool lessons, activities and explorations 1-2pm: My children have independent play and I get some quick work tasks done
  • 2-4pm: Max, my three-year-old, goes for a nap, which is when Mama/Me Time starts
  • 5:30-6 to 9-9:30pm: Dad is in charge while Mama has uninterrupted work time

 

This has really been working for us. Why?

I will get to why I dedicate the entire morning to our homeschool work in a minute.

Let me jump down to independent time for now. I always have emails to respond to, social media channels to connect on, etc. that I only need a couple of minutes of uninterrupted time to get through. I take on these kinds of tasks during this time frame to manage my own expectations for when independent play may not happen as independently as it’s supposed to be…and we all know that happens.

As I have been going through my journey of self-discovery, I have realized that I need time to regroup in the afternoon and fill my own bucket from being ‘ON’ all morning with my autistic kiddos. When Max naps is the perfect time in our house because usually Penny, my seven-year-old, is needing her own time to recharge as well.  I have also been able to give myself permission, through this journey, to honour myself and that I am a night owl; making my prime work time the evening.

This all comes together through practice and explicit modelling with my children and spouse. Everyone knows the routine and expectations are; what it should look, sound and feel like.

Fill the buckets before you need to get down to work

 

Now let’s talk about why I choose to dedicate the entire morning to our homeschool work. Scheduling my morning this way kills two birds with one stone for us. They are learning. They are getting to spend completely uninterrupted time with Mama, which means that they are having their buckets filled up so to speak. When I am not as available throughout the rest of the day, they don’t feel like they are getting the short end of the stick.

Let your clients and followers know what to expect from their relationship with you at the outset

 

For this last one, I’m going to go outside of my house and talk specifically about it from a scheduling aspect.

Let’s start with my clients. They know that I can only schedule in-person meetings on certain days and have dedicated call times as well. If at the outset, they can’t meet with me during those times/days, then I will let them know that we likely aren’t a good match in the long run. If once we are working together, they need to reschedule a meeting or call, they may have to wait until the following week’s call time. Now, I am pretty flexible for the most part (you’ll find most autistic parents are, I bet). However, having that clearly laid out from the beginning avoids bad tastes all around on the one time I have to enforce it.

Similarly, my follower’s know what’s going on in our community each day. Our Facebook group members know when they can promote themselves and what we’re talking about each day. They know when a new blog post comes out. Viewers know when Fempire LIVE is on each week so they can tune in. They know all this because I  have clear, straightforward communication with them and am consistent in my action.

 

As a rule you’ll find that people feel more at ease and comfortable when things are predictable, which is why both of these approaches have worked so well for me and my business. When the expectations are clear and the enforcement of them are consistent, not only will everyone know what they can ask and expect from you, you’ll also feel more confident when you have to put your boundaries walls up to get things done.

 

Samantha King is a busy mompreneur and homeschooler with two young children and a couple of businesses at home. When Samantha’s daughter was diagnosed with autism, she had to learn how to keep her priorities aligned within her family, while operating her business at the same time. She is excited to share her knowledge to empower entrepreneurs by giving them the tools they need to do something they love while building sustainable, profitable businesses.  

Contact Samantha:

Tel: 416-885-6841

Email: samantha@fempirebuilders.com

Facebook: @FempireBuilders

Twitter: @FempireBuilders

Instagram: @Fempire_Builders

Do you Mastermind? Should you be?

Samantha King

I constantly see images and hear things from other successful business owners about Masterminding, and why I should be doing it.  In fact, this morning I was listening to Michael Stelzner’s podcast, and he and his guest, Jeff Korhan, were talking about the importance of small business owners taking the time to co-operate and collaborate with other small business owners.

When you’re a one man show 90% of the time like me (okay…maybe you have a virtual team member or two), it’s hard to really strategize and set goals because…well…there’s only you.  Gone are the days when you can meet up with your team of co-workers to sit down and hash ideas out…I bet your office doesn’t look like this anymore:

And, so many other things come up, right? You just don’t have time, right? And when it’s just you, it’s easier to not hold yourself as accountable as you do when you know there will be someone else checking up on you.  Sound familiar? I know it does for me.

But the more I’ve been thinking about it, the more I see that this is something I need to make time to do.  Why? Here’s 3 reasons:

  1. I plan and think through things best when I talk through them….to do that I need more than myself.
  2. ACCOUNTABILITY!! I think we all make things a priority when there is someone else in the mix…we just don’t want to let them down.
  3. Fresh ideas…plain and simple.  A fresh set of eyes could be exactly what you need to get out of a rut, bring together a great new campaign/product, or solve a customer problem you’ve been having.

As you can see, the process of collaboration has some very obvious, simple benefits (for me anyway), and I’ll be making it a big part of my business planning and strategizing in 2015.

(Now I’ve just got to find places to meet fellow masterminders…any tips?)

So….do you Mastermind? Why? Why not? If you do, what benefits have you seen? Let us know in the comments!

Samantha King has a passion for working with female entrepreneurs to build the business of their dreams.  Specializing in Branding, Marketing, & Event Planning, she uses her experience in event and marketing co-ordination to work with small business owners on the conceptualization, coordination and execution of their marketing and event projects.  She works with her clients to understand their brand, current marketing strategy, and (most importantly) their dream to help them complete the marketing tasks on their to-do lists that they know they need to do, but don’t have the time to do…and don’t have the budget to hire a full-time inside person to do.
You can reach Samantha directly via email at: iamsamanthaking@gmail.com or connect with her on LinkedIn at: ca.linkedin.com/in/samanthajking

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