How To Get Your Time Freedom Back [PPP #152]

On today’s episode, I’m going to break down exactly how you create Time-Freedom, and it may not be the way you think it is. Stay tuned!

Hey! What is up to everyone? It is Andrea Maxim, here again with you on the Profitable Practice Podcast. And this episode was inspired by an Email that I saw about Time-Freedom and Lori Kennedy has sent out this Email and I’ve been following her for years and I thought it would really be an important episode to share with you as well. Because now that we have all of our members going through the Elite implementer level that we have created as an upgrade to the Maximized Practitioner program, that’s the feedback that we are getting; is I do weekly calls with all those Elite members to track the tasks that we’re doing for them the overarching feeling is just like, “Wow, I can’t believe that all of this got done in a three-month period.” 

And I mean our team is revamping people’s homepages, we are creating landing pages for their products, and we are putting together the Email sequences that they need to sell their products. And one of the best conversations that I’ve had was with Sara, and she was just like; having a team actually put your work out there just proves that what I have to offer isn’t bad or isn’t going to work. 

It’s that I just haven’t put it out there for people to actually buy it and even know that it exists, and that is kind of the overarching feeling of Time-Freedom. Because how many of you have wanted to put together a program, have wanted to rebrand your website, have wanted to show up more on Social Media but you are getting constantly bogged down by the day to day stuff. For me to run my own business, there are so many things that I wanted to do that are 5% that actually grow the business, but I find even I will get bogged down by just even the thought of my To-do list. But last night was a great example of that, I had my first shift back at the Oakville Office, it was awesome, it was so great to have patients back into the office and doing that one-on-one experience again. 

I came home; the kids were home, so Scott is on landscaping duty right now, so he is running his own business, this is his season so I’m basically taking care of the girls 100% of the time until he gets home. Therefore, anybody who has kids knows you have like a five-minute window at any given time to actually do something, and by the time you actually get your brain into the mode of doing the work, that time has passed and “Mommy!” is being called every five seconds. So, it was like 8 o’clock at night and there were so many things that I wanted to do and get done for me to feel like I kind of accomplished my day. I was just like I don’t know how to muster up my energy now that it’s 8 o’clock at night to get all this stuff done. 

And then I was just like; ‘Well I’m going to delegate all of these to my team.’ And so I delegated 3 Email sequences that needed to be built out, I delegated a video that needed to be edited out, I basically did a 15 minutes’ worth of work but got a vast majority of my To-do list done and this is where Time-Freedom comes from. So I think often when we talk about how our businesses look from a successful standpoint, often the amount of profit that we’re making or the amount of money that we have in our bank account is one of those big accolades that everyone talks about and I will be the first to tell that I am basically buying my Time-Freedom, so I am paying Virtual Assistants to do work for me. 

I am paying for my reception staff to manage all of the bookings and the calendars for all the clinics, I am paying for my associate to run an entire office without me and I will happily continue to do so. Because I could not imagine my life any other way than what I have created right now and yes, that does mean that I am making less profit and yes that does mean that I am not going to have as much money in my bank account, but I can also tell you that we are also growing quickly, that because I have all of these elements in place, we are getting much better return with regards to customer satisfaction. 

Now that I have all people where they need to be, and they’re all working in their zone of genius and I can continue to cultivate that, all we have moving forward is growth, there’s nothing left for us to do and so when you are reflecting on how your business structure is set up and how overwhelmed you are and anxious you are and you know that you can be easily delegating these things out and trust me it is a huge exercise in overcoming fear and overcoming this massive story that we had ingrained into our brains from the very moment we set foot into our business whether that is virtual or in the office that we had to do it all. And if we don’t do it then we will lose people or it won’t be done correctly and you have to do it again or hiring someone is just going to be a huge waste of money because they’re not going to work out. And yes, that is true but I will also challenge that thought and say: If the people you hire are not doing what you expected them to do if the virtual assistants you hire are not putting out the work to the level of your expectation, then that also falls on your shoulder as a leader. Because as soon as you start hiring a team you automatically get into the leadership role, you are no longer a Practitioner, you are now leading and managing a group of people, you are managing a team. 

And once you understand that, once you put all of the elements in place with regards to having frequent meetings to make sure that everyone is touching base, to having those uncomfortable conversations about the frustrations that you are having and leaving that open for your team members to also voice out their frustrations, as soon as you drop the ego because this is the other hard part as a team leader, it’s because when you don’t see what they are doing and you have this idea that they’re probably just wasting your money and not getting things done, more often than not that I address those assumptions that I’m making with my team. They end up telling me; “Well this is why I could not get this done because I was so busy working on this other project that needed my attention.” Or “Yeah, I thought it was going to have 4 hours to work on X, Y, or Z but we ended up having a bunch of phone calls and a bunch of bookings and cancellations or people have just walked in because they needed supplements.” Or there is just a learning curve that you are not appreciating that they also have to go through to learn the tasks that you want them to do. 

And I have caught myself probably weekly making that assumption with my team members and every time I just bring it up like; “Look, I’m worried about this, or what’s going on here, or I was expecting this to be done.” They always have a really solid reason as to why, and it’s just that I didn’t know. So having this entire aspect of Team Building around transparency is going to be a massive part of this entire piece and I’m talking right down to the financials, like Meghan we go over our income, we go over the minimum we have to make weekly, we go over every single stat every week. So she knows whether we’re making a ton of money or not because you have to remember from an employee perspective they also create assumptions that “Oh! You know you’re taking so much more money, and you’re only paying me X amount per hour.” Or “You have so much money in the bank and you’re only paying me this.” The assumption goes both ways and as much as you can minimize that from both angles you will build a fantastic team that shows up for you, that start to manage themselves so there’s less work for you to do. It’s just a phenomenal thing to do, however, coming back to this idea of Time-Freedom, you need to buy it. 

There’s no other way around it then you have to be comfortable to be paying for that Time-Freedom unless you’re planning on significantly raising your rates so that you see maybe 50% less people can make the same amount of money, that’s also another way to approach this but it’s not just as nearly as fulfilling as putting on that leadership hat and start managing your team because you’re also supporting their growth and you’re making them feel like they are giving back to the world in a different way and it’s a really phenomenal thing. But it does take a tremendous amount of effort and courage on your part to get that going, and it also takes a lot of mentorship from people who are already managing a team like myself, to show you the ropes of how to do that correctly. 

And I learned all of this from Alex Sharkfin’s program and that was a huge investment but well worth it because now I have all of that foundation and place for my team and I would love to support you in growing yours with the knowledge that I have. And this is something that as I have said, I am more than willing to pay for my Time-Freedom then I am going to be scrounging every single dollar or penny that I can just to make my bank account look better or just to make myself feel better that I am collecting a hundred percent. And there are a lot of great decisions that you can make too to offset the cost like for me I canceled that contract with my Burlington clinic, so now that rent that I was putting towards that clinic can go towards payroll or a new course that I want to invest in. If you really look at where you are spending your money you can find ways of putting things from one bucket over into another, so that you can kind of keep your expenses exactly where they are now, but you’re now going to be cultivating a different dynamic of how your business is running. 

So if this is inspiring you if this is something you know you should be doing, and this is exactly where it stemmed from me, I was so sick and tired of hearing about these phenomenal people that had these great businesses and with them, there’s always this phenomenal team that was kind of backing their vision, I was always so jealous of those people. And one day I said, “You know what Andrea instead of being jealous of and wanting, it’s time for you to just do it and that was the first step I mentally took. So if you need support in figuring out what this is all about and what the expenses look like and all of those things, I would love to have a chat with you. 

Book a 30-minute game plan call, the link is in the show notes and for that 30 minutes, you and I are just going to talk about what Team Building looks like and where the areas of your business that you need to be delegating, and I’m sure you know what they are, but you may not even know what’s possible. You may not even know what’s available for you to delegate or what a business structure could look like because again we have this story that we tell ourselves that it has to look like this or historically it has always been done this way.

And I can promise you that  I love breaking the mold with regards to what things are supposed to look like, and it doesn’t have to be the way that everybody else is doing it, we can make it work for you and your lifestyle, and your business model. So book that 30-minute call with me so that we can make an honest chat about how we can give you that Time-Freedom back, I cannot wait to see you show up in my calendar and for us to book that one-on-one call. So book that now, and of course, any other questions that you have, do not hesitate to reach out to me @AndreaMaximND on Instagram, I am your host Andrea, and I’m out!