#620 Work Less, Achieve More: Time Mastery for Entrepreneurs with Jake Smolarek

What would your business—and your life—look like if you could work less and achieve more?

In this high-impact episode of Talking with the Experts, I’m joined by bold and brutally honest high-performance coach Jake Smolarek, who’s known for helping driven entrepreneurs master time, crush distractions, and unlock their next level of productivity.

Jake’s approach to time management isn’t about pretty planners or apps—it’s about owning your priorities, working smarter, and eliminating everything that doesn’t create real results.

Inside this empowering conversation, we dive into:

• Why most entrepreneurs waste time without even realising it.
• The truth about hustle culture—and how it keeps you stuck.
• How to shift from busywork to high-impact actions using Jake’s priority-focused methods.
• How Jake helps clients rebuild their week around energy, goals, and mental clarity.
• What “working smart” really means in today’s chaotic, always-on business world.

Jake shares how his brutally honest style of coaching transforms the way people think about time. You’ll walk away with a fresh lens on productivity, clear takeaways to restructure your day, and permission to let go of the noise and focus only on what moves the needle.

This episode is for the entrepreneur who’s tired of the hustle, ready to grow smarter—not harder—and willing to be challenged in all the right ways.

Whether you’re already successful or just climbing your first mountain, Jake will shift your mindset—and your outcomes.

🎧 Tune in, take notes, and let’s redefine your relationship with time.

📩 CONNECT WITH JAKE

📍 Based in the UK | High-Performance Coach | www.jakesmolarek.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakesmolarek/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jake.lucas.smolarek

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jakesmolarek/

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Transcript

Intro | 00:01
Welcome to Talking With The Experts. Here we discuss all things business, by business owners, for business owners. Here is your host, Rose Davidson. 

 Rose | 00:11
Hello and welcome to Talking with the Experts. I'm your host, Rose Davidson from rosedavidson.com.au. We're going to be talking about all things time management in entrepreneurship with Jake Smolarek, who is from Jake Smolarek Limited. And Jake is... A high-performance life and business coach known for his direct, no-fluff approach that gets real results. He works exclusively with driven individuals who are really Already successful or have access to resources, but want to be pushed to their next level. Based in the UK, Jake offers in-person consultations and delivers tailored coaching that That's brutally honest, strategic and deeply transformational. His style is unapologetically bold. Clients either love him or leave him and that's exactly how he likes it. Welcome Jake to Talking With The Experts. 

 Jake | 01:08
Thank you very much for having me here. 

 Rose | 01:11
Tell me a little bit about your background and why did you choose time management as a thing for business owners? 

 Jake | 01:18
We have to understand that we cannot manage time. We can only manage ourselves. It's funny that we say managing time because time doesn't care. Time just fly, you know, and most people like, you know, I have to manage my time. No. You have to manage yourself and, you know, the way you operate and how you procrastinate. And more often than not, some people say like, I need to stop procrastinating. We all procrastinate. It's just successful people procrastinate on small things and unsuccessful people procrastinate on the most important things. I love time management. It's one of my favorite things in coaching. I'm not just a coach, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm firstly an entrepreneur and then a coach. Because... 
 Yeah, go on. 

 Rose | 02:06
No, you go. You continue. 
 I mean, I said, like, I... 

 Jake | 02:11
It's just like I love time management because We can manage time well, or we can manage ourselves well only if we know what we want from life if we have a vision and we actually you know want to achieve that vision i meet a lot of people and a lot of people, they're not exactly sure what they want from life in general. You know, I will ask them a very simple question, maybe a little bit cliche, but the question is like, what is it that you want? And a lot of people struggle to answer that. 

 Rose | 02:44
Yeah, and it can be a hard question to answer because we can want a lot of things, but what is our priority basically in life? In what we're seeking you know do we want more money do you want work-life balance? Did we want to have lots of followers on social media? It's a question that people sometimes really can't answer in a short way because we want lots of things. 
 So I guess we've all heard of smart goals, so... And, you know, in time management. In the time management world, you know, smart goals are the way to go. But how can we work less and achieve more? Setting those smart goals aside. 

 Jake | 03:36
So Goals are great, but goals are not everything. And there's a beautiful book by James Clare, Atomic Habits, when he's actually talking a lot about goals. But at the very beginning of the book, he's saying that goals are not enough. And I 100% agree with that. 
 That's why about 10 years ago, I created a framework that I called a vision GPS. And the... The Vision GPS works exactly like the GPS in your car. The Vision is your destination. The Vision is what is it that you want in life in general. As cliche as it may sound, but as we just said, it's very important to know where you're heading. Because if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. But unfortunately, you will be drifting around life for your entire life if you don't have the direction. Interestingly enough, The vision doesn't have to be 100% clear. Vision is something completely different than goals. Vision is for your entire life. Interestingly enough, you will never achieve your vision because vision is something that you will be chasing your entire life in a good way, but you will achieve your goals. 
 So the GPS, it's an acronym from goals, planning process and systems. Once you have those or four things, including the vision, you will achieve what you want. But if you don't know what is it that you want, if you don't have that vision. It's going to be very difficult. And again, that vision doesn't have to be 100% clear at the beginning. If you know that you're going from, let's say, I'm based in the UK, if you want to go from London to Edinburgh, you don't have to see the Edinburgh all the time. You just need to know which direction you're going. At least you know the destination. If you don't even know the destination, the direction which you should be going, it's enough to start going. And this is very important with time management because a lot of people procrastinate because they don't know what to do, because they don't have the direction and any idea it's good enough to consider, if you know what I mean. But if you have the direction, it's so much easier to make decisions. 

 Rose | 05:54
Yeah, I guess having some... Way to get to your end in goal or vision or whatever it happens to be is always really helpful sometimes we get sidetracked along the way I love shiny objects I get sidetracked while shiny objects all the time so I never actually get to the end of whatever it is I'm trying to do. 
 So how do we stop, you know, the shiny object? From getting in the way. 

 Jake | 06:24
So I had a client the other day and she asked me, How do you get rid of distraction And I have to be brutally honest with her and I said like listen how I deal with distraction. I just remove distractions This is how you deal with distractions. You just remove them and So there's no distractions. It's like if someone wants to stop I don't know, drinking alcohol for example for 30 days or 60 days, it doesn't matter. Yes, I know that some people say like " I have a strong will" but even the strongest will can be break. 
 So if you want to stop drinking just get rid of all the alcohol from the house. If you want to stop eating you know sugar and sweet things, get rid of those distractions from the house. It will be just easier. 
 So that's the best way if you want to be very good at time management, Removing distractions is one of the best ways to do it. Because they will always be there. 
 Something will be there to distract you. So get rid of those distractions as much as you can. Sure, sometimes you cannot remove your husband or your wife, for example. 
 So don't work from home if you cannot work from home because you are distracted. Get an office, go to the park, do something, just get rid of those distractions. 

 Rose | 07:40
That's really good advice, actually. You know, because I'll be sitting here and I'll be doing something like editing videos, for instance, and then I'll take a break from that and then I'll get distracted with. That thing that, you know, I've had to get up and leave the room for whatever. 
 So I'll go and do something else. And then I've probably used up an hour of the time when I could have been sitting back at my desk, but I still needed the break from what I was doing. 
 So, I mean, those types of distractions can be good because you can't sit in one place for an infinite amount of time. Fine. 

 Jake | 08:16
But this is... Proper planning at the end of the day. You have to, if you want to be discipline, if you want to do a lot of work, you have to plan it. Nothing happens by accident. 
 That's why always when I work with people, I said like, you know that the GPS, there's the P there, it's a planning process. The P is for planning process, not just the plan itself, because pandemic was a great example that plans are great, but you must have a planning process. My P, the planning process is based on the book called The Art of War by Sun Tzu, which she says, you know, You have to be on top of everything all the time. You have to see what's going on all the time. It's not just the plan, it's the ongoing planning process that must be in place. 
 So that's why you have to plan your day, you have to plan your week, you have to plan your month, your quarter, entire year. Sure, it's not that easy to plan the entire year at the beginning of the year, but... As we all know, most people they underestimate what they can do in a month, but they overestimate what they can do in a year. They overestimate what they can do in a week or a month. 
 That's why you have so many people at the beginning of the year, you know, with New Year's. Resolutions like I'm going to lose weight and I'm going to change my relationships and I'm going to work out and eat less and work more and make more money and two weeks later, nothing, everything failed. Because they tried to change too many things at one time. It's the same like during the day. I've seen this all the time. People with like 20, 30, 40 things to do on their to-do list, rather than just like, hey, let me try to do one thing, but do it properly and finish it. 
 And then I can move to another thing. I hate when people say, I remember like today, about 10 years ago, I was on a conference. I was giving a speech and it was mostly women. And I said that Multitasking doesn't exist. And those women, they almost whipped me there. But that's true. There's no such a thing as multitasking because you cannot multitask. You can only switch from one task to another. It's impossible to give 100 focus to two tasks. It's just impossible. 
 That's why when we're driving, we shouldn't be texting because we crash. If something like multitasking would exist, we could drive and eat and you know, send messages and stuff like that, but it doesn't, it just doesn't exist. 

 Rose | 11:03
Yeah, that's a good point. You can't, you know, you can't concentrate on two things at once, which is, you know, you lock your left hand in your right hand, you've got to always say what hands doing otherwise, you might get lost. But you know, prioritizing our priorities is, you know, part of the process. Part of the planning. How do we go about prioritizing our priorities. 

 Jake | 11:31
We're going back to our vision and what is it that we want to achieve because when people have a We've got loads of decisions that we have to make every day. And people, again, they procrastinate on important things because they're not sure which ones are actually most important because they don't know where they're heading. 
 So if you don't know your destination... How can you... Make a decision if you don't know where you're going or people are afraid of the FOMO effect the fear of missing out they like hey I don't want to leave money on the table. 
 Well, how about if you leave the table and you find a better table with more money? But you have to move. I always say to people that the worst decision to make is to not making a decision. Because actually not making a decision, it's a decision of not making a decision. I was talking to another client of mine last week and he said, you know, I'm afraid that I'm going to make a mistake, that I'm going to make a wrong decision. And I have to explain to him that like making wrong decision is still progress. Making wrong decision is better than not doing a decision at all. Because When you're making a wrong decision, you're always gaining something. You're always gaining experience. 
 That's why more often than not I say It's the. It's the wrong F word that we use. It's not failure. It's feedback. Because if you make a wrong decision, you're getting something, you're learning something. Hopefully you will learn something, but there are some people who never learn, you know, they're making loads of mistakes, but I always... Say, if you're making the same mistake twice, it's not a mistake anymore, it's a choice. 

 Rose | 13:12
Yeah, I know. I agree with that. I think the word fail and failure should be taken out of our vocabulary and replaced with learning experience. 

 Jake | 13:22
Yeah. Yeah. 

 Rose | 13:24
100%. That's what they are. They're learning experiences. 
 I mean, if you don't learn, you're right. There's something wrong with you if you don't learn from the first time. 

 Jake | 13:32
Yeah. Laughs. 

 Rose | 13:35
Tell me a little bit A bit more about your GPS. Thank you. 

 Jake | 13:43
Framework. 

 Rose | 13:44
Framework. Yes, I was thinking of that word and I couldn't think of it. Tell me a little bit more about it and how people can use it in their day to day life. 

 Jake | 13:54
So, for example, you want to run a successful business. I always correct my clients when they say like, hey, I want to build a business. No, you want to build successful, profitable business, because there is a lot of people out there with businesses who are not profitable. And, you know, they instead of having escaping the nine to five, now they have to work 24 hours a day. The Vision GPS, first of all, you really have to sit down and think about it. What is it that you want? Okay, you decided that you made a decision that you want to run a business. Okay, write it down. How is this whole operation going to look like? Ask yourself a question. Why do you want to have that business for the first place? A lot of people, they make a massive mistake. They say, I'm doing it for money. If you're doing this for money, one day or another you're going to burn out. Because that's not a good reason. Because yes, if you have no money at all, having more money, that's nice. Money is a great thing. It's giving you choices. But once you start making loads of money, as people say, it's not that money can't bring you happiness. It's a lot of more money. If you already have money, more money won't bring you more happiness. 
 So you have to know what is it that you want from that business. Most people they want to have a business because they want to have freedom. They want to have a boss. They want to do whatever they want to do. 
 So write it down. Work on your vision. People should be working on vision for their life and their businesses for the rest of their life all the time. It's not a one day job or one week job. It's for the rest of your life. Because you have to know, you have to have a direction like a north. 
 Something like that. And then the GPS, again, it will work exactly like the GPS in your car, but you have to be very specific. The G for goals, they must be smart goals, as we said. I often ask people, do you have smart goals? And people will be like yeah, I heard about smart goals, but not a lot of people are actually using them. And it's such a useful thing. Because you have to measure the progress. If you're not measuring, you don't know where you are. 
 So you have to have smart goals. Then you have to have the planning process in place. Again, pandemic was a great example when people with plans failed because suddenly something happened, something we couldn't predict. Actually, we could predict it, but that's another conversation. 
 Something happened. There's a beautiful book by Nicholas Taleb called "The Black Swan". Basically, the book is telling about things that we cannot predict. 
 Like black swans. We thought that black swans do not exist until people went to Australia and they saw black swans. 
 So planning process is a must and then systems. The easiest thing to explain systems, for example, if you're running a business, you're running paid ads, for example, Google Ads. It's a system that works 24 hours. Seven. And is generating the leads or SEO. Again, it's organic marketing. System that brings you leads 24/7 even when you sleep. 
 So you must have different systems. Some systems are very simple, like James Clare was talking about in Atomic Habits when he was explaining: "If you want to go to the gym next morning, prepare everything the day before, because the probability that you will go to the gym when everything is already set up is so much higher." Even those little systems are very important. Having routines and regimes It's even small ones as bad as it sounds, regime might sound a little bit bad, but it's just like you have to do it. 
 Sometimes people ask me like, How do you do that you're so disciplined? For example, if I say to myself, I'm going for a run for the next 60 days, I'm going to do it. There's no decision that needs to be made. Decision has been made. Now it's part of the day, like eating breakfast or eating lunch. 

 Rose | 18:03
Yeah, no, I understand all that. I think it's a great system to put in place and, you know, the goals, the processes and the systems, and you've got to have all of those to be able to manage your time. I understand all of that. That makes absolutely perfect sense. But how... How can we use those, I guess, you know, do we put it on a chart or do we write them down or do we, you know, diarise everything, you know, what is the best, way to use this GPS. 

 Jake | 18:37
First of all, it's to really do the work. Like if you A lot of people struggling with creating that vision thing. They think that they will sit down for an hour or two and they will create an entire vision. No, it takes time. For some people, I'm talking from experience, it's taking weeks, for some people it's taking months, so we just have to accept it, like, okay, it's a long-term project, I need to work on it. It will pay off because the I can see when I work with people for, let's say, six months, how they've been making decisions or how quickly they've been making decisions six months ago, and how quickly they're making decisions today. Because they will look at the problem, they will look at the decision that needs to be made, and it will be two answers: either it will help me with my vision or it will not. If it's not helping me with my vision, I'm not going to do it. As simple as that. That's it. Decision has been made. I don't have to procrastinate. If it's going to help me with my vision, I'm going to do it. Again, as simple as that. It's, and, I can see that a lot of people struggling with making decisions, even small decisions like: "What movie should we watch on Netflix?" and they spend two hours scrolling. Instead of just choose the first one, if it's a good one, you're going to have a good experience. If it's a bad movie, at least you know that it was a bad one. But learn how to start making more decisions, start making decisions faster because The secret to success is success like speed. Let me repeat that. Success like speed, making quick decisions. Sure, some decisions, they need a little bit more time. There's another beautiful book by Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, as far as I remember. And he's talking about, you know, like decisions that can be done automatically, like when you're driving and you're on the motorway, you're making quick decisions. And some decisions, you need to sleep with them, as they say. But don't give yourself three weeks of making a decision. Give yourself, I don't know, two days or maximum. And don't take me wrong. To cry. I procrastinate and I used to procrastinate a lot. I was so good at procrastinating that I could teach it. I was so good. But then I learned that we all procrastinate, but we just have to procrastinate on different things. Unfortunately, most people, they major in minor things. They're good at things that They don't really matter. More often than not, when I work with not entrepreneurs, but people who want to become entrepreneurs, they want to start their own business or side hustle. And sure, I understand that you have to save money, but especially at the beginning, but the best time management strategy is to delegate. Delegate as much as you can, as fast as you can. Sure, if you don't have the money, be careful, sure. Maybe you have to delegate to family and friends first because it's free or almost free, but start delegating and a lot of people struggle with that. A lot of people have this, I call it a superman or superwoman syndrome. They want to do everything themselves. 
 Like, for example, at the beginning, they need a new website or they will be like, I will learn how to make websites. But it's a skill that you're only going to use once. Why would you want to spend this amount of time when you can start concentrating on finding clients, for example, and pay someone else? If you don't have the budget, I don't know, use a website like Fiverr or Upwork that you can, you know, do it for free. The margin of the money. You don't have to spend, I don't know, $2,000 or $1,000 or whatever it is. 
 You know, just be... Be careful who you delegate as well. But delegation is one of the most crucial things that we have to learn, especially as entrepreneurs, because you only have 24 hours, which means you should be concentrating on the most important things. And at the beginning of the entrepreneurial journey, finding clients, you know, lead generation is one of the most important things. 

 Rose | 22:50
Absolutely. No, I Couldn't agree with you more. I think everything that you've said makes absolutely perfect sense. And, you know, I'm all for one for having processes in place. 
 I mean, I love my processes. Otherwise, I couldn't do what I do. 
 You know, to get guests onto the podcast and then the follow-up after that and then the editing process and whatever. If I didn't have processes in place, none of that would happen. 
 So, you know, I'm all for great processes. And, you know, there are systems in place that, you know, that you can use like calendar booking sites and, you know, form sites like JotForm if you are in need of something like that. And there's all sorts of things out there that you can use, and a lot of them are for free. 
 So if you're just starting out. Just Google Meet and find out and you'll find a lot of free things out there and use them. 
 You know, as Jake said, don't try and do everything on your own. You know, try and get these little systems in place where you can automate a lot of your processes. 

 Jake | 23:55
Yeah, 100%. And I mean, there's a lot of I meet a lot of people who say like, hey, I tried that, I don't know, Pomodoro technique, for example, it didn't work out. It doesn't work. It's like, no, it didn't work out for you. Maybe it's not 25 minutes and five minutes break. Maybe for you is 10 minutes work and seven minutes break. It's a variation of that. It's the same when people say, if you want to become great at something, you have to spend 10,000 hours. Yes, but it's just an example because for some people it's going to be 5,000 hours to become great at something and for other people They are not so lucky, they have to spend 25,000 hours of learning something. But that's the key. The time will pass. The time doesn't care. And if it's 25,000 hours, then start today with the first hour. Because that's the biggest problem. It takes 10,000 hours to be great at something, but it usually take about 20 hours to become decent in something. But most people, they procrastinate on the first hour for 10. 

 Rose | 24:59
Years. Yeah, that's very true. You know, I taught myself how to build websites. I taught myself how to do a lot of things. And, you know, you just have to start because, you know, time waits for no mean, as they say. 

 Jake | 25:16
That's it. That's it. 

 Rose | 25:18
If you want to work with Jake or you want to find out a little bit more about time management, you can find him on LinkedIn at Jake Smolarek. He's on Facebook at Jake Smolarek and his website is jakesmolarek.com and he has something he'd like to share with us today From the website. 

 Jake | 25:45
From the website? Well, yeah, so there is, I always offer a free initial consultation to anyone who approached me. Of course, there is a process of, I have to say, eliminating people who are just not ready for the coaching or maybe not ready for the senior coaching that I offer. But yeah, that initial consultation is usually about for two hours. It's free of charge. And if you're okay, if you know, if... I don't hard sell anything. If someone is meant to be working with me, you are free to go. I always say to people, I'm a little bit like Marmite or what's your thing in Australia? I can't remember the name of it, which you put on toast. Marmite, you know, the veggie extract. 
 Some people love it and some people hate it. I'm like that. My clients love me, but some people hate me. I'm okay with that. But yeah, the free initial consultation is usually a very... Very intensive session. And it happened to me that I had clients... Or potential clients coming. They've only been on the initial consultation session and we fixed all the problems, you know, in two or three hours. It was very interesting, but it happens. It happened quite a lot. 

 Rose | 27:04
Wonderful. All right, so don't forget to reach out to Jake on his website. Jake, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for sharing with us about time management and how we can be better time managers. 

 Jake | 27:16
Thank you very much for having me today. 

 Rose | 27:18
Bye-bye. 

 Outro | 27:20
You've been listening to Talking With The Experts, hosted by Rose Davidson. Make sure you have a look at our back catalogue over at talkingwiththeexperts.com. And be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss out on any episode. We look forward to your company next time.