Podcast Show Notes
Episode 2: Making Time to Work on Your Side Business
This episode of the Start Up Heart Up Podcast is all about TIME, namely how to make and manage time for your side business. Show notes & time stamps are below!
0:00
Kae starts the episode sharing that her coffee has now been microwaved three times due to the fact that her sweet 10-month old baby has been interrupting her coffee enjoyment. Then, a dorky poem to set the mood:
“Emails, texts, to-do lists, oh my!
A career, friends, and family, wow, how fast does time fly?
What am I doing day in, and day out?
But day-dreaming, doodling, and scheming about,
My most passionate project, a million-dollar-idea,
A side hustle business that I hold very near.
Some days I’m on fire, other days I’m put out,
But it’s my special venture that I’m so all about.
Hard to explain without feeling quite dizzy,
But suffice it to say I am just VERY busy.”
3:45
Kae gives a bit of background on her career full-time job, her side hustle dreams, and why time is something she’s so interested in discussing. She reads the following quote: “Time is the most valuable resource, because it’s the only thing we can’t get more of. All of Bill Gates’ billions can’t buy one minute of yesterday.” Noah St. Johns Author of the book Power Habits, on John Lee Dumas’ podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire.
6:30
Kae shares her methods on making & managing time for your side business.
Tip #1: Waking up earlier. Kae uses this method by adding 30-60 minutes to her morning alarm and getting on the road quickly so she can work on her side business in the morning for at least 45 minutes before work. It also creates motivation to wake up early each morning, because in her head she thinks that if she goes back to sleep, she won’t get to work on her side hustle that day.
8:10
Tip #2: Getting better sleep and making good use of your time before falling asleep at night. Kae tries to follow this rule: phone is plugged in away from the bed by 9 pm each night. This helps in two ways, first the light from the phone doesn’t keep her awake for longer, and second, she can avoid the endless scrolling of social media which prevents her from the temptation of looking at “just one more” post. Better & earlier sleep also results in better energy for the next day.
10:35
Tip #3: Exercising and eating right. This results in more energy which in turn results in more time. Kae talks about her experience with the Start Today journal by Rachel Hollis. Instead of removing unhealthy food from her diet, Kae decided to add healthy food (healthy greens). She found that writing it down everyday caused her to think about eating healthy food more and create the habit.
12:05
Tip #4: Utilizing commutes for learning. Kae spends her morning and evening commute listening to business podcasts. She searches the podcast app for key terms and phrases that relate to a specific goal she has in her business, for example the phrase “digital course”. Kae is building a digital course for her business now to guide future entrepreneurs through the steps of creating a business from scratch, so she listens often to podcast episodes that discuss making digital courses. She recommends The Goal-Digger Podcast, Amy Porterfield, Entrepreneurs on Fire, and How I Built This.
14:20
Tip #5: Being disciplined about working on your side business when you do have time set aside for it. If you wake up earlier, make sure you are efficient and focused on your business during that extra time you now have. Don’t read emails, text, or go on social media. It’s easy to waste time unintentionally, like spending an hour writing a paragraph for a blog or spending a bunch of time on formatting. Kae talked about how she learned that formatting is one of the most time-consuming things she’s had to do for her product development (because information products include a lot of document creation). She shares an anecdote of how she had no idea what she was doing when she printed her first workbook and messed up the margins.
Kae also gives lawyer tip about time efficiency. At her law firm job, she used a timer to see down to the minute and second how long she spent on every project. She still uses the method sometimes to see how long it takes her to work on something, and to keep her focused.
19:00
Tip #6: Finding ways to share the load of your responsibilities. For Kae, taking care of the baby creates a lot of time obligations. Her husband is a great partner and is always willing to take the baby for 3-6 hours on the weekend so she can work on her side business. You can also delegate work to a virtual assistant if you have the money and/or invest in automation software and apps. If you don’t have the extra money, simply creating systems is a great way to save time. An example that Kae uses is by filling out her marketing & social media weekly calendar pages from her “Master Plan: Business Planning Workbook” product. Thinking through and writing down your marketing plans ahead of time is a good way to make & maximize time for your business, and then you don’t have to remember everything or make excuses not to do it.
21:45
Tip #7: Working on goals that baby steps that are specific and actionable. While big picture planning is fun, it’s important to focus on specific little goals. Kae talks about her paper to-do list methods. She uses two big columns, one that says “urgent” and the other says “important”. This keeps her little goals and baby steps organized so that she can decide quickly what she needs to work on in the precious time she has to work on her side hustle.
24:00
Tip #8: Enforcing your boundaries and learning to say no. Kae shares how this is difficult for her, because she loves being a “yes” person, achieving things, and taking on leadership roles. In some cases, saying yes lead to incredible opportunities like being captain to a team of women in Cross Country in college. In other cases, if the leadership role wasn’t in line with her life plan, it created stress.
Kae read a couple quotes from the book “Boundaries” which she is currently reading. She talks about how she is looking forward to learning to enforce her own boundaries. Doing so protects our valuable time. For example, if you have time set aside to work on your side hustle, but someone asks you to go out or volunteer, you need to be disciplined about enforcing your boundaries. You are not being mean for enforcing your boundaries.
Kae shares a story about how non-confrontational she is, and how that it stresses her out when a server forgets to bring her coffee, i.e. taking on other people’s problems. Being non-confrontational like that makes it hard for Kae to enforce her boundaries, but she’s working on it!
28:40
Short overview of the eight tips for making & managing time for your side business.
30:00
Kae gives a final tip on time. Don’t work on your side hustle while you’re at work for two main reasons: 1. Sometimes your employment agreement will include legal obligations that intellectual property you create on company time or with company resources are owned by the company. 2. Even if your employment agreement doesn’t have an IP ownership provision, in some cases your work may be owned by the company if it’s considered a “work-for-hire” (aka “work-made-for-hire”). If you create copyrightable materials using company time, resources, skills, location, etc., then the company may be able to claim ownership of the materials under this legal doctrine.