Like most new entrepreneurs, you chose to get into the business of coaching sold on a dream of freedom, success, fulfillment, and of course service and impact.
If you’re reading this, the chance is, you’re sick of the income and opportunity limitations imposed by a regular 9-5 job.
Maybe you got inspired by the 4 Hour Work Week book by Tim Ferriss, or maybe it was scrolling through the Instagram accounts of lifestyle entrepreneurs posting photos of themselves from sunny tropical beaches and breathtaking mountaintops.
They’re always smiling, always raving about their latest adventure around the globe, and they are always featured with a laptop in the background – proving it’s all true, it’s all possible, and that yes, a laptop can be your entire office. Leaving you inspired and dreaming of financial freedom and adventures too.
Or maybe you just want to make a difference. The world needs more than ever the loving care and support of coaches. To recover, heal, grow, and eventually find peace.
So you’ve stepped up because you’re the kind of person who can carry your burdens and those of others too. You’ve done the work. You’ve studied to become a professional coach in your unique area of expertise. You’ve built up skills and practiced them into mastery. And now, you’re working hard to set up the foundations of your business that promises you and your clients to achieve all of your respective dreams.
But time is running out. You haven’t launched after months of work or still do too many things manually because you were never taught what to do about wearing all the different hats required to run an online coaching business without burning out or running out of motivation (and often funds…).
The key is to manage like a pro the only resource you are guaranteed to run out of. You guessed it. Of course, it’s your time.
So let’s talk about time.
Delicious time giving life to your projects.
Too often wasted time.
Unbearably limited time.
Precious, precious time indeed.
Time to build the business of your dreams, live your values and follow your passion to be of service to others.
How many sleepless nights have you already spent – willfully or not – working on building your coaching business?
Here are the key skills we’ve learned the hard way to manage your time effectively in the set-up and running of your coaching business:
UNDERSTANDING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE VALUE AND FREQUENCY OF TASKS
If you look back at the work you’ve done on and in your coaching business over the past few weeks, as well as the list of tasks (hopefully you have at the very least a messy one! 😉 you will notice some recurring themes in the way your work flows.
In the chart below, you will see the two axes showing Value and Frequency (from low to high).
Value means financial value as well as highly impactful tasks for your business. These can be tasks that bring greater awareness, greater leverage, greater leads, greater service, etc. Anything that makes your business greater in a significant way can be marked as high value.
Frequency simply means the number of times you (or someone else) has to get this task done. It goes from the one-off task (these rate low on the chart) to repeat daily tasks (these rate high) and everything in between.
First, you will notice that some tasks never make it to the top of your list. These are your low-value and low-frequency tasks. We like to keep these in the section called (D) because you should be asking yourself if you should simply DELETE them from your list. Most likely the answer is yes. Give it a go now. It’s the most freeing feeling!
You will also notice that other tasks are scheduled daily and always get done no matter what. This will be your coaching call with clients and other tasks that you would never dream of skipping. (A)
You will also see a lot of tasks that you really struggle to get done but know are important. These are your low frequency (most are one-time jobs) but high-value tasks. (B)
The reason for such struggles is because you either:
- Have no motivation to get them done (i.e. writing a year’s worth of marketing emails to keep the prospects on your mailing list engaged), or,
- Lack the technical knowledge on how to do them, and, hate spending money on courses and programs that only provide a fraction of the answer, or, resent watching YouTube tutorial videos that only confuse you more and feel like a waste of your precious time.
Example of (B) task: Building a website where clients can read about your services, book calls & sessions with you, log in to access an online course, and of course pay for your services and deliver your marketing giveaways. This task is very important, very techy, and very not something you’re likely to be interested in doing yourself but feel you have to anyway.
Finally, you will see on your list tasks that have a medium-high frequency and medium-low value.
These are the tasks that might be essential to your business’s viability but not necessarily high-value in the way we described above. You will find in that basket tasks such as weekly bookkeeping, replying to emails daily, reviewing your business insurance policy yearly, booking all the logistical details of a business trip, and so on. These are the (C) category which we recommend you consider delegating asap to:
- An IT program or system that can do the work for you, or,
- (if a human needs to complete the task) a contractor that specializes in the area of work you require: customer service, accounting, personal assistant, etc.
To recap:
If you can review your work and task list and split them into these four categories, you will be able to execute and prioritize your high-value + high-frequency tasks (A). The more time you spend on your (A) tasks, the better you will become at them and the healthier your business will be. This is where you will really become masterful with your coaching and as a business leader too. Most of these tasks should be DIY (unless a system can be set up to do them for you over and over again).
Many of your (B) tasks are the exact type of tasks we do for you (DFY) at CoachingBUMP. They require a high level of expertise, provide high value for your business, and only need to be done once, which means that the time spent on learning how to do them is wasteful for you and better spent in the (A) zone.
Your (C) tasks should find their way out of your task list by way of delegation or automation.
And your (D) tasks should get done within 2 minutes or be seriously reconsidered for the trash basket.
You will find below a useful list of automation tools we recommend to help you organize your work and save time:
| Task Rating | Task | Tools We Recommend For Coaches |
|---|---|---|
| (A) management + (B) set-up | Build + manage prospects & client lists, send bulk emails, collect payments (and more). | Ontraport |
| (B) set-up + (A) for brand updates & blogging | Set-up Brand hub & visibility | WordPress Website |
| (A) + (C) | Connection & Engagement with prospects | Preferred Social Media: Facebook groups + pages, Instagram, Medium, Twitter |
| (B) set-up once | Marketing automation | Marketing funnels & campaigns built using Ontraport |
| (B) + (C) set-up once | Systems integration | Zapier |
| (A) + (B) + (C) + (D) | Task manager(incl. Everyday Workflow, Reporting, Forms, Tracking Data, Managing Team, Social Media Campaigns Planning, etc.) | Click-up or Trello |
