Resources:

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

Transcript:

Kathi Burns  0:04  
Hi there, I'm board certified professional organizer Kathi Burns. I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is designed for busy entrepreneurs just like you who want to take better control of your business and move forward with less stress and more success. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming. The Organized Energized podcast is produced for your enjoyment and show notes are found at ThePodcast@OrganizedandEnergized.com. Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes. You can also follow me on Twitter at organized energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now let's get into the show. Hi everyone, I am back and I am with Neill Williams. Neill is a master life and scheduling coach helping busy overwhelmed female entrepreneurs simplify their schedules to 20 to 30 hours a week for the rest of their careers. Don't we all want that? Yes, we do. Thanks, Neill, for being here. I can't wait to hear what you have to say.

Neill Williams  1:08  
Yeah. Thank you so much, Kathi, for letting me come on the show. I'm so excited to talk with you about this today.

Kathi Burns  1:13  
Yeah. Okay, so a scheduling coach, I absolutely love that. What did you do prior to that? How did you come up with that career for yourself?

Neill Williams  1:23  
Yeah, so I was in the corporate world, I was actually an actuary. If anyone knows that is we don't, it's totally fine. It's a numbers job. And I was managing a big team. And really struggling with the amount of time that that job enroll was taking me to do, I was a mom. And I just got to the point where I was like, I didn't want to be working 60 to 7080 hour work weeks anymore. And but I wanted to still be making the money that I was making. And so everyone was telling me like, yeah, you can totally go part time, but then you're not going to be able to make the money that you are and I just refuse to take that as an option. And so what I realized, as I was going through this was that it's not the number of hours that anybody really cares about, nobody cares how long I spent on something. What matters to them is that it's done, right? The accomplishment, the achievement, the value that's created inside the time. So I just set out on a journey to figure out like, how do I do the things I do just more efficiently and get them done, but using less time to do them. And I was able to scale back my corporate job to about 30 hours per week, throughout that. And so then I was teaching my team how to do those things as well. And then I decided to start my own business to teach other people how to do this.

Kathi Burns  2:39  
I was wondering that so you didn't go cold turkey, you scaled back to halftime? And then if you were teaching your team how to do it, was it the team for your new business or your existing business?

Neill Williams  2:50  
So I was doing it as a manager in my corporate role, I was teaching them how to use their time and be efficient and all of that. And then because I had scaled back my workweek so much, I had the space to be able to create a business on the side. And so I did that in about 10 hours per week. And I just built it to be like, much bigger than what I was receiving as my corporate income. So eventually, I just decided to let that go.

Kathi Burns  3:17  
Yeah, congratulations on that. And how long have you been doing this now?

Neill Williams  3:21  
So in my business is about three years in my own business. Yeah, so not not too all that long. And I really worked my corporate job for the first two, at least, maybe a little bit more than that. So I haven't been out on my own as an entrepreneur full time for all that long.

Kathi Burns  3:40  
Well, congratulations and for those of you listeners who out there who are thinking about making the leap, because I know we have the great resignation happening, it is possible and Neill is proof of it right there, as well as myself and all the other guests that I have on my podcast. So we're all living images that yes, you can do it, you can quit your real job. And create a fun real job for yourself where you're the boss.

Neill Williams  4:05  
Yes, right? Yes. And you don't have to have a lot of time to do it in quite honestly, you can do it.

Kathi Burns  4:11  
Especially if you handle your schedule, which is what we'll talk about. So what how do you help your clients saw the time management take control of your life schedule?

Neill Williams  4:23  
Yeah, so for many of my clients are already business owners who have big businesses and their schedules are very big and inflated as well. So in that instance, I help them scale back their work week from the 4050, whatever it is back to 30 hours or less, whichever, you know, whatever their number is. And we do that through scheduling. I really believe that scheduling is the tool that allows us to get a lot done really like create full time results, but on a very part time schedule that is really at the core of what I teach. And so, of course, there's a lot of techniques that go into but that is the idea.

Kathi Burns  5:02  
Now, what do you do about the artistic, creative entrepreneurs, which we all have as as clients? How do you get them to adhere to a schedule? Yeah, so

Neill Williams  5:10  
Yeah, so schedule also I think there's this connotation around it, that it's very restrictive. And it's very, like time blocking and back to back kind of thing. And I don't believe that about scheduling, I believe the whole idea behind a schedule is getting what you want done in the amount of time that you want to work. And there's lots of ways to do this. And we do want to honor the creative part of our brain. And so we want to give lots of space and time to that part of the brain, when when that's the part of the brain that we need functioning, in order to accomplish the thing that we're doing. There's other times where we don't want to give as much space and time because so that creative part of the brain is the right hand side of the brain. The left hand side of the brain is more of the check the boxes tick the things off organized part of the brain. And for that one, having tighter time blocks, and maybe scheduled things back to back is okay. It really depends on what it is that you're doing, and what part of your brain you need to leverage in order to get the thing done. So schedule sometimes looks very open and fluid in ways, and sometimes it is more of that back to back.

Mm hmm. I totally dig that. Yeah. And it's good to think about what hat are you putting on? And that's what I say, What hat are you wearing? I'm wearing the fireman's hat. Are you wearing the coach hat? What are you wearing? Yeah. What part of the brain you're gonna fire up? I love that. Yeah. So this is kind of visit interesting question for me to ask you. But because your your time management queen here, so when you get burnout, or overwhelmed, or you just darn tired with your business, what do you do to recharge yourself?

I go away. Yeah, I think really, um, it's a matter of understanding. And I've gone through this where it's, it's kind of like a roller coaster, like, my schedule is beautiful. I love it. And it feels so great. I feel so so spacious, and I feel so filled up. And then it's pretty easy to like, add too many things in and then I'm like, Oh, I noticed that I'm feeling really resistant to and I'm feeling like I'm, like overloaded a little bit. And then I have to start pulling things back. So I think it is an evolving thing, especially as businesses grow, because your schedule looks so different from one phase to the next. Like, I like to think about what you talked about hats just a second ago, I talked about in your schedule, you're going to have your employee hat, and you're going to have your CEO entrepreneur hat. And we need time in both buckets. Inside your schedule, sometimes you're doing the things it's very task oriented is very project oriented, that's you being the employee. Other times, you're solving problems, you're creating vision, you're creating goals, you're doing all the creative high level work. And we need space and time for that. So oftentimes, what I notice this is like the litmus test for me, which may might help for your listeners, is if I find myself spending more and more of my time doing, I know that I've lost the plot, because now I don't have the time and space to think about working on my business. And my business will probably suffer. And I will suffer enter energetically, and feel overwhelmed and burned out by that. So noticing it number one, and then having the tools to be able to reverse it is number two.

Kathi Burns  8:19  
Yeah. So are you in it? Are you on it? Right. Are you working inside of it? Because yeah, I mean, we all have to work inside our business. But the idea is to delegate out the things that we can so that we can work on our business for the big picture. Absolutely. Okay, so what's your favorite hack for entrepreneurs who want to create more freedom and want to be able to do this and handle it and be all energized and organized within their business and have freedom?

Neill Williams  8:49  
Yeah. My favorite idea here is going to be one probably your listeners haven't heard of. But instead of allowing time to be the solution to problems in your business, or things coming up, take time as an option that's off the table. So what I see so often is something comes up in someone's business, and they're like, well, I'll just work more to solve it. And before automatically going to that, because that's the easy answer. That's always the answer that your mind is going to tell you is the only answer is just pausing for a second and asking yourself if I didn't use time as the solution here. What are some other ways that I could accomplish this? And just pausing long enough to ask yourself that question will have you instead of defaulting to more time where I'll just work this tonight and I'll and then it turns into I'll just work like a couple hours this weekend. And I'm pretty sure you're working the entire weekend. It just this like snowball effects. So instead of engaging with that time, letting time be the solution, come up with an innovation cramp come up with a new creative way of doing this that you hadn't thought of before. That is the like that is where you create a business that's easy to run in a few hours per week is not relying on time for the solution, but coming up with the other solutions that where your creative brain actually has to go to work to find the solutions for you. So I think that not allowing time to be the answer.

Kathi Burns  10:11  
Oh, I absolutely love that. That's so smart. That's so smart. But no, love it. Okay, so, um, if you had an organizing obstacle in your business, what what is the obstacle that you had to really overcome? As in within your own business?

Neill Williams  10:27  
Yeah, it was my schedule and my time. So I built my business, it was very much on the side. And I had so many business coaches and mentors telling me that I had to quit my corporate job in order to be successful in this business. And I was like, that is just not the option for me right now. And I'm still going to create a successful business. So I really had to figure out like, what was it in my limited time that I had each week, which was about 10 hours per week, what is the thing that I'm doing in my time, so that I'm moving my business forward. And so it was really me figuring out the right ratios of time to be spent in my business as an employee where I'm doing my coaching and doing that, versus being the CEO and entrepreneur creating the value offering the value doing the sales and the marketing. So for me, it was figuring out the right organization of that schedule that then finally clicked and then had it burn my businesses making money, and I understood it. And it was kind of like, rinse and repeat. So that was really the the biggest obstacle for me, and I think it is for a lot of people who are doing business as a side hustle.

Kathi Burns  11:34  
Right? Absolutely. And even people who are not doing it as a side hustle. So knowing that 8020 Pareto Principle, what 20% of my stuff is gonna actually do something. All right. And, you know, I'm one I love being busy. So I'm a doer, I mean, action taker, doer. Right. So I think I need to use your advice to be more cerebral, more analytical, because I'm absolutely action, action, action. And I think as entrepreneurs, often a lot of us are either like, I'm not alone, right?

Neill Williams  12:09  
I've just learned how to calm that down a little bit.

Kathi Burns  12:13  
Yeah, less, less, do more thought around what you're doing. Absolutely. Yeah. So which leads us to the best pieces of advice what would be if you had to tell someone off the street? Anything, any, any of our listeners here? What piece of advice would you give them? Who want to launch into a new career or who have just started their career?

Neill Williams  12:38  
So I would say, being really discerning about your time, and really looking at it in those two buckets that I was talking about earlier, this is where I see the most overinflated schedules don't have these clearly delineated roles of your time being the employee versus the time being the business owner. It's like we don't when we start business, we don't know what it means to be a business owner, we don't know exactly what it is we're supposed to do. And so we just don't even try and figure it out. Because we don't give ourselves time and space to be that and figure it out. So being very clear with yourself, maybe even making a list of these are the things that I do as an employee, and these are the things that I do. This is my role and responsibility as the CEO and the business owner, and what proportion of my time makes sense to be doing both of those things. And depending on what kind of your your business model is, those ratios will vary. So won't be the same for everybody. And it's not gonna be the same. When you start your business as when you're three years or five years or 10 years in, there's going to be an evolution that happens. But being clear of yourself on those different roles, I think is the most important thing.

Kathi Burns  13:46  
Yeah, and know what you're doing. Yeah, I love that. Like, no, are you in it? Are you on it? And I think that's, and oftentimes just do, do, do, you're just doing it and not really realizing what part you're doing. Yeah, and I'd like to, I'd like to feather that put a feather in the cap of, if you find yourself doing stuff that is below the CEO level, think about maybe delegating some of that stuff out. Which I think is a great everybody could use that as well. So I love that you're very insightful. I would love to be in your brain and see how you figure all this out as you're as you're working on.

Neill Williams  14:25  
It's pretty scary in there.

Kathi Burns  14:30  
No, I love it. I love it. I love it. Love them. Okay, So Neill, you probably have something for the guests and for the listeners. What would you like to offer them to help them with their life?

Neill Williams  14:41  
Yeah, so I have a 30 day planner, which is to build a coaching business in 10 hours a week, which is completely free. It gives you you'll get a weekly email from me with your to do list and your weekly 10 hour schedule. And I take you through a couple of video trainings that teaches you like the ratio of your time depending on if you're business model looks like this, you want the ratio of the time that you're working in your business versus on it to look like this. And here's how you might set up your schedule. I also give you to do lists and how to accomplish those to do lists inside of that schedule that I send you. So totally free. Amazing. I wish I would have had it when I was first starting out too, just to have an idea of like, so he didn't have to make those decisions about what should I be doing? I've already helped you, I've already made those decisions and created a schedule for you that will help you get those things done.

Kathi Burns  15:29  
Absolutely. And I know you also have a podcast,

Neill Williams  15:32  
I do have a podcast. Yes.

Kathi Burns  15:36  
 What was that? Where should they? Where should they go to find your podcast? And what's in it?

Neill Williams  15:41  
So the podcast and the 30 day planner, all available on my website at WWW dot Neil williams.com. And Neil is an E I ll.

Kathi Burns  15:51  
Excellent, excellent. Everybody tuned into that as well. That's a really generous gift that you're offering. And I hope that everybody takes advantage of it. We can all use it, no matter where we are in our business is always good to have more clarity around what we should be doing what we should not be doing. That's always the ticket. Right? What should we not be doing? Think about that. So, yeah, well, I really appreciate your time. And I will definitely put down below you'll have all the download for that join up with Neil and also listen to your podcast, see what she has going on there. And we will see you soon. And thank you, Neill for your time.

Neill Williams  16:29  
Thank you, Kathi.

Kathi Burns  16:30  
Absolutely.

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you want to hear more, feel free to subscribe on the platform of your choice. Also, if you feel so inclined, I would truly appreciate a good writing from you, to me have a stellar day.