Buy Back Your Time

You can’t “find time” for strategy when your week is crammed with tiny jobs that feel urgent but do nothing for growth. Jane and Paul Domino get blunt about the real problem they see with small business owners: doing £15-an-hour tasks while the £500-an-hour work like strategic planning, marketing, pricing, and relationship building gets pushed aside. The fix is not another productivity hack. It’s a decision to buy back your time.

We dig into the 80/20 rule and how it shows up everywhere: the small set of clients that generate most of your profit, the handful of actions that drive most progress, and the long tail of “busy work” that steals your best energy. We share down-to-earth examples, from robot lawnmowers and robot hoovers to outsourcing bookkeeping, admin, IT, HR, and even phone answering. We also talk about why “it’s faster if I do it myself” is a short-term trap, and how tools like Loom, checklists, and AI can make delegation and training far easier.

You’ll hear a simple way to think about your hourly value, how to spot customers who cost you more than they pay, and why raising prices or letting a client go can be the most profitable time-management move you make. We close with a practical weekly challenge to stop one recurring low-value task, plus an unfiltered detour into the surprisingly expensive world of prams and what it teaches about customer experience.

If you want more time without working longer hours, hit play, then subscribe, share the show with a fellow business owner, and leave a review. What’s the first task you’re going to stop doing or hand over?

🎧 Listen now on Spotify & Apple Music and don’t forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review – and send us your questions for future episodes!

Transcript

Buy Back Your Time Mindset

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Business with the Donnells where we talk about family business and everything in between. I'm your host, Jane Domino, and I'm here with my dad, Paul Domino. And Matilda is here as well. Probably the only time you're gonna want her here because soon she'll be crying in the background. Or hopefully not, hopefully sleeping. But yeah, this week is all about how to reclaim your time to be able to plan your business.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Or not play golf.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Oh, play golf. And you can use your time as you wish. Okay. Um, but a bit of strategic planning probably wouldn't go amiss either. So you probably want to just make more time.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

You can strategically plan on the golf course.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Well, there's a lot of thinking time on the golf course.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Yes, I'm sure that there is. As you walk to get your ball. Walk to get your ball. Um so one thing I think that we find is a lot of business owners work a huge amount of hours and they end up doing a lot of tasks that are probably not worth their time. So I've put that they're doing like a£15 an hour task when their actual strategy where they get£500 an hour is sitting there gathering dust and they're not doing anything on that, and they're doing the the small jobs.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Yeah, but that that is a typical small business mentality, isn't it? Yes. And it does take a while to get into the you know the thought process of you know, what is my return on investment?

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Because, you know, every every penny counts. But equally time does count too. So if you can earn the time, earn the earn it, why not pay someone to do the bits you don't want to do?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Exactly, but a lot of people would just say, I can't afford it. Yeah, but if you've got a strategy that is gonna pay you that that extra, then surely it's worth taking a risk and paying that that person to do that 15 hour 15 pounds an hour bit of work.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

I think I I read a book, actually, I lent it to Dan. Dan Pilly, he hasn't given it back yet.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Oh, how rude.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Yeah, hope he's listening. Give me my book back, Dan. But it's by a guy called Funny Enough, Dan Martin. Oh, and it's called Buy Back Your Time, and that is actually this entire topic. Ah buying back your time.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Buying back your time. And it is really, really important because every single business owner that we talk, I don't think there's any exception, has no time. No, like we'll we'll say do this, and they'll say, I don't have time.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Don't have time for that. Especially around marketing.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Yeah, especially around marketing.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

They'll come in and go, Oh, we haven't got any work, blah blah blah blah. We'll say, Okay, what marketing you've done, we haven't got time for that. Or okay, but you haven't got any work. So don't you think that marketing should come in and pay someone to do it, especially your social media? But again, most people drop that when they are busy.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Yeah, well, we do. I mean, it's a definite thing that we do. We haven't done the podcast the last two weeks.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

No.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

And why is that?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

We have so time.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

We haven't had time.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

So, so we are not and you're growing a human, you could growing a human.

The 80 20 Rule In Real Life

SPEAKER_00 3:22

I think you tell me that regularly, actually, but okay. Um, one thing that I I read in making the the topic for this week is that, and I'd heard this before from Daniel Priestley, I've mentioned him a few times, he's really great. Um, it's that actually 80% of what you do actually only comes from 20% of what you're doing, which I think is really interesting, and this um is with your clients, so you've probably you're probably making your money from the top 20% of your clients, and probably not a lot from the bottom 80. Um you've your productivity, you're normally 20% of your effort contributes towards 80% of your completed work. Um, software, if you fix 20% of the bugs, it can eliminate 80% of system crashes. Um, and I've put a normal life one in here that 80% of the time you wear about 20% of your wardrobe.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

And it it's a it's a thing.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

I tied my wardrobe up the other week.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

You did, didn't you?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

And it was like going shopping all over again. I found things I didn't even know I had.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Exactly, you're just proving the point.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Yeah. They're all on the same type of hanger, they all look nice. Wow, you're such a girl. All the proper wooden hangers, so they all look nice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

That's good. I had to buy maternity clothes, and I wasn't very happy about it. But it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Except because you're grown human.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

It is, yeah. It is. Um, so yeah, I think that's really interesting to think about that only 20% of what you're doing is actually making an impact.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

I think you can apply the 80-20 rule to a lot of things, but yeah, you're absolutely right. A lot of people just sort of, I mean, I'm the world's worst to procrastinate, but you you do kind of get stuck on stuff you don't really need to do. Um, and you know, some people sort of. I know people have laughed at me about buying my robot lawmart. But they have laughed at me on that.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

They have.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

But to cut my grass takes me about half an hour.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

At least two or three times a week.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

That's an hour and a half.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Now I press a button. And I've even pressed a button from a beach in Mexico.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

You have, although it did get stuck and me and Josh had to go around. To rescue the lawnmower.

Automate And Outsource The Small Jobs

SPEAKER_01 5:58

It was screaming. But that's another good example of something to deal with your time. And if you add that, if I add that in hours and my charge out rate, I could have an army of robot lawnmowers.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Well, yeah, exactly. No, you don't need an army, you only need the one, but it's it's fine.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

But that is something that helps me buy my time back.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah. Um I've got a robot um Hoover.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Moped.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

You did for Christmas. It was a Christmas present, and it is a really good Christmas present. And it Herbie, we've called him Herbie the Hoover, Hoover's every night, and now I don't have to.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

And mops the floor.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

And mops the floor.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Yeah. So how much does that save you in time? Loads. Well, not a lot because you didn't really do much with it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

I did, thank you very much. It does save me in time, although now I do forget to do all the other jobs. Um, yeah, but I think people as well naturally gravitate towards those easy tasks because, like, for example, for the Hoovering, you do it, you feel like you've achieved something from doing the Hoovering. Whereas if you've got in your business, like you might have your strategy plan and the thing that's really high value that you need to do, it might be a lot harder, a lot harder task for you to do. So you're filling up your time doing the admin stuff, feeling really productive, but really you're not doing the bit that's important.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

But sometimes a harder task because it's a task that you probably don't know what to do. And I know sort of reading you know Richard Branson's books, you know, he always says he he surrounds himself with people that are better than him. Yeah, he's just a really good leader. So at the end of the day, you know, he's got people that are, you know, lawyers, accountants, social media, whatever he's got around him, are much more better than what he can do, but he just puts them together. But how many business owners do we have? Well, especially now chat GPTs there, but you know, go in and go, right, I want to do this, and this is what it says, you know, and this is how I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna spend four days on that when I could spend 400 quid on someone to do it for me. Yeah, I just find it I find it incredible sometimes what some people do, and I know I know you know we are where we are, but you know, outsourcing, you look at you know, outsourcing bookkeeping, those mundane stuff. I mean, the amount of people we see that do their own bookkeeping and then get a bill at the end of the year because it's rubbish, you know, not good at it, but they spend hours on it, hours.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

I mean, you know, I've got a relation that spends all their time bookkeeping, but you just think really I just like why.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Yeah, I've got another example here as well. So that was a bit of a rant, it was a rant, wasn't it? It was a rant, but it is it is true, and people do do it because they know how to do it, they're comfortable with it, it's the way they've always done it, and it's uh moving on to something that's more valuable and harder is a struggle, it's a shift in mindset and it's a shift in what you have to do, and it's often your frog. Um I say that as well, you should always eat your frog, which means doing the tasks you don't like first, otherwise they'll sit on your list forever. Um, if you're making those sorts of sort of strategy plans and plans to move forward and having those business goals, you're never going to achieve them if you just do things the way you've always done them. Um example was if you had a cafe and then the cafe owner was spending four hours a day washing dishes instead of negotiating better rates with the coffee bean suppliers, you can then see how yes, the washing dishes is important, you need to wash the dishes, but that that negotiation skill, yeah, some somebody who you could pay a little less get them in to wash the dishes, is gonna it's gonna save you more money in the long run because then you can do that more high value job.

unknown 10:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Um, like negotiation, the prices. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

And and you look at, you know, I know we've always said that admin is really important.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Yeah.

Paying For Admin And Calculating Value

SPEAKER_01 10:23

You know, we got people that, you know, if they did charge by the hour, which we don't, um, in not all in all cases. Um but the admin's so so important. It's so important, and it just takes that job away from people like money laundering, etc. Um, which not not actually physical money laundering, the the checks that we have to do for the anti-money laundering procedures. But we've always spent good money on admin, haven't we? Yeah, we have to to to give the jobs that we just people just don't want to do.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Exactly, so they can focus on what they do. Yeah, that's exactly how we've we've done it in our business. The accountants don't do the admin side of stuff, they still do their emails and whatnot, but even that's monitored by our admin team.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Um how many accountants have we spoken to? And we do speak to a lot of accountants, yeah, that you know, go, oh yeah, I've got to get me engagement letter out, and I've got to get this out, and I've got to do that, and I've got to raise me invoices. Why on earth are they doing it?

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Yeah, well, they've uh there's loads that have said to you, like, oh well, I don't have a Jade. They've loads that have said that to you, and it's like, well, why don't you get one?

SPEAKER_01 11:33

And uh but the way they say it is though that you're free. I know it's like really okay, but we have we have you on board so that I don't have to do a lot of stuff that I don't want to do. Now you don't want to do it, and you've got someone else.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

It's true. Well, it's more like got too much of it to do. Well, yeah, but um no, so in terms of people wanting to calculate what their hourly rate should be, how would they go about doing that?

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Well, we've always worked on an hourly rate, you know, our professions buy an hourly rate.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

So traditionally, sort of four to five times what you pay someone is the hourly rate. So you take their gross salary, don't worry about NI and all that stuff, although you should roll it now, it's 15%. But you take their gross salary, divide it by the number of weeks in the year, 52, times it, we times it by five, times it by five. Um, and divided by 37.5 being the hours a week. That gives you your hourly rate, and that's your charge hour rate. So basically that's it. So, you know, my charge out what I worked out the other day that anything under sort of£25-30 an hour is worth me considering paying someone to do.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

And and kind of looked at it like that, you know, sort of no, there are some things in the house that I would like to be able to pay for, you know, from a my point of view to free up my time a bit more, like gardener and what have you. Um, but you know, we do have people clean the windows, we've got the robot normal, the robot um Hoover thing, and what have you? Um, and yeah, so maybe there is a case for people to say, actually, if I'm really, really busy, why not pay for a gardener? Why not pay for a handy person to come in and you know do the odd jobs because I don't like them. No, they normally cost me more money to do.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Well, probably, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Especially if I've got like blinds, you know, like your blinds. Did you do them?

SPEAKER_00 13:37

No, but that was after we tried. There is a hole up there if you can see. No.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

How long did it take Josh to do that? Make that hole?

SPEAKER_00 13:46

A while.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Yeah. So there you go, rest my case.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Oh, yeah, we ended up getting handyman in.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Who did it?

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Handy Dan.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Handy Dan. Well, it wasn't Dan.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Got my book.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Yeah. But yeah, they they came in and did it much quicker and much neater than we would.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

So, you know, that's the way it took it. Do you wash your car?

SPEAKER_00 14:10

No.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Does someone else wash it?

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Yes. They actually do.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

But it is actually clean. I'm looking at it. But you know, these are things that you you pay for that free your time. And in business was the same. You know, do we do we look after our own IT?

SPEAKER_00 14:27

No.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

No. So someone else looks after our IT. Could we look after our IT? Probably. How long would that take? Hours.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Yeah, a lot longer.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

So we got someone else that does that. Why not?

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Same with our HR.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

HR, yeah. Do we do a HR? No. Someone else that come in, they look after the tea, etc. etc. Absolutely works, true.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

It does. And I think it is looking into that. And also identifying what your high value 20% of what you're doing that is high value, because you will be doing some things that are high value, you won't be doing everything. Yeah. Not, and it's identifying what those are and then really leaning into that.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

But doesn't that also go for customers?

unknown 15:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

So, you know, why work for, you know, we've got some people in our books who have worked for people for years and years and years, but are really scared about putting their prices up, and actually, when you worked it out, they it's almost cost effective to pay someone else to go and do it for you. But they haven't put their prices up and doesn't reflect current market. And you just think, well, okay, you need to look at that, you need to spend time to analyse that and look at that and deal with that. Um, because especially with the way if you're employing people, you know, you've got to factor in those costs now. And there's so many of our clients are so scared of putting their prices up that if you want good people to work for you and you want a good service and you want the holidays, etc., etc., and a bit of time off of the family, then you you've got to look at that as well. But you need the time and the space to be able to do that strategy.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Well, exactly, and it is identifying what the high value stuff is that you're doing, which also could be in because it's your business, could be in terms of relationship building, it could be the high-level sales, um, sort of maybe product innovation, partnerships with people, like it's all those sorts of things that potentially you don't see as high value. Maybe you you really enjoy going networking or something like that, and you're like, Well, that's not really working, but it is that is the value that you're bringing. If you're getting customers from that, or building the relationships from that, that's really important, and I think people devalue that because they're not working on the tasks.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

No, absolutely, yeah, yeah. And and there is a you know, I'll go back to my robot normal. I'll say that the amount of people that have said, Oh, that's lazy. Well, it's not, it's quite smart, really. But I mean, you look at, you know, you you've had someone to come and do your carpet, haven't you? Yeah, you know, they're gonna put your carpet in. So they're gonna come yesterday, weren't they?

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Yeah, well they're gonna come this week, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Why didn't they come?

SPEAKER_00 17:19

They forgot to order the stuff.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

So that is a whole job for them that you might, if you didn't know this person, which you do, yes, but if you didn't know this person, you might go, wow, ridiculous. I'm gonna go somewhere else.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Because they forgot to order the job. So that person is fitting the carpets, doing the quotes, you know, putting the diesel in the vehicle. Yeah, they're doing all that work, they're overwhelmed. The one thing they need to do is order the carpet that goes on the floor for the job they're doing that week that they've scheduled in that week.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, but it is because they're overwhelmed with tasks, yeah. They've probably spent ages doing a load of stuff they didn't need to, and then yeah, forgotten. Forgotten about poor Matilda's floor.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yeah, and they're but they're probably doing the bookkeeping, aren't they? They're probably you know arranging everything. They've got I know they've got a few people work for them, you know, they're probably arranging all that as well, probably doing all of that, and then you forget.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

How many small business owners are in that bracket?

SPEAKER_00 18:25

A lot. A lot, a lot. Yeah, and I think as well, I've put on here as well about spotting when you're doing tasks that actually contribute nothing towards the business, because there will be tasks that you're doing that do nothing, and you're doing it for the sake of it, just to feel productive. Yeah, um, and we've seen that a lot.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

I think we all probably do it as well.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Oh, yeah, absolutely, and but it's worth identifying when you're doing it, and you might think, oh yeah, but that is really important, but it's it's probably not, it's probably not essential. Um and also for the those 20% times when you want to really hone in on the the valuable stuff that you're doing, do it when you're at your most energetic. Like, if you work best in the morning, schedule it to do in the morning. If you work best in the evening, schedule it to do in the evening. Like, make sure you're making the time for it because if you start doing the little tasks, you'll just do those all day.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

Yeah, um, yeah, yeah, I'm most productive in the morning.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Me too.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Between nine o'clock and two minutes past nine.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

That sounds about right. Wow. Um, I know we've banged on about automating things as well a lot on this podcast. However, it fits hand in hand here as well. Yeah, some of those pointless jobs you're doing, you can probably get a piece of software or AI to do it.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Or also ask people. Yeah. You know, even people in your own sort of like, you know, business profession, what have you, ask them, ask what other people are doing.

unknown 20:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

And sort of, you know, and and go from there.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

And then, you know, there is well, especially now the way you think like your lovable AI, that would, you know, create a lot of tasks, a lot of things that would help people.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Even if you had a little checklist that would help you, you know, take that carpet fissure the other day, you know, checklist, order the goods.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Well, uh, yeah, could make a very basic bit of software for him to keep on track.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

Send quote, customer accepts quote, book in order goods. Simples.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Done. Tick.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

So yeah, it's it's definitely worth looking at what software can fill those gaps. Yeah. Um because yeah, it's it's just it could help so much. It can. You don't have to do things the way you've always done them. Um so yeah, and then I've I've written down here about sort of valuing your admin team.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Absolutely. I mean admin is really, really, really, really important.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Even answering the phones. There are services out there that will answer the phone for you.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

And yeah, it might cost a couple of quid, but if they get a job that you would never have got before because you've answered the phone, they can even send the quote out for you, or you know, certainly an appointment or something for you know, a very small investment.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Well, exactly. It's you can get rid of these little tasks that you're filling your time with, yeah, um easily. Yeah. It just might cost you a little bit, but you'll probably make that money back, especially if you're repurposing your time to do more of those 20% tasks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

You'll definitely you'll from experience. Over all these many years of in business, you will definitely get your money back.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Yes. And so I've written down here as well that there's another thing people say, which is it's faster, I can just do it myself.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Oh yeah, especially if you're trying to delegate to team members. I could do that myself. Why would I want to spend time doing that?

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Yeah. But that's not a long-term mindset. That's very short term. It's not going to help you out long term. Yeah. And yes, it might be more painful to delegate at first. Yeah. It might take you a little bit more time at first.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

But not for the long term.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Absolutely. Yeah. What was it? The the um saying about the you know, you you can give a give a person a fish, you know, and they can feed their family, but you can teach them the fish and they can feed them all yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

And this is the thing. And there's so many tools. You are there's so many tools as well you can use now to help you to train people. Like you've got Loom, so you can record your training session so that you don't have to repeat what you've said. You've got tools where you can make training manuals, you've got tools where you can have like different tasks so that people know exactly what they're doing and when. And so you don't have to spend huge amounts of time training.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Unless you it's me.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Unless it's you doesn't listen. Sorry. That was awful. But um cha. Um so another thing you can apply the 80-20 rule to is your client list or your customer base. Um, and this is an interesting one, and this is one that people are really scared to do. It is likely that your top customers are only in the 20%. Yeah. The ones you're making the most money from are in the top 20%. The rest of the other 80%, you're probably not they're probably not giving you that much. So it's worth looking at that and seeing what to do about it. Maybe you need to the bottom 10%, maybe you need to just ditch them. Yeah. Maybe those top 20% you need to nurture even more. Yeah. Maybe you need to drag a few more. Maybe some of the ones that are in that 70% bracket, you need to push a little bit more. Yeah, yeah. Um, but it's worth really identifying who they are and and how to deal with that.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

And it's really nice, you know, it's been a few years now, but it's really nice to be in a position where you know you can say no.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

And you're not really worried about saying no. Um, what was it? Blimey Cracky. Was it four or five years ago, we refused to take on a tax return only client, didn't we?

SPEAKER_00 24:46

We did, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Then obviously we've got Josh on board, so we're taking on tax return-only clients now, but but those with a little bit more complex tax issues. But you know, we made a decision that actually we weren't making any money.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Yeah, and we wasn't in that area.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

So, you know, you you take for for argument's sake a window cleaner that charges 10 quid to do you know someone's house, but you got there, unrealed all your hose pipe and all that sort of stuff. It's not worth it, is it? No, you know, and you just think, well, what's the point? Why why do it for that sort of money?

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

So maybe look at something like that, and you know, when we had you know, we had we didn't do it because we helped someone to get on the ladder in their profession, but you could look at that client base and go, actually, there's 50 customers that I go to regularly that I don't need anymore, so I'll sell them. Yeah, you can give you a bit of money in your bank in your in your bank, in your business to be able to you know progress forward. Yeah, these are things you can do.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

Yeah, they are you need the time to think about that, and and this is part of your 20% strategic thinking. Um you need the time to be able to do that, otherwise you will just spend forever just doing things that aren't making you any money or aren't fulfilling because it might be that you want to do a certain job that isn't making you any money because it it gives you other things, like it might be a really nice thing to do for something. I know we do a couple of charity things that that we would keep, but like you've got to really weigh up what what you're doing and and yeah, and say no to things that aren't worth it as well.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Um so one action that you can do after listening to this podcast is every Friday find one task that you do every week that provides no value that you could just stop doing and stop.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Trying to think of one.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Yeah, I'm trying to think of one as well. Well, there probably is one.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Mine's the garden.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Yours is the garden.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Yeah, I know it's not business related, but it does create time. I really would like someone to come in and spend an hour or two a week in in the garden just to tidy it up. And I love the garden, but I just haven't got the time for it.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Well, maybe that's what you need to do to stop that.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

I think uh we'll consider it later in the year.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

It's on my it's on my plan.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

It's on your plan. Um so one example I've got here, and this is a small thing, so maybe you've got a customer that doesn't pay you very much at all, but calls you every day, and you spend a half hour on the phone for him every day, every other day, maybe. They soak up your time, and and you don't get the return.

unknown 27:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Maybe you politely let them go.

unknown 27:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Or put your prices up.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Or put your prices up. Yeah, either way. Exactly, but maybe you sort that out.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Yes. Yeah, that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Um so we we as well at one accounts, we we obviously end up doing stuff we shouldn't as well. So we probably need to take our own advice and we do and look at the 20%. Um however, I think this is something business owners really should look into and make sure they are making the time for strategic planning and making sure that not even just the planning, strategic implementing. Because most people are quite good at planning when we talk to them, like lots of people have goals and what they want to do, what they want to achieve, but then they just can't get there because they haven't implemented the plans that they've put together.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Or we can't do it next month because this is happening, can't do it that month because that's happening. Yeah, just do it.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

So just do it. Take this as your sign to just do it.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

That'd be a good slogan for a sports brand.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

It would, wouldn't it? Yeah. Maybe they should take our advice.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

I think they should.

Unfiltered Minute Prams And Customer Service

SPEAKER_00 29:06

Um, so yeah, that leads us into our unfiltered minute.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Okay, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Um mine was gonna be that we've got the pram at the weekend. Oh so we've got a bugaboo pram that folds very easily. So I have seen. Um, yeah, and it was very fun. We went to Mamas and Papa's, we had a full appointment where they showed us all the different things. Um, yeah, it was a nice day out. Cool. That was it.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Do you want to know what my um feels a minute is?

SPEAKER_00 29:40

What?

SPEAKER_01 29:41

How flipping expensive are prams?

SPEAKER_00 29:43

They're really expensive.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

So who paid for the pram?

SPEAKER_00 29:46

You did.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Yeah. And like it's like the Rolls Royce of Prams, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 29:50

It is, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

And it is so, so expensive.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Prams are expensive, everybody. If anyone's thinking of having a baby, prams are expensive.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Mum said, well, it's not as expensive as your golf trolley. Well, actually, it was.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Oh!

SPEAKER_01 30:07

It was more expensive than my golf trolley, which is the top-of-the-range Stuart remote control golf trolley.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

Well, yeah, well then.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

But then Matilda really does need to, you know, start the world how I mean to go on.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Exactly. She needs she needs the bougie.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

So, yes, so um, yeah. But it's not just for, is it alright? It's good it's no, it's got a carry cop thingy.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

There's a whole bundle.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

It's got a cup holder.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

It has got a cup holder, a bag.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

A bag, um, a car seat. Car seat. Yeah, yep. All that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

Yeah, and it's got the attachment for like the newborn bit on the pram.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

And what happened when we bought it? What did mum say? Oh, we've got to be a big one. She wants one house. But not that one, but like so there you go. So, yes, that's my unfilled submit is how pluminely expensive is a pram.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Yeah, it's a good business to get into because I think the only sh I've only seen mamas and papas really offering um those sorts of buy-in-for-baby appointments, and it's the pram market is overwhelming. If you look online, you don't know what you're buying, you don't know why you're spending the money.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

But um as a small business owner, there was one area that that was really strange, was it? So they sell that product, and John Lewis, who is next door, sell the same product.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

And what did they say to us because we wanted to look at something that they didn't have?

SPEAKER_00 31:36

I said, go to John Lewis.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Go to John Lewis and have a look.

SPEAKER_00 31:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

I mean, if we'd have gone to John Lewis and if it was cheaper, which it was not really cheaper, what would we have done? We'd have bought it in John Lewis. So as a business owner, why on earth would you do that?

SPEAKER_00 31:50

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

Yeah. I know these people are employees of the business, but I would never ever tell anyone to go down the road to a you know someone else in our industry just for a second opinion because you know they've got a blue pen and we've only got black.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

Yeah, it doesn't really make any sense, but John Lewis didn't have it anyway, did they?

unknown 32:10

No.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Um, I think as well, the whole appointment thing, they've advertised it online as being like a little sit-down, you get like a drink and a bit of love, and it wasn't actually like that. It was still very good. The lady was very knowledgeable, which is what you need, but you didn't get like a glass of water or glass of water, no, you can't drink well. No, I can't have any bubbles or anything, but like you didn't get that that sort of customer service that it was sort of advertised as, and I was quite excited to have that sort of yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Well you are a lovey.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

I do, I do like that sort of lovey experience. But but you know, I I think they could make some small, very small tweaks and everyone would go there.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Um, well maybe not everyone because it was still very expensive in mum's and papas, which is why I think there's a gap in the market here for the buying for baby appointments.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

Yeah, there you go.

Easter Goodbye

SPEAKER_00 33:11

There you go. If you're thinking of a business idea, there's one for free. Um anyway, I think that's everything.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

I think that is.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

We will.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Well, Easter's coming up.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Happy Easter, everybody.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Happy Easter, have a lovely bank holiday, everybody. Goodbye.