Family time, actually working ON the business instead of in it, sleeping 8 hours a night, watching allll the trashy tv…

I’m guessing you didn’t sign up for entrepreneurship just so that you could stay up all night staring at a screen, work through your weekends, and give up precious family time. Am I right?

If you’ve found yourself in this situation (working way too many hours for not enough return), I have some good news. You can achieve the goal of 15 extra hours each week. It’s perfectly realistic and I do it for my clients all the time.

Right now, I’m willing to bet that there are at least 15 hours’ worth of tasks you’re doing each week that you don’t have to.

Firstly, let’s identify the biggest time sucks in your business.

1. Social Media

You hop on for a bit because that’s what all good business owners do. You spend 20 minutes racking your brain before you post an update on Instagram, contribute in a Facebook group, check out a competitor’s profile page (hey, cute puppy!), and suddenly you’re looking at the clock and it’s been 3 hours of scrolling. And that happens regularly… it might not be 3 hours in one go, but throughout the day, the time you spend on social media adds up.

2. Showing Up Consistently Online

Of course, you can’t just switch off social media, your blog, or your email marketing. Your customers expect you to be there day in, day out, posting consistent content that connects with them. It’s all about that know, like, trust factor… it’s how you generate and nurture your leads, so you can’t just cut it off or your business will stop growing or die. If your online presence suddenly goes quiet, your audience will assume your business has closed, or they might just forget about you.

TIME-EFFECTIVE ONLINE STRATEGIES FOR BUSY BIZ-OWNERS

So, how can we keep a consistent presence online without sacrificing quality or spending hours a day keeping up with it all?

The short and simple answer: automation!

Here’s the thing that most biz owners are a bit late to the party on: even though online marketing and social media take up a huge chunk of time for most of us, they don’t have to, even when your business relies on it for generating and nurturing leads.

Most of the essential tasks for your online marketing can be strategised, systemised (with the right set of tools), batched, and scheduled. With just a little extra set up and planning, your marketing can run on autopilot, giving you back the freedom and flexibility you were hoping for when you signed up for business in the first place.

Here are my top 3 super-practical and actionable approaches to automate my clients’ online marketing, and an estimate of how much time they save as a result.

A strategy to guide your online presence is going to make sure that every moment you spend on social media and your online marketing is intentional and beneficial to your bottom line. Then you can start looking at systems to support your strategy.

To figure out what systems and tools you need, ask yourself the following questions:

By putting both a strategy and key systems in place, you can make technology work for your business in a really streamlined way.

The beauty of having a plan and system in place (step 1) is that you can start to automate parts of it, like your social media. You can put your social media on autopilot so that it runs itself for months at a time, so that all you need to do is log in and respond to interactions/messages as they come up.

How is this possible? In short: batching, scheduling, and the right tools to get it done efficiently without losing out on quality.

I find that my automated systems allow my clients to run their social media in just 5 hours every 2 months, or their virtual assistant does it all for them so that it takes up no time at all.

• Inconsistency
• Boredom (it’s a menial task sending out almost the exact same email to different clients over and over again)
• Lack of time (it can take a while to manually write and send emails in real time)

Instead of manually emailing your list, set up a strategic automated email nurture sequence. Your new leads will get amazing content from you over a period of time that helps them know, like, and trust you, warming them up so that they are ready to buy from you (even while you sleep!).

WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THAT TIME?

I guess now that we’ve made some extra time, we should plan out what to do with it. So, what are you going to do with all your extra time? For me, here’s how I break it down:

Each week, I might do the following in 15 hours…

• Self-care (massage / hair appointment / pedi / cuppa at my fave café / extended puppy cuddles): 2 hours
• Space in my schedule for urgent client work: 3 hours
• Product creation or marketing: 5 hours
• Taking my little ones to the park / building a cubby out of cushions / general hangs with the kiddies (in ‘business’ hours): 5 hours

If I didn’t have automation, I’d have to miss out on all those wonderful things, my business wouldn’t be able to grow like it does, and I’d get burnt out fast because I wouldn’t be doing the things that light me up.

In fact, thanks to the extra time I get from automation, I could take most Fridays off if I wanted to.

In my experience, a lot of other businesses have the same potential in their existing business model, if they had the right systems and automation put in place.

So… what are you waiting for?

Are you ready to start getting back 15 hours each week and enjoying your lifestyle, while still growing your business?

If you’re interested in working with me to find the space you need to breathe, create and experience more joy in your biz + life, see how we can work together here >>

Claire