As a business coach, I can tell you without reservation that the #1 struggle female entrepreneurs have is time management. Most of us are busy moms, wives, and business owners and we flounder around all too often, trying to figure out a way to wear all the hats and manage all the things.
IE 183: How to Improve Time Management with Angela Proffitt
My guest on today’s episode of the podcast is Angela Proffitt. Angela began her adult life with “real jobs,” while on the side she was growing a business as a wedding and event planner.
And even though the event planning business has seen a decline due to COVID-19, Angela had begun building a productivity business a couple of years ago that she is now placing more focus on.
What Angela realized as she started to work with entrepreneurs, especially the creative types, was that while they excel at their craft, most of them were fairly clueless about actually running a business.
This led her to create the arm of her business, Getting Sh*t Done, which exists to help business owners put processes and systems in place so that they can, well, get sh*t done.
Create a Schedule or Routine
If the systems you depended on, like childcare, school, daycare, or the gym, have closed down due to coronavirus, you may be scrambling to fit everything in. If you’re living in crisis mode on the regular, Angela has some tips for you.
*First of all, I highly recommend you listen in starting at the 5:00 mark, as Angela shares some fascinating information on how we use time, based on our personality. Such helpful stuff!
The number one thing you have to do to get control of your time is to set a schedule or routine.
Even if you aren’t necessarily a schedule-oriented person, knowing what needs to happen and setting aside a time to get it done will change everything.
Once you start putting things in a routine and on a schedule, you’ll be shocked at how much you are able to get done.
Outsource What You Can
Once you have a schedule created and you know what needs to happen and when, it’s time to outsource the things that need to be done but that somebody else can do for you.
Angela is a huge proponent of hiring a virtual assistant, but only if you have the time to properly train one.
I really loved one of the points that Angela made about how much time we waste doing things just because our moms did them. For example, her own mom goes to 3 different grocery stores every week to take advantage of the coupons she has.
But Angela doesn’t typically go to the grocery store at all because it’s something that doesn’t require her. She outsources the things that others can do for her so that she can spend that time on her business. She’s choosing to earn money instead of wasting time.
Even if you only have a few dollars per week, you can pay for grocery delivery or hire a VA to do a few hours of work for you.
Color Inside the Lines
Okay, you’ve got your schedule set up, you’ve outsourced what you can, now what? Now you have to bring order to the things you’ll be doing. Angela does this by color-coordinating the tasks on the schedule.
She breaks tasks up into 3 categories: personal, family, and business. In her business, anything that she has to do herself is colored red. Green is for tracking the time that she and her team members spend on billable services.
Anything colored orange is personal time. That means anything she does for herself. It’s that “me time.”
For you, that might mean going to the gym, or whatever it is that you do for yourself. You need personal goals that keep you healthy and that you’re passionate about.
Finally, Angela uses blue for anything she needs to do at home or in the business that nobody else can do. Because she is so spontaneous at heart, she schedules doing laundry, etc.
Blue also covers special projects she wants to do for her business, such as the content creation she does for her audience every year.
The Best Apps for Time Management
When people find out that Angela is a productivity expert, they all want to know one thing: what her favorite time management apps are. She listed 5 for us:
Marco Polo – a video texting app
Trello – board organizing tool for projects
Dropbox – online storage and sharing of documents
Google Drive – word processor, storage, and sharing of documents
I-Cal – calendar app for iPhone
Angela uses most of the productivity apps that Apple offers. She actually looks every month at the new apps that have come out to see if there is one that would work better than something she is already using.
How to Find a VA
Maybe you’ve listened to this episode and you realize it’s time for you to hire a VA to take some things off your plate. How do you find someone you can trust and who will do a great job for you?
Many years ago, a mentor advised Angela to begin an internship program. She had no idea why anyone would be interested in what she did, but she set it up and registered with several colleges.
And the emails flooded in.
With that experience under her belt, Angela recommends you do two things before hiring anyone.
Do some sort of psychology test, whether that be Myers-Briggs, True Colors, etc..
Set up an internship, whether that means that person follows you around for a week, or a long-term paid internship.
You’re looking for someone who is eager and proactive when it comes to getting things done. You don’t want to hire somebody who is always waiting for you to tell them the next thing to do.
Angela also cautions us all to remember that 90% of the time when someone we hired makes a mistake, it’s because they weren’t taught or led correctly.
If you want to hear more from Angela on how to GSD, visit her at https://www.gsdcreative.com/.
She also has a podcast where she shares her path to business success and advice from other industry experts.
Action Steps:
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