Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Neill Williams. Neill is a Master Certified Life and Productivity Coach who helps too busy high-achieving online entrepreneurs scale back their work weeks to 30 hours or less so they can do what they most want to do, most of the time. We talk all about how we can become more productive and organised, as well as staying accountable so you can work smarter and reach your goals working fewer hours. We also give you some of the mindset tools and practical tools you need to do this!
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- Time does not = money. You can earn a great amount of money working less hours – it is possible.
- You have to have the mindset in place first to take the action of systemising or delegating in your business.
- Don’t take your employee mindset into running your own business – you have to think about everything and hold yourself accountable.
- We are the CEO of our own businesses – everything is down to us.
- Let go of the cookie-cutter version of what you think a CEO looks like.
- To have self-integrity – you have to keep the promises you set yourself.
- Create an amazing relationship and don’t let yourself down by not doing what you planned to do.
- When you give yourself less time, you have to be more efficient!
- Cutting hours is a great way to increase your productivity because it limits you being distracted and procrastinating.
- Ask yourself – does it make the boat go faster? Is what you are doing pushing you towards your goal?
- Carve out time for being the ‘employee’ eg Fulfilling/delivering your product/service and being the ‘CEO’ eg Marketing/selling.
- Schedule thinking time – you are solving a problem for someone. Give your brain things to focus on during this time eg what is my goal for next year? What are my next 3 steps?
- You don’t have to do ALL the things – you need to have a focus and know where you are going.
- Scaling back the number of hours we have been conditioned to work gives us the freedom to be flexible and spontaneous.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…
Don’t add complexity when it comes to making money – it only takes one amazing offer or thing done really well and one platform.
HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS
- How Neill scaled back her working hours but still hit 6 figures in her business.
- How you can work less hours whilst earning 6 figures.
- How to stay accountable when you are running your own business.
- How to be more productive in your day and get more done in less time.
- Intentional productivity vs intentional time-wasting.
CHECK NEILL OUT:
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Take my quiz to find out your No 1 Business Blocker
Ben (Shoutable Agency) – Website Developer
TRANSCRIPT
Teresa: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So I've got lots of updates for you for this week. Lots has been going on.
So first update. Have you gone and done the quiz? So the quiz what's your number one business blocker is out and live. If you go to teresaheathwareing.com/quiz so you can uncover where you're getting stuck in your business and reveal the action steps that you need to grow your business.
Plus you've received a personalized growth rapport and an action plan. We're going to do a whole episode about this quiz because the whole thing was amazing. The process and the work that's gone into it. Like I totally geeked out at the backend of it. And like, cause basically what happens is I wanted it to be really personalized, you know, and it says it's personalized.
And it's really not that personalized when you've done quizzes in the past. So what I've done is when you take the quiz, the page you finish on that gives you the name of where you're stuck is kind of the, the overall, yeah, this is the area you need to focus on. However, The report that I've put together and I'm laughing because it's crazy.
I talked, I was having some sessions with active campaign because we were moved over to that or moving over to there. And which, again, I'll talk about properly at some point. And also having conversations with the lovely Kylie who built the quiz and both of them, when I said how many options of the report I needed and wanted, they would just like ‘What on earth.'
Because I've made it very personal. So basically there are three main questions within the quiz itself that I pull out and put into the report. So your actual answers, I tell you the next thing you need to do in your business. And this is all based off my dream business growth path, which is in the club, which is phenomenal.
It's a, we've spent a long time putting it together. It's very, very detailed in the sense of use you pick a section. So it might be social media. It might be content. It might be sales. It might be emails. It might be your community. It might be a team. And basically you work through that. And you go into a section of the growth path and it will say, you know, where are you?
And you basically decide, is this the level I'm at? And then if that's the level you're at, it tells you exactly what you need to do to get to the next level. And then at the end of each section of the growth path is a quiz and well, not a quiz, an assessment where basically you mark it and you put in the answers and if you pass, you can then move up into the next level.
But basically. It isn't, it sounds like a course. It is so not a course. Like this. And I think I've talked about through the pathway took me almost seven years to do, and I'm not saying it's going to take you seven years. Cause obviously I changed and tweaked and I had to learn along the way, but basically I've taken all the things that I've learned and all the steps that got me, all the things where my business really moved and improved and I've put them into pathway.
So good. So the quiz is linked to the pathway, um, and the content comes from the pathway. So the report that you get is so good, I am so very excited.
And then at the end of the report, it tells you which level of the club is most appropriate to you, to where you are in your business. Honestly, I've had way too much fun doing this, probably spend way too much time. So that's the first thing the quiz. The next thing is we are doing a free workshop. Now I am going to be very aloof in telling you what the workshop's about because at this point I am still finalizing things.
Now it makes me so very unorganized and ordinarily I'm not a very organized. However we have done so much stuff. So what I want you to do is I want you to head along to teresaheathwareing.com/dreambusinessworkshop okay, all one word. I will put a link to it in the show notes. And that is going to tell you what this free workshop is all about, where you get to come and sit with me and work on your business for free for a couple of hours.
It's going to be cool. Okay. So that's that? Sorry. It's very aloof. I promise I'll give you more information next week, but it's going to be on the 16th of March. So don't hang around if you're listening to this late, because you want to get booked on while there's still space. Okay. So that's that.
And then the third thing is my website went when live. I told you we've been very busy, which is why I'm a little bit disorganized. So the website went live. I love it. I've had such good feedback from it. So we're going to put a link in the show notes, please go and take a look because it's cool. And that was done by the amazing Ben from Shoutable which I will link up to in the show notes, as well as linking to Kylie who did the quiz and active campaign.
So all of those links are in there if you wanna go and check out any of that stuff. Um, but do go sign up for the workshop. Do do the quiz and do go take a look at the website. I've given you three actions today. I'm very bossy. Okay. Today we've got an interview with the lovely Neill Williams.
Neill is a Master Certified Life and Productivity Coach through the Life Coach School. She's coached with Rick Mulready's mastermind and is the host of The Unbusy Your Life podcast. After ditching our own belief that success is measured by the number of hours you worked, Neill was about to true achieve true lifestyle freedom while juggling her role as a mum, wife, entrepreneur, and employee.
She built a six figure online business, just working 25 to 30 hours a week while working the demands of a corporate job and making her and her family top priorities. I mean, that just doesn't sound real. Does it? I mean, I've spoken to this woman it is real. But it does sound like, sorry, do you have an extra, so many hours in your week that we don't have?
She did do amazingly well in terms of how she transitioned from full-time work to then starting to doing her business and how much she earned with doing the hours she did. And she's given us some really good strategies in terms of how we can do that. And I'm not saying, how we can only work 25 hours a week, but how we can just become more productive and more organized.
And also things like how do we stay accountable when we're the only people in our business in lots of cases. So, and also when it's our decision as to when we do something, which is why I do stupid things, like I say, go check out this page that doesn't exist right now, but we'll do by the time this episode comes out because it's got to, because we are running out of time.
Like for me, that's how I hold myself accountable by telling publicly what I'm doing and therefore having to do it. But yeah. So we talk about this and we also talk about the fact that it's a mix of mindset and the practical stuff. So that's actually what I really love about this interview, that it wasn't just, you know, dream that you have more hours in the day, got to think we do that on a regular basis.
It was about some of the mindset tools as well as some of the actual practical tools. So go take a listen. Neill is absolutely delightful. We will link up to her in the show notes and let me know what you think. Here's Neill.
So it's my pleasure today to welcome to the podcast Neill Williams. Neill, how are you doing?
Neill: I'm doing great. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me Teresa.
Teresa: So am I. Really excited. So there's lots of great things going to celebrate. Say lots of things close to my heart. Uh, but before we get into that, we always start the same way by you introducing yourself to my audience and letting them know how you got to do what you do today.
Neill: Yeah. So I started off as that typical corporate corporate hustler girl climbing the ladder, doing all the things. And then I became a mom. Then my whole world kind of changed. I was still trying to do the same thing that I had always done, but be a mom doing it. And it just was like creating so much tension and stress in my life.
So I kind of went on this journey. I'm like, I got to figure this out. I don't, I no longer want to be doing the 50, 60 plus hour work week. I want to be really like, ideally in my mind at the time, I was like, if I get just for 30 hours a week, like that would be like a dream come true. Right. So that's the journey that I went on was figuring out how to scale back my corporate work week to 30 hours or less.
And everyone told me, ‘Oh, well, you can totally work part time, but you're not going to make as much money.' And I was like, adamant, like, I don't want to make less money. I want to keep making the same amount of money. I just want to do less hours for that money. And so it took me awhile to do that, but I did end up scaling it back to 30 hours and with the help of a coach, that's how I figured out how to do this.
Um, and then once I did that, I was like, okay, I got to teach other people how to do this because I look just like sitting in my office hearing the conversations about how many people are miserable. And they're just like coming to work and punching the clock and feel like they're going through the motions.
And they're so stressed out and they're like living for the weekend and all of that, I was just like, I want to try and make a change culturally, like bigger than just like me and a few clients. Like I literally want to create a movement to change how we're working and why we're doing it the way that we're doing it.
It just didn't make sense to me anymore because there, I figured out a different way. And so I created my business on the side. It started about 10 hours per week. And I ended up growing that to multiple six figures while I was still in the corporate world. I wasn't like, and I was still feeling like balanced.
I still was being a mom and still being a wife. I was still taking care of myself. It was just like this fun thing that I was doing. And I was just making a lot of money doing it. And then eventually I just decided, because I thought I'll just do both, like for as long as I want to. And I totally could. I created a system for myself, those sustainable to do that as long as I wanted to.
And then when I decided that I wanted to leave the corporate world, I could, because it was making so much more money in my side hustle and it just continued it as like a side hustle. Most people would call it a side hustle because of the number of hours that I work, but I'm making a lot of money doing it and super fan.
Teresa: I mean, that's, you know, that's kind of the dream, isn't it?
Like, that's what everybody totally to, if they are in, in a job, you know, to have a side hustle, the abundance, the money that then ends enough that they can leave. If they're not in a job and they have their business, they want to earn the six figures and have that balance. Like. Because that feels like so impossible.
Neill: Totally. Right.
Teresa: How could you even do that?
Neill: Because my mission I've decided that my purpose in life is to do impossible things so that people can follow me and do the things, make it like it's a possibility in the world because someone else did it. And then I systematize it and I create programs around it. And I teach you how to do the same thing I did.
That's my whole purpose in life. Like right now, my husband and I have decided, well, I kind of had to convince him to do this, but our goal for the next year. Yeah, exactly. I decided, and then I had to sell him on it, um, is for 2022, we always do a big goal for our family. And our goal for 2022 is to figure out how to live on a 30K a year budget.
And the reason that I'm doing that is not because I have to, but because I think so many people, they tell me all the time, I can't leave my job. I can't do this business because I have to provide for my family. But what I want to show is you can actually provide for your family and have a very enough lifestyle.
Are not about of money. And so that's my next like, challenge that I'm throwing out for myself and I'm going to figure out how to do that. And I'm gonna share along social and all the things I'm gonna share my budget and share like all the things. But that is really just like my goal for my life is just to do these crazy impossible things that people think are keeping them stuck, doing what they're doing when it doesn't have to be that way.
Teresa: So I'm just thinking about like. One thing I really love here is that when we talk about goals for business and business owners, everyone always uses the financial goal always, like you've got to win this, like your businesses isn't successful if you don't earn this. And it's like, do you know what yeah, the money is important and don't get me wrong.
Of course, I want to earn big money, but that balance, like, am I willing to sell my soul? Am I willing to not see my children? I mean, that's probably a bonus. I'm joking.
Neill: Some days say it's total bonus. Right.
Teresa: But that's the truth. I'm a mom, I'm a step mom, you're mom, we've got to have that balance there. Isn't, you know, don't get me wrong.
You know, I, I look at the Tony Robbins, this world and, and the Gary V's, he's all about hustle all the time. And it's like, yeah, that's cool, but you're not managing a home and a family. And you know, and that isn't always that easy to say. So, what is it that your, like, what do you buy into? What's your, because there's lots of different things here.
Isn't that? There's like the hustle has to get up at 4:00 AM and do that. Like, what's your philosophy on this?
Neill: My philosophy is. Really, this is the belief system that I had to adopt to get all these crazy things that I've done so far today is that time doesn't create money. When I let the idea that it takes a certain number of hours to create a certain amount of money go.
That just opened me up to be able to consider, all right, how would I do this? Like if I have 10 hours a week, how do I create a 100K in a business in 10 hours a week? And when you open yourself up to the possibility you start asking yourself those questions, you'll be amazed at the things that you learn or the things that you try.
And you're like, ‘Oh, that worked or that didn't work.' Right. It's really like open yourself up to possibility. And then figuring out, like, how do I get myself there? And for me, it's also putting constraints. Like I'm not willing to work beyond 30 hours a week. Like if I can't fit it in, in 30 hours, I don't tell myself I should work more that I just never say that to myself.
What I say is, okay, then it wasn't meant to be done this week. I'll figure out how to do it next week or the next month. I never use hours as more time as a reason to get things done ever.
Teresa: Okay, so. Again, we've got like two camps here in terms of like, And I think probably you're, you're using a little bit of both, um, as my guest, like, so we've got the, uh, the camp of time is relative and you know, if you tell yourself, you've got no time, you've got no time.
And then also we've got the camp of like systemizing. The more practical side is, is.
Neill: Probably mix of both or yes. Yeah. It's a, yeah, it's a mix of the mindset of it because the mindset is the thing you have to have locked into place first, or you will never take the action of systematizing or delegating or figuring out how to do things in a new or different way.
We just get locked into doing things the way we've always done them. And we don't consider how we could do them differently. And it requires considering how you could do them differently in order to actually figure out how to do them differently.
Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. So do you think when ask is like when I was employed, I was smug as hell.
Right. I was so organized. I was like, irritatingly organized, like I would say to my boss, or I'd say to my clients, I'll have that done by Wednesday for you. And then Tuesday morning, there you go. Like, that's so good. So I started my business thinking I am so organized. Like I am the best. And then. Wow.
What a shock, like the reason my boss at the time, maybe wasn't as organized as I thought was because she was running the business. And I have no idea what your head does when you're running a business. Like I did. Did you notice a difference going from corporate to running your own business?
Neill: A hundred percent.
It's a total different mindset. Instead of like a thought patterns you have to have as an employee versus an entrepreneur. Like that's it. And it took me a long time to figure that out too. And I think that's part of what ends up happening is we have this business and we take our employee mindset into our business, which works great for the employee portion of the time that you spend in your business, but doesn't work at all for the part of the business where you're spending time entrepreneuring.
Like working on your business. Like that's a totally different thing than working in your business, which as corporate employees, we're really good at doing. Like, we know how to do that. But when you're the boss, you have to tell the employee what to do, which means you have to think about like, telling yourself what you have to do.
If you think about building the business, you have to think about marketing. If you think about selling, you have to think about all these things that you didn't, you just took for granted. You didn't have to think about it as an employee.
Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's very hard for us as small business owners in the first, you know, while years maybe to finally go, we are the CEO, because I think in our head, especially if we've come from corporate world, the CEO is some normally guy.
They are sat at top of the business that has got hundreds of employees, like thousands of employees, like that's a CEO. So when it's little to work in your house, doing your thing to go ‘I'm the CEO of my business.' feels a little bit ridiculous. So I think that may be as a stumbling block as to why we're not thinking that way and thinking we need to pull back and look at the bigger thing.
Neill: But it's because we have this version of CEO in our brains, right.
That doesn't have to be what a CEO is. And in fact, I would just stop following everything that told my brain that that's what CEOing looked like. Right? Like CEOing can be a million different things. All it really is, is like growing and managing a business. And that can be in your yoga pants and it can be at 5:00 AM.
It could be at, you know, A couple of hours a day, whatever it is for you. But I think we have to let go of this like cookie cutter version of what CEOing looks like. It may have looked like that before, but it doesn't look like that for us, especially those of us who have online businesses and our women in the world who are taking kicking ass and taking names, doing it.
Teresa: Yeah, absolutely. So one thing that I struggled with, and I think lots of my students and people who are listening to this struggle with is that staying accountable? Because again, the reason I was so smug and good is because I have someone I was accountable to. So when I said I needed it done well, they need to be done by Wednesday.
And I put it in for Tuesday. Cause I just wanted to be a kiss ass. You know, I like now I've got my own business. I have clients to begin with, and now we don't really have clients. And actually that's really hard because there's no one to be accountable to so I can put off stuff that I shouldn't put off. So how do you find staying accountable to yourself?
Neill: Yeah, it's such a brilliant question because it's kind of how we're socialized, right? That there's external accountability is how we manage ourselves to get things done on deadline or whenever they're supposed to be done. Right. We do that in school.
And then we do, if we go into and we work for somebody else, we do the same thing, right? Somebody tells me this is the deadline. And then I figured out how to get it done then, because the consequence of not getting it done, it feels so painful, right? Like for you, if you didn't get something done, you would probably feel like mortified.
Like that's just not going to happen. Right. I'm not going to let that happen. And then for some reason we think it's different when we hold ourselves accountable to ourselves.
Teresa: Okay.
Neill: That's the difference. Right? So as an entrepreneur, you're right. You don't necessarily have external accountability in the same way.
Sometimes you do, like you said, you know, if you have a call with a client or like, you and I are right now, we're accountable to each other because we're recording this podcast.
Teresa: Yeah, exactly.
Neill: We're like, oh, for sure. I'm like, no, no thought. And either one of our brains probably came up. That was like, oh, I'm not doing that.
Or I'm not going to show up because the consequence of that, like I would be like. I would feel awful, right. That I just didn't show up with you and same thing probably for you. So as an entrepreneur, though, this is why I think entrepreneurship is like personal development in disguise is because you have to learn these skills that you didn't necessarily have to have to be successful as an employee.
It takes a whole different skillset to be successful as an entrepreneur. And what I would say, like one of the most important skills is what you're talking about right now, which is learning how to be accountable to yourself. How do I tell myself I'm going to get something done? And then I sit down and I do it, even if I'm the only one who knows if it's going to be done or not.
It's that important because I told myself. That I was going to do it.
Teresa: And is that just a practice? Is that, is there some like hack I'm missing that makes me look I'm really accountable to myself or was it just a I've got to do this.
Neill: I mean, yes, it's a practice, the skill, right? So it's not like we're born with like, I have amazing internal accountability.
Like most of us don't do that. And we're so maybe we could, but we're socialized in a way that has us accountable externally. So we never get to practice the skill of internal accountability. And so as an entrepreneur, one thing that I have all of my students go through is what I call a 30 day keep your promise practice.
Where we set three promises a day. And your only job for those 30 days is to follow through on those promises. And you like build the skill, right. You start to get stronger at keeping those promises to yourself. So you you're, you're absolutely right. Like you literally have to practice it. To get better at it.
It's not like something that's like, somebody's going to come down from the heavens and like all of a sudden you're gonna feel like you're totally accountable to yourself. It doesn't really work that way. Cause it's a skill.
Teresa: Yeah. I hit something. I'm sure it's something like, you know, tough self-integrity is to be accountable to yourself. Keep your promises.
Neill: Totally. Right. And so many of us as entrepreneurs, we have a lot of guilt and we have a lot of distrust in ourselves. Because we tell ourselves we're going to do something, or maybe we're going to get this funnel done, or maybe we're gonna get this email nurture sequence done by a certain time.
And then we're like, oh, I don't really feel like that today. So I'm just going to go do whatever. Right. But that does kind of erode our relationships with ourselves, which is another reason why I love entrepreneurship is because it really teaches you to have to trust yourself. Like create this amazing relationship with yourself.
And that means not letting yourself down by not doing what you told yourself you're going to do. That's part of it.
Teresa: Yeah. And I think like you said, being very intentional with that. I am I this week, I always do like lots of planning. Block time and all this of thing. And I have a morning routine and I spoke to, I have a lovely nutritionist who I speak to, uh, cause we've been working on some supplements and things and I have this call with her and I have not spoken to her for like a couple of months.
And for whatever reason, everything had gone out the window, I was like, I'm not meditating. I'm not like doing any of the things I normally do. So I literally next to me. And obviously we're on screen so you can't see us, but I'm just showing my very lovely, colorful habit tracker. And I like created this habit tracker where you color it in and like, yeah.
I can't tell you how effective that is being like right next to me on my desk every morning I come in and like color it in for the day before I did it, whether it was just the color, but like having to be really purposeful of going. You are going to do these things because you've made that promise to yourself.
And I think, like you said, with too easy to break them and it's like the whole, I'm not going to have, I'm not going to chocolate tonight, or I'm not gonna have wine tonight. I'm going to eat that today. And we just don't ever hold ourselves accountable and therefore break up on us and we don't trust ourselves. So I think that is such a generally a powerful skill to hone.
Let alone in terms of being accountable for the work. So let's, let's talk more about like, cause, cause I know what everyone's thinking, they're sat there thinking ‘How the hell did you make six figures as a week?' Like that's what they want to know, but so tell me how, like, what are some of the productivity things that you do?
How do you ensure? Because I think there's an element where. We say we do 50 hours in a week. And actually how much actual work did we do? So how do you make sure that you use those hours to their full potential?
Neill: Right. And so I totally like, I get this all the time. Like people are like, you're just this unicorn and no one else could do what you do.
Right. Which is total BS. I will tell you, because I have many students who are doing the same thing that I'm doing. And the reality is when you give yourself less time, You're more efficient because you don't have time to waste. You don't have time to go on Instagram and like, oh right. You have to like get to it.
And so cutting hours actually is a really effective way to increase your efficiency. 'cause you're like, okay, I'll look at Instagram, but it's gonna be after I get this thing done, because I have an hour to do this thing. And I told myself I was going to, it's like a pairing of these two skills. Right? Like I create a schedule and I tell myself like what I'm going to get done each day.
And then I, because I'm good at following through, on my promises to myself, I just go do that. And even though my brain wants to distract me and I want to go down the rabbit hole and all of that. And I'm like, oh, but I can't because. I have to get this thing done in the next 45 minutes. That's all I have.
Right. So it's thinking about how scaling back is actually your hours is actually a really efficient thing to do because it, it eliminates your tendency to distract and to like buffer and like go do other things. Um, Again, with being accountable to yourself. So that, and then the other thing I want to say is I was very clear with myself from the very beginning, from even like when I was okay, I'm like, okay, I'm doing 10 hours a week here to start with.
And I made a lot of money doing 10 hours a week. I looked at my business from the perspective of like, there's part of those hours that I'm going to be employing in it. Which for me, I'm a coach. Right? So employing for me is coaching, coaching. Yeah. It's like fulfilling on the thing that you're selling. Right.
But then I was very intentional about having specific number of hours that I spent doing the work on my business. So marketing and selling, and I really committed to those fiercely and I used every single minute I could to do. Like I was juicing everything out that I could out of that time. So it was really important to me to be intentional with those hours and then figure out like what works and what doesn't work and do more of that.
And it just kind of like snow, there's like a snowballing effect. Right. Which you've probably seen like, oh, when I do this, this happens. I should do more of this. It's like, I literally had a Google sheet and I would like track, okay. When I do this, I make this money. Or this month I did these things and this is the money that I created.
So really isn't about the time, the number of hours. It's like how you're showing up and using those hours.
Teresa: Yeah. You're so right. I think we are very skilled at wasting our time. And so this morning I was social media was getting me down yesterday and it doesn't often, but it was, I was just getting tired of seeing things and seeing things of, you know, like we all do, you know, comparing against things.
And I just thought, you know what? This is no good for my energy or my time. So I normally pretty good during the day I have to say, but this morning I woke up, I get up fairly early. So I was up at five. Um, I did my morning routine and colored in my habit tracker. And I didn't touch my phone, not once other than like, I listen to a meditation on it, but I literally went on my phone into the app, turned on the medication that medication meditation came out.
Like I didn't go and check social. I didn't look at the emails. I mean, I am one of those people that cannot stand a number notification on something. I have to go and click on it to clear it off. But I literally were like, I was like, no, because there's nothing on there that is going to, and I looked at it to make sure, uh, that, you know, a family member hadn't called me through the night.
You know what I mean? So I literally went nothing emergency. I don't need to look at anything else. I think one thing I try and do is there's a book, which I always quote, but I've never actually read. So you think I should probably read it? But basically.
Neill: No. You got all the value out of the book out of one quote.
Teresa: Exactly. But it's like, it's, it's the British rowing team and it's about how they were dreadful and how they got better. And basically one of the things that they did is every single activity they did. Like for months beforehand, they asked themselves the question, will it make the boat go faster? Like, so, and that's our equivalent, like, what's my goal.
Where am I going to head to? This thing that I'm doing right this very second. Is it going to make the boat go faster? Me scrolling through Instagram, me like looking at something, make it and distracted by something else is not making the boat go faster? No, stop it. And I've been known to literally talk to myself and then shut it down.
Like I got distracted with an ad about this fancy pan. So I was looking at this fancy pan. Is this making the boat go faster? No, it's not turn off the button. So I think you're right. I think lots of people think that it's some magic trick, but it's not, you're being just very strategic and organized using that time.
What kind of like we have habits that gets really unproductive. So what sort of things should we be keeping an eye out and trying to avoid.
Neill: Yeah, I think, um, for entrepreneurs or especially, I have four things that I would suggest, which are probably going to be a little bit like different. Maybe you haven't heard these things before, but this is what I see working for myself.
I see working for like all of the six and seven figure businesses who are, um, working just a few hours per week or a few days per week. The first one is what I kind of mentioned this already, but it is really looking at the number of hours that you want to work. I always start there like how many hours do I want to work?
Right. And then I'm just going to figure out how to do it in that number of hours instead of what most people do, which is like, I'm going to figure out all the things I have to do. And then that will tell me how many hours I'm going to work. It's we swap it. Right. We swap it. It's like, these are the number of hours I have.
Here's how I'm going to use them. Because that makes your decision-making process. Like you become more discerning, right? If you're like, I have 10 hours.
Teresa: I'm not gonna waste it.
Neill: Exactly, I'm not going to waste it doing this thing that's actually not going to move the boat forward or move it faster. Right. So thinking about that and then carving out time, like literally having time that you have those number of hours.
Think about the ratio of those that you want to be the employee in your business, which is the fulfillment, the delivering of the thing that you do. And then the other portion being you CEOing right. Being the CEO of your business. And depending on what your business model is, there's different ratios that make sense.
You want to just play around with like, okay, how much of my time doing and be marketing and selling? Or should I be, what, what does my business need me to be doing marketing and selling versus fulfilling? So that's the first thing. Cause I think people just like, they're like, all right, I have 40 hours this week.
What am I going to do? And it's like, think about, is asking your brain that question and what happens. It's like a Pandora's box opens up and you're like, I have no idea now.
Teresa: I could do this. I'll just like, you know.
Neill: Right.
Teresa: Yeah. Yeah absolutely.
Neill: Yeah. So that's number one, really thinking about the split between being the employee and the CEO, because especially if you're in the corporate world, you haven't thought about being the CEO before, because someone else did that.
Teresa: Yeah. That role was taken. Right. Okay.
Neill: You had the luxury of not thinking about that. Yeah. So that's. That's number one, number two, I would say I never see people schedule this out, which I think it's kind of interesting thinking time. As entrepreneurs, we get paid to think like you literally, as an entrepreneur, the whole reason you have a businesses, cause you're solving a problem for someone, right?
So it's like your most lucrative skill and we spend no time intentionally doing it. So I would like literally have time blocked out in the calendar for thinking time. And you want to think, you want to give your brain really specific things to focus on during that time? Cause it could just go like down a rabbit hole if you're not careful.
And so maybe ask yourself a question, like what, what is my goal for next year, or what's the next three steps that I'm going to take to, to try and hit this goal? Or what's a problem that I'm having in my business that I really want to solve. What, and ask your brain, like, what are three possible solutions to this?
Teresa: Is this like a journaling exercise or. Would you class as journaling?
Neill: Could be.
Teresa: Or would you just sitting there thinking.
Neill: It depends on how, yeah, so it could be like, I like to do that. I sit down and I just will ask my brain a question and then write out the answers. Right. Which doesn't take much time.
I also really like, I just pay attention to like how my brain functions, like, and I just leveraged that in my everyday life. So for instance, I'm runner, and my brain solves a lot of problems when I'm running. And so I'll sometimes just insert a problem into my brain before I start my run. And I know like I'm just going to have like answers by the time I'm done.
So it doesn't have to be this conventional. I'm only sitting down at my desk, always in front of my computer. That's also like if you look at brains science, there's a part of your brain that works really well in that kind of environment. For many of you, especially if you're entrepreneurs, you're ideators, you have other places where your brain offers you amazing ideas.
Like, think about what happens in the shower in the morning. Like how many ideas do you have when you're in the shower? You're like a seriously, yeah. Right. So thinking about leveraging those other things that you're already doing, where your brain is naturally functioning to solve problems or think creatively or innovatively.
Teresa: So would you include this? Let's say you wanted to work 30 hours a week and you're going to do 15 CEOing and 12 employing like terms. So would you like to say I'm going to book two of those hours for thinking.
Neill: Yeah. And literally like, I'll give you an example from my schedule. So I work Monday through Friday, kind of.
On Friday. I don't have anything scheduled. So my assistant knows we don't put any appointments. We literally, it's a completely open blank space. And I just let my brain kind of like have fun thinking that whole day. So I oftentimes like I'll create new programs or I'll create, like, this is a great email sequence idea, or this is a great podcast topic idea, right?
Like I just like to let it have that creative space. Now that doesn't necessarily work for everybody. Like just having an open day like that. But for me, because I've tested this enough, it really works well. So could look at a lot of different ways. It might not be like an hour every day. It might be.
These are the four days that I'm doing the employee work. And this one day is my CEO day. So be creative with it.
Teresa: Okay. So that was two. Number three.
Neill: Number three, as entrepreneurs as especially new entrepreneurs. I feel like we like to add a lot of complexity in making money. So constraining and really thinking about like, it really only takes one really amazing offer and one platform that will take you to multiple six figures and to even seven figures.
One thing done really well better than anybody else. And one platform. That's all that's really required. We think we have to be on like all the places, right. There's like clubhouse and there's TikTok and there's podcasts and there's email. And there's like, like, think about all of those. Each one has a strategy that you have to really understand and learn how to leverage to be really good at it.
So it's this idea of going, instead of going like a mile wide and an inch deep, it's like an inch wide and a mile deep, get that thing going and then maybe add something on. But as entrepreneurs we're so subject to the shiny object syndrome, like they should be this because they have made so much money. I should totally do that.
Teresa: Should be doing that. That's the secret to be making the money until you see someone else doing something, and then, oh, no, that's definitely the secret to be making money.
Neill: Yeah. And then we just like shift and then we shift. And then, so we're doing all the things, which just is like, you think about your energy and your focus, especially if you have just a few hours that you're working per week, you can't have it expended out in a million different directions.
It has to be like straightforward. This is where we're going. Consolidated constraints.
Teresa: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think I heard again another really good quote about like, if you're running a race and you can do like, you know, five miles a day, but you've got five things going on. You're only getting a mile into each one a day.
Whereas if you did one thing, you're going five miles into that thing. So like, you're going to get to it quicker. You're going to get through it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Neill: And so much simpler. Right? Like I like to think about my business. Like it has to be simple and easy or I'm just not going to do it. Right.
Cause I could just go back to the corporate world, doing what I was doing. And so if it's not simple and easy and fun for me to do, then it's just not worth it. And so that is different for everybody. Right. But I think simple it's like, oh, when you realize how simple you can make your business, it just brings so much clarity.
You immediately know, oh, this thing is no longer part of this. Like, it just creates so much, like the discernment is just automatically there. You don't have to work for it.
Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that was number three, number four.
Neill: The number four is really the one that we touched on earlier, which is accountability.
So not doing what you told yourself you would do. So important to build that skill for yourself. Yeah. Because if you don't, you're using a lot of time to make up for that habit. Right. Because you're going to have to reschedule, you're going to have to like work more hours or like, whatever it is that is your solution.
It is going to cause like you to be doing more than what you need to be doing.
Teresa: Yeah, I was, I was reading a book. Uh, I love obviously reading and listening to books and things. And they were talking about when it comes to decision making that tell yourself, there is no decision to talk about. That you've made a decision because the minute you start to question it, the minute you're like, okay.
So I was going to come and sit down and record some videos, but you know, well, should I record the videos now? Cause I could always do so and so, and I could do this bit first and it's like, no, don't ask yourself that question. You made the commitment there's no question to ask you're doing that thing. And I think that sometimes I often joke with my members that like some things we spend, you know, they take half an hour, 20 minutes for us to be like, oh, do I have to, I don't want to do it.
And 10 minutes to actually do the thing, like just stopped questioning and thinking and do most of it. We would just get it done. So, absolutely. So we've got a couple of. Uh, another question in terms of like, does this include a team member or have you got a team? Is this part of the success that, you know, being the, the CEO of the business then means having team members and focusing on that?
Neill: I think it, it could be either way. Like I didn't have anybody in until the last, I think three months ago I hired my executive assistant Kelly. And I have had some contractors that I've done some work for. Like, I'm very discerning about like how I want to use my time. Right. Like, so I started my podcast couple years ago and I just knew when I started it, that I was not going to be doing the editing of it.
I could, I knew I could. I knew I could totally learn how to do that. I just decided it was a no for me.
Teresa: No so you could use of your time.
Neill: So. Yeah, exactly. So you, you want to be discerning about that too. You're either going to invest money or you're gonna invest time. Which one? Where are you at in your business in which one makes sense for you?
Sometimes it is the time. Like I did my own Facebook ads. I did my own website, did all that stuff for a long time and it was just totally fine. I could have continued to do that. I just decided I don't want to. For now I hire that out and Kelly is like, um, Kelly's amazing. So she used all of my stuff that I talked in the podcast.
Scale back her teaching job to 30 hours. And then she basically like sent me a video application was like, I'd like to come work for you. I don't know what this looks like, but this is what I did. And I think I could really help you. And I was like. Totally. Yeah. So I've only had her for a couple months and it literally, I mean, it's totally different.
Right. But, and it's amazing. And so if you want to hire people, I'm like totally in invest the money to do that. But here's what I want you not to do. If you're going to hire people do not spend a ton of time managing them. This is like such a waste. Here's what happens, right. Okay. I'm finally going to be able to like stop working all these extra hours when I hire somebody.
And then what do people do they spend all those same extra hours managing the people that they hired. That's a no.
Teresa: And it's, and it's something that I think we do. I think, you know, it's like we need to work at, how that looks, and Because I have had team members and I have team members now but I have team members in the past.
That's what I was doing. Like I was just basically spending my time managing them rather than them just getting on with the thing or doing the thing. And that was no benefit to me at all. Because again, not only is it taking those time, but it's reliant on you. So, yes, I wasn't driving. If I wasn't. Now I have team members.
I have a full-time assistant who I know she normally has things to get on within the background. And then if I want to give her something immediately, she'll get on and do that. But I am well aware that if she's got nothing going on the backend and I'm not giving her anything, because that isn't anything that's come up in that particular afternoon or whatever, then she might be sat there doing nothing and that's on my hat.
That's fine. But the truth with her, I think, was the fact that. I wanted someone full-time because I've got all these like freelance people that worked for me who did X amount of hours, but no one was there when I needed them, like immediately. So I wanted to bring someone on, even though I probably didn't have enough for full-time hours.
I just wanted that availability. That was what I was paying for more than the actual number of hours.
Neill: Yeah. Yeah. And what you're saying is like such a beautiful concept. It's, you're paying for the value that person is delivering to you. You're not paying for the number of hours that they're working.
Teresa: No, and she doesn't always do it full-time and that's absolutely fine because when she's, when I need it, she's there. And that's what I needed.
Neill: And you're willing to invest in that.
Teresa: Yeah. And I think the other thing I was going to touch on is the fact of, you know, how, when you are in your business and you've been running it for a while, there are a million plates that you're spinning and you feel overwhelmed and you feel that there's so many things.
And then something happens. And for me, it was my mum passed away really suddenly last year. And suddenly I had to look and see, what do I have to do? Because all these things on my to-do list that were like, the week before she died, was screaming at me like, oh, and I've got to get done. And I was getting overwhelmed from the path.
Suddenly the perspective of, I can't give the business time at the moment, because I've got this going on. So I now need to look at this and go, what can I actually give up? What can I, and not even necessarily give up, but as in what can I delegate? What can I delete? What can I, you know, put off until a later date?
What can I, what actually was a nice to do, but it's really not important in terms of driving the business forward. And that really helped me understand. Okay. There are things like the podcast I had to do. Coaching calls when I'm coaching. Obviously people paid for me. They don't pay for someone else to do it.
I have to do that. But when it came to some of the other stuff, it's like, actually I make out, like that has to be me, but it really doesn't have to be me. And I think sometimes having something like that come up is a really good reminder. If you like, in terms of what's important for you to get done.
Neill: Totally. Yeah. And I love this. I've had multiple students who have had situations like this too, right. With some major thing happens in their family. Some of them have had COVID and had you know side effects that they've had to deal with. And it ends up being this most amazing thing because they're like, I figured out how to do my business. In a different way because I was forced to.
Teresa: Yes.
Neill: So we can have forced constraints put on us. Right. That's one way that like compels us to just figure it out and that what you said, I think this is, what's so brilliant about what you just said is like, you can figure it out. You just have to have the want or the desire or enough juice to figure it out.
Right. Sometimes that's something that is just given to you from the universe that you did, right. You didn't choose. But if you're not in that situation, when I want to say is, you can still create that for yourself. Like I have one student right now who decided to take a three week break from her business.
Right. And I'm like, this is like the most amazing thing ever, because she had to figure out how to like, she planned it out and ain't even have as a plan. The thought process that you have, because you're not going to be available to your business or to your team. It's just such an interesting exercise, if nothing else, cause you really start to see like, where am my time pushing the needle forward and where am I just like spending time to spend time.
Teresa: This is an exercise. I get lots of people to do in terms of like either time-blocking, which is, I love. When I do it, which I'm not always brilliant at, but when I do, I'm very productive. And the other thing I get them to do is time track. So I will say to them every so often, just literally write down every 15 minutes, depending on what you do and how long it takes, what you're doing.
Like, and I will literally write messing around. Like, I don't know why, but sometimes like that is enough of a thing to go. Oh wow. Like I thought I was really busy and I feel really busy, but actually I just spent like 30 minutes there, 20 minutes here, 10 minutes here doing, I'm not entirely sure what or, and I just think it's about being really, really going into it with your eyes wide open and seeing it. Isn't it?
Neill: Yeah, it really is. And the thing I'm going to say two things on that. Um, one thing when you're feeling really busy, most likely what's happening is your brain is really busy. Like there's a lot of chatter in your mind. That's what feels so busy. But if you don't have the like effect of your actions, like a lot of things done or what you want done, then the busiest, most likely more in your brain than it actually is.
Like you being busy in your calendar being too full. Right. So that's one thing. And then the other thing I, um, I'm a nerd on this, so I read all the studies and there's a study that came out not too long ago. That looked at a 40 hour work week for a typical employee and how many hours they actually used of those 40 to get their work done. And it was like 12.
Teresa: What? That's insane.
Neill: Mind blowing, right? Yeah. Wealth.
Teresa: And it's like, what are they doing?
Neill: Exactly. You're like, what is that? Like, I want to go like follow these people around and just see, like, what are they actually doing every day?
Teresa: Yeah. And I think sometimes like when people listen to this kind of conversation, they think, well, you know, actually in my life and yet we are, in fact, I had a bit of a run sort of Facebook group once because someone put a busy as a mindset.
You're not wise enough to know what you should be doing. And this person did not have a family or any responsibilities. And they were young. And I got a bit like, hang on a minute now. Like, my life is busy. I have a lot to do. I get there is a difference between being productive and wasting time. And I think that's, I just wanted to address that in this conversation in case someone's sat there going ‘Yeah the same as but.' and it's like, yeah, you know, I get it.
We have a lot going on, but also I will a hundred percent of hold my hand up and say, There are times where I am nowhere near, as productive as I should be or could be. And this hopefully will just serve as a reminder to them, pull you back to it. And I have to practice it all the time.
Like I said, I have to practice time-blocking. I have to practice committing to myself, doing my habit tracker. It's it. This doesn't happen by just sheer is luck. This is a very purposeful thing.
Neill: Right? Yeah. And I like to think about like intentional productivity and intentional time-wasting. Because I think we also get this message that we're supposed to be productive all of our hours.
And I think that's total crap. I don't believe that at all. I think. You be as productive as you want to be so that you get what you want done in the hours that you want to work. That's your metric to try and hit and that's different for everybody. Right. And then also like not beating yourself up for time-wasting outside of that, like go on, scroll on Instagram, binge on Netflix, who cares, like.
It doesn't matter. You don't have to feel bad about that.
Teresa: No, just when you're working, make sure it's focused and productive and therefore. And we all need downtime don't we? We all need some time to switch off children and feed them.
Neill: Yeah. And that's kind of the whole point, right? Like scaling back that number of hours that we have been conditioned to think we need to work, so that we have more of that space.
We have more of that freedom and flexibility and the ability to be spontaneous when we want to be spontaneous.
Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Neill thank you so much. This has been so, so good. I've really appreciate your time. Great conversation. Uh, obviously we're going to hook up to everything in the show notes, but is there somewhere that you hang out, that you would like people to come and find you on?
Neill: Yeah, they can find me on Instagram at neillwilliamscoach or they can come check out my podcast, which is Unbusy Your Life and it's available on all the platforms.
Teresa: Perfect. Thank you so much Niell it's been a pleasure having you on.
Neill: Thank you Teresa. This is so fun.
Teresa: There we go. That was lovely Neill I hope you got lots of good stuff from there?
Okay. Like I said, don't forget to go do those three things. Check out the workshop, check out the quiz and check out the website. If you go to the website, you'll find it all there, but otherwise go to the show notes and you'll find all the links in there. Have a wonderful rest of your week and I will speak to you next week.
