The New Financial Year Reset: Five Habits Every Beauty Business Owner Needs Before 1 July

If you worked for another company and every single year you worked harder, took on more responsibility, and never once received a pay raise, you would quit.

So why are we doing it to ourselves?

This is the final episode of the 2025/26 financial year, and I am not sending you into the new year with another motivational pep talk. I am giving you five habits that will actually change how the next twelve months feel: in your bank account, in your calendar, and in your body.

Because if another financial year passes and you are still overwhelmed, underpaid, and running your business from memory, the problem is not your revenue. It is your habits.

→ Habit 1: How to review your numbers weekly and set aside GST, tax, super, and leave before you spend what is not yours
→ Why "save 20% for tax" is dangerous advice and how to calculate the right percentage for your structure
→ What Payday Super starting 1 July 2026 actually means for your cashflow
→ Why leave entitlements quietly cripple businesses that are not preparing for them every single payroll run
→ Habit 2: How to give yourself a proper pay raise and why being the last person paid in your own business leads to burnout
→ Habit 3: The weekly saving method that means Christmas, equipment upgrades, and team events are never a financial emergency
→ Habit 4: The Sunday CEO reset that took me from reactive and overwhelmed to clear, intentional, and in control
→ Habit 5: Why time management is not your problem, and what self-management actually looks like using ClickUp and Google Calendar
→ Why your brain is for creating ideas, not storing them, and how to build the system that finally gets things done

You do not need a new business. You probably just need new habits.
If you know another business owner who is constantly overwhelmed, underpaid, or carrying their entire business around in their head, send this episode to them.

Connect with me and join the Beauty Industry Leaders movement:
→ https://www.instagram.com/sammykennedycoach/
→ https://www.instagram.com/beautyindustryleaders/
→ https://beautyindustryleaders.com.au/

Connect with Bookkeeper and BAS Agent
→ Books by Auri: https://booksbyauri.com.au/

I want to empower women in the beauty industry to create an impact, build an empire, and leave their legacy!

Ready to become an industry powerhouse?
Get more clients, more income, and your time back without burning out. Be among the first to access exclusive scripts, strategies, and systems to get booked, banked, and in demand.
https://beautyindustryleaders.com.au/booked-banked-and-in-demand

If you have any questions about the episode, or have a burning question you’d like me to answer on the show, or if you’d like to join our movement of ambitious beauty leaders, connect with me and the rest of our incredible community on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/sammykennedycoach/
https://www.instagram.com/beautyindustryleaders/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You worked for another company and every single year you worked harder, you took on more responsibility, you invested in your own education, you worked longer hours, carried more stress, solved more problems, and never received a pay raise. Would you stay? Probably not. So why are we doing this to ourselves as business owners? We convince ourselves we'll pay ourselves more one day once the business is bigger, once revenue increases, and once things calm down. But the reality is there will always be another expense. There will always be another investment or another reason to delay it. Being a business owner should not mean being the last person to be rewarded for the value you create. Because if your business can afford to invest in everyone else, but not the person carrying the entire vision, eventually resentment and burnout will creep in. The new financial yacht isn't just about increasing revenue, it's about building a business that takes care of you. You're not building freedom, you're building another job. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Beauty Industry Leaders podcast. I'm your host, Sammy Kennedy. I can't believe that today we are officially two years into the show. Like the last few episodes, there's been some really cool milestones that we've been celebrating from a hundred episodes released through to hitting 25,000 downloads, and now we're two years in. Like, if there's ever a sign to keep going in hard times, the universe has just been giving them to me. And once again, I always appreciate you for showing up in these episodes. If you've subscribed to the show, if you're sending it to friends, if you're commenting on socials, like I see you and I appreciate you, and I want to keep growing with you on this journey together. Now, quick update before we dive into today's episode. This week on Friday, I'll find out if I would take out the win for the Reinhardt Young Leader Award. So the seven news, they've got these Young Achievers Awards where all the award categories are up until the age of 30, and then my one is up until the age of 40. And I've been announced as top five in the state, so I made it as a finalist. They also released the bios of the other finalists, and I had a look at their profiles. They're quite impressive. Three are in mining, and then one is in aged care. So I've got a really unique story. I'm definitely the only person in my 20s as well. And when you've got an award category up until the age of 40, like these guys have almost two decades on me or just under. So it'll be really interesting to see how the night goes. And then on socials, I've also been sharing for people to please vote for me for People's Choice Awards. So if I take that out, we'll also be able to celebrate that. But I'm not expecting anything. I think I'm at the point where I'm just really glad I went through this process to reflect on all the things that I have achieved and to then make it through semi-finals and then be announced as a finalist and then be able to attend these awards. It's not from a place of validation. I a hundred percent think that modeling and beauty pageants that was purely for validation. But I feel like these awards are something that I can just celebrate with all the people around me. Like I've been taking my audience on the journey, my family are coming, like poor poor and gungung, my grandparents, they're also coming. And it's just a really beautiful thing. So I'll keep you posted next week with what happens. Otherwise, follow along at Sami Kennedy Coach on socials and you'll probably get the updates first there. But today I want to set you up for success with a new financial year that's just coming around in a couple days' time. So let's get into it. Now, because this is the final episode of the 25-26 financial year, I wanted to leave you with something practical. Something that can genuinely set you up for success heading into the new financial year. Because I think so many of us have been conditioned to believe that we need some huge life-changing strategy to get a massively different result. One of my favorite quotes by James Clear in Atomic Habits is Success is the product of daily habits, not once-in-a-lifetime transformations. I'm gonna say that one more time. Success is the product of daily habits, not once in a lifetime transformations. This is where so many business owners get it wrong. They chase the breakthrough instead of actually looking at their behaviors. Now, your next financial year will not be built on one big decision. For example, making a million dollars. It will be built by the hundreds of small decisions that you repeatedly do over a certain period of time. So today I'm gonna walk you through five habits that will help you stop surviving your business and start actually leading it. And please make sure that you stick around for number four and five, because they completely change my life. And I know that they will make a world of difference for you two. Those two habits alone have taken me from feeling constantly overwhelmed, reactive, and like I was carrying my entire business around in my head to finally feeling clear, intentional, and in control of my time. Because if another financial year passes and you're still overwhelmed, underpaid, and constantly putting out fires, you're probably gonna have to look at yourself and go, look, it's not a revenue problem anymore. It's actually my own habits and my own identity. So let's get into it together. The first thing that I want you to look at doing from the first of July 2026. So even if you haven't done this in the past, you can start the habit from the first of July, is doing a weekly analysis of your numbers and allocations. This is so helpful at being able to pick up things as they're happening, being able to prepare and do the groundwork so that you don't have to deal with more stress and anxiety later on in the year. So, what I mean by this is you should be reviewing your numbers weekly and setting aside allocations for GST, tax, super, and your employees leave. Also, if you're a sole trader, set leave aside for yourself. There is nothing worse than getting sick or wanting to go on holiday and feeling like you've got nothing in the bank to be able to do that. So the first thing that we want to look at is your super. If you're not aware, from the 1st of July 2025, the super guarantee rate went from 11.5% to 12%. From the 1st of July 2026, payday super starts. So this actually means that as an employer, you need to pay super at the same time as wages instead of doing it quarterly. The ATO says contributions generally need to reach the employee super fund within seven business days of payday. Now, I understand that this is going to impact your cash flow, but I actually think this is an incredible thing because there are thousands of business owners who get into so much super debt because they spend money that they're not supposed to spend. And so if you're actually setting that money aside, paying super on a regular basis, this is going to help you so much more with actually managing cash flow that you have, not just spending things and then trying to pull money out of nowhere when it comes to the end of quarter, and you've got to pay those supers. So please, if you haven't already had a conversation with your bookkeeper or accountant, make sure that you've got this set up. Make sure that you're doing this on a regular basis because you don't want to get penalized for something that you can be proactive about and keep on top of. Now, the next thing that I want you to think about when it comes to allocating money aside is GST. So the way that we work this out is we look at, okay, how much money did you make this week? And then we want to divide that number by 11 to estimate the GST component that you need to set aside. So the reason why we want to do this weekly is because once again, if you have all this money here and you don't actually set it aside, you might overspend in other areas. Whereas if you start doing this on a weekly basis, setting that money aside into a bank account that isn't even attached to your current bank, that is an absolute game changer. So for me, I have all my bank accounts with ANZ, and then I have some stuff set up in UBank. So UBank, I have a GST account set up, and that is where my GST sits because I don't look at it and I'm not tempted to transfer money from one account to the other if I need a bit of extra cash flow. So if you haven't already got a separate bank account set up for tax and GST, I call that like my Bass or my ATO bank account, please look at doing this because it's so helpful. One thing that I noticed with the bowling alley and the way that my mum operates the bank accounts is that because we've got so many loans and we've got so many different bank accounts, the last thing that she wanted to do was set up another bank account. And so what would happen is we would have one bank account where we'd have a certain amount of money in there and you've got income coming in, expenses going out. So that's kind of like a holding account for all our expenses and income. But then we've got another account which is purely for our savings, our Bass payments, like literally anything. So we had that separate bank account, which was actually sitting in an offset account so that we could offset the interest of loans. Now it's really hard to know exactly how much money of that is your savings versus what needs to be paid to Bass if you're all putting it in one account and you're not tracking it on a spreadsheet. So if you've got a bank account and you don't have the time and energy to actually track in a spreadsheet how much money is your Bass payments and then how much how much money is actually your savings in that bank account, you could be tempted to spend some money in there and actually not know how much you can spend. So just having a separate GST tax account, it's going to be a game changer. So coming back to what I was saying with your GST, look at how much money you make each week and then divide that by 11. That will give you the GST amount, and you want to transfer that into a bank account that you're not going to touch. And I mean that. Don't transfer in and out. Treat that money as if you don't even own it because you don't. The government is taking that the second that you make that money. And this is how you can get into debt really easily by not actually doing this on a weekly basis. So don't do it monthly, do it weekly because you'll be able to get the cash as it's coming in. If you wait until monthly, you might do a big stock order, you might invest in a new device, you might pay for new training, and then all of a sudden, money's gone. So weekly basis. Now, next to GST, we're also going to have to look at our tax. One of the biggest mistakes I see is when business owners just choose a random percentage to put aside for tax because someone on Instagram said, just save 20%. Unfortunately, tax doesn't actually work like that. The amount you need to set aside will depend on your business structure, your profitability, and your pay as you go obligations. So I want to give you a really simplified breakdown. Obviously, this is not financial advice. Please talk to your accountant if you're not aware of this for your own unique situation. But I'm just going to give you a general overview. If you're a sole trader, there is no separation between you and your business. So any profit that your business makes is considered your personal income. And you'll actually pay tax based on Australia's marginal tax rates. If you operate as a company, the company is a separate legal entity and eligible small businesses generally pay a 25% company tax rate on company profits. But if you pay yourself a wage within that company, you'll also be paying personal income tax based on your own marginal tax bracket. Now, if you operate through a trust, a trust generally doesn't pay tax itself. Instead, the profits are distributed to its beneficiaries who then pay tax at their own marginal tax rates. So if the profits aren't distributed appropriately, there can be significant tax consequences, which is why it's really important to work closely with your accountant. So I can only give you the 25-26 financial year Australian personal tax rates as they're on the ATO website. But if you made anywhere from zero to $18,200, you will pay no tax. If you make $18,201 up to $45,000, you'll pay $16 for every $1 over $18,200. So this is where people get the 16% from, because essentially it's like 16 cents of every dollar. So 16%. If you make $45,001 to $135,000, you will pay $4,288 plus 30 cents for every $1 over $45,000. And then if you make $135,001 up until $190,000, you will pay $31,288 plus 37 cents for every $1 over $135,000. And then the highest bracket is $190,001 plus more. So it doesn't matter how much you make over that, you will be paying $51,638 plus 45 cents for every $1 over $190,000. So what I need to remind you is that the amount that you make in profit is what you will get taxed on. So if you're a company, you're going to get taxed at 25%. For personal income tax, for people paying themselves wages in the company, for sole traders, you will have to refer to the HO benchmarks for personal income tax. So sometimes it's not actually the smartest idea as a business owner to pay yourself $250,000 because you're going to get taxed half of it anyways. And this is where having a great financial advisor, having a great accountant, having someone who is quite educated about how they can set up the best business structure, how you can look at purchasing assets, how you can look at claiming depreciation costs and all of those other things is going to set you up so much more than, oh, I just have a friend that I know where I met someone and they can help me out. Like you need an expert, especially with all the changes to the budget and having all these different rules and things that we're constantly needing to keep on top of. I cannot stress this enough. You need to find a good quality accountant and people who are willing to have these difficult conversations with you if you need to pull back spending, if we need to make some sacrifices, if we've got to make some decisions about changing the structure. Like I have found so much value in changing accountants. Like when we're at the bowling alley, we had an old accountant who potentially got us into a few situations where we paid over $30,000 in tax that we didn't actually need to. And so having the right people in your corner will make the world of a difference. And coming back to why you need to be on top of tax is because if you don't set aside how much tax needs to go into that separate account each week, you can get caught out massively. And this is the absolute worst for startups because the first 12 months, you don't know how much money you're making. And so then you get the first tax return. You're like, okay, this is how much money I need to set aside. And if you don't actively set that money aside, in your second year, they will start basing your tax bracket or your pay as you go instalments off the first year. And this is when you can get a double up of what feels like I'm paying two tax bills at once, because now they've got the data, they're making you pay as you go, and you've also got to pay the first year's tax. So get into the habit. Understand where you're gonna sit in terms of your personal income tax. So if you're making around $135,000 or more in profit, you're gonna look at 37%. If you are making anywhere from $45,001 to $135, then you're gonna look at 30%. So the reason why I want to bring this up as well is because we have accountants out there who will tell you set aside this dollar amount each week or each month. And I actually don't think that that is the best advice because if you scale your business and they've told you, okay, you need to put $100 a week away or $1,000 a week, and then all of a sudden you've gone from making, you know, $10K to $50K, that dollar amount is not going to be relevant. So what you actually want to do is look in your zero, have a look at your profit and loss statement and see how much profit that you made, and then apply the percentage that you're sitting in with your tax to that number and set that aside in your tax so it's more accurate. I've been doing this and it's actually really helped me because obviously when you're making, you know, in the early days when I was making $5,000 versus when you're making $40,000, it's a very different amount of money. And so if you're only putting in a certain dollar amount and you're not actually applying the percentages, you can get caught out really badly when it comes to the end of financial year. So if you're not sure where you're sitting in your tax, either book a meeting with your accountant or have a look at a previous tax return and see how much that you got taxed on. So what was your taxable income? And then that way you can have a look on the ATO website. I'm actually going to drop the link in the show notes for you, and you can see how much money that you're making and then what tax bracket that you sit in. Another thing that people also usually forget with tax is that we all have to pay a 2% Medicare levy. So most Australians pay that additional 2% on their taxable income to help fund Australia's public health care system, including public hospitals and Medicare services. So this is on top of your income tax, not included within it. So just be mindful that when it comes to calculating your tax, you will also be paying another 2% on top of whatever tax bracket you're in. So you might want to look at adding that 2% and then having each week's profit. If you're a sole trader, you're wanting to multiply that by the percentage that you're paying in tax. If you're a company, then you've got your 25% tax rate. So making sure that you know what these percentages are so it works for your profit because all of the tax system is based on profit, not income. So if you're making $200,000 but you're spending $150,000, then you're only going to get taxed on the $50,000. Out of that $200,000, you would also pay 10% of that to GST. So it's really important that you take the time to actually understand what your percentages are. And then if you need help working this out on a regular basis, I actually have a spreadsheet that allows you to live track your numbers. And this is what all my clients have been using. They have never had issues when it comes to tax time because they've always set the money aside looking at exactly how much money they're earning, what they're spending, what needs to go to GST, what needs to be set aside to tax. And if that is something that you have never been able to do and it's felt quite overwhelming, this calculator is going to help you so much. So I'll drop that in the show notes as well in case that helps you. As you hire more staff and your business starts to grow, depending on what state you're located in Australia, you'll also be subject to things like payroll tax. So the tax system, it's cooked. There are so many things that they tax you on. And this is why, once again, you need the best accountant that will help you work with the business structure, your expected profit, your payg instalments, your tax obligations. And I'm also going to drop a really great bookkeeper in the show notes, Auri. She has been very proactive. She isn't just your regular bookkeeper who's reconciling expenses. She can do payroll. She's actually a registered Bass agent and she looks at your profit optimization. So she can go in and see, okay, where are we overspending? Where are we underspending? Is this great given where you want to go in your business, or is this actually going to hold you back from your goals? So I'll drop her in the show notes as well. Because having a great bookkeeper on board, that is also an absolute must if you're not going to do your books. Because there are so many people out there who are like, yeah, I don't want to pay for a bookkeeper. I don't want to pay for zero. And I'm like, well, you have a business. And if you're not going to do it yourself, Then you need to hire someone else that will because letting it build up until the end of financial year is not helpful for your stress levels, for your finances, or for planning for the next year ahead. Now, another thing that I need to touch on is leave entitlements. I have seen so many businesses fall victim to not preparing for when employees go on leave. So if you have a business in Australia and you have full-time and part-time employees, they will get four weeks of annual leave based on their ordinary hours. And that leave accumulates from their first day of employment. So every time you process payroll, don't just think about the wages that you're paying today. You need to also think about the future costs attached to that employee as well. So as part of your cash flow planning, I want you to get clear on okay, how much am I paying in wages? And then you need to multiply that by 0.12 to know how much you're paying for super. That's your 12%. But then based on the wages as well, you need to multiply that by 0.175. Because that will give you 17.5%. That for most awards and agreements, that needs to go for their leave entitlement. So you've got annual leave, you've got sick leave, personal leave, like that money needs to be set aside on a regular basis. Otherwise, if you never set it aside and then the employee decides, hey, I want to take my two weeks or four weeks off, it will absolutely cripple your business. Because when someone takes annual leave, you're often paying for an employee who's not generating revenue while also needing to continue operating the business. So please stop treating leave as an unexpected expense. Holidays happen every year. Your team deserves to take them. So your business should be financially prepared for them. Now, the more proactive you are about setting aside that money each week for your leave liabilities, the less financial pressure you'll feel when those holidays roll around. Now, once you've built the habit of proactively managing your money instead of reacting to it, I want to shift gears for a moment. Because it's one thing to look after your GST, tax, super, and leave obligations, but what about looking after yourself? So point number two is give yourself a pay raise. I want to ask you a question. If you work for another company and every single year you worked harder, you took on more responsibility, you invested in your own education, you worked longer hours, carried more stress, solved more problems, and never received a pay raise, would you stay? Probably not. So why are we doing this to ourselves as business owners? We convince ourselves we'll pay ourselves more one day once the business is bigger, once revenue increases, and once things calm down. But the reality is there will always be another expense, there will always be another investment or another reason to delay it. Being a business owner should not mean being the last person to be rewarded for the value you create. Your income should evolve as your responsibilities, skills, and business evolve too. And that doesn't mean pulling money out recklessly. It means intentionally reviewing your numbers and asking yourself, what am I currently paying myself? Is this sustainable? Is this reflective of my role and responsibilities? Does this actually support the life I'm trying to build? Because if your business can afford to invest in everyone else, but not the person carrying the entire vision, eventually resentment and burnout will creep in. The new financial yacht isn't just about increasing revenue, it's about building a business that takes care of you. Because if you're constantly exhausted, you're underpaid, and you're running on empty, you're not building freedom, you're building another job. And while we're talking about being proactive instead of reactive, I want to show you how this mindset applies to more than just your income. It also applies to the expenses we know are coming out every single year. The third thing that will set you up for success in the long term will actually be setting aside money for things from the 1st of July. So, for example, if you have a Christmas function, start saving for it now. It might sound really simple, but it's one of those small habits that can make a huge difference by the end of the year. Every single year I have the same conversation with clients, my parents, people around me. It's like Christmas came around so quickly. Where does the time go? But Christmas comes at exactly the same time every single year. So instead of scrambling and trying to find the money in December or January, because I understand it's busy season and sometimes you might do it before or after. But let's say you started prepping from the first of July and you decided you were going to do something the week of Christmas or after Christmas because you guys are probably all burnt out anyways. You have 25 weeks between the first of July and Christmas, which means if you save $50 per week, you would have around $12.50 by the end of the year. If you save $100 per week, you would have around $2,500. And if you save $200 per week, you would have around $5,000. Now I always think about this with holidays or Christmas presents, like just being able to put that small amount away consistently. And once again, in an account, not looking at it, not touching it, not tempted to transfer it in and out, it will help so much because when the time comes, you've got the money there. You don't feel guilty. You don't feel like you're actually scrambling. And all of a sudden, your Christmas party or whatever it is that you're saving for, it actually feels like a sense of accomplishment or appreciation and a way to celebrate, not a stressful expense. Because it was a planned investment from the start. So I want you to start thinking about this with all your future expenses in your business: Christmas functions, team events, equipment upgrades, training and education, retreats, conferences, holidays. None of these are actually surprise expenses because if you know they're coming up and you've got a date, you can work backwards week by week, calculate how many weeks, how much money you need to have there, and you can predict and put aside the money in the lead up to the actual event. Now, one of the biggest differences that I will see between the reactive business owners and the proactive ones is that the proactive business owners stop waiting for the expenses to arrive before preparing for them. So those small habits today will compound into less stress later. And your financial freedom is not going to be built through one big decision. Like I said at the start, it is built through hundreds of small decisions repeated consistently over time. And this is where you'll start to notice a pattern emerging throughout the episode. We all have the opportunity to make small intentional actions repeated consistently over time. This is our daily habits, the way we wake up, the kind of things that we invest our time and energy into, things that we say yes to, things that we say no to, like whether you make a decision or you don't make a decision, that is still a decision. Which brings me to one of the most powerful habits that I have ever implemented. This is number four, creating Sunday CEO habits. Now, having a Sunday reset is so powerful. Instead of starting your week on a Monday when you're trying to figure out, okay, what is the to-do list and who do I need a message and just getting overwhelmed by everything? I want you to think about setting your week up for success before it even begins. So every Sunday I get my journal out and I reflect on four simple questions. What worked well this week? What didn't work? What could be improved for next time? And what did I learn? Reflection is one of the fastest ways to accelerate your growth because if you don't stop to assess what's happening, you'll continue repeating the same patterns. I then like to create my task list for the week ahead. So I don't create an endless to-do list with 47 things that overwhelm me before I've even got started. Instead, I look at okay, what are my top three priorities? These are the non-negotiables that will move my business forward or it will help me in my personal life. Like, depending on what's going on, what deadlines we've got to meet, I just choose three priorities. And then under that, I'll write a secondary list of additional tasks that I can work on if I have extra time. Because not every task deserves the same level of urgency. And this is something that I've really struggled with having ADHD. Like I think it's all important and it all needs to be done at the same time. And I link it all together and I'm like, but this helps this and that helps that. And I just don't do that. I want you to look at like what is the big goal? What's going to actually help you get there? And this week, what three things would you tick off on your to-do list you'd feel accomplished and you'd know, okay, cool, I'm actually moving towards that goal. Because if you just let yourself kind of go with the flow, like I have for a very long time, you don't actually feel like you're getting anywhere. Like when we were doing this podcast studio fit out, we had to create an action plan. When do we need to order things by? When do things get installed? Like we had to create the step-by-step process. Otherwise, nothing gets done. It's the same thing with the way that you run your team. It's the same way with your marketing. It's the same way where you get all your payroll, your cash flow management done, looking at your profit and loss in your numbers. Like, you need to prioritize when you're going to do this. You need to look at, okay, when can I make the time for this? And how am I going to say no to things that are going to distract me? That is the key. Like the people who are the most successful, they have consistency, they have clear boundaries, and they just know, okay, if I don't get distracted and jump into 10 other projects, like I'm going to become the expert. I'm going to become the master at this and get the best result possible. The more often you reflect and intentionally plan your week, the clearer you'll become on priorities, time management, boundaries, where your energy should be spent. Now, I want you to think about what you're actually doing to then turn this into something that happens because we can all dream about, okay, well, I want to get these three things done. But then you make all the excuses, you know, I had to drop the kids off to school and they had some dance rehearsal, they had sport on, or one of my team members called in sick. Like, I think there's some things that happen that are out of our control and they do take up our time and energy. But we also need to prioritize what we are doing for ourselves. If there is half an hour that you can block out in your week, lock yourself into a room or go out to a cafe, turn your phone off, become uncontactable and get the things that you need to get done, do that if you have to. Because if you do not manage yourself and your time, you will always struggle to actually achieve any of your goals. This new financial year, it won't change because if you're always living at the effect of everything else in your life and you're not actually living at cause, then how are you going to achieve your goals? How are you actually going to change your life? Like you have to take personal responsibility. You need to prioritize yourself and you need to actually make boundaries so that when you come into these priorities, you don't just people please and then throw things on the back burner and they never get done. So this leads me into my fifth and final thing for today: self-management. Everyone talks about time management being the problem, but it's actually self-management. The truth is, time is a constant. It is never changing. There is 60 seconds in a minute. There are 60 minutes in an hour. There are 24 hours in a day. There are seven days in a week. The real skill that we need to get better at is how we manage ourselves in that time. Because, like I've been saying before, it's so easy to have a million things floating around in your head and you'll say, I'll do it later. Or I need to get to that. Yeah, I'll get to that next week. And before you know it, you have become really reactive instead of intentional because you're having to get all these things done and you're like, oh, why did I leave it till the last minute? And this is why I want you to start using tools that support your brain instead of relying on your brain to remember everything. So for us in our team, we use ClickUp and then we've also got Google Calendar set up because they serve two very different purposes. So ClickUp is our project management tool. This is where all our specific business tasks live. So for example, our podcast workflow is completely mapped out from start to finish. So we have a task list for every single thing that needs to get done for the podcast each week. So creating real cover images, editing and producing the episode, show notes, uploading and distributing the podcast, writing the email marketing, creating the social media assets, reaching out to guests. Like there's a whole system behind the podcast. And every team member knows exactly what they're responsible for and what stage we're at and what needs to happen next. So this actually takes the complete guesswork out of running the business. And before having this, it was just memory and trying to think, okay, yeah, usually I get these things done. And then things would get missed and deadlines would get pushed out. But by having click up, assigning tasks, being able to have a checklist where people can tick it off when they're done, not only does it keep people on task and on track, but it also gives us all a sense of accomplishment. I know I've had days where I feel like I'm getting nothing done. But if I actually listed out all the tasks and things I worked on and I ticked them all off after completing them, I would feel this sense of pride and accomplishment that I use that time effectively. So if you're not creating a task list at the very least, or you're not using some kind of tracking tool to keep you accountable and to allow you to actually see what your progress is, it is going to feel really draining working towards goals because you're not going to feel like you're going anywhere because there's no method of tracking. Now, the second tool is Google Calendar. And this is how I design my entire week. It's not about tasks, it's actually about protecting my time. So with Google Calendar, you can set up recurring events, which is a game changer. I block out everything from the time I wake up to eating breakfast, going to the gym, when I do my meal prep, when I have my deep work time. I obviously keep hours open for client meetings. And I know that within that hour, I'm going to be potentially seeing clients. So you can do that with your business. If you've got meetings or you see clients or your running team training, you can block those out as well. Date nights, content creation, podcasting, any personal appointments, downtime. Because if it's not scheduled, there is a high chance that it just won't happen at all. And I'm no longer hoping that I'll have time for the things that matter. I actually intentionally create the time and space for them. Now, here's the biggest lesson that I've learned throughout this whole process. Every time you put something into your calendar, you're making a commitment to yourself. The goal isn't to become busier and have all of these meetings and appointments and catch-ups. It's actually about being more intentional because if you can see a time block, you can either go, okay, cool, I'm going to use that to do something for my business, or I'm going to use that to fill up my cup. I never prioritize self-care. Like the only self-care that I would do would be going to the gym and that was it. But now I have self-care Fridays. So I do one thing each Friday that is going to help me look after myself. I also go through all my finances and I have a money date booked in. So I reconcile all my transactions, I look at my profit and loss statement, I allocate all the money into the accounts that I need to. And so before having this in my Google Calendar, it was always a dream. Like, oh yeah, one day I'll do it. Or that that's something that I definitely need to do. But when you actually set it up, it gives you a notification, and you don't book anything else in at that time, you protect it. That's when it actually gets done. And so for every single person that tells me, I don't have time to do it, I don't know how, like there's never enough hours in the day, there are, you're just not having strong boundaries. And once you do, you will find the time. Like, how many hours do you waste on social media scrolling mindlessly? How many hours do you think you waste messaging people or going back and forth that you could potentially outsource to a VA? Like there is always a way to get time back. Sometimes it actually just looks like letting go of the behaviors and habits that aren't actually serving you. And other times it looks like I need support. I need to either systemize this, I need to delegate it, I need to hire someone. And so if you are feeling burnt out and you feel like there's never enough time, I want you to time block and actually track where you spend your time over two weeks. Write it down in a diary or a journal because what you'll start to notice is patterns of things that you're always doing on autopilot, places that you're actually losing time, things that you could potentially start systemizing or outsourcing. And then you can create your dream calendar in Google. So Google Calendar's free, it doesn't cost anything. Set up recurring events. I go into the settings section and I actually set it up so it gives me a notification half an hour before every event. The default is 10 minutes, but half an hour is perfect for me because when I've got a million tabs open in my brain and I know, okay, I've got to head to a meeting or I've got to wrap up a call, I get that notification. I'm like, oh, okay, perfect. I've got enough time to react. Sometimes 10 minutes is just not enough. So that's also a game changer if you are looking at setting up a calendar on Google as well. One thing that really stuck with me is that your brain is for creating ideas, not storing them. So stop trying to remember everything. Build a system instead because you don't need better time management. You do need better self-management. So if you can start looking at, okay, how do I offload all this information that's in my head about things I need to do, things that I need to follow up on, and how do I actually create that support system, you'll find yourself a lot less overwhelmed and a lot less reactive because you can see things, you've planned it out. As we wrap up this episode, I want you to realize something. None of these habits are particularly difficult. They are intentional. And I think that's where we overcomplicate business sometimes. We do convince ourselves that we need another strategy, another course, another breakthrough moment. When in reality, it's often the small things we do consistently that will create the biggest transformation over time. This new financial year isn't about becoming a completely different business owner overnight. In fact, if you try to change 30 things in one day, the likelihood of you being able to consistently do that over a period of time is very low. You're better off becoming 1% better every single week. Because if you can learn how to protect your money, protect yourself, protect your future expenses, protect your priorities, and protect your time, I can almost guarantee that you will feel lighter, you'll feel clearer, and you'll feel like you're more in control of your business by this time next year. Because success isn't built into one big moment. It's built in the quiet decisions nobody sees, it's built in the Sunday reset, it's built in setting aside money before you need it, it's built in paying yourself properly, and it's built by putting things in your calendar instead of carrying them around in your head. The future version of you isn't created by one massive decision. They're created by the small promises you keep to yourself every single day. So don't wait until next year to feel different. Build the habits that will make it different. And remember, you don't need to start a new business. You probably just need new habits. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you took something away from this, don't let it become another podcast you listened to and forgot about tomorrow. Choose one habit and commit to implementing it this week because small actions repeated consistently are what create extraordinary results over time. And if you know another business owner who's constantly feeling overwhelmed, reactive, underpaid, or like they're carrying their entire business around in their head, send this episode to them. Because I genuinely believe that every business owner deserves to build a business that supports their life, not one that consumes it. And if you've been enjoying the show, it would mean the world to me if you took 30 seconds to subscribe, leave a rating and a review. It helps us reach more business owners and continue creating free education that makes a real impact. Thank you for being here. Thank you for spending your part of the week with me, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.