Treat Your Business

154 The Hidden Cost of Doing It All: Why Valuing Your Time Changes Everything

• Katie Bell • Season 1 • Episode 154

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Welcome

This week, I’m sharing a powerful reflection from our Activate Masters boardroom session. If you’re a clinic owner who’s constantly juggling business, family, and the never-ending to-do list, you’ll find plenty to relate to here.

Episode Summary

Let’s get real about the hidden cost of doing it all. After our live strategy days, I sat down with our Activate Masters members for a boardroom session that got right to the heart of why so many of us feel stuck and exhausted. It’s not just about needing help with social media or hiring someone for odd jobs. We talked about why we end up undervaluing our time, taking on every task at home and in the clinic, and why so many of us fall into the trap of trying to be superwoman.

One member’s “simple” marketing question turned out to be so much more. Together, we uncovered the real challenge and worked through practical steps to break the cycle. In this episode, I walk you through how to do a proper time analysis, the importance of outsourcing, and why saying “no” isn’t selfish. I even share a few stories from my own world (including the infamous toilet roll saga) to show how the little things really do add up.

Key Takeaways

  • The real reason you might feel trapped and exhausted as a clinic owner
  • How to uncover and tackle the hidden tasks draining your energy
  • Practical ways to start valuing your time and letting go of “doing it all”
  • Why saying no to rescuing everyone is a gift to yourself and your business
  • How creating space in your week can lead to better decisions, more profit, and a happier you

Resources & Links

  • Book a demo of Jane clinic management software: [see show notes for link]
  • Use code Thrive one mo for a one month grace period with Jane
  • Want support and accountability from people who get it? Find out more about Activate and our boardroom sessions

 Episode Sponsor:  Jane.app

Clinic management software and EMR that simplifies bookings, forms, and reminders so you can reclaim your evenings. Book a demo via the link in the show notes. Use code ThriveOneMo for a one month grace period.

Thank you for listening!

If you’re ready to step off the hamster wheel and start valuing your time, I’d love to hear what you’re letting go of this week. Drop me a message—I’m always in your corner. Remember, you don’t have to do it all to be a superwoman. Your time is valuable, and so are you.

Subscribe for more honest conversations, practical tips, and a big cheer from me every single week.

Come and join me over on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@thrivebizcoach?sub_confirmation=1  

Resources & Links

Clinic Growth Live: https://events.thrive-businesscoaching.com/cgl-tickets-2026

🔗 If you are ready to get ahead, you will find all the essential resources and links you need right here: our Linktree

Treat Your Business EP154

[00:00:00] Katie Bell: Hi everybody. Welcome back. It's Katie here and we are back with another episode of The Treat Your Business podcast. Now, today I'm gonna share a powerful reflection from an Activate Masters boardroom session, which we ran after our live strategy days. Now last week I told you a fabulous story about Pete and jojo, and you must go back and listen to that episode.

[00:00:21] If you wanna know how you can make more money and take home more money in your business. But what we did this time is that we had a half day session around a boardroom with me and they that this is for our Activate Masters program members who are in their second year of the Activate program.

[00:00:39] Now, these boardroom sessions are where we get super laser focused on your individual challenges and there was some really powerful conversations that came up and I know that. The conversation that I'm gonna choose to share with you is gonna resonate with so many of you, especially if you are a clinic owner, and especially if you are a mum, but boys don't switch off.

[00:01:00] 'cause this might resonate for you as well. Because let's be honest, a lot of you listening 

[00:01:05] are trying to do everything. You are running the business, 

[00:01:12] you are raising the kids, you are making the lunchboxes. You're doing the school runs, you're sorting the washing, you are running the house, you are booking the clubs, and I'm gonna guess that you are also probably exhausted.

[00:01:26] Now, dad's listening to this. I know that you will be doing this as well. I'm talking from a place of being a new mum and who clearly has got no idea yet because I don't have toddlers. But the conversation that I heard in the room. There was a lot of people that resonated with it around the table 'cause there was a lot of ladies around the table.

[00:01:46] But there was also someone around the table who could come at it from the men's perspective, the male perspective, and really helped us see how we need to do things a little bit differently because he was able to see this showing up in his wife as well. So I wanna talk about the hidden cost of doing it all and why if we don't start valuing our time in a different way.

[00:02:20] You are not ever gonna break the cycle of being constantly run ragged in your business. It's you're just gonna keep going round and round in circles, or it's just gonna keep getting worse. And you'll say it'll get better when the little one goes to nursery. Or it'll get better when the little one goes to school.

[00:02:35] It'll get better when he's in after school club, but, and we just hear ourselves saying the same thing over and over again. So let's talk about why valuing your time is one of the biggest game changers, and I'm gonna talk to you about how this showed up for one of our members. And I know that this is gonna resonate for a lot of you listening to this.

[00:02:55] Welcome to the Treat Your Business podcast, the show for clinic owners who want real, honest advice and tried and tested ways of doing things. I'm Katie Bell, and this is the new era of bigger insights and bolder conversations to help you grow a clinic and a life you love. Let's dive in.

[00:03:13] Today's episode is sponsored by Jane, a clinic management software and EMR. The Jane team knows that when your workday is spent providing care to your patients or your clients, it can feel like there aren't enough hours in the day for the rest of your admin tasks. This can mean scheduling appointments become.

[00:03:32] The hours tasks turning what should be restful evenings into extra long work days. That's why Jane has designed user-friendly online bookings. You can give your patients freedom to book their appointments at their own convenience. Patients can also manage their appointments, fill out intake forms, and enable SMS and email reminders.

[00:03:50] From their secure online portal, which saves you from having to do it manually to see how Jane can help you reclaim your evenings and weekends. Head to the link in the show notes to book a personalized demo. Or if you're ready to get started, you can use the code Thrive one mo at the time of sign up for a one month grace period.

[00:04:07] Apply to your new account.

[00:04:11] So one of our members came with what perceived like a fairly straightforward marketing question. Stay with me on this. Basically, who did she need in the business from a marketing point of view to actually like. Implement the marketing strategy she had written for a whole 12 months. I was like, wow, I'm so impressed.

[00:04:33] She's got all the social posts, she'd got the content. She knew what we needed to be going out there. She just didn't wanna be actually the person to schedule the posts. And she said, I need this. I need them to take this off my plate, like this needs to go. And we dug into this a little bit more and.

[00:04:53] I think one of the things that I think is really important as a coach is the ability to be able to listen, but not just listen to what they're telling you, is to be able to ask the right questions to really unravel what the real issue is. Because I knew as soon as this fabulous member said, I need somebody to implement.

[00:05:19] My marketing calendar, I knew that was not the real issue because that's not something that you bring to a boardroom session when you've got me on a one-to-one basis because we'll just hire a kid that just puts your social posts out there. And by the way, that's not gonna make a big enough difference in your business anyway.

[00:05:35] It's not gonna bring you enough clients for you to warrant doing that. So what else is going on here? And that's, I feel like one of our. Most powerful things that we can do is to really get underneath the surface and find out what is going on so that we can give you absolutely the advice that you need and the guidance that you need to be able to move forward.

[00:06:00] And actually what we revealed was that she was com feeling completely trapped. She was doing everything. She's, they've recently relocated, so she's running the clinic from a distance. She's managing the kids. She's trying to work between school hours. She's responsible for the school runs. Her husband's just taken on a new job, and the, there's all that comes with that.

[00:06:25] She's managing all the washing, the whole of the household and just juggling a bazillion other things. And yes, her husband has a big job and yes, she said, it comes with a healthy salary, but it was all still on her and she was running a whole business as well. And the thing is, what I could see was that she was pushing and she was forcing, and she was hustling away through everything.

[00:06:52] And one of the things that the ego then looks to do is just get quick wins. Easy wins, which is I just need somebody to actually initiate these posts and that would've just solved like a very small part of this problem. But she was. Hustling hustling, working harder.

[00:07:11] Just doing longer hours and actually having no time for herself rather than being able to step back, use her power and be able to say, is this the best use of my time? Is this actually serving me? Not just posting on blooming social media, but actually running. One of the boys lunches in because he forgot his lunchbox or, his PE kit or doing the Tesco shop or having to juggle all the million things that happen that most people don't see happen to keep a household moving forwards.

[00:07:45] So if you are listening to this and nodding along, it's because society conditions us, and I'm sorry that this is gonna turn into a men versus woman thing, but it's just what it is. It conditions us as women to have to take on everything like we are meant to be. Superwoman. We are meant to be able to run the business, be every school, drop off, make nutri nutritious lunch boxes, show up at every club, keep the house running.

[00:08:16] Somehow magically have time to wear collagen masks. Wipe your teeth, do your 65 minutes of meditation three times a day. Be skinny and this is what society are putting on us as mum. And guys, I'm sure you've got a whole different like societal thing that's going on for you, but this is what is all over my Instagram feed.

[00:08:38] And somehow we've got to also magically grow a thriving business. But when you are the one that's doing everything, your time basically gets devalued. So you start to see your time as less important than everybody else's. And that really keeps you stuck because the truth is you could be spending hours working on your business, building profit, creating impact, but instead.

[00:09:06] We're running to school with forgotten lunchboxes. We're scrubbing the bathroom. We're stuck in Tesco for the third time this week because you forgot the pasta and the list just goes on and on. What we do when we're in the boardroom is we present the challenge. I then strip that challenge back and delve deeper and ask those questions that really get to the actual problem.

[00:09:27] And we ask clarifying questions as a boardroom. So we go around the table, we ask anything that we need to know more of to be able to help and advise this particular client. And so we've got all the information we needed and then what we do is we offer feedback. So we'll go round then and we'll give her feedback and she's not allowed to say anything.

[00:09:47] Okay. She just has to listen. Now, what this means is that she, there are things that she's gonna hear that she's yeah, that actually really resonates with me. That's gonna work for me. There's things that she'd be like no, that's not quite how I wanna do it. But she just takes it all on, and then we ask her, what's the action?

[00:10:03] What are you gonna do? Everything that you've heard, what's the thing that you're gonna take forward? We did all of that and I talked about her doing an analysis of her week. Every single task, write it all down and then categorize it. You can use chat, GPT to help you do this. So basically I wanted to know what is business building?

[00:10:27] How much time are we spending on certain tasks in the business? How much time are we spending on driving? How much time are we spending on things that could be outsourced? Shopping, cleaning, window cleaning valeting your car, going to get new school shoes, being in Tesco's, hoovering, the carpets, whatever it is, walking the dog.

[00:10:45] I don't care. Or just document everything. Analyze the whole week and then you can ask chat GPT to put it into categories for you. This is when it gets really interesting because once you've listed everything, you can start to ask yourself, what is the real cost of me doing this? 

[00:11:03] For example, could you get a cleaner?

[00:11:06] Could you get a weekly ocado order delivered every Sunday? Could you do so some simple meal planning? Could you buy a robot, Hoover? Could you hire someone to valet your car? Could you get someone to run errands for you? And here's a big one. Could you stop rescuing everybody? So if your child forgets their lunchbox, is it really the end of the world?

[00:11:28] Or could they just have a hot dinner at school that day? Because the truth is, your time has value. But when we aren't people pleasing, and when we're not rescuing, we then question who are we really? And what are people gonna think of me if I say, no, not bring that lunchbox in. You're gonna have to have a hot dinner.

[00:11:48] Tough. It is then we start questioning our own worth and if we are good enough for being a good enough mum, if we're being a good enough wife, a good enough friend, and that's why we then end up having, keeping everything in our control and not being able to delegate. And I always tell the story before my husband's asked me for a lift somewhere.

[00:12:08] It doesn't happen very often, but my reply is always I'll pay for a taxi for you because genuinely the cost of that taxi is cheaper than the value of my hour in the business. And that's not being cold, and that's not being a selfish person. It's just about being smart. Like when you start valuing your time like that, you start creating space.

[00:12:29] And when you create space. You start to see what actually needs to be done in your business and what you actually need from a marketing point of view and all of those things, those decisions that you need to make. And I said to this particular member, you have no space. I can feel it. You are trying to hustle and trying to push and out strategy the shit out of all of this and it isn't gonna work.

[00:12:53] 'cause you're just gonna make the wrong decisions. You've gotta create some space for your business, for yourself, and for your own wellbeing. Now, don't get me wrong, this was a big, powerful, uncomfortable conversation. There were tears, there were always tears involved because we are real people running businesses and it's hard and it feels lonely, and sometimes you need a very safe space to vent.

[00:13:18] Tell people what's really going on for you in your personal life, because that's often is what's gonna limit how you show up in your business. So I want you to really think about this today. Where are you undervaluing your time? What are the tasks that you are doing? And it can be like, if you really love walking your dog, how do we make more time for walking your dog?

[00:13:41] How you know all the things that you think you should be doing. Like how can we. Organize that. How can we leverage that? How can we put structures in place so that you are not stuck? Meal planning, ironing, chasing, lost PE kits because you're just gonna stay trapped. And often the resistance then is I don't then have the money to pay somebody else to do it.

[00:14:05] And that is a very shortsighted mindset. Because you will go and find the money, because if you just spent that one hour making bigger, better decisions in your business, it will pay for that person 10, 20, 30 times over. If you are outsourcing, if you're delegating, if you're saying no and valuing your time, suddenly you open up the possibility of building a business in a life that actually feels good rather than trying to be everything to everybody, but you are then nothing to yourself or you are nothing to nobody.

[00:14:36] So could you do a time analysis this week? Could you write down every single thing that you do in a week? And I'm not even joking from, the most annoying thing in my house is when you go upstairs for a wee and there's no toilet roll. And we have Who Gives a Crap, which is a toilet roll subscription service, but it's in the downstairs cupboard, in the utility room.

[00:15:00] You then have to go back downstairs, get the toilet roll, go back upstairs. Okay, this is all small things, right? Really small things. But then I thought, okay, maybe this could be a weekly job that the cleaners have to do that they just restock the toilet roll. And that's just one of the things that I add onto the list of what they're doing because it's just that one little thing that I don't now have to think about.

[00:15:22] And that is an example of the billion things that we do in a week in a household that goes unnoticed, but. Allows the household to function. And guys, you, you might be doing this as well, so write every single thing you do in a week down. Categorize it by using chat GPT, and then look at things that what you only you can do, what could be outsourced, what doesn't actually need doing, and what you freaking hate doing.

[00:15:52] And then take one action. Just get a cleaner. Get somebody else to wash the towels in the clinic. Set up food delivery. Just put a list together with all your favorites and just press go and it arrives on a Sunday and you've got the whole week ahead of you done. Or just start saying no to rescuing somebody.

[00:16:11] Start small, but start. So if you're listening to this and you do feel run ragged please hear this, you. In fact, I wanna say, I was gonna say you're not superwoman, but you are. You are a superwoman, but you don't have to be, you can be a superwoman in so many other ways that actually feel good for you.

[00:16:32] Your time is really valuable. You are really valuable and your business needs you to be working on the things only you can do. Your family needs you to have energy left at the end of the day and most importantly. You deserve a life that doesn't feel like it's an absolute hamster wheel. So start valuing your time.

[00:16:55] Outsource what you can. Start rescuing everybody else and give yourself the permission to step out of the trap of doing it all. Because when you do, you'll be amazed at how much more energy, profit, and freedom that you can go on to create. That's the power of being in the room. Thank you for tuning in today.

[00:17:20] I can't wait to hear what you decide to let go of this week. And please tell me, drop me a message because I always wanna support you. Cheer for you. I'm in your corner. And the thing I said to one of the members who text me after the day and I just said, we've got you back, right? And she was like, yeah.

[00:17:42] And that feeling of having somebody else with you on your business journey is more powerful and more needed than I think you probably realize. Because these are the exact conversations that will change your business and will change your life. 

[00:18:02] Thank you for joining me in this week's episode. See you soon 

[00:18:05] Thanks for listening to the Treat Your Business podcast. Hit subscribe now and keep joining me for bigger insights, older conversations to help you build a clinic and a life you love.

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Katie Bell

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