October 20, 2024 • 11 mins
What if you could transform your business by simply managing your time better? Discover the essential strategies that can propel your online venture to seven figures, as we explore the art of balancing your workload with tasks that are both challenging and enjoyable. In this episode of Brightside Business, I share my proven framework to help you spend 80% of your time on activities that not only fuel your passion but also significantly drive revenue and growth. Learn to navigate the four-quadrant task table to effectively focus on what truly matters, steering clear of demotivating and unproductive tasks that can hinder your progress.
Join me in mastering the three-step approach designed for early-stage entrepreneurs eager to maximize their potential. Learn to identify a successful money-making strategy that resonates with your interests and allocate the majority of your time to these crucial tasks. I offer insights into maintaining both satisfaction and sustainability in your business journey, ensuring you're always engaged and never burnt out. Reach out with any questions, as I'm here to guide you in achieving a balanced, productive, and fulfilling entrepreneurial life.
Got Questions? Send them here and I'll tackle them on the show: joey@joeyhyoung.com
Follow me on Instagram, X/Twitter, and Threads for daily content on business strategy and high performance @joeyhyoung
Ready to scale your business? Book a free connection call here and let's chat!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Joey Young (00:00):
Welcome to Breadside Business, where we talk to
online entrepreneurs likeyourself about growing your
business to seven figures.
Over the past four years, I'veled a business that's in the
seven-figure range and I've alsocoached multiple six and
five-figure entrepreneurs onproductivity and business
systems.
One thing comes up consistentlyas an issue for these
entrepreneurs that I work withwho are trying to scale to that
(00:21):
seven-figure range, and that'stime how to manage their time,
how to use their time in a wiseway so they're not just working
hard, they're working smart.
So in this video, I'm going totell you how to spend your time.
If you're an early-stageentrepreneur, it's a framework
I'm going to lay out, basicallytelling you how to allocate your
limited resources of time inthis video.
(00:41):
If you're a business owner whohas outside responsibilities,
this is perfect for you.
Let's say you have another sidegig to make income while you're
building your business, oryou've got family or other
obligations.
This will be really helpful.
I had a client ask me recentlylike listen, joey can only spend
about 12, 15 hours on mybusiness per week, but I always
end up sitting down to work onmy business when I have time and
(01:04):
I don't know what to do withthat time.
So I showed them this diagramhere I'm about to show you, and
it really helped them to clarify.
Okay, what's my next step?
What am I going to do here andwhat am I going to do there to
create the revenue I want tocreate?
But before we jump into theframework, I want to lay out
some presuppositions here.
A business is the processthrough which you add value to
(01:25):
people's lives and they give youmoney in exchange.
It's an entity to handle thattransaction between the value
added and the money coming in.
To add this value to ourcustomers or our clients' lives,
we need to exude effort, andthat effort needs to be combined
with pre-existing skill orknowledge or expertise.
(01:47):
Now the problem is a lot ofbusiness owners get burnt out
before the effort exuded tocreate the value creates income
for them on the other end.
So they get burnt out basicallytrying to add value before the
revenue comes in, and so theyget discouraged and they quit.
So if we're talking about howto build a successful business
(02:09):
from scratch, or we're talkingabout scaling the revenue of a
current business, we're reallytalking about how can we stay in
the game long enough.
Add the value, which is theeffort combined with expertise
and knowledge.
How can we do that long enoughfor the revenue to come in the
other side?
That's the challenge we'retrying to solve here and that's
the key to a sustained business.
(02:30):
You're in the sweet spot herewhere you're being challenged,
you're having fun and you'remaking money.
If you can achieve all thosethings at the same time
challenged, you're having funand you're making money you're
in a great spot, and that's whatthis framework is all about.
We're looking at a table withfour quadrants.
In the columns up top, you'vegot fun and life-sucking.
(02:53):
On the rows on the side, you'vegot hard and easy.
So the four quadrants of thistable are fun and hard, fun and
life-sucking, and then easy andfun.
Easy and life-sucking.
So where do we spend our time asa business owner in the early
stage?
Well, 80% of our time fully 80%of our time we spend building
(03:14):
our business should be in thefun and the hard category.
The vast amount of your timeshould be spent on activities
that are fun and that are alsodifficult, hard, challenging,
make you grow, make you thinkoutside the box.
These are the needle-movingactivities that actually grow
revenue, that actually createmoney, that actually build your
(03:35):
business.
Now the problem is when peopleslip into the life-sucking and
hard quadrant.
So if you're having fun andyou're working hard, you're in a
good spot.
You're working on thoseactivities that generate revenue
.
It's difficult work but you'reenjoying it.
Great, that's an awesome,sustainable way to spend your
time building a business.
(03:56):
You're going to last thedistance.
But what I see a lot ofentrepreneurs do is slip into
the hard and life-suckingcategory.
Now, there is a certain amountof work in every business and it
should be less than 10% of thetime here where you have to do
some things that are hard andare life-sucking.
Let's say you have a customerthat's pissed off because an
expectation was not met.
You can't just ignore them andsay, hey, I'm not gonna answer
(04:18):
that email, I'm not gonna answerthe phone.
Obviously, there are someminimal amount of tasks that are
hard and life-sucking, but itshould be, again, less than 10%
of your time.
If you're an early-stageentrepreneur, the idea is that
you hire out these areas lateron, if you hire a customer
service engineer or managerlater on down the road.
But If you are early on in yourbusiness and you're spending
(04:41):
more than 10% of your time onhard and life-sucking things,
that's your reason why you'redemotivated.
That's the reason why you'restruggling.
I don't care how good yourstrategy is, if it's sucking the
life out of you and it's hard,you're going to give up.
You're going to move on todistractions.
You're going to be using thattime that you are working on
your business very poorlybecause you actually don't enjoy
(05:02):
it.
Now let's talk about fun andeasy the fun and easy quadrant.
These are the tasks that areusually light, breezy.
They're not challenging for you, you get them done really
quickly and they're pretty fun.
They are usually the tasks wedo when we're procrastinating.
Doing the hard and fun things,they feel good in the moment.
(05:25):
They're like quick checkboxthings.
It's like organizing things oror like spending the 15th time
reviewing the creative on a post, but not in a in a way that
improves it, but in a way thatlike just is kind of like light
and breezy and fun.
You know we're just kind ofdoing things off the cuff and
changing things.
Or, again, we're organizingfolders or information or doing
(05:47):
quick little tasks that don'tactually create revenue.
They are distractions from thehard and the fun things that we
should be putting our time to,so we really should not be
spending any time in ourbusinesses early on on fun and
easy things.
Let's talk about the lastquadrant life-sucking and easy.
So this quadrant is where a lotof people waste time on tasks
(06:10):
that really should not be giventhe time of day.
It should be less than 10% ofyour time spent in this quadrant
, similar to the life-suckingand hard stuff like dealing with
customer complaints.
That is difficult and sucks.
The easy and life-sucking stuffis, like you know, sending
invoices to clients, drawing upcontracts, checking your email,
your, you know, closing thebooks in your business, like all
(06:33):
this stuff.
That just isn't like superdifficult, but it's just got to
get done.
It's very easy to overthink orovercomplicate these things.
You know people can spend hourstrying to find the right online
software for their business orfind you know just the right
contractor to do a project.
You know they're easy, they'relife-sucking things and we can
(06:55):
just spend way too much timeovercomplicating them.
Again, it should be less than10% of your time.
Yes, you have to spend sometime checking your email, some
time drawing up contracts andinvoices and invoicing your
clients and charging them, andall this stuff.
That's easy and life-sucking,but do not overthink it, do not
spend too much time in it.
So if you bring it all together,what are we spending our time
(07:15):
on Fully?
80% of our time is on the hardand the fun stuff.
10% is on the hard and thelife-sucking stuff, you know,
dealing with clients that haveproblems.
And then 10% of our time is onthe easy and the life-sucking
stuff, only the bare minimum,the necessities to get things
off the ground.
We're not spending the majorityof our time early in business
(07:37):
picking out whether we useNotion or Evernote or ClickUp or
.
You know that kind of stuff canalways be changed later.
It doesn't matter, you know.
We just need to get through itso we can get back to the hard
and the fun stuff, which is theprospecting, which is the sales,
which is the product design,the marketing campaigns, the
fulfillment piece.
You know, the hard and fun,nitty-gritty pieces of business
(07:59):
that actually create revenue.
So if you're struggling to knowwhere to spend your time as a
business owner, there's threesteps that you got to take here.
First, find a strategy that'sproven to make money.
This is the key.
First of all, you got to find astrategy where someone has used
it before to create thefinancial results you're looking
for.
(08:19):
That's the most important piecerevenue generating strategies.
Second of all, think what itwould look like to still be
doing this strategy two yearsfrom now.
So you've got to pictureyourself not just implementing
this strategy now, but thinkabout continuing to do it for
the next two years and thinkwhere you'd be.
Would you be happy if you werestill implementing this strategy
(08:41):
on a week-to-week,month-to-month basis two years
in the future?
That's to test the fun factor.
Because, again, the firstrequirement of a business is hey
, it makes money, hello, it'snot a hobby, right?
So that was the first step.
Second step is to test is thisgoing to be something you're
going to enjoy several yearsfrom now?
Because if you have this reallyspunky, fun strategy that's
proven to work but it sucks,it's in that life-sucking
(09:03):
category.
So it's hard and life-sucking.
You should not be in thatbusiness, you should not be
doing that work, you should notbe trying to make money that way
.
So get out of that business.
And a test for that is would Istill be having fun talking
about this topic or using thismarketing strategy or using this
product strategy, two yearsfrom now?
And thirdly, you want toschedule 80% of your week that
(09:26):
you have set aside to work onyour business.
80% of that time should bespent on the hard and the fun
needle moving tasks thatactually bring about that
strategy.
So this is where the rubbermeets the road.
You've got your strategy.
It's a lot of fun.
That was step two.
Step three is all right.
I'm going to put blocks of timeon my calendar that move this
(09:48):
strategy forward.
That creates the results tobring about whatever framework
or business plan or strategyI've chosen to move forward with
.
And that's how you scheduleyour time.
80% of your week is alreadyaccounted for.
It's already set in stone.
You know what you're going tobe working on and then all the
other stuff falls into placearound it All the things they'll
(10:09):
get done.
Believe me, like you'll get anangry customer email, you'll
deal with it when it needs to bedealt with.
You'll have to send outinvoices.
You'll spend a few minutes todo that.
But what's really important isthat you schedule out 80% of
your time dedicated to workingon your business, on those hard
and those fun nitty gritty needa moving tasks.
(10:32):
And that's how you scheduleyour time in your early stage
business.
I hope this has been helpful foryou.
I'm really excited to hear fromyou.
What's your question about yourbusiness?
Do you have a problem you'refacing?
Do you have a question aboutgrowing your business?
Do you have a team issue?
Do you have a productivityissue or a business systems
issue?
Let me know what it is.
Shoot me an email, joey, atjoeyhyoungcom.
I'd love to hear your question.
Just shoot me your question,your name, and I'll tackle it
(10:55):
here on a future show.
I'd love to hear what you'regoing through so I can help you
and you can watch my answer toit on a future show.
And if you have liked thisepisode so far you're still here
watching I'd really appreciatea thumbs up, a five-star review.
Hit the share button, hit thesubscribe button, hit the like
button, whatever it is.
It really helps spread the showto more people.
Thank you for doing that onthis episode and until next time
(11:17):
, my friends, happy scaling.
Welcome to Breadside Business, where we talk to
online entrepreneurs likeyourself about growing your
business to seven figures.
Over the past four years, I'veled a business that's in the
seven-figure range and I've alsocoached multiple six and
five-figure entrepreneurs onproductivity and business
systems.
One thing comes up consistentlyas an issue for these
entrepreneurs that I work withwho are trying to scale to that
(00:21):
seven-figure range, and that'stime how to manage their time,
how to use their time in a wiseway so they're not just working
hard, they're working smart.
So in this video, I'm going totell you how to spend your time.
If you're an early-stageentrepreneur, it's a framework
I'm going to lay out, basicallytelling you how to allocate your
limited resources of time inthis video.
(00:41):
If you're a business owner whohas outside responsibilities,
this is perfect for you.
Let's say you have another sidegig to make income while you're
building your business, oryou've got family or other
obligations.
This will be really helpful.
I had a client ask me recentlylike listen, joey can only spend
about 12, 15 hours on mybusiness per week, but I always
end up sitting down to work onmy business when I have time and
(01:04):
I don't know what to do withthat time.
So I showed them this diagramhere I'm about to show you, and
it really helped them to clarify.
Okay, what's my next step?
What am I going to do here andwhat am I going to do there to
create the revenue I want tocreate?
But before we jump into theframework, I want to lay out
some presuppositions here.
A business is the processthrough which you add value to
(01:25):
people's lives and they give youmoney in exchange.
It's an entity to handle thattransaction between the value
added and the money coming in.
To add this value to ourcustomers or our clients' lives,
we need to exude effort, andthat effort needs to be combined
with pre-existing skill orknowledge or expertise.
(01:47):
Now the problem is a lot ofbusiness owners get burnt out
before the effort exuded tocreate the value creates income
for them on the other end.
So they get burnt out basicallytrying to add value before the
revenue comes in, and so theyget discouraged and they quit.
So if we're talking about howto build a successful business
(02:09):
from scratch, or we're talkingabout scaling the revenue of a
current business, we're reallytalking about how can we stay in
the game long enough.
Add the value, which is theeffort combined with expertise
and knowledge.
How can we do that long enoughfor the revenue to come in the
other side?
That's the challenge we'retrying to solve here and that's
the key to a sustained business.
(02:30):
You're in the sweet spot herewhere you're being challenged,
you're having fun and you'remaking money.
If you can achieve all thosethings at the same time
challenged, you're having funand you're making money you're
in a great spot, and that's whatthis framework is all about.
We're looking at a table withfour quadrants.
In the columns up top, you'vegot fun and life-sucking.
(02:53):
On the rows on the side, you'vegot hard and easy.
So the four quadrants of thistable are fun and hard, fun and
life-sucking, and then easy andfun.
Easy and life-sucking.
So where do we spend our time asa business owner in the early
stage?
Well, 80% of our time fully 80%of our time we spend building
(03:14):
our business should be in thefun and the hard category.
The vast amount of your timeshould be spent on activities
that are fun and that are alsodifficult, hard, challenging,
make you grow, make you thinkoutside the box.
These are the needle-movingactivities that actually grow
revenue, that actually createmoney, that actually build your
(03:35):
business.
Now the problem is when peopleslip into the life-sucking and
hard quadrant.
So if you're having fun andyou're working hard, you're in a
good spot.
You're working on thoseactivities that generate revenue
.
It's difficult work but you'reenjoying it.
Great, that's an awesome,sustainable way to spend your
time building a business.
(03:56):
You're going to last thedistance.
But what I see a lot ofentrepreneurs do is slip into
the hard and life-suckingcategory.
Now, there is a certain amountof work in every business and it
should be less than 10% of thetime here where you have to do
some things that are hard andare life-sucking.
Let's say you have a customerthat's pissed off because an
expectation was not met.
You can't just ignore them andsay, hey, I'm not gonna answer
(04:18):
that email, I'm not gonna answerthe phone.
Obviously, there are someminimal amount of tasks that are
hard and life-sucking, but itshould be, again, less than 10%
of your time.
If you're an early-stageentrepreneur, the idea is that
you hire out these areas lateron, if you hire a customer
service engineer or managerlater on down the road.
But If you are early on in yourbusiness and you're spending
(04:41):
more than 10% of your time onhard and life-sucking things,
that's your reason why you'redemotivated.
That's the reason why you'restruggling.
I don't care how good yourstrategy is, if it's sucking the
life out of you and it's hard,you're going to give up.
You're going to move on todistractions.
You're going to be using thattime that you are working on
your business very poorlybecause you actually don't enjoy
(05:02):
it.
Now let's talk about fun andeasy the fun and easy quadrant.
These are the tasks that areusually light, breezy.
They're not challenging for you, you get them done really
quickly and they're pretty fun.
They are usually the tasks wedo when we're procrastinating.
Doing the hard and fun things,they feel good in the moment.
(05:25):
They're like quick checkboxthings.
It's like organizing things oror like spending the 15th time
reviewing the creative on a post, but not in a in a way that
improves it, but in a way thatlike just is kind of like light
and breezy and fun.
You know we're just kind ofdoing things off the cuff and
changing things.
Or, again, we're organizingfolders or information or doing
(05:47):
quick little tasks that don'tactually create revenue.
They are distractions from thehard and the fun things that we
should be putting our time to,so we really should not be
spending any time in ourbusinesses early on on fun and
easy things.
Let's talk about the lastquadrant life-sucking and easy.
So this quadrant is where a lotof people waste time on tasks
(06:10):
that really should not be giventhe time of day.
It should be less than 10% ofyour time spent in this quadrant
, similar to the life-suckingand hard stuff like dealing with
customer complaints.
That is difficult and sucks.
The easy and life-sucking stuffis, like you know, sending
invoices to clients, drawing upcontracts, checking your email,
your, you know, closing thebooks in your business, like all
(06:33):
this stuff.
That just isn't like superdifficult, but it's just got to
get done.
It's very easy to overthink orovercomplicate these things.
You know people can spend hourstrying to find the right online
software for their business orfind you know just the right
contractor to do a project.
You know they're easy, they'relife-sucking things and we can
(06:55):
just spend way too much timeovercomplicating them.
Again, it should be less than10% of your time.
Yes, you have to spend sometime checking your email, some
time drawing up contracts andinvoices and invoicing your
clients and charging them, andall this stuff.
That's easy and life-sucking,but do not overthink it, do not
spend too much time in it.
So if you bring it all together,what are we spending our time
(07:15):
on Fully?
80% of our time is on the hardand the fun stuff.
10% is on the hard and thelife-sucking stuff, you know,
dealing with clients that haveproblems.
And then 10% of our time is onthe easy and the life-sucking
stuff, only the bare minimum,the necessities to get things
off the ground.
We're not spending the majorityof our time early in business
(07:37):
picking out whether we useNotion or Evernote or ClickUp or
.
You know that kind of stuff canalways be changed later.
It doesn't matter, you know.
We just need to get through itso we can get back to the hard
and the fun stuff, which is theprospecting, which is the sales,
which is the product design,the marketing campaigns, the
fulfillment piece.
You know, the hard and fun,nitty-gritty pieces of business
(07:59):
that actually create revenue.
So if you're struggling to knowwhere to spend your time as a
business owner, there's threesteps that you got to take here.
First, find a strategy that'sproven to make money.
This is the key.
First of all, you got to find astrategy where someone has used
it before to create thefinancial results you're looking
for.
(08:19):
That's the most important piecerevenue generating strategies.
Second of all, think what itwould look like to still be
doing this strategy two yearsfrom now.
So you've got to pictureyourself not just implementing
this strategy now, but thinkabout continuing to do it for
the next two years and thinkwhere you'd be.
Would you be happy if you werestill implementing this strategy
(08:41):
on a week-to-week,month-to-month basis two years
in the future?
That's to test the fun factor.
Because, again, the firstrequirement of a business is hey
, it makes money, hello, it'snot a hobby, right?
So that was the first step.
Second step is to test is thisgoing to be something you're
going to enjoy several yearsfrom now?
Because if you have this reallyspunky, fun strategy that's
proven to work but it sucks,it's in that life-sucking
(09:03):
category.
So it's hard and life-sucking.
You should not be in thatbusiness, you should not be
doing that work, you should notbe trying to make money that way
.
So get out of that business.
And a test for that is would Istill be having fun talking
about this topic or using thismarketing strategy or using this
product strategy, two yearsfrom now?
And thirdly, you want toschedule 80% of your week that
(09:26):
you have set aside to work onyour business.
80% of that time should bespent on the hard and the fun
needle moving tasks thatactually bring about that
strategy.
So this is where the rubbermeets the road.
You've got your strategy.
It's a lot of fun.
That was step two.
Step three is all right.
I'm going to put blocks of timeon my calendar that move this
(09:48):
strategy forward.
That creates the results tobring about whatever framework
or business plan or strategyI've chosen to move forward with
.
And that's how you scheduleyour time.
80% of your week is alreadyaccounted for.
It's already set in stone.
You know what you're going tobe working on and then all the
other stuff falls into placearound it All the things they'll
(10:09):
get done.
Believe me, like you'll get anangry customer email, you'll
deal with it when it needs to bedealt with.
You'll have to send outinvoices.
You'll spend a few minutes todo that.
But what's really important isthat you schedule out 80% of
your time dedicated to workingon your business, on those hard
and those fun nitty gritty needa moving tasks.
(10:32):
And that's how you scheduleyour time in your early stage
business.
I hope this has been helpful foryou.
I'm really excited to hear fromyou.
What's your question about yourbusiness?
Do you have a problem you'refacing?
Do you have a question aboutgrowing your business?
Do you have a team issue?
Do you have a productivityissue or a business systems
issue?
Let me know what it is.
Shoot me an email, joey, atjoeyhyoungcom.
I'd love to hear your question.
Just shoot me your question,your name, and I'll tackle it
(10:55):
here on a future show.
I'd love to hear what you'regoing through so I can help you
and you can watch my answer toit on a future show.
And if you have liked thisepisode so far you're still here
watching I'd really appreciatea thumbs up, a five-star review.
Hit the share button, hit thesubscribe button, hit the like
button, whatever it is.
It really helps spread the showto more people.
Thank you for doing that onthis episode and until next time
(11:17):
, my friends, happy scaling.
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