The Savvy Seller with Kristen Doyle

163. Are You Stuck in Creator Mode When Your Business Needs a CEO?

• Kristen Doyle, TPT seller, SEO coach, and web designer

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Have you ever poured your heart into cranking out product after product, only to watch your sales drop instead of soar? I’ve been there, and it turns out, I was stuck in what I call “creator mode.” In this episode, I’m sharing how I learned (the hard way) that sometimes what your business really needs isn’t another new thing to sell, but for you to step up and put on your CEO hat! Trust me, getting out of my comfort zone as a creator and actually leading my business has made all the difference, and I’m breaking down exactly why.

We’ll dive into what creator mode really looks like for digital product sellers. Think dreaming up new ideas, designing, tweaking, and all the fun stuff we love. But then there’s CEO mode, which, let’s be honest, probably feels a lot less exciting: reviewing data, analyzing your numbers, and making strategic decisions that actually move your business forward. I’ll talk you through the big mindset shift I had to make, and why hustling in creator mode without direction can leave you feeling burned out and discouraged, even if you’re busy every single day.

Most importantly, I’ll walk you through the practical systems I use now, like my monthly CEO days and simple time blocking tricks, to make sure I’m not just creating into the void. You’ll hear why both roles matter, how to balance them, and some gentle but firm encouragement to look at your own calendar. If you haven’t given yourself CEO time lately, this is your nudge to finally make it happen. Your business, and your sanity, will thank you!

00:18 – The danger of staying stuck in creator mode
01:42 – What creator mode actually looks like
03:18 – Why CEO mode matters for business growth
06:21 – How I use time blocking for CEO and creator tasks
08:40 – Simple steps to start your monthly and weekly CEO habit

Links & Resources:

Show Notes: https://kristendoyle.co/episode163 

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Check out my Everything Page at https://kristendoyle.co/everything

Kristen:

Have you ever wondered why your sales are slipping, even though you're creating more products than ever? Here's a thought. You might be stuck in creator mode, when your business desperately needs a CEO. I learned this myself the hard way, when my own sales started slipping despite cranking out new products left and right. See, I was making whatever I felt like creating without any real strategy behind it, and I hadn't taken the time to step out of creator mode, which, let's be real, that's my favorite thing to do in my business. I hadn't taken the time to step out of that creator mode and put on my CEO hat to think strategically about my business. So today, I am sharing the difference between creator mode and CEO mode, plus how to know which one of those hats you should be wearing right now to get your business back on track. Are you a digital product or course creator, selling on platforms like Teachers Pay Teachers, Etsy, or your own website? Ready to grow your business, but not into the kind of constant hustle that leads straight to burnout? Then you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Seller. I'm Kristen Doyle, and I'm here to give you no-fluff tools and strategies that move the needle for your business without burning you out in the process—things like SEO, no stress marketing, email list building, automations, and so much more. Let's get started, y'all. So let's start with the fun stuff that most of us love. Here's what creator mode actually looks like. This is doing the things that most of us think of as the fun part of our business. We are imagining and creating new products, maybe even designing social media graphics or website pages. It's those things like creating and recording new video trainings or courses, even things like podcast episodes and blog posts. Maybe you really enjoy tweaking website layouts and product designs. Maybe you get caught up in tweaking and adjusting your logo or your brand fonts. These are the things that for most of us as creative entrepreneurs, they light us up and they feel fun, but sometimes we can get stuck in this mode and not move on to the CEO mode. See, a creator mode feels productive because at the end of the day, you've made something. You can physically see what you've accomplished, and that is energizing and exciting, and it feels good to check something off a to do list and have a physical product or a digital product, in our case, that we have done today. Now, creator mode is obviously super important. Our creativity is that thing that sets us apart from our competition, that makes our audience love our products, it's what makes us unique. But where things get tricky is that most of us can often get stuck in creator mode and avoid CEO mode. So the less fun reality is that CEO mode is important. It is doing the business of running your business. When I say CEO mode, I'm talking about things like looking at the money, reviewing data, setting goals based on your metrics, making those strategic decisions based on some data analysis, updating your offers to make them sell better, but not just based on what you think you should do, based on the data you've looked at. Even things like hiring and training team members is part of that CEO mode, and it's important for running a growing business. Now, if you sat there listening to all of that, thinking, Oh, that sounds terrible, I totally get it. These aren't usually the fun parts for us as creatives. But the hard truth is, you can't wear both of these hats at the same time, and your business needs them both. So what I have found works for me is to make a conscious shift between modes. See both of them matter, because as important as the creative work is, without the CEO work, we can run ourselves and our business into the ground, cranking out tons and tons of products with no strategy behind it, or spending forever and ever in the weeds of tweaking tiny things on our website or our logo that aren't really making a difference in our business. So both roles are super important. But the thing that trips most of us up as creative entrepreneurs is that the CEO work doesn't feel as productive. Like I said, that creator mode feels super productive because you've done something, you have a thing at the end of the day. When I'm in CEO mode, a lot of times at the end of the day, what I have is a to do list, and that doesn't feel so much like I've accomplished anything. In fact, it can sometimes feel like you just gave yourself more work. The reality is, though, that work that you've come up with for yourself out of your CEO time is better quality work. So the CEO time that you put in now sets you up for doing the right creative tasks later, for making the right strategy based or data backed changes to a product or a sales funnel, by preventing you from some endless trial and error of just, well, this product isn't selling as well as I want, so I guess I'll try this and wait a little while, and okay, it hasn't really turned around. So let me try this new idea. Let me go to chat GPT and see what ideas they can come up with for me. See, when we do that, we get stuck in this cycle of trial and error constantly, and we're doing all this work that maybe the data could have told you wasn't going to work in the first place, or was addressing something that's not even the problem. So when we put in the time on that CEO work, it can really help set us up for better creative work down the road.

Unknown:

For me, I have to treat these as separate things. I have to put tasks on my to do list that I know are CEO tasks, and other tasks that are creative. And I do this with a little bit of time blocking. It's pretty casual in terms of the way that some people talk about time blocking. I don't have a set hour of the day that I must do CEO work or anything like that. But generally speaking, I do have a monthly CEO day. So every month, on the first of the month, I do some CEO tasks. These are essentially the things that you need to do to kind of close out the previous month and get ready for the next one. So during my monthly CEO day on the first, I am looking over the numbers. I am paying invoices that need to be paid on the first. I'm paying my team and myself. I am looking at things like taxes that might be due. But I'm also looking ahead at the coming month, and I am kind of making some strategic plans for how I'm going to spend my time during each week, what things need to get done by a certain week. If I've got a big sale happening the third week of the month, then I know in weeks one and two, I'm gonna need to do some email writing and things getting ready for that sale.

Kristen:

Now on a weekly basis, I also drop in a few CEO blocks for those tasks that just need to be done every week, things like responding to emails and actually addressing whatever was in them. You know, it can be easy to put off answering an email about an error in a product or something that's not working the way that it's supposed to, or, you know, someone who has a question, but those things are important for keeping your business moving forward. So I drop in some CEO blocks for those every single week. Now for me, and this may be totally different for you, but for me, I do my best thinking and deep creative kind of work in the mornings. So my mornings are when I block out creative tasks, and I do the CEO stuff in the afternoon, when I'm not feeling as creative, maybe my energy is down a little bit, and I just need to sit and kind of, you know, check things off a list and not have to do a whole lot of deep thinking. You may feel the exact opposite, and you might need to do the CEO stuff in the morning, or maybe you do all your work in the evenings and on Saturdays. Whatever you do, you just need to think about your own energy patterns, the way that you work best, and make a plan to block out some time for that CEO level work that you need to do for your business. So here's what I want you to do. Start with some monthly CEO time. Block out the first of the month for a half a day or so, two to four hours, depending on how much you need to get done. During that time, you want to do things like reviewing last month's numbers, paying yourself or your team, any kind of financial tasks that need to get done, and start looking ahead at the coming month, mapping out what you'll need to get done during each week. Put it in your calendar now on a recurring basis, and treat it as a non negotiable. I block it in my calendar with a recurrence on the first every single month, and it is marked as busy time, so nothing else can get blocked in there. And then every week, add some little weekly CEO blocks as well, one or two, maybe three, shorter blocks of time. For me, I do that during my low energy times, and this is when I am handling emails, fixing issues, maybe checking over some weekly data if I've got things like ads running that need more frequent data checks. Just keep in mind, like I said, you need to schedule this to match your energy levels. For most people, you need to schedule your creative work during those peak energy hours when you are most effective and excited about work, and then At the end of the day, your creativity is absolutely what makes your products and your offers special, and it sets you apart from everybody else. But without the CEO work, it's schedule the CEO work for the times when you might be feeling almost like you're creating into the void. You don't have any strategy behind it, and you're just throwing things out there and hoping that they work. Really successful digital a little more drained and less creative. If you're just getting product sellers know when it's time to create, and when they need to lead their business, because a successful business needs both. started with this idea, start with just one hour a week, and So my challenge for you is to look at your calendar right now and ask yourself, when was the last time you really, truly, honestly put on that CEO hat, and did the CEO work? If you just build a habit of blocking that into your schedule. can't remember, then maybe it's time to schedule some CEO time in today. I'll talk to you soon.