A Behind the Scenes Look Into the Lives & Schedules of 3 Business Babes
I recently hosted a special edition of The Business Pleasure Map just for my Clarity To Clients students. A huge piece of this work is creating your ideal, dream schedule (for 6-12 months down the road). Because most of us have grown up around others working a 9-5 or something similar (or in general, just living to please others ) it can be challenging to feel like you even know what your dream life & schedule looks like – especially if you haven’t had a lot of examples for what other possibilities there are.
I know I found myself seeing a lot of examples of what I didn’t want as I started to uplevel my business. Even in the business owner/entrepreneurial community there’s a lot of people working HARD and often to keep making what they are making and to keep growing (which there is nothing wrong with, of course). I knew this wasn’t what I wanted to be working towards. I wanted to be working smart and feeling free!
If you're here I'm going to go ahead and assume you are wanting to build a business and schedule that allows you the time, energy, creativity and freedom you desire.
Since several of my clients ask about what my schedule actually looks like I figured I’d give you a look behind the scenes so you can get some ideas of what you want and don’t want. And, since there are SO many possibilities I figured I do you one better and show you the behind the scenes of 2 other business babes too.
One’s a business pro with over 6 years under her belt in her current business, a team of 6 and 3 kidlets, another is a single 24 year old night owl who lives 60m from the beach with a wide and free schedule.
I posed 3 questions to all of them:
What does your current schedule look like.
What do you absolutely love about your schedule.
What are some upgrades you might want to make to your schedule.
**I typically re-evaluate my ideal schedule every 6 months depending on what’s going on in my life (am I traveling for the next 6 months or staying at home, etc.) – making sure everything FEELS the way I want it to feel. I recommend the same for my clients.
Without further ado, here is your behind-the-scenes peek at our schedules.
Use this as an opportunity to get ideas, and gain clarity on what you do and don’t want your schedule to look like…and start creating it!
Behind the Scenes with Allison Braun
{Founder of TheBusinessJoyologist.com}
My schedule goes in 2 week intervals. Weeks 1 and 3 of the month are usually pretty similar and 2 & 4 are pretty similar.
I do my best to listen to my body. I'll often check in with my body in the morning before getting out of bed and ask myself what I need that day. Someday's if Garret (my handsome husband) gets a spontaneous day off or morning off, I'll stay in bed extra long with him before going out for breakfast together. Or if I'm traveling and living in Sayulita or Bali or wherever else I might be during the cold Canadian winters I will happily take extra days off or morning/afternoon's off to go swimming or for long walks.
During launch periods usually Thursday’s, Friday’s and sometimes a few hours on Sunday’s will be dedicated to content creation, marketing and connecting with other potential partners. After a launch you might find me taking afternoons completely off to veg out and watch t.v., meet up with friends, go shopping or go on vacation.
What I love most about my schedule: At pretty much any point in the year I can travel and wipe everything off my calender for play time with the exception of my clients every other Tuesday and when I’m teaching a class Thursday nights. I can check in and see what I need any given day and move things around if I need to. Everything feels spacious to me while still being a little structured for the sake of my productivity levels.
What I would like to upgrade: I currently sneak in social media more often than I’d like to admit throughout the day. I could safely say I am addicted. I would like to wean myself off to 2, 15 min time chunks a day max.
Behind the scenes with Racheal Cook
{Founder of TheYogipreneur.com + RachealCook.com}
As a mamapreneur with 3 littles {twins age 4 1/2 and toddler age 1 1/2}, routines are essential to ensure that my business doesn't overtake my family or self-care. That's why I keep a model calendar to help me stay on track each week.
A model calendar is a flexible framework that helps me carve out blocks of time to work on the BIG picture things in my business {especially CEO time, creating new training programs, and creating new content}. I've found if I don't keep these times sacred in my weekly calendar, I quickly fill up the time checking emails or hanging out in Facebook groups!
My weekly calendar is pretty consistent most weeks as I've shifted my business model to mostly work with clients inside my Conscious Business Design + Sweet Spot Online Mastermind Programs. A recent change has been to take OFF the last week of the month from private clients so that I can spend more time on big picture projects OR just have more time for myself and my family (especially during the upcoming holiday season!).
Now that I have a team of 6 helping me behind the scenes (including my husband Jameson, who left nearly 10 years in the classroom to be my right hand in my biz), my weekly CEO dates are ESSENTIAL for making sure that everyone is on the same page with various projects. This is the time when check in on each team member, review our yearly/quarterly/monthly goals, and make sure that we're not just on-track, but in alignment with our core desired feelings + values. If something is feeling forced or rushed, then it's time to re-evaluate priorities and timelines! Creating EASE and ABUNDANCE is essential.
My most challenging area has always been self-care! As a mama who always puts everyone else's needs first, I'm learning that I need to continue INCREASING my own self-care to keep up with these active kids. Most days, my self-care is as simple as going for a walk in the morning, taking the time to shower and blow-dry my hair, and make a green smoothie. But the challenge with doing what you love is always STEPPING AWAY from the computer! That's why my #1 self-care practice is really having clear work time vs. family time as well as having a dedicated office space.
Another big support is having dedicated childcare for my kids. It's an investment I made before I even knew how I was gonna pay for it... but it has paid for itself in multiple! My twins are in Pre-Kindergarten 5 days a week and we have a nanny come 5 mornings a week for the little guy. There is NO WAY I could get done the things I need done without knowing my kids are having fun and learning... and it lets me focus 100% on biz during work hours and 100% on family during family time.
I actually don't have anything I would change about my current schedule! I love that I'm still working about 20-25 hours a week and my business has still doubled every year. That's the power of focusing on what's most important and delegating the rest!
Behind the Scenes with Beth Katherine
{Founder of BethKatherine.com}
When Allison asked me to share my monthly schedule, I was really excited! I know that so many things work for different people, so I’m glad I can share a window into what my world looks like.
Firstly, there are a vast amount of ways to organize yourself and your day, and one is not better than the other. This is simply what works for me, and it is always changing and evolving.
My monthly schedule is incredibly free, in fact, I have a very small amount of ‘have-to’s scheduled into my life, and most of it is very free flowing.
An average day looks like this:
I get up when I want, no alarm, and I allow myself to get up as slowly as I want. Sometimes it’s 9 am, sometimes it’s 11am, though my preferred time to get up I’ve found is around 9:30am.
I usually have a shower, make a light breakfast, and move my body around. A few sun salutations, or a little dance party does the trick to get my prana flowing :) I will often meditate, and check in with myself / Spirit. I ask - ‘What would you have me do today?’ - and allow my inner guidance to come through.
Then I check in with my client bookings for the day. I always schedule my clients between the hours of 1pm and 5pm. Some days I’ll have no clients, others I’ll have up to 2 or 3.
After I’m ready, and know what time commitments I have for the day, I’ll stroll out into town (I live in a small town in the Pacific Northwest) - and see my friends who work at various coffee shops or the health food store. I absolutely love running into people everywhere I go - something that rarely happened when I lived in the big city!
Sometimes I’ll bring my computer with me and nuzzle into a coffee shop to write a blog post, answer emails, or the like. After a few years of running my business, I have one rule - if it doesn’t feel like play, I don’t do it. If I’m really jazzed and motivated to do - then I do! This ensures that I’m coming from an aligned place - I want to feel great, and I want the work I do to make others feel great too! How can I do that if I have a set schedule, like, write a blog post at 2pm, when at 2pm I just feel like going to the beach with a friend?
So after the afternoon has passed - usually with clients, writing, or perhaps I just take the day off and head to the beach, or cuddle up in bed and watch Sex and the City or meditate, it’s nighttime - my most creative time!
This is usually when ideas come to me and I find myself intensely creating until anywhere from 11pm to 2pm. Ideas for blog post tours, brainstorming for marketing, or ideas for my upcoming book will flow, perhaps I’ll find myself on photoshop for an hour making new branding materials.
Sometimes I don’t work at all at night of course, and find myself hanging out with friends, creating artwork, watching a movie, or going for a nighttime beach walk (I’m lucky enough to like about 20m from the ocean!).
The only other set parts of my schedule are creating and uploading videos every Full and New Moon to be send out to my tribe. That, and my sessions with clients are what is fixed, everything else is free flowing play.
I think I have such a free flowing schedule due to all my years in school. I was quite an academic, and was always studying and making sure I got things done on time. I graduated 3 years ago from University with a degree in Finance, and everything about that degree was so linear. I think I’m enjoying my free flow even more because I know what it’s like to have all hours of the day devoted to going to class, writing papers, meeting with groups, and heading to a job.
I’m still not totally fulfilled with my schedule. Sometimes I feel insecure about how much free time I have! I would like add more structure, in a way that works for me, and I’m still trying to figure out how to do that. Usually when I try to force myself to adhere to a schedule - say ‘1 hour per day of writing’, or something like that, it flops. I know I’m free, so I don’t have enough willpower to make myself do anything. But I kind of like and admire that about myself. So we’ll see where it goes - I’m only 24 and have a lot more to learn about business, and time management, but for now, I’m a really big fan of just playing, and doing what I feel, when I feel in the moment.
I often toy with the idea of productivity, and what it really means. Can I relax when I’m not being ‘productive’? What is productivity? Can spending time with friends laughing, be just as productive as getting a blog post written? What does my soul really want to create? Will I ever feel totally satisfied with my output? Like I’m doing ‘enough’? Or will my ambition always be there, pushing me to do ‘more’?
These questions fascinate me, and I think all of us, especially entrepreneurs have them to some degree. Right now, my answers usually come down to presence. Be in the moment. Ask your inner guide what it wants to do, and act from there!
I hope reading through this brought you some new insights and clarity on what you want YOUR schedule to look like. Stay tuned for another addition of "Behind The Scenes of Business Babes Schedules" coming soon (I want to show you a few people other examples including one of a lady who also works a job alongside her business).
And to connect with other business babes, join our sisterhood of the Living Richly Lounge here.
