From Busy to Strategic: Systems That Free Up Your Time

In this episode I’m joined by Kathi Burns, a strategic adviser and productivity expert, founder of Organized & Energized, as well as 2-times best selling author. 

In this episode, Kathi reveals why so many business owners get stuck “in the muck” and what to do about it.

Kathi shares how disorganisation, lack of systems, and poor delegation are quietly costing entrepreneurs time, money, and energy. More importantly, she explains how simple systems can give you back control, free up hours every week, and help you focus on what actually grows your business.

You’ll also learn:

✅ Why busy doesn’t mean productive

✅ How entrepreneurs lose 4 hours a week without realising it

✅ What it means to work below your pay grade

✅ Where to start if you’re stuck in the weeds

✅ How systems can give you back time and clarity

If you feel like you’re constantly busy but not actually moving forward, this episode will hit home.

Grab Kathi’s little treat, her free Paper Flow Blueprint that you can download to get started.

It gives you a clear starting point if you’re feeling overwhelmed by paperwork or just don’t have a system that works.

Simple. Useful. And very easy to implement.

Also, Kathi is hosting a free Paper Flow Masterclass next Tuesday, April 14th at 12 PM PT/8 PM Dublin. She'll show you how to build frictionless systems, reclaim your executive bandwidth, and finally stop drowning in paper piles.

If you're a professional who wants to simplify your work life and find any document in 30 seconds or less… this one's for you.

Join here!

📩 Connect with Kathi Burns on LinkedIn

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to my podcast because more like this is on the way!

If you'd like to book a call to see how I can support you head over to my website here. www.sellonsocialmedia.academy/hello

👉 WHAT'S NEW: I've built an AI-powered Digital Marketing Platform, SellOn.Social. This is not a training program. It's an AI platform that helps you stand out on social media and turn followers into real enquiries and paying clients.

And please connect on social media and let me know what you thought of this episode!

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Transcript

Louise McDonnell: 0:00

welcome to the Social Media Takeaway. I'm your host, Louise McDonald, and this is the show for business owners who want to know how to use social media more effectively to drive sales and needs of further business. If you enjoy the show, please make sure that you give us a follow. And if you enjoy this episode, please make sure that you share it with somebody who you think may find it useful. And if you enjoy the show, you can give us a five star review. We're always delighted to get those. Today I am delighted to be joined by Kathy Burns. She is a strategic advisor and productivity expert, and she is the founder of organized and energized.com. As well as being a two times bestselling author, her work ensures that your environment supports your growth. Rather than hinders it. And she has over 20 years experience and has been featured in magazines such as Oprah Magazine and Entrepreneur. Kathy provides precise systems. You need to work less and live brighter. Wow. Who wouldn't want to work less and live brighter? You're very welcome to the show, Kathy.

Kathi Burns: 1:04

Oh, it's a pleasure to be here. I know we all wanna live brighter and work less. Absolutely.

Louise McDonnell: 1:09

Yeah. It's the dream. It's the dream. So tell us a little bit about your backstory. How did you get into this?

Kathi Burns: 1:14

It's a long, windy road as usual, I think for most entrepreneurs. I've been a serials entrepreneur my whole life actually. But I've been following my bliss. So I was a licensed Coast guard captain and I delivered boats 'cause I basically wanted to get pa get paid the sail for a living. So I did that for a while. And after that, and I was living outta the duffle bag. And I don't know if you're familiar, whenever you're out to sea, you have to have everything right there within arm's reach. You have to know where it is and you have to be able to grab it if you need it. And I think that was the beginning of the organizational journey for me. I remember sitting in the middle of the Gulf Stream on a clear night just watching the satellite go over and thinking about my. Apartment and realizing that nothing in it really mattered and I would get back to shore and I would start purging. so that was the beginning of it. After that, I became a travel writer and I was living out of a suitcase 52 weeks a year. And again, I realized I had everything I needed in this. Suitcase and when I got back to my apartment, I would purge. And that was the beginning. Flash forward a few years later, I moved from Florida to San Diego and I met a woman and I had a year off to reinvent myself because again, I'd been changing careers and wondering what should I do when I grow up? And I knew that everything I'd done was. Fun, but it wasn't really my dharma or my calling. She had a year off. I had a year off. She was off for a healing journey and I went to her house and I instinctively said, girlfriend, you've got to get rid of some of this stuff. You've just got to do this because you're not gonna heal. You're surrounded by doing much stuff. So I helped her start purging and at the same time, she really needed to dress herself up to feel better. So I helped her shop and buy some clothes and, she goes, you know what? You're really good at this and you're nonjudgmental, and wow, you should become a professional organizer. And I'm like, what the heck is that? so I, she goes, you should interview my girlfriend. She's been hiring a pro for years. And so I interviewed her girlfriend to gimme 45 minutes on the phone saying what her organizer had done for her. And I said, I could do that standing on my head. So here we are. 20 years later, I became a board certified professional organizer and personal stylist. I remember coming home and telling my husband that, and he is okay, honey, whatever you wanna do, he is I had no idea what that was. And here I am. So now my company has progressed that now because I've been a serial entrepreneur for so many years, I look at systems behind the business. Of the owner. And the reason that I do this is because I'm a little bit a DD and I have to have the system to support me. So as I was growing my business, I was realizing how important it was to have systems behind me. Do I have a calendar that works? Do I have a note taking? And then it's progressed right from physical to digital. So now I look at the infrastructure of my client's businesses. To figure out what's missing and are they doing stuff that they shouldn't be doing, delegation wise, are they working below their pay grade, so to speak? So that's a very long, hopefully shorter story on why I do what I do and how I'm doing what I'm doing right now.

Louise McDonnell: 4:24

Okay, great. So I often think Kathy, that people sometimes who need our help they don't realize that they need our help. So can you describe to me. The, the people that you work with, what does their life look like before you

Kathi Burns: 4:39

Yeah, so before me, they're generally making a little bit of money, but they're in the weeds every day and they don't know how to get themselves out of the doing it kind of stuff. And they're losing hours. Just in paperwork alone, they're losing four hours a week trying to find documents that they know that they own. But they can't find, or maybe they have 50 tabs open and they don't know which tab they were working on to begin with. So they're basically in the weeds and they're not delegating well. For starters. They don't have systems behind them, so they're constantly trying to find things that they know they have. That's step one. Step two, once they find the things. Then the day, the next day happens and they're back in the same place because they didn't stop to build the system to find what they needed to find. And so they're losing the average entrepreneur weighs four hours a week just trying to find documents. So that's a given fact. So that's where they're at. Then also, They're doing stuff that's below their pay grade. I have clients all the time that are doing this busy stuff, and they could have dropped that out easily. They could have delegated that out to a VA or to an in-person assistant so that they could focus on the big picture, which is growing their business. My very first book had a Master Your Muck, I call it being stuck in the muck of their stuff. They're like, they're in there, they're in the weeds. They don't see their way out. They have no idea what they need to do to grow their business because they're just, it's the forest through the trees, or I call it muck.

Louise McDonnell: 6:12

Yeah. Yeah. I love the title of that book, how to Master Your Muck okay. For somebody that is stuck in the muck. Okay. What's the first, is there a system you take them through or how do you help them to systemize their business or get out of the weeds?

Kathi Burns: 6:26

I start with looking at what they're doing on a daily basis. So it starts with productivity and time. Where are you spending your time? And once I see where they're spending their time, I can see where there's friction and where they probably need to build some infrastructure in their business that they don't keep doing it over and over. So it starts with how are you spending your time? And then, what do they need to grow their business and what should they not be doing? Once I figure out what they're doing, then I figure out what they should not be doing, and we start a whole list of everything that they're doing that's below their pay grade, right Oh, and it also starts with what is your hourly value? How much do you charge per hour? Or what is your hourly rate? Most people don't have any idea what their hourly value is, and they're doing things that are $20 an hour jobs, right? To run their business 'cause they think they have to. so that's how it starts, is what are you doing? I always say delegate what you hate. Delegate what you can't do and delegate what's below your pay grade. Once you figure that out, then we can figure out what they should be doing and get all the other stuff shipped off to somebody else that they can handle that type of task.

Louise McDonnell: 7:38

So give me examples of the type of tasks that if you're a founder or CEO in your business that you should not be doing.

Kathi Burns: 7:46

You should probably not be going into your inbox every morning. You should probably have someone or something handling your inbox so that you're not looking at all the roughage in there that has hit you. Checking your inbox first thing in the morning is always a bad idea anyhow, but going through all of your emails on your own is. Something that could easily be delegated out to someone else. Also setting up a structure for your business for paper flow. I have a paper flow challenge and class coming up here in a little while. That's about how to get your papers, number one, to land where they need to land when they. Hit your office right live so that there's somewhere where you have them and so you can find them quickly. And then the most important thing is leave. How do they leave? So having someone that helps you with the flow of your paperwork helps dramatically or bare minimum setting up a system so that you have that land, live and leave kind of situation for your papers. That's one thing that's very important. They shouldn't be doing. There's so many things that, and every company is different, right? Every, individual is different. The thing that I would suggest is Number one, delegate what you hate. If you're not good at bookkeeping and you hate bookkeeping, why are you doing bookkeeping? That's bare minimum. If you're not good at doing outbound calls, maybe someone else could do your outbound calls. If you're not good at writing, maybe you could get someone to write and you proof it. But then you put your signature on it, as as branding, have people do your posting for your social media. Once you've approved that, it's good for you and that it is your messaging. So there's so many things as entrepreneurs and as business owners, we feel we have a lot of control issues, you think?

Louise McDonnell: 9:31

Yeah. Yeah.

Kathi Burns: 9:32

Yeah, loosening the controls of your business and having actually SOPs set up for your business is step one to actually running a real business and having you run your business instead of your business running you, which I say all the time is so easy to have your business run you, that you're not focused on the big picture of running your business.

Louise McDonnell: 9:51

What about hidden distractions and habits that are unbalancing our lives? Can you give us a few examples of hidden distractions or habits that people have that they may not even realize are hindering them and their growth?

Kathi Burns: 10:04

I think a morning routine, a hidden distraction is you don't do a morning routine. You get up, you sit down, you open up your computer, you start looking at things, and you haven't really centered yourself or focused. I think a hidden distraction is that another hidden distraction is if you work from home, the average entrepreneur if they say they wanna go get a cup of coffee. How long do you think they're gone from their office to go get a cup of coffee? In a corporate environment, they're gone about eight minutes. Okay? At a home-based office, they're gone about 18. Okay? Because they have the dog, they have the fridge, they have to go outside. They take out the trash, they check the mail. So a hidden distraction is getting up and leaving. So I always say, whenever you're in your office, you should have everything that you need within arm's reach. Be careful when you get up to go someplace that you can set a timer or whatever and get yourself back in the seat. But another, which is the inverse of that, another distraction is not getting up and moving and sitting on your butt all day in your chair. It's like not actually getting up and moving a little bit. But the thing is, try not to leave your office, get around, go face the sun or something, or set a timer and come back.

Louise McDonnell: 11:18

Yeah. It's so true. Yeah. I find sometimes that because I work for my home office as well. That I might even see daylight. So that is now my new thing. I have to go make sure that I see the daylight and get out in it.'cause my worst thing is that I'll work all the time. So I am not distracted by anything. I'll just keep working so that, that's something else as well. But, so this is really interesting. what does life look like then for people that have implemented your systems? So what should people expect? So if they're currently in the muck, what does it look like to be out of the muck?

Kathi Burns: 11:49

More time to focus on growing your business, if you save four hours every day, and you have more time for productivity, you've gotten a month back of your life every year. A month. So the question is, what would you do with that month? Would you take a vacation? Would you spend more time with your friends? Would you just make more money so that you could try it earlier? What would you do with that month? So time is the only thing we cannot get back. So to become more efficient with our time is really the gift that I give people whenever I Work with them and show them this is where you're leaking, this is where time's leaking from your hands. And it could be paper flow, it could be stuck in their digital inbox. It could be doing what they shouldn't be doing and not delegating. The thing is most people don't feel like they, especially, smaller businesses, they feel like they don't have the funds or the time or the resources to delegate. I don't have enough money for a va. Really, you don't have enough money to not have a VA because once you have this stuff done that's below your pay grade, you can actually grow your business and make more money and have more free time. One of my clients, she contacted me because she had rental properties. And she also was a personal stylist and she was working seven days a week. And when she contacted me, all she wanted was Saturday and Sunday off. Most importantly, she wanted Saturday off to have brunch with her girlfriends 'cause that's what they used to do. And her girlfriends were like, we never see you anymore. We don't have time. So what we did was we were able to parcel out her time so that she could do her rental property management only one and a half days a week. And she could see her other clients. It was like , , Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So Monday was property Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday Friday. Was planning and organizing our week. Half the time, she was off half a day on Friday, and she always had every Saturday free and Sunday free. So Saturday was her girlfriend time, Sunday was her family time. And then she was right back in the mix of things Monday through Wednesday. And then ironically, I saw her five weeks, I don't know, I saw her some time after that at a social gathering. And she goes. You know what, this is really great 'cause sometimes I have style clients who can only see on me on Saturdays. So I opened up one Saturday a month for these men to come in and get styled. And so now one Saturday a month I'm working, but the other three Saturdays I'm always free. And every Sunday I'm always free. So that's what happened with her. And now her girlfriends say that she's no longer a ghost in their life and she has time to go out and have fun.' Louise McDonnell: maybe area, so you see it more than I would, but it just feels that sometimes people, they just get busy or things just happen and there are no systems whatsoever and that their time is anybody's time and that there's no structure behind it. And that could feel very overwhelming, if you've no time, if you're working, like it's not sustainable either. You get burnout. And I can't tell you how many times, I see relationships are faltering and I actually set up date nights a lot of times for my clients. It's you need to have a date night. And the thing is whenever I work with people, there's no perfect answer, right? Everybody's different. So do you need a date night? Every week, do you need a date night? Every other a date night? Once a month. What's it gonna work for you? What do you need? And it's always different, but we all need that. We all need to have time with our loved ones and our family. And if we're all inspired by our business and we're just work, then we're depleted. And we don't have time for the other people in our life.

Louise McDonnell: 15:21

Yeah. And you're so right, if you're so busy being busy, you're not being strategic.

Kathi Burns: 15:25

I call it being stuck in busyness. And we fall into that, we think, and I did that, oh my gosh, the first three years of my business, 17 years ago, I was like busy. Let's just be busy. And I thought that meant I was being productive. No, actually busy does not mean that you're being productive at all. Busy means that you're generally just doing stuff that you can cross 'em off the list and feel like you're doing something important.

Louise McDonnell: 15:48

So busy is not strategic all the time. Brilliant. So tell us about this challenge that you have coming up.

Kathi Burns: 15:53

Ah, it's a masterclass. It is how to turn your piles into files and your papers into profits. Because if you cannot find, if you cannot find the papers that you need, you're in the weeds and, it could be a missing contract whatever. So basically I've been doing this system or put helping clients put this system together for 20 years, and it basically, as I said earlier it's a chance it, so most papers when they enter your life. Don't really have a designated landing place. Like they don't. Oftentimes it's the kitchen counter, and that's a big, whole nother source of stress between husbands and wives and spouses. You need a designated place for your papers to land. Then once they land, you need a place for them to live if you need them, so you can find them quickly. So that you're not trying to search, and again, losing those four hours a week trying to find the papers, you know you own, but you don't know where they are. And then the most important thing for me as a paper trafficking expert is an exit strategy. I want those papers to get gone once you're done with them., we're talking paper here on this particular workshop, the majority of filing systems, 80% go in the drawer and never see the daylight again. We just file 'em away and then, they just get filed away. One of my clients had a corporate client had a stack of eight four door file cabinets and they called me in because they needed to buy more file cabinets and they wanted to have a good system for that. By the time I was done with them, they were down to four file cabinets from eight, and they did not buy any more file cabinets because all the stuff that was in there was oldy moldy stuff. It got for proprietary reason. It got shipped off to a, storage device, a blue mountain. But they didn't need it in their face and nor did they need more files in. The more files you have, the harder it is to find things anyhow. So that's a story. And as aside, but the most important thing is to know that the papers that you have in your life, if you need them, you know where they are. The system that we put together during this workshop is a color coded and alphabetical because that's the way that we think. It's also timeline time sensitive so that they're gone when you no longer need them based on the tax codes in your country. Or, policies that are. Fired. So it just really helps you take control of your paper flow. It flows right? That's the important thing. The flow of the paper so that it's gone when you no longer need it, and the less paper that you have, it's quicker it is to find. Anyhow.

Louise McDonnell: 18:16

yeah, I would say that not only would this work for your business, but even if you are like involved with a club or a society, there's probably more paper flying around clubs and societies. And not only are they in one house, they're probably in multiple houses depending on who's on the committee. So I would say this sounds absolute gold if you're organizing your paper and your content and your life.

Kathi Burns: 18:38

It's ironic you say that. I just had a client that she was the treasurer for her volunteer association, and we just actually packaged up all the stuff and it's in a box and she can hand it off to the next. Person and it, we found like checkbooks there. We found stuff that, needed to go to the next person. So now it's not only going to the next person, it's organized. So when the next person gets it, they know exactly what's in there. and also multiple properties. If you have rental units and you have other properties that you own, how do you keep track of that paperwork? Yeah, it works for corporations. I have Sempra Energy, the litigation departments on it, but I also have mom and pops on it. I also have just retirees,'cause we all have paper, so it's just a matter of how do we organize it and find it. And again, it's alpha and color. So this is a workshop. The masterclass is going to come up. It's a paper formula. Paper flow formula, and that will be happening on April 14th. So it's free. You can check it out. If you like it, then you can maybe jump into the workshop. Where're actually organize all of your papers.

Louise McDonnell: 19:39

Fantastic. It sounds an absolute must because if you can say, I love the fact that as well, that you don't just organize them, that you figure out when they have to go. Outta

Kathi Burns: 19:49

there.

Louise McDonnell: 19:50

Courage. Get gone. Yeah. So well look at, talk about an amazing story. I love the idea of you like lying on a boat and looking up at the stars, but having everything that you needed within arms disarms reach. So I think there's huge learning in that. I think we. All carry around too much in our heads and in our inboxes and in our filing cabinets and in places where we probably shouldn't be filing stuff, but how can people find you then? Where is the, where do you like to hang out?

Kathi Burns: 20:15

You can find me on LinkedIn. It's actually Kathy Burns and that's a great place to reach out and talk to me and see what's up. You can also email me directly, kathy@organizedandenergized.com. K-A-T-H-I. I'm sure we'll have something in the show notes below. And , if you want a little treat, I do have the paper flow formula workbook that you could download for free. And and just. Check it out. It talks a little bit more about what I'm doing on the 14th. You can go ahead. It's a paper flow blueprint download that, that'll give you an inkling if you have paper challenges. If you don't have paper challenges, you're digital. That's great. We also organized digital, so just reach out to me on LinkedIn and we'll have a discourse.

Louise McDonnell: 20:57

So if you wanna get out of the weeds and put SOP, so standard operating procedures in place for your business to free up your time so that you are being more strategic and that you are not doing the work that, as Kathy says, is below your pay grade. Then if you need help doing that, 'cause let's face it, sometimes we can't do everything ourselves. Sometimes we're too close to the issue to see the wood from the trees, or as you would say, the piles from the muck

Kathi Burns: 21:25

stuck in the muck.

Louise McDonnell: 21:26

Look in the muck. So if you wanna get outta the muck and you wanna get rid of those piles, make sure you reach out to Kathy. We'll have all the links in the show notes are on socials or in our emails, so you can figure out how to get there. Thanks for coming on, Kathy. I feel like I need to finish off now by reorganizing my desk and sure that I'm taking this brilliant advice on board.

Kathi Burns: 21:43

Thank you so much, Louise. It's been a pleasure.