EP61: Power Up: Strategizing Your Powerful Internal Resources for Success

Ever feel like the mantra "we all have the same 24 hours" doesn't quite fit your life?

This episode tears down that myth and reconstructs a more personal blueprint for success. As we continue dissecting the four Ps of consistent success, we zero in on the third P: power.

I'm here to unfold the layers of your potential, showing you how to prioritize tasks that genuinely push your business forward, and reveal the truth about personal capacity. From the energy you expend to the resources you wield, I'll steer you through making every business move count.

Harnessing power isn't just about sheer effort; it's about the finesse of managing your team, tapping into expert insights, and mastering the art of delegation. This episode isn't just talk—I'm bringing practical tools and personal anecdotes to the table, illustrating how a robust support system is as valuable as your professional network.

We'll also discuss the importance of financial wisdom and investing within your means, preparing you for next week's deep dive into the emotional aspect of promise in business. If you're an entrepreneur at any level, ready to sync your ambitions with your true capacity, this is your sign to listen up.

Looking for the Business Time Optimizer I mention in the show? Check it out here:
https://getcorporaterehab.com/timeoptimizer

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the Business Blasphemy Podcast, where we question the sacred truths of the online business space and the reverence with which they're held. I'm your host, sarah Khan speaker, strategic consultant and BS busting badass. Join me each week as we challenge the norms, trends and overall bullshit status quo of entrepreneurship to uncover what it really takes to build the business that you want to build in a way that honors you, your life and your vision for what's possible, and maybe piss off a few gurus along the way. So if you're ready to commit business blasphemy, let's do it. Hello, hello blasphemers, welcome back.

Speaker 1: 0:39

We have been for the last couple of weeks, talking about the four Ps of success in business. Now, if you haven't been keeping up, first of all, I'm going to urge you to go back and listen to the last two episodes. The first episode, where we talked about purpose. You know this is your why. This is your anchor, the thing that grounds you. This is the thing that's going to keep you going when shit gets tough. And then, last week, we talked about priorities. And when I talk about priorities, I'm not talking about checklists and to-dos and things like that. I'm talking about the actual things you need to focus on to move your business forward. So often we get stuck in busy work or doing what other people are doing, but with no real clarity around how it's supposed to be executed or even how much time to spend on it. And so what I talked about was how do we ensure we're working on the right priorities, like how do we even define what our priorities are? So I really want to urge you to go back and listen to those two episodes so that you have a more comprehensive picture, because, again, these four principles, they don't sit in silos. They all support each other in establishing a really strong foundation for your business, and this foundation is kind of like the pre-foundation Before you even get to figuring out your strategy, figuring out how your operations are going to play out, figuring out the marketing, figuring out your messaging and your content. You've got to start with these four principles, because these four principles transcend any kind of business model. They transcend any kind of pivots in business. They really help keep you on track. So number one is purpose, and again, that's your why. It keeps you remembering why you took that chance on yourself, why you bet on yourself to become an entrepreneur, because we know that entrepreneurship is a risk. I mean, everything's got risk associated with it, but being an entrepreneur is a huge risk and you believed in yourself and what was important to you enough to take that risk. So, with purpose, it's all about what do you want and why is that important to you?

Speaker 1: 2:52

Then we move to priorities, and I talked about my entrepreneur growth hierarchy, which is a proprietary methodology that I created a few years ago that really identifies the five key growth stages of a business, and they have nothing to do with the amount of time you spent in business. They have everything to do with what conditions exist in your business that are going to allow you to actually move sustainably to the next level. That's what we're focusing on, and when you're clear on what stage of business growth you're at, you're clear on where your priorities are, what your focus needs to be, and that helps create ease and consistency, because you know every single day this is what I got to work on, no matter how much time I have, and this is what's going to get me to the next level. And I also invited you to book a call with me. If you're like I don't know what stage I'm at, how do I figure that out? Go to the show notes book, a call and we'll have a free conversation. We'll walk you through the hierarchy questionnaire and we'll make sure we identify exactly what your priorities should be Today.

Speaker 1: 3:57

I want to move to the third principle, and that is power. Power is really what helps you determine your ability to actually support your vision. So you know, we start to get realistic about your capacity in four key areas. Power looks at your available time, your available energy and your available resources and available support. So we'll start with how much time do you actually have to spend each week on your business? It could be consistent every week. It could fluctuate, right? Maybe you're a busy parent, maybe you work full-time or part-time, maybe you have a chronic illness, maybe you are the carer for an elderly parent or relative.

Speaker 1: 4:52

Everybody's time is different, and this is why it really bugs me when people are like you should have achieved X, y, z in this time span without really thinking about people's reality. Right, that whole. You've got the same 24 hours as Beyonce bullshit, like. I don't buy into that, because your life, your reality, is completely different from everybody else's and so, instead of fighting against that reality, we focus on okay, this is how much time I realistically have. This is how much time I realistically have. How can I spend it in the most effective way possible? And so when you look at, I've got five hours this week, or 10 hours this week or 50 hours this week.

Speaker 1: 5:30

When you are able to honor that amount of time, then you know exactly what you need to focus on. You're not wasting time stuck in busy work or doing things that seem like you're making progress right, like I say, show of hands, but I can't see you. But show of hands. How many times have you spent hours creating content, feeling like you've done a lot, accomplished a lot, but you're not seeing growth in your business? That's one of the most common places people get stuck in creating content, thinking that that's moving your business forward. It's not. Not if it's not done without clarity behind what kind of content you should be creating. And, honestly, when you're clear on that piece, the amount of time you spend executing it goes way down. So, regardless of what stage of business you're at, there are key things you need to focus on every single week, and they focus on five key areas and they include things like your marketing and visibility, your own personal growth, because you should be spending time every week, whether it's in a course or a program or listening to a podcast, hey, or, you know, reading a book or whatever it is. But growth is important. That's not something we should overlook Planning out your week.

Speaker 1: 6:41

If you don't plan and you just kind of let things go as they may, that's when you get pulled in other directions and other people's priorities start to become your own and you also want to focus on admin. How often are you putting time aside to actually go through your finances or to log things in your P&L sheet, or to answer answer emails or to check up on your email sequences? Those things are important to do regularly as well. And then there's money-making moves, which is service delivery. If you're a service provider I know because I've been a service provider for a long time sometimes we spend all of our available time delivering a service to clients and our own business growth falls by the wayside. So one of the things that I have created to help you in this area is my business time optimizer, and this is a calculator that you can buy from my website for $27.

Speaker 1: 7:36

I'll put the link in the show notes, but the business time optimizer is essentially a calculator. All you have to do on a Sunday night or a Monday morning is pop in this is how many hours I have this week to work on my business, and the calculator will do the rest. It'll tell you. Cool, this is how many hours, then, or minutes, if you've only got like five hours a week. This is how much time this week you need to spend on creating content, how much time you need to spend on admin, how much time you need to spend in service delivery and that's been a game changer for so many service providers because, again, a lot of the time you're like well, I've got 20 hours this week to work on my business and you spend 18 of those working for client stuff. So it helps you organize your week and say, actually, this is the amount of time I can realistically spend on client delivery, a service delivery, without sacrificing my own business growth. And that then helps you determine how much time you have over the course of a month. So when you're quoting clients, I'm like this is how many hours you can have of my time. That gets easier. So you're growing your business while you're still delivering a service, and so all you got to do is figure out how much time can I realistically spend on my business this week? Pop that in the calculator. It'll then disseminate. This is what your time should look like this week, and then you get to take action on only those things that are important. So that's time.

Speaker 1: 9:01

The second piece of your power is energy. How much energy have you got? What is your capacity, your energetic capacity for this week? And sometimes you got to look at it on a day-to-day basis.

Speaker 1: 9:13

Back in late January, early February, I got COVID for the first time and that shit knocked me on my ass. For 10 days I could not get up the stairs without needing a 20 minute break. It was insane. So there's no way I was going to be able to energetically spend a lot of time in my business, and every day was a little bit different. Mornings I felt a little bit better. By mid-afternoon it was really, really tough.

Speaker 1: 9:35

But just on a normal day, even when you're not bogged down with COVID, how often have you felt like? You know I'm a morning person. I've got way more time in the morning and energy in the morning, and in the afternoon I have that slump. Maybe you're a night owl and you have more energy available in the evening. So you get to actually honor what that looks like on a day-to-day basis. There were a couple of days last week where I was like I just don't have the energy to do anything. There's nothing wrong, I just don't want to, and that's totally cool. You get to honor that because when you are focused, when you know exactly what your priorities are supposed to be and you know exactly why you're doing a thing. So, again, go back and listen to the last two weeks of content. But when you're clear on your energy and you honor it, you're not pushing through. We shouldn't have to push through all the time and that then reduces the possibility of burnout and that keeps you from feeling overwhelmed to the point where you just hate everything. You make bad decisions. So, honoring your available energy super, super important.

Speaker 1: 10:35

And the last two pieces to the power puzzle I want to put them together, but they are your available resources and your available support. Now, most people know that time and energy are important aspects of capacity, but very rarely do we look at resources and support. So when I'm talking about resources and support, I'm talking about you know, do you have a team? Do you have access to somebody who can support you in your business as a resource. Do you have the right knowledge or expertise or experience to do a thing? Is this something you can outsource, or is this something maybe you need to take some time to learn before you can execute effectively? What sort of resources are in your business to help you do things more efficiently? The number of people that I've met who are not taking advantage of, like a calendar to help them organize their appointments and they're still doing things manually, or they're sending out invoices as PDFs or Word documents, like there are things that you should be taking advantage of to help make things easier for you.

Speaker 1: 11:36

And then support. Support is like not just about team support, but it's like do you have things in your life that are supporting your ability to focus on your business on any given day? So when your kids are sick, for example, do you have support to be able to work a couple of hours? Or are you a primary parent? Maybe you're a single parent? Do you have childcare, so you're not having parent? Do you have child care so you're not having to rush to the school to pick your kids up at 3.30 or whatever time school lets out, because they can go to daycare after school or you can drop them off earlier. Do you have the support of someone in the household to help you with things that are going on in the home? And these are just like home-based and family-based examples.

Speaker 1: 12:18

Look at the breadth and depth of your life and look at the supports that you have in place. Do you have, for example, people in your business circles who can support you in helping make a decision or in investing in something like deciding whether something's good to invest in good to invest in? Do you have a biz bestie that you can rant to? Do you have a coach or a mentor that can support you in certain aspects of business and making decisions and strategy and all that stuff? All of these things come together as available support, and so, for me, when you look at power as a holistic thing, it's taking into account all of those things. You're looking at time capacity, you're looking at energy capacity, you're looking at resources that can help make work easier and you're looking at the support that you have available to help you get through your business day to day. All of these things are super, super important.

Speaker 1: 13:13

And actually I want to give you a fifth kind of bonus power principle, and this is money. Gosh, money is so wrought with just emotion and controversy and all this kind of stuff and what I want to say when I talk about money power. We all have varying levels of access to money and I never want you to feel ashamed or stuck on the money thing. No one should ever make you feel bad for your realistic money capacity. I wholeheartedly believe that you should not be spending more than you can comfortably afford on any kind of investment.

Speaker 1: 13:56

So let's say there's a coach you want to work with and you don't have the money to support working with that coach right now. You don't have the money to invest. That doesn't mean that you don't believe in yourself. It doesn't mean that you don't want it bad enough. It just means you don't have the funds to comfortably invest in this right now, right now being the key term. So maybe you put your resources towards something else. Maybe you save a little bit over the next few months. Because here's the thing any coach or mentor or program worth its salt is not going to disappear after one round. A coach is going to stay, they're going to be there and when you're ready to work with them, you can work with them. And a good coach is also going to say until you can afford to work with me, here are some things you should do. Here are some free things that you can do right now to get ready to work with me.

Speaker 1: 14:43

So honoring your financial capacity is also super, super important, because then you're not making investments from a place of desperation. You actually take back the power that money has, that you give it, that you imbue into it. So look at your power in a holistic sense, because these things do not rule you. You rule them when you honor your time, when you honor your energy and your resources and your supports that are available. When you honor money and what you can comfortably invest in something, you start to make decisions from a much more powerful, empowered place, and that's what we want. So that's your third principle and that ties really nicely back to priorities and to your purpose. When all of those three things are working in concert with each other, you're bringing ease into your business and you are dialing into what success looks like for you. You get to create a blueprint, a framework, a roadmap, whatever the hell you want to call it, that is very, very specific to you, and that's when you start to see success consistently. So that's the third P. That's the third principle.

Speaker 1: 15:57

Next week I'm going to wrap it all up and talk to you about promise, and that one is where we start to get a little bit emotional. So remember you can have success without the BS. I'm living proof. I'll talk to you soon. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening to the Business Blasphemy Podcast. We'll be back next week with a new episode, but in the meantime, help a sister out by subscribing and, if you're feeling extra sassy, rating this podcast, and don't forget to share the podcast with others. Head over to businessblasphemypodcastcom to connect with us and learn more. Thanks for listening and remember you can have success without the BS.