Episode #21: Time Management Isn’t Enough: Finding Joy in Your Business Journey

Episode #21: Time Management Isn’t Enough: Finding Joy in Your Business Journey

Description:
Does it ever feel like there’s just not enough time for both your business and everything else in life? In this episode of The Joy-Led Business Podcast, we’ll talk about how you can break free from the overwhelm of juggling it all. Discover how aligning your work with God’s plan for your life can help you manage your business with more joy and ease. Tune in to learn how to find peace in your day-to-day, and practical steps to make room for your business without sacrificing the rest of your life.

Show Notes:
In this episode of The Joy-Led Business Podcast, we dive into a topic that resonates with so many of us: the struggle to fit our businesses into the busyness of life. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the endless to-do lists or like you're constantly running out of time, know that you’re not alone, and there’s a better way forward.

Here’s what we cover in today’s episode:

• Why time management isn’t the real solution to your business struggles
• The key mindset shift that can help you feel more aligned and joyful in your day-to-day
• How prioritizing what truly matters can bring more peace and success to your business
• Real, practical steps to create space for your business without sacrificing your life

You don’t have to keep feeling torn between your business and the rest of your life. When you focus on what God is calling you to do—and let go of the pressure to ‘do it all’—you’ll find a rhythm that works for you.

Discover the Secret to Getting Organized and  Having Work-Life Balance in Your
Joy Led Business - Get Your FREE Daily Journal at https://www.goldenheartland.com/getorganized
Contact Tina and Find out more about at GoldenHeartland.com
Connect on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/goldenheartland

Transcript

Tina Joy 0:01

Hey there, welcome to the Joy Led business podcast. I'm your host, Tina Joy Cochran. I am thrilled that you're here. Sometimes growing a business can ruin your work life balance and make you feel like you have to be someone you're not, but it doesn't have to be that way. Business should incorporate your faith and honor the creative rural lifestyle you cherish. That's why I created this podcast to be your personal business coach in your pocket. Here you'll find Practical tips, insightful interviews, and easy to follow training all crafted to fit seamlessly into your busy life. Whether you're driving, creating, or taking a walk, I'll be right there with you. Now let's dive into this episode and start turning your dreams into reality. I can't wait to share this journey with you.

0:57

You're listening to a special episode. Of the joy led business podcast in this episode. We've got to have a sneak peek. At some training that I did in our recent joy led marketing challenge. So jump in and listen. As we talk about. What is the most important thing that we need to manage? I hope you enjoy this session.

Gallery View 1:24

All right, are we ready to pray and get started on some content rather than me just throwing a bunch of details at you? This means yes, this means no, yes, we would like to pray. All right. Father, Thank you for all the moving parts. Thank you that they do all fit together, even though sometimes it feels a little chaotic. Thank you that we can hold space for each other. Thank you that you already know exactly what you have for us in this challenge and that you have for us over the next five days. Help us to just let everything else just bubble away so that We can hear from you and we can connect with each other and we can come into this time next week Excited about the business. We're building with you and we ask this in Jesus name. Amen what are we gonna cover in this session? What we are gonna cover first and foremost. What is marketing? Let's define it. Why do we get stuck with marketing? How joy can help with that. And then the most important thing that you need to learn to manage. And I want to give you an overview of the joy led journey so that you can see where how joy fits in and what the journey is that we're taking you on. What is marketing? Marketing is the process, process, process, project. Marketing is the process of sharing what you have for sale. And helping people decide if they want to buy it. That's it. That's what marketing is. So if that's all marketing is, why do we get stuck? Why do you get stuck with marketing? If we were honest, completely honest, I don't really want to do marketing. So what do we do then? We make up stories like, I don't have time. I'll be salesy. I'm the worst salesperson. Production is more important. I don't really understand what I need to do with marketing. Maybe I'm not a good salesperson at all. This is what gets us stuck. Is this. Right here between our ears, so how does joy help? Well, before we dive into how joy helps, let's talk about what joy is. Just like I want to define marketing, I want to define joy. When I say joy, I am not talking about a feeling. Joy is a state of being. It's a way we show up in the world. Think of it this way. Joy lives at the intersection of peace. Wisdom and love as we grow in peace, wisdom, and love. Each one of these things help us grow in joy. And then no matter what is happening around you. you can walk through the world in joy. So when you hear me talk about being joy led in your business, this is what we're talking about. It's a way of working through business, where you show up in peace, in wisdom, in love, and can walk through that. In the Bible, it talks about Jesus for the joy set before him endured the cross. I'm not a theologian, but I'm pretty sure Jesus wasn't terribly excited about enduring the cross. There was nothing feeling wise joyful about that, right? But it was coming at it for what was on the other side from a place of peace and wisdom and love. Make sense? That's what we're trying to do. So how does that help in your marketing and business? Well, when you're growing in joy, it helps because it gives you what you need to manage the most important thing, the thing that is the same for all of us and the thing we often struggle with the most. So what is the most important thing we must manage? We think it is time. We saw it when we started talking about struggling, I don't have time, I'm too busy working on other things. Here's the reality. We all get 24 hours a day. No more, no less, no matter how rich you are, no matter how poor you are, no matter how successful you are, no matter what country you live in, 24 hours in a day, that's all you get. How many of you have said, even this morning, I don't really have time? I don't have time is the number one objection I hear from every single person when I talked to them about how can we grow your business? They come to me and they say, I want help with marketing. I say, great, we need to do this, this, and this. And the first thing I say is I don't have time. I've been coaching people for, over 15 years and it didn't matter whether what they were trying to do was, lose a hundred pounds, figure out how to navigate retirement, start and grow business. I don't have time showed up over and over and over again. I need to figure out how to balance it all. Work life balance. We think that if we just figure out a way to manage our time better. We can get it all done. We can grow our business, have a better life. We just manage our time better. I just can figure out a way to get it organized. It'll all fall into place. It's not true. I wish I could tell you that it was true. It would be a lot easier to tell you it's true and if you will follow my system to manage time, everything will fall into place. Why would that be easy? And I guarantee you there are people out there that are telling you if you just buy their time management system that it will fix everything. How many of you have bought a planner? Thinking this was the planner that was going to fix it. How many of you have gone to a webinar or got a course on how to manage your time because this is the system, this is the system that is going to fix it, right? That's not true. Why is it not true? Well, let's talk about two things. There's time, 24 hours in a day. That each of us get no more, no less. And then there's something that is a little bit more ouchy, if you will. Priorities. Priorities are the decisions that we make and how to spend that 24 hours. We are making decisions thousands of times a day. Right now, in this moment, you are making a decision on how you are controlling your attention to being on this call. Some people have made a decision to not be on the call at all. The decisions that we make every day are called our priorities. And we don't always think about them. So what if? What we really need to be managing is our priorities. Hmm. So who's in control of this? Guess what? You are. If you are too busy, ask yourself, who designed your schedule? I hear it already. I hear it already. The lie is, I have to, but Tina, I have to, I have to, essentially what we're saying is that we choose to allow. others, circumstances, people, the weather, to control our schedule. Don't hear what I'm not saying. Do not hear judgment in what I'm saying. This is observation, not judgment. Remember, you are in control. Understanding that what you are doing, if you make a choice, that if it is hot, I am not watering my blackberries. Let me give you an example of how this works. Okay. I am heat sensitive, which means I get uncomfortable to the point of passing out if I get too hot. I bought 14 acres, decided I was going to grow blackberries, planted them in a place on my property that in July and August is in full blown sun, which means those blackberries really need to be watered to grow well. But I can't get out there. I have to stay inside. I can't get there, right? You see how this starts to fall. So here's the here's the end result last week My husband mowed down the blackberries because I had to make a choice I either have to choose to do things differently and Figure out a way to get those blackberries watered or I need to give up on growing the blackberries Your business is the same way There are certain things that your business requires in order for your business to grow. Marketing is one of them. When you get into the course, I'll talk more about that choice of why are you in business at all. But for the moment, just recognize that you get to choose. You get to choose how you spend your time. What you don't choose is how that works out, right? If I choose, I'm going to spend my time growing blackberries. There are certain things that come along with that. That I have to accept. Because blackberries require certain things. Make sense? So here's the truth around all of this. If the lie is I have to do this, the truth is we get to. Every action we take is based on the decisions that we make. Whether it's conscious or unconscious. Even if it doesn't feel that way. We're back to the feeling thing again. Joy is a feeling and if I don't feel good about it, it must not be real. I feel like I have to, therefore, have to must be real. I Maybe, maybe not. Remember, joy isn't a feeling. When we let feelings run the show, they get us lost. Because they can't make up their mind. How many of you have woken up in the morning feeling good, and by 9 o'clock you feel like crud? Or vice versa? Right? When we let feelings run the show, they will run us all ragged. Because they don't they don't stay the same all the time. That's the bad news. The good news is, they don't say the same all the time. So when you have a feeling that feels yucky, chances are it's not staying. And I get this, right? I struggled with depression for decades. So I know what it feels like to be in a place where your feelings are pretty much running your life. And the big lie of all of that is that it will always feel this way. And that's not true. But in the moment, it feels like that. Make sense? Well, let's make a list. We have these things. We have time, we have people, we have circumstances, we have the weather. Now, I work with a lot of people who either live a rural lifestyle or want to live a rural lifestyle. Does the weather impact your life? Yes, absolutely, right? We have these on the one side, Time, people, circumstances, weather. Can we control those? Okay, so listen to what I just said. People is in there, guys. If this person would do this, then I could, I have to because this person, you don't get to control that person. I wish I could figure out how to do that because boy, would I have a lot more money if I could tell you how to control your spouse, right? Or significant other, just saying. If somebody can figure that out, I will be happy to pay you every penny I have if you can tell me how I can control the people around me. That's the one side. Those are the things that are uncontrollable. On the other side, what do we have control over? Our choice, our behavior, our beliefs, our values, what we think is important. We can control those, can we not? So here's my question. Why are we trying to manage, aka control, The uncontrollable. And why is this important to launch into when we're talking about a marketing class, what did we say? Why we get stuck with marketing. I have time. I get distracted with other things. bottom line. I don't really want to. So when we say we want work life balance and try to find it through time management. We are setting ourselves up for stress, failure, or worse. Yes? That planner that we bought that will control our time, if I can just get it organized on my schedule, it will fix everything. Are we setting ourselves up form more struggle? How many of you have beat yourself up for not being able to control your time better, if you were really honest? So here's my two word coaching ministry. Stop it. The most important thing to manage is not our time, but our priorities. And what if there was a way to figure out how to do this? Because I can sit here and tell you, you need to do this. And lots of. Motivational speakers will tell you, just figure out what's important and follow that. But nobody really tells you how we make that happen. And so, gives us one more reason to beat ourselves up. This is what the Joy Led Journey is about. I've spent the last year, ever since my business coach said to me, Tia, what does joy have to do with business? And I'm like, Oh no, I just know it does. I tend to be intuitive. I just kind of know. So trying to figure out a way to package all of this stuff that I teach all the time in a way that makes sense that you can follow. And it has grown into the joy led journey. So the joy led journey starts out with when you are stressed, overwhelmed, not knowing what to do. Thinking maybe you're not a business owner at all. Anybody relate to that every day, two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, right? Waking up. I joke being an entrepreneur is forced personal development because it makes you face all the stuff that you don't face when you have a job, right? Imposter syndrome. Yeah. All of those things, right? We have names for all of those things. It starts there. Here's where it ends up because you're joy led. You're walking at peace. You're walking in wisdom. You're walking in love. That's the goal. So how do we get there? How do we go from scarcity mindset to abundance mindset? Because isn't that what Jesus died for us to have anyway? I came that you would have life and have it abundantly. Not, I came that you would have life and struggle and hustle and grind for the rest of it to make sure it all works. I don't know, maybe I'm reading the wrong Bible, but it's not in my Bible. So the joy led journey consists of two parts. It consists of the process and the characteristics. three step process, clarity, number one, clarity, decide what you want, just pick. So, and I will say this more than once, because I just do, they call them Tina isms. It doesn't matter what you pick. But that you pick, right? So the story of that phrase is, I was in a marketing class. I'd spent, once again, if I just spend this money to buy this glass and sit with these people, they will teach it all to me, and it will all work, right? And he was going on and on and on about niche and all these things you need to have, and I was like, well, how do you know if you got the right one? And he went, it doesn't matter what you pick, just that. So getting clarity and deciding what you want is the first step in heading towards joy. Second step is confidence, building what you need. Whether that is tools, business systems, or personal, professional development stuff. Getting out of your own way, the mindset stuff, right? Sometimes we can focus on the mindset stuff, but never build an inventory system and we're still stuck. Sometimes we can build an inventory system, but never have a website and we're still stuck. So it's those three things together. Building that confidence that I have what I need to move forward in the vision. That's step two. Step three is commitment. Actually taking action and showing up over and over and over and over again. If your business is not working, I would submit that something is broken in one of those three areas. Make sense? We good? But Tina, I don't know if this would actually work in something else. I would submit it does. Let's try it. You want to go on vacation. That's the idea. I want to go on vacation. But you have no clarity. You have no idea where you're going. You just want to go on vacation. How many of you have been like, I need a vacation, but never go, right? Why not? Because you haven't picked the time, the place. I haven't picked something. But once you pick, I'm taking a cruise when I turn 60. All of a sudden, things start to shift, do they not? And then you move into confidence and you go, okay, if I'm going to take a cruise when I'm 60, first thing I got to lose is lose 50 pounds and buy some cruise clothes. And you know, I need to save some money. Your brain automatically starts to go into problem solving mode. Right? And then this happens, Oh my gosh, I'll never lose 60 pounds and I look terrible in a bathing suit and it's going to be too much and then I'm not going to go. And what happens there, the commitment to that decision, craps. This is why this process is our main focus. Because no matter what you're trying to do, whether it's trying to grow a business, whether it's trying to go on a trip or trying to learn how to make your next product, trying to grow blackberries, trying to do any of the things that we want to do, the things that you actually have done, Look back. So I'm going to pick on Nessa for a second because I see her knitting. I bet the first time Nessa picked up knitting needles and yarn, it was, doesn't look like the way it's going right now, where she can knit and be looking and listening and not paying attention. Right? She can do it all at the same time. She's not paying attention to what her dands are doing, they're just doing it. But it doesn't look like it first time there was no clarity there, but the clarity came from, I decided I wanted to learn to knit and then I got knitting needles and I got yarn and I maybe got grandma sometimes to show me how to do it. And then I had to decide, go back to clarity, decide what I wanted to knit. Then I'm starting to knit. Then I have a commitment. to doing the same stitch over and over and over and over and over again. And I hear this when it comes to marketing. I don't want to do it because it's admin stuff and I have to do it over and over again and it's not creative. Really, think about the way you make your business. Sarah, you're in gardening, right? So everything about being in gardening is wonderful and fabulous, and there's nothing that gets you dirty, and there's nothing that stinks. It's all, right? When you think about the thing you want to do, the what of your business, there are parts of it that are repetitive, that you absolutely hate. Right? If you have livestock, shovel and poo, we all have parts of this, but why do we do it? Because of the clarity and because of the commitment. I am committed that my animals won't die, therefore I shovel their poo and I spray them in 90 degree heat when they're alpacas and so forth. Make sense? So that's the process to get you onto the joy led journey. Now what happens to you when you do this? What are the characteristics of a joy led business owner? There are five characteristics of a joy led business owner. We don't go deep into it in this course, we do in the workshop. And I did a deep dive into it on episode 17 of the podcast. If you are interested in hearing more about this, but real quickly, those characteristics are vision. A joy led business owner has a vision of what they're creating, what their business is. Number two is growth. Joy led business owners committed to growing all the time, that lifelong learning. And if you say, well, I don't really want to learn any more stuff. I don't want to go back to school. Ask yourself, okay, my fiber people. When was the last fiber class that you went to? Just saying. And how much did you spend on it? Right? As creatives, we generally are committed to growth and learning because we always want to, want to learn new stuff because the same old stuff gets boring. Number three, the care number three characteristic of a joy led business owner is focus. Now, don't hear what I'm not saying, I'm not saying this is a person who is completely focused and driven. This is a person who is committed to trying to make sure they focus. I'm going to continue to bring my focus back to that vision that matters and grow into that. Number four characteristic is gratitude. The reality of gratitude is it takes your brain from looking at what is not present to looking at what is present. And that in and of itself shifts your thought process to a more positive way. And when you're in entrepreneurship, it's really easy to focus on what you don't have yet all the time. Because you're chasing goals, and we're not there yet, we're not there yet, we're not there yet. So having gratitude allows you to shift out of that. And the last characteristic of a joy led business owner is connection. We don't do this alone, we don't run alone, it's connecting with others that are on this journey as well, makes all the difference. So when you grow in these areas continuously, it helps you to walk in joy, in all circumstances, not just business or marketing. By growing in this, you can get to the place where you stand in a place of peace and wisdom and love when the world is burning down around you. By shifting to more of a focus of being joy led allows us to stay in place of solidness while the world spins around you, bad things will happen. How many of you Have ever said this when things settle down, I will. How many of you have ever had things settled down for more than a day? So, again, trying to control the uncontrollable. When we say, when things settle down, what are we talking about? The time, the circumstances, the people, the weather. And we wait for it to settle down. That's letting those uncontrollable things control our time. So the challenge and the Joy-Led marketing course is designed to give you a chance to make a different choice for yourself and your business, if only for the next five days. So what if you chose your business first for the next five days? What if your business looked totally different this time next week? It can, but it's up to you. So will you manage your priorities? Or continue to try to control the circumstances. Let's consider these questions. One, what is the plan or vision for your business? Two, do you have everything you need to run it? Three, do you know what to do to market it? And four, if you knew exactly what your business goals were, had everything you need to run it and knew what to do to market it, what would stop you from doing it? Okay. On that last question, pay attention to the first thing that pops into your head, because the first thing that pops into your head Maybe something you really need to look at. No matter where you're trying to get to in life, it's most likely that this stuff is the stuff that's holding you back and keeping you stuck. That's the bad news. The good news? It doesn't have to stay that way. And you are the one who can fix it. JoyLed Journey is the structure or the roadmap to help you do that. No technology or tactic will do it for you. And you don't have to go it alone. And that's why we're here. And that's why Golden Heartland exists. Let's go ahead and pray. Lord, You are so good and so kind and you love us so much and you already know Exactly what you prepared for us and you were just waiting for us to rest in joy And grow in that peace and wisdom and love that you've already prepared for us so that we can Access are all the wonderful things that you have set ahead of us help us to just clear away the clutter and stop trying to control the uncontrollable and focus on you and what you would have for us. In Jesus name. Amen.

Tina Joy 27:35

You've been listening to the joy led business podcast. I'm your host, Tina Joy Cochran. Thanks for sharing part of your day with me. You don't have to walk this business journey alone. Discover others just like you at goldenheartland. com. Business coaching community for creative rural women. Faith. Go there to learn more and get free gifts I designed just for you. Be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode and share this episode with someone who could use a bit more joy today. Remember, your business success matters to me and to God. Being joy led will get you there. Can't wait to meet you at Golden Heartland.