175 You Have the Same 24 Hours… So Why Does It Feel Like You Don’t?

Welcome What if the thing holding your business back is not a lack of time, but how your attention is being used every day? In this episode, I’m sharing a shift that has made a remarkable difference to me over the last 30 days, and why it could completely change how your business grows this year.

Episode Summary In this episode, I’m sharing a shift that has had a huge impact on me over the last 30 days. It is not about marketing, hiring or pricing. It is about how I’m using the time I already have and what has really been stealing my focus.

I talk about my 30 day challenge to break up with my phone, what I noticed almost immediately, and how small habits were fragmenting my attention more than I realised. If you’ve been telling yourself you need more time to work on your business, this episode is a reminder that the issue may not be time at all. It may be where your attention is going.

I also share why protected CEO time matters so much, how distraction can make you the bottleneck in your business, and a few practical changes that have helped me create more headspace, clarity and intentionality in my day.

Key Takeaways

• You already have the time. The real issue is often how that time is being spent.
• Phone habits can quietly steal focus, creativity and decision making.
• Being busy is not the same as moving your business forward.
• Fragmented attention can make you the bottleneck in your business.
• Protected CEO time is essential if you want to lead well and grow sustainably.
• Small changes to your environment can help you break reactive habits and create more space to think.

Resources

• How to Break Up With Your Phone in 30 Days
• Be Present app - on app stores
• Foundations programme

If this episode gave you something to think about, take a proper look at where your time and attention are really going. You do not need more hours in the day. You need more awareness, more intention and more protection of your focus.

If you know you are the bottleneck and you are ready to lead your business differently, this is exactly the kind of work we support inside Foundations.

Thanks for listening to the Treat Your Business podcast. Make sure y

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Resources & Links:

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Katie Bell: Today's episode. Might just send you all into a little bit of a spin because it's one of those conversations that if you really hear it, it could completely change how your business grows this year. And this feels like a really massive, sweeping statement. But the difference that this has made to me in the last 30 days is absolutely remarkable.

[00:00:21] And I thought I would bring this to you because this isn't about marketing. Thank goodness. It's not about hiring, it's not about pricing. [00:00:30] It's about something much more fundamental than all of that. And it's your time, or specifically what you are doing with the 24 hours that you already have.

[00:00:43] 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 [00:01:00] in.

[00:01:01] So one of the biggest challenges that we hear and we see all the time from clinic owners is them saying that I just need more time. I don't really have a lot of time to work on the business. When I do work on the business, it feels very scattered. It feels very unproductive and inefficient. I don't really know what I should be working on.

[00:01:20] I have a massive to-do list. And it just feels like it's never ending. And I'll do that, Katie, when things calm down or just need to go away and implement [00:01:30] everything that I've learned. And I absolutely get it. 'cause I have heard myself saying this before too, but the uncomfortable truth is you actually already have the time.

[00:01:40] You have the same 24 hours as the clinic owner who has built a team, the clinic owner who's stepped out of treating. It's you have the same amount of time as the one who's taking proper holidays without their laptop. So what is the difference? And it's not time. It's how that time is being spent [00:02:00] and what is quietly stealing that time from you.

[00:02:05] So I have been on a 30 day breakup challenge, not to breakup with anybody important, but my phone, a 30 day breakup with your phone challenge. And honestly, I don't think or didn't think that my phone usage was that bad. Like I had a few things that I used to do to help me not be on it all the [00:02:30] time.

[00:02:30] And then, we all doom scroll, don't we? And there was, I was, I thought I was quite disciplined around the amount of time that I was allowed to doom scroll, and then I was introduced to this book, it's actually quite an old book. And it's how to break up with your phone in 30 Days.

[00:02:47] And I decided to listen to it alongside listening to a podcast that kind of narrated it and went through some of the challenges. And so I've been doing this day to day challenge and I'm actually recording this episode and I am day [00:03:00] 29. So I am literally like, really close to finishing this challenge and.

[00:03:06] Within about 24 hours of starting this challenge, I realized that I was far more attached to my phone than I thought. And it wasn't like it was big chunks of time because I've just I have an eight month old baby and I don't have these big chunks of time, and if I do, he's around And I literally don't want to be on my phone.

[00:03:27] So it was like, [00:03:30] I'll pick it up when, I was sat in traffic lights. Really hope nobody's in the police just listening to this. Or I'd be in a queue and then I'd just start scrolling on my phone. Or it might be that between meetings I come off and I'm like, look at my phone. And, because I've got all those notifications on there about different things going on, and I have two phones, I have a personal phone and a work phone I would then start just diving into all of that sort of stuff.

[00:03:55] I'd wake up in the morning and. I pick up my phone and scroll. [00:04:00] Now I have relative discipline already in that my work phone doesn't live upstairs. So like I don't take it to bed. My personal phone lives upstairs from seven o'clock and I don't have it then downstairs and it lives in another room in the evening or like at nighttime when I go to bed.

[00:04:18] So I'm never scrolling before I go to sleep. I read. But in the morning it was this habit of I would go and get my phone and then start scrolling. And then you'd open Instagram and then you'd forget why you [00:04:30] even opened Instagram. Is there actually ever even a reason to open Instagram? No, it is just to doom scroll and suddenly.

[00:04:36] Five minutes became 15, 15 minutes might become 30. And then this kind of whole me saying I don't have loads of time, I feel really overwhelmed. I'm trying to juggle being a present parent and a business owner to two big businesses and. It, this whole I don't have time concept actually was really boring me.

[00:04:58] And it was something that I was [00:05:00] thinking, why do I keep saying this when actually if I have time to scroll on my phone, then I absolutely do have time. And we had a massive event this month, clinic growth live for any of you that came to it last week. Thank you for being in the room. It was probably one of the best days of my business life.

[00:05:17] But it took an enormous amount of preparation and we also launched our brand new foundations program, which I'm super proud of. And we had to develop that very quickly in the space of not very many weeks [00:05:30] because we had a big team day in January. We really got clear on what we felt like clinic owners really needed, and it became very obvious that we needed to make these changes and this is what we were gonna do, and we went away and made it happen.

[00:05:42] So I really had. A lot to do in not a lot of time. My little boy's not in nursery yet. My parents went on a cruise. How dare they? So that my childcare was non-existent for the two weeks leading up to clinic growth live. And so I was like, I am bored of saying I don't have time.

[00:05:59] [00:06:00] I do have time. 'cause I looked at my screen time and I had two hours and 21 minutes a day where I was doom scrolling or I was just spending it on my phone. What could you do in those two hours and 21 minutes? I, there's a lot of people that I spoke to on Friday and a lot of people are like, I really want to make stuff happen, but I just, they, people struggle with the accountability, with the discipline of getting shit done and getting the right shit done. 'cause a lot of people that I speak to, I'm like, why are you doing that [00:06:30] stuff? Why are you spending time on that? And it was really interesting because a lady caught me coming out of clinic growth live on Friday, gorgeous lady.

[00:06:38] She's been in a, a. Kind of community or audience for a few years now. And she said, Katie have questions just come to me and I forgot to ask it in the live day and I'm really sorry, but I feel like it's really holding me back. And I was like, okay, Judith, email at me. I'll get through it this weekend because it's really important to you.

[00:06:58] So she sends me [00:07:00] this email and it was an email about. AI and how she could be found on AI and what she was going to go away and do to try and be more visible in that area. And I read this email and I put together quite a lengthy detailed response to her, which basically said. All of that stuff that you've just said, you're gonna do, Judith, don't waste your time.

[00:07:25] You need to do this, and this instead. And she was like, oh my God, [00:07:30] thank you so much for this really detailed response and for giving me that clarity that I absolutely needed and couldn't find by myself. And so a lot of clinic owners, it's not that you're not doing the stuff, you're just doing the wrong stuff.

[00:07:43] And if you're doing the wrong stuff, you are wasting that very. Small amount of time that you have to walk, work on your business. I want to get really clear on this is not only let's create you that time to work on your business, but let's create you the time to work on your business and do the right [00:08:00] things with it.

[00:08:01] So this is the bit that matters, right? It's not just a phone that wastes your time. It's that they. Absolutely destroy your attention and your creativity. And this is something that has been really wild to me over the last 29 days that I've been doing this challenge is actually how much more head space and how much calm I feel if I'm not constantly being distracted by my phone.

[00:08:27] And as a CEO, because you are all [00:08:30] CEOs, your attention is your most valuable asset. So because your business grows through the decisions that you make, the thinking, the strategy, the leadership, and none of this can happen when your brain is constantly distracted, constantly reactive, constantly half focused.

[00:08:49] So basically you then spend your day really busy, but not that productive doing, but not really leading, reacting, but not really deciding. And then you finish the day thinking [00:09:00] I've been flat out. I've been really super busy, but have I actually moved anything forward? Have I like completed and finished a task or have I just started working on random other things on my to-do list that are not really that important?

[00:09:13] So this is where it links to something that I talk about all the time. You being the bottleneck in your business. And most clinic owners think that the bottleneck is not enough patients. It might not be enough staff, it might not be enough space, but actually nine times out of 10, it's you. You [00:09:30] are the bottleneck, not because you're not capable, it's because your time is very fragmented.

[00:09:35] Your thinking time doesn't exist at all, and your attention is constantly pulled in, 10 different directions. So decisions then don't get made. Plans don't get followed through on. Opportunities don't get acted on or you don't see them because your attention is being. Shifted and placed on other things, and then the business slows down.

[00:09:57] It stagnates, we see [00:10:00] cashflow issues. We see profit profitability problems. We have hiring challenges. We have team that are not performing. And it's not because of the strategy, it's because that you do not have the space to lead that business. , Yeah, okay. We've gotta get better at marketing.

[00:10:15] We've. Gotta get better at the, the business has to have really key foundations in it that are robust for you to have a platform to, to springboard off and grow off. But you [00:10:30] have to have protected focus, CEO time. And right now I can guarantee most of you listening to this episode do not have enough of it.

[00:10:39] And if you think you have it, and it's called business admin, that is not protected. Focus, CEO time. So here are a few things that I've done. This last 29 days that have made a massive difference. Now, don't get me wrong, there's been a lot of things okay. But I wanted to distill this down into kind of some simple action points for you.[00:11:00]

[00:11:00] So the first thing that I did was I downloaded an app called the Be Present app. I think you get seven days for free. And then I feel like it was like 39 pounds for the whole of the year. And it was brutal but brilliant because what it. Allowed me to do was set up parameters. That meant I couldn't actually access apps at certain points of the day.

[00:11:27] And yes, you can override it, [00:11:30] but the friction was enough to make me stop and go, what, what actually do I actually need to be on here? For example, I set it that I couldn't access any apps between nine and five, like my general working times. And I could only access Instagram outside of that.

[00:11:50] Three times for 10 minutes at a time, and it tells me like the app is closing in 30 seconds and you realize that you've just been like scrolling away for 10 minutes. [00:12:00] Like nothing happens in Instagram that I need to go and see, but I basically just shop, or I just get distracted by other people's shit.

[00:12:07] So I can only access Instagram three times for 10 minutes in a day. I can't access any apps between nine and five. My phone doesn't have any notifications coming on the screen now until 8:00 AM in the morning, and then from 7:00 PM at night it goes off again. So I don't see any notifications. What this has done is not only just drastically reduce my [00:12:30] screen time, but it's given me enough speed, what they call speed bumps, that get in the way and make me have that conscious thought of, do I actually need. To access this, because if I wanted to access it outside of those hours, or more than three times, it doesn't let me do it.

[00:12:46] I have to then go and come out of Instagram, go in, go and find the app, go into the app, then ask me to unlock it. Then it asks me again if I really want to do this, and then I come back and then I have to go back into Instagram and all of that. I'm like, Ugh, no, can't be bothered. [00:13:00] So that has been a game changer.

[00:13:01] There's loads of other apps on the market that you could use, but that's been really helpful for me. So that was one of the first things I did. One of the second things I did was having a blank home screen. So when I log into my phone now, I've moved all the apps off the home screen onto the second page, and they're all in folders and they're all labeled, of course, they're and I've taken all the the blob things in the corner that tell you how many emails and notifications you've got taken all of those off.

[00:13:27] And so on my home screen now, [00:13:30] it's completely blank. So when I open my phone, I don't see anything. And that in itself is there's no easy taps, there's no apps staring at me. If I want something, I now have to go and search for it. And that tiny pause, it breaks that autopilot behavior. The other thing that I've been experimenting with is I've turned my phone to grayscale, and this sounds really odd, and you can do this by going to your settings.

[00:13:58] And then you [00:14:00] can go to accessibility. And within the accessibility section there is an area that you can turn it to grayscale, right? This literally makes your phone so much less appealing. No bright colors. So you are not getting that dopamine hit like phones are designed specifically in a way to make you addicted.

[00:14:21] It is like having a form of an addiction. It, there's no surprise that Mark Zuckerberg and whoever invented [00:14:30] lots of the other things don't allow their kids to have phones. Because they know exactly how they are designed. So it's like turning your phone into like your 2003 Nokia.

[00:14:42] Do you remember that you could only just play snake on it? Bring that back for me. Great. So you just don't want to be on it as much 'cause it's just not that appealing. So even if you just did that would make a massive difference to you. And then the other thing is having no phone zones.

[00:14:56] So this is really important and I think this is really important for [00:15:00] any of us who have children because your children will learn to behave in the way that they observe. If you, if your children are observing you, even like babies or observing you on your phone in front of them all the time, or, and you believe it or not, if you had like a a video of you on your phone.

[00:15:22] Your face is like you are hunched over you. You've got protracted acquisition and your face is just [00:15:30] completely blank. And this is really awful for children to have to watch, but also if you have the phone on the dinner table or in the bedroom, it sets up these habits that are not helpful habits.

[00:15:44] And because it's there, you'll use it. So for example, the phone, I've never done this anyway, but the phone would not ever go onto the dinner table. It doesn't go in our bedroom, it goes in our dressing room, which is off the bedroom. So I can't see it at nighttime. I'm not addicted [00:16:00] to it.

[00:16:00] I don't look at it after seven o'clock. So you don't just sit we've just started watching capture on BBC and you have to actually watch it. Like you can't be doing another a hundred things at once. And actually. Just slowing my brain down and not having it, like with all these tabs open, it feels very uncomfortable and you feel like, oh, I need to be doing something.

[00:16:24] So like I've had to start like filing my nails or like putting hand cream on because it's [00:16:30] that you can't believe how much you are addicted to just picking up your phone and doing things. But over time it becomes less and less of a need and you become much, much more present. Having no phone zones I think is really important.

[00:16:43] The other thing I've started doing is putting my phone in the boot of the car so that I, I can't check it when we get to a traffic light, for example. So we've all think we've got more discipline than we actually do. Like I would say I'm a really motivated discipline person, but like with phone usage, it is [00:17:00] not good.

[00:17:00] So no phone zones. Turn your phone to Grayscale. Download one of the apps that acts enough as a speed bump to stop you being on it. And if you want to go like really big on this, and we did this in our ascend coaching session a few weeks ago where I actually made one of the members post her screen time and into our our WhatsApp group that we have, because it really was enough for her to go, wow.

[00:17:25] Like she was on her phone eight hours plus over a [00:17:30] 24 hour period. I'm not sure she goes to bed, but it just blew my mind. It blew her mind and it was enough for her to be like, that. I have to change this. This is this is an unbelievable level of phone use. Now some of us use our phones for work.

[00:17:45] I appreciate that. But you've gotta have some barriers. Like none of you need to have your emails on your phone. You absolutely don't. Patients do not need to be spoken to outside of your work hours. It is not an urgent enough. It's not important [00:18:00] enough that you need to be on your emails. So on my personal phone, I can't access anything that's work related.

[00:18:06] It's just a personal phone. And then I have my work phone that has stuff on, but that stays. And is only available during work times. So there are a few simple things that I've covered in this episode that's gonna really help you create some boundaries and some really simple habits that will actually just [00:18:30] slow your brain down and give you some headspace.

[00:18:33] And what that then allowed me to do was be so much more creative. With my time and allowed me to really think about what I wanted to deliver at clinic growth, live, what I wanted to deliver it within our foundations program. And that's what you are all absolutely desperate for because you're all overwhelmed.

[00:18:51] There's too many things in your mind that you're trying to deal with. So here's what I want you to take away from today. You don't need more time, okay? You've just gotta have more [00:19:00]awareness. You've gotta have more intention, you've gotta have more protection of your in, of your attention. Because right now your business is being shaped by what you focus on, what you avoid, what you allow to distract you.

[00:19:16] And if you don't take control of that, you're just gonna stay busy. You're just gonna stay overwhelmed. You're just gonna stay stuck in the day to day. And this is exactly why one of the core pillars inside our foundations [00:19:30] program is CEO, time and leadership. 'cause none of you have been taught it. None of you have been taught how to become great leaders.

[00:19:38] 'cause we can give you marketing strategies. We do that in pillar two. We can give you best financial systems. We give you that in pillar one. We're gonna give you the best hiring frameworks. That's gonna be in pillar three. But if you don't have the space to then implement them, nothing changes. And nothing changes until something changes.

[00:19:53] So if you are listening to this thinking, I know I'm the bottleneck. I am the one that has to make these [00:20:00] decisions. I'm the one that has to move this business forward, but I just dunno how to change it. This is exactly what we fix inside our foundations program. We create the structure, we create the time, and we help you step into that CEO role properly.

[00:20:12] Because the business doesn't need more from you, it needs a different version of you. So my question is, you've got 24 hours. Are you using them or are they using you? I hope you've enjoyed this episode. See you again next week. 

[00:20:28] Thanks for [00:20:30] 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 [00:21:00] love.