Intuitive Marketing Podcast

#19: How to Create CEO Time That Actually Moves the Needle in Your Business

• Chelsea Fournier + Meg O'Neill • Season 2 • Episode 19

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We unveil why dedicated CEO time transforms your business from a hobby into a strategic enterprise that delivers sustainable income and impact without burning you out.

• The critical difference between working IN your business (client work, content creation) versus ON your business (strategic planning, vision)
• Why working in pockets of time makes it challenging to reach your most creative flow state and strategic thinking
• How CEO time (whether weekly, monthly, or quarterly) helps you make proactive business decisions instead of constantly putting out fires
• Practical CEO time activities like reviewing finances, analyzing marketing performance, planning campaigns, and refining your offers
• Strategies for integrating CEO time into your schedule even as a busy parent or neurodivergent entrepreneur

Message us at Intuitive Marketing Collective on Instagram to share how your CEO weekend or time goes. Tune in to our next episode where we'll share how we created months' worth of content during our CEO weekend together.


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Follow Chelsea on Instagram @intuitivebusinessmentor...

Speaker 1:

What if the biggest thing holding your business back right now isn't lack of strategy, but the lack of dedicated time to think, plan and lead?

Speaker 2:

We're sharing why CEO time isn't a luxury. As you grow your business based on thought leadership, as a coach, speaker or author, it's a necessity how we structure ours, and why it's a game changer for our business hey there friends, welcome to the Intuitive Marketing Podcast, where we ditch the bro marketing BS and bring you big sister vibes instead.

Speaker 1:

I'm Meg and this is Chelsea.

Speaker 2:

Your new biz besties.

Speaker 1:

We met on TikTok in 2023. Fast forward to now and we have teamed up here to guide you through the wild world of marketing your business with heart and soul.

Speaker 2:

Are you feeling lost or overwhelmed, maybe unsure of your next steps, but you have a big vision of where your coaching, healing, speaking or writing career could be in the next five years, 10 years. Don't worry, we've got your back. We'll help you tap into your intuition, build a brand that lights you up and leverage proven marketing strategies to grow towards a six or even seven figure business in a way that won't make you cringe.

Speaker 1:

We're actually here to help you bring the magic back into your marketing.

Speaker 1:

Because marketing should feel good, not gross Grab your favorite drink, get comfy and let's get started. We are actually experiencing right now a CEO weekend. Meg and I, even though we are in separate rooms recording this podcast just so that it sounds good, are in the same house, and that is very unique because Meg lives in Massachusetts and I live in North Carolina. So what it looks like to have for us a CEO weekend or maybe it's a CEO day, a CEO hour a week, a CEO week of the month We'll talk through some of the options, but it's about having for us whether I do this sometimes by myself the amazing, unique opportunity to be able to do it together. It's about looking at a catalyst, like not just oh, my gosh, I'm going to rail through a bigger to-do list than I normally would. It's, I think, a time to step back, have bigger picture thinking, refining an offer, exploring if a pivot is needed, like really energetically connecting to your messaging.

Speaker 1:

I think for me and for a lot of our listeners, if you're a mom or you have a day job or you're a caretaker, so many of us are running our businesses in pockets oh, I have 30 minutes right now. What can I work on? And it's really challenging for me anyway to like, oh, I'm just going to drop into my most creative deepest flow state in pockets of time, and so for me, it's also about just allowing some expansion of time. Sometimes I literally need to get like bored, watch a Netflix show, to then be like, oh my gosh, my brain is excited and ready, and in my day to day I don't get that. I think for me, part of it is honoring that my creative process requires time and doing things that are on my own schedule and being able to drop in and be like, oh okay, let's think some of these bigger picture things that aren't just tasks.

Speaker 2:

And I think if you don't make that time, whether it is weekly or quarterly then you're always just working on the serving the clients and which is very important, but you're not being able to set goals or see the bigger picture of and that's actual like business leadership.

Speaker 2:

So many of us start our businesses because we're so passionate about something, but we haven't been trained in like any kind of business leadership, CEO type. So we have to learn that in order, especially us who are building businesses. In the pockets of time, like when my kids are home or have vacation or I'm solo parenting, it is really hard to carve out the time to think of what do I want to be doing in May? How are we launching that? So we have to set the time. I think also, as two busy, neurodivergent moms and my kids are older, they're in a lot of activities like to have this weekend first of all in a bed that's like really comfortable to sleep in and not just being in. Everybody else's energy on the day-to-day is just my brain is like able to just focus.

Speaker 2:

And we've already been doing we probably we've worked the amount that like we usually work in a week and like a day just because we have this time carved out, and I think that the other thing that I want to just like note too, is that our businesses are movements.

Speaker 2:

The people that come to us have these amazing offerings to give to the world. But so many of us are also trying to balance being a mom or doing all of the mental load that comes with also being home, and if you don't carve out the time to actually treat your business like a business, then it's a hobby and it's not something that is going to necessarily have the income producing quality that you want it to have like. You have to treat it like it is something that's going to give back to you in that way and when you do, it's going to reward you. Essentially, it is really important. So the weekend to me is really important, and then also I keep Mondays as my CEO. That's when I try to do my bookkeeping, my backend stuff, have meetings with you and not take client focused things. Yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 1:

So whatever cadence works for you as a business owner shorter, quicker touch point or like batching almost sometime for yourself, I think, for me, having this I have been doing quarterly-ish I'm gonna call it where my husband often is like shouldn't we just plan these ahead of time?

Speaker 1:

Because you just get to a place, I get to a place where I'm like I need this, I need time away, a big launch is coming, or we have big goals and I just can't make it happen. And so it always like, when we look at when I get to that breaking point, it's about quarterly-ish. And so he was like maybe you should just plan these.

Speaker 2:

Your nervous system will probably thank you.

Speaker 1:

But for me it's about allowing for sustainability, because for me I work a little bit of a weird schedule because my son has just half day afternoon pre-K time and then I usually work on Saturday because my husband is home, and so I already have this like a little bit of a weird flexible schedule.

Speaker 1:

For that to be sustainable, for me to be able to put in enough energy and creativity and client work time, like it does have to have that kind of catch-all every couple months where I can be like okay, I know I want to revamp our membership page, but that's not a 30-minute project. That can be when, like allocating time and energy and I think also, just so many of our clients are healers, coaches, you're preparing a keynote speech, you preparing like thinking through your next book launch. There's so many micro decisions that happen and I find that condensing the micro decisions around a topic to be like, okay, I'm gonna really feel into it, and it's not like we're and sitting here like working every single second quote unquote working like grinding out, like we've had time for doing rituals and we're pulling cards and we're going out to lunch and, like it also just allows you to not just be okay, I got to close my laptop to go do the next thing.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let me have a little bit of integration time on some of those conversations we had. And how is that going to pop up into an action 90 minutes from now, which you often don't get the luxury of?

Speaker 2:

Exactly, and I think that just everyone who's listening is clear too. There's a difference between working in your business and working on your business, and that's what kind of the nuance that we're talking about. We're doing both this weekend, but most of the time spent in entrepreneurship is like working in your business, like serving the clients, getting the freebie up, doing those things. But to step back and to say I'm working on the business gives you that sustainability long-term too, because you're planning for the future and you're not just saying, okay, now I'm in a launch and now I have to do this. You want to get to the point in your business where there's some kind of cycle that you understand, so you're not just like flying by the seat of your pants all the time. And that's what I mean.

Speaker 2:

I was in that as an entrepreneur on my own for so long. I was working in my business, I was doing the day-to-day, I was putting the content out, I was serving the clients and a. What I think our goal is to do is to like get a little bit farther away from that so that we can grow into the business that we know, like the scale of the business that we know that we can have. If you are constantly in the day to day, you can't put that visionary hat on.

Speaker 2:

It's really hard to do that so like you can get that visionary hit and be like, oh, this is this, oh, I know this is where I'm going, but it gets put on the back burner. And it gets put on the back burner again because it's not that money, like that needle moving money activity. So, having the CEO time to, even if it is just weekly, to journal through what that vision is, or to and then from there carve out these are the actions that I need to take. So we're doing it in more of a condensed weekend, but it is really important to think about that quarterly. You don't have to go away. You can do this just on a Friday or something with your business to really get clear on the vision for it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think for me as a generator I know Meg was like I think you might have more stamina, but for me I reflect on these times. If I look back at past CEO weekends, for myself they have been catalysts, because it's not just another workday of okay, let me just rail through things that have backed up. There's some things that I could be like, oh, I should get caught up on a couple of client communications, but like in my mind I'm like, no, that will be there Monday or maybe two, because I might need a little bit of a little work over. I'm taking Monday off. You're flying, yeah, but it's not just about catch up ideally. It is like you were saying those high level planning, and so to me that means how can I improve an offer? How can I audit what's working? Do I need to log in and get some data? Do I need to see the conversion rate of a sales page? What do I want to do with that information? Do I need to be looking at some market research? Like, maybe you have people fill out testimonial sheets or fill out why they joined a certain offer, but you don't really like look, sit down and look at them. Oh, how does this shift, my messaging, how can I better connect with or better serve? I think there's often the how do I become more visible? Right, you're so much more the visibility queen. I'm more of the client journey queen, but I think there's both. When we spent I don't know almost six hours yesterday collecting content, we did that in such a big burst because we're not together in person, but even my husband and I have been chatting about this. We're not together in person, but even my husband and I have been chatting about this. Like we should just find a babysitter. Ask my parents if we had a monthly brunch date and then he took an hour to capture B-roll for me after it just sets future Chelsea, future Meg, future your business up.

Speaker 1:

Like whatever is challenging for you to fit into the day-to-day can be part of that CEO time. So if you have a messy house and you just never feel like you can get B-roll or content, that can be part of it. Maybe some of your CEO time is we went to a co-working space and I know in our next episode we're going to talk more about how we organized and batched as much content as we did, but because that is something for us to fit in day to day. That can become also a priority in your time. I feel like Because it's like whatever you cannot typically fit in creativity-wise, messaging-wise, reassessing it just so that it can really feel like you are putting that different hat on and then say, okay, in the next three months these tasks can be done in the hat of execution and getting the actions done.

Speaker 1:

It's also a great time to assess what you're delegating. If you haven't listened to our episode from last season on, like how to figure out what you could be or should be delegating in your business, it is a great time to look at to-dos that are not getting done on a regular basis and deciding if you really need to keep doing that or if it's time to say, oh, I need to hire a bookkeeper, I need to have a VA who's not, who can be in their zone of genius to do these things that I'm not getting done, and when you can just step back and look at it. It's really a helpful time to assess that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it's so important because I think, again, it's like that leadership piece that not everyone is desiring, necessarily, when they get into entrepreneurship. But then you love your business, you want to pour into it and you have to step into that leadership position and it helps if you know that you have this time carved out every year too. It helps avoid the restrictive decision-making and, like the burnout, because you know it's coming, coming, you can plan for it. You're going to evaluate, you're going to look at the data. You're going to say, okay, this is what burnt me out, this is we have a plan of writing the email sequences and stuff like that that you can spend some time. We're not doing it this weekend, but like somebody could essentially say, okay, that's going to be the project, or and it also helps you just prioritize what's going to move the needle, what we keep coming back to.

Speaker 2:

We knew we had to get this done, so in order to be on the timeline that we wanted, so we're able to look at the things and say, okay, this is going to move the needle, these are the things that we need to accomplish, and it puts that. It puts that hard boundaries and structure around it, which I think is really important, especially where so many of us are so intuitive. It is great and that's the way that we want people to run their business. That's how we want to run our business. And also we have to be grounded in the three day to we're taking people's money right, like we're exchanging a service, like you have to have.

Speaker 2:

There's a level of professionalism that you want to treat your business with, to honor the people that are showing up and paying you, and it also just creates a space for innovation and strategic pivots, like for us, having a partnership and having a partnership that is not physically close. We spend a lot of time on Telegram and that is great, but we work opposite schedules, so I work more so in the morning, chelsea works more so in the afternoon evening morning, chelsea works more so in the afternoon evening. So we don't get that time as much to just have conversations and look at like strategy, be innovative.

Speaker 1:

We're more like okay, we're going to drop off.

Speaker 2:

We had this idea. We need that time to be like, okay, this is a great idea, but like when are we going to implement it? And just having knowing that we were working towards this space together gave us like a place to put things and not feel like it was this like weight on your shoulders of when am I going to get it done? Okay, we have this time. We can spend talking about it when we are together.

Speaker 1:

And we did create a Google Doc in advance of the things that we thought we wanted to be able to get done. And, as always, it's like a reality check of like you want to get done more than everything takes, longer than you think it will, so that you don't feel rushed or in hustle mode, and then like constantly we've been checking in. Ok, what if we can't get everything done? What's the next most important thing?

Speaker 1:

The topic that's harder to do in pockets. What's the thing that we want to be focusing on? How can we stay on top of things? And so we're going to run through. I think we've got a list of five examples of CEO time key activities. So if you're exploring this, you can have some direction and idea. And then we're also going to talk about, like, how to make, how to make this happen, cause we can just do this by chance and give you some homework. Here's some key activities specifically. So one is reviewing business finances, going through your bookkeeping, going through any expenses that like, oh my gosh, maybe we can cancel this software system we're not using.

Speaker 1:

Running your business as lean as possible requires paying attention to what's coming in and what's going out. Marketing performance, really. Maybe you are someone opposite of us who, like, really pays attention to insights, yeah, but looking at what social media platforms have been bringing business, have you been ignoring a platform that used to bring you business? How has that been impacting you? So, really, looking at the marketing activities and upcoming launches If you're someone who does live launches or even just thinking through, oh, in this month I'm going to be speaking more about this particular program and just planning out a little bit so that you're having those touch points.

Speaker 2:

And another thing that you can do is map out content and campaigns with a big picture strategy. So a lot of us are just like what am I going to talk about this week? But what we're doing, we did map out like three months of content and then we like pivoted our messages slightly so we might go back to that, but it does give you the time to think through what launches are coming up, so that you feel grounded and more stable and it's not just Sunday night and you're like what am I going to talk about this week?

Speaker 1:

Also analyzing and refining offers, messaging, pricing. Have you gone through a recent certification and you realized you don't even say that anywhere? Maybe you should increase your prices because of it? Like reflecting what's happened in the last couple months. Should something be shifting? Or have you gotten feedback? Are you hearing every client who hires you saying, oh, I really resonate with the fact that you blah. Oh, is that reflected on any of your sales pages? Or are you just hoping people figure that out about you? So really just like looking at things through a less personal lens and more from like feedback can be really helpful.

Speaker 2:

So the other thing that you can do in your CEO time, too, is identify bottlenecks and make decisions so that you can streamline your operations. So in the day to day it's hard to say. You might be able to see something and say, okay, this is a bottleneck, but you just don't have time because you're doing the day-to-day. Having that CEO time can give you the space to sit down and say, okay, how am I going to remediate this? And say how can I make it more streamlined? Who can I delegate it to who? How can I make it more streamlined? Who can I delegate it to? Who can fix this for me? And it gives you the time to actually make the change instead of just realizing this is a bottleneck and not being able to shift it, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And then, of course, setting clear goals. If you're doing it quarterly, quarter to quarter, looking at what your goals are, or even setting longer term goals if that resonates with your personality. But just to really OK, now I've gathered some data, I've felt into my offers, Maybe I've made some tweaks. Now what am I hoping to see come out of the business? How many of certain packages are going to sell? Or for us, we have our membership and so we're setting goals of like how many members we'd like to have in it by the end of next quarter and what are the plans to get there. So it could be financial goals, number of clients that you plan to serve, number of stages you want to get booked to speak at, or even like planning for a book launch, like whatever is coming up next. Getting really clear on some goals and then making sure that your actions are going to be set up to support that. That's the exciting part for me.

Speaker 2:

I like that, just like logistically, how do you make CEO time happen? Like I, from the start of my business, I have, like I said, I have made Monday my CEO day and it ebbs and flows, but I really try to keep to that. And then for this weekend it did take. It took planning for us. We have kids, we have to buy tickets, find somewhere to stay, all of those things, and sometimes it's like you have to bite that bullet to say I'm putting my flag in the sand here. We're making this happen and that's really. You're really honoring your business in that way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it almost feels like an initiation in some way or an expansion to say all of these other roles or obligations I have that are important. But this is important to ask you, I think one of the scary things as a mom you have to ask for the help. I can't just disappear right. You just leave your three children. So you have to ask for help and say out loud this is important enough to me that I need help from other people to replace me, and I think that can be a little bit of a hard thing to say out loud. That's just growing.

Speaker 2:

And then just like figuring out what the structure is going to be like, how much time or we spent a big creative day yesterday and we knew that was going to take a lot of time getting that content and how are you going to split your time between planning, making decisions, keeping yourself on a schedule? So you really do honor the, have an intuitive flow about it, but also honor the time that you're putting in dedicating to your business.

Speaker 1:

Should we give them some homework? I guess we've been weaving it in. But a couple of specifics. I know you have some good ideas, yeah, so first, schedule this CEO time.

Speaker 2:

So maybe it is Monday, like I said, or maybe it is a weekend. Maybe just start with a dedicated half day. So block it off no client calls and take a few hours to set some goals and get those bottlenecks cleared up. Things like that. Choose two to three focus areas for your CEO time, especially if you have a limited amount of time. Maybe it is just that financial review and content planning. Find two areas that are really going to move the needle or just honor your business in a level that you haven't before, and finally, just set up a simple CEO day structure. So maybe that is time blocking for content, for visioning for and spend some time journaling. Look, create some templates. Have tools in place that keep you on track for the goals that you want to accomplish with your time.

Speaker 1:

I know when you first showed up, we were like this kind of feels surreal and now I'm like I don't want Matt to fly back home. I know now it feels normal, just come on, move in. But we're going to be wrapping our CEO weekend up this afternoon and shifting back into normal life. So if you have questions about how we ran this or if you want to share how your CEO weekend or time goes, make sure to come. Message us at Intuitive Marketing Collective over on Instagram.

Speaker 1:

We hope that you found this episode of the Intuitive Marketing Podcast as inspiration to help you bring the magic back into your own marketing. Our goal is for this podcast to be a compass in the chaos. We know how you get bombarded with information, options and conflicting ideas out there on the internet streets. We hope that you tune into the next episode, where we will be sharing how we created as much content as we did this weekend, which is quite a bit that will carry us through honestly, for probably a few months until our next time. Hopefully that we get together and we're also going to share some of the lessons that we learned as well around gathering as that as much content as we did, and also some of the mindset stuff around, seeing yourself gather putting yourself out there, so we're going to be sharing some of the lessons and if you're someone who desires to get into content batching on any level, you should definitely tune in awesome.