Ep41: Competing Priorities as a Founder: How to Choose What to Focus on First

As your business grows, so do the number of things competing for your time, energy, and attention.

Clients need you.
Content needs to go out.
Systems need improving.
Visibility matters.
Growth matters.

And somehow, everything feels important. And sometimes everything feels urgent.

In this episode of The Aligned & Thriving Podcast, Jada dives into the reality of competing priorities as a founder, and how to decide what actually matters now, without defaulting to hustle, guilt, or reacting to external pressure.

This conversation was born from real decisions Jada had to make inside her own business, including intentionally pausing content and podcasting for a season, not because something was “wrong,” but because something else mattered more at that stage of growth.

Inside this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why not all priorities are equal, even when they all feel important.
• Four essential aspects Jada uses (and you can too) to choose between multiple high priorities.
• The difference between urgency and importance.
• Why capacity (time, energy, emotional bandwidth) must be part of your decision-making.
• How to think like a leader instead of reacting like a task-doer.
• What choosing not to do something can unlock for growth.
• Why clarity often comes from subtraction, not addition.

She also poses an important question worth thinking or journaling on to help you in your day to day priority juggle

This episode is for you if you:

• Feel pulled in too many directions.
• Know something needs to change but aren’t sure what.
• Are growing and realising old ways of working no longer fit.
• Want to lead your business more intentionally.

This episode is not about productivity hacks or doing more.
It’s about discernment, leadership, and choosing what actually moves the needle -for this season.

🎧 Listen now to Episode 41: Competing Priorities as a Founder: How to Choose What to Focus on First

If you had a takeaway or ‘aha’ from this episode and want to share it with your business besties and community, screenshot and share it on Instagram, tagging me at @jada.businessmentor. I’d love to shout out your takeaways and your support!

💬 Let’s connect!
Instagram: @jada.businessmentor
Email: jada@riseandshinecollective.com.au

→ DM me on Instagram @jada.businessmentor or send me an email to jada@riseandshinecollective.com.au if you’re ready to explore live launching in a more aligned, ease-filled, and higher-converting way through 1:1 Aligned Launch Coaching & Consulting, or you want personalised and strategic support to create or grow an online offering (course, membership or program).

And please hit follow, leave a review, and share this episode with a business bestie if you’ve found it helpful.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Episode 41. Welcome to the Aligned and Thriving podcast for ambitious female entrepreneurs where we align systems. Strategies and Self for sustainable success. My name's Jada. I'm your host. I've been an entrepreneur now for over 15 years across multiple businesses, and today I want to pose a question to you to get you thinking about it on the subject of.

Competing high priorities, which we're facing all the time as business owners and founders. So let's get into it. Let's talk about a common challenge as founders of businesses, which is having many, many competing priorities. Oftentimes competing priorities that are all urgent or at least all [00:01:00] feel urgent.

Now, I really started to rethink about this, or it came to me to speak about this when I've been interviewing for a new role in my business over this last week, and one of the questions I'm asking the people that I'm interviewing is. What would they do if they had competing priorities? How would they choose what to prioritize if they had those competing priorities?

And it really got me thinking, because we're faced with this all the time as founders, probably even more all day long, every day. So I kind of wanted to bring that question here as a thought provoking question for you. More than anything else, because I don't think there's only one way to go about this, and [00:02:00] oftentimes it will depend on where you're at in your business, you know what facility you have as far as team and delegating and et cetera.

So really, I wanted to pose this question to you when you have competing priorities. How do you decide what to do first? What to do next, and I would encourage you to take some time to have a think about that, maybe even journal on it. Uh, because I know that it's something that I've struggled with at varying times.

Sometimes I'm better at it than other times, and I know that it is a common thing that comes up with my. Coaching clients and consulting clients in the launch space, because certainly within a live launch, there are many competing high priorities that need to be focused on. Even when we're, for example, deciding what areas to focus on [00:03:00] for the next launch, there will quite often be varying areas that could.

When focused on really improved the results of the launch, but there's not always the capacity from my client to be able to focus on all of them at once. So then like how do we decide in that situation which to focus on for that next launch, but even on a day-to-day basis, right? It's happening all the time and.

For me, some of the things that I look at and think about and use to choose what to focus on or main guiding, I guess check-in point, is re recalibrating back to, or pulling back to my bigger picture goals, say for the year or even longer term goals for my business. And also my main, I guess, [00:04:00] shorter term objectives that fit into those goals.

And I guess the plan that I have set out to reach those goals. So rechecking in with that bigger picture, if I'm feeling confused in that day to day moment about what I should be focusing on. And then also checking on another, another part you can bring into it is. Re, you know, looking back to, and pulling back to also your values as well, like why, what are the highest values in your business to be able to analyze and look at more, I guess, objectively from your top priorities or competing priorities today or any day, which is going to have the biggest impact.

To moving you towards those goals and being aligned with that plan, you have to move you towards those goals and also is most aligned with your values and your highest business priorities. And this is why I guess in each business there's going to be. You know, that's gonna [00:05:00] be a little bit different for different people.

If your business is very customer, uh, centric, you know, if there's a a priority that's competing with something that's quite internal and moving you to work towards goals that are quite internal versus something that is high priority and is customer facing. Out of those two that might both be very aligned with your bigger goals, how do you choose?

Well, it can come back to some of your values. Helping you to lean into, which would be your highest priority. Obviously, sometimes it is customer facing, and oftentimes we can be caught in ways making the customer facing things or that customer support be our highest priority. However, what I have certainly found is that sometimes we need to just check ourselves on that because if we do that at the expense of moving forward, some of the other high priorities in our business.

We cannot move forward to solving the [00:06:00] bigger picture or, you know, getting to the point where we are then having a team member, for example, which is going to help solve what feels like the urgent, the urgent, uh, priority with your customer at the time. But actually maybe having a slight delay on that, doing something to move internal operations forward so that that becomes an easier thing in the future.

Could be the better way to go. As an example, another piece of the puzzle for me is capacity. What is my capacity when and if I have a team? What's my team's capacity? Combined with the goals, the plan, the shorter term priorities or focus areas and values, we need to look at that capacity. Yes, we might have 3, 5, 2 high priority competing [00:07:00] areas or tasks that we need to be doing today.

So what capacity do we have? Or say you're planning out your week and there are five key areas that you need to get across. What's your capacity? What's your team's capacity? Are you in school holidays? Are you in full work mode? And I don't just mean. In relation to time as far as capacity, but also your emotional capacity, your brain capacity, your energetic, your emotional, your time capacity, because this is really another factor, like the emotional capacity, uh, to.

Prioritize something in a particular way versus in another way, like give it more importance or, or less importance and solve it in a more, say, thorough or long-term kind of way, versus a quicker, short-term kind of way. [00:08:00] Is in part deciding on how much priority to give it, uh, and how much of a competing priority it is right now in this moment, and also to do with your capacity.

Again, this comes up a lot with my mentoring and coaching and consulting clients. It's checking in like, yes, this could be a high priority, but we don't have to make it a high priority right now. It's one of the priorities. But what is the capacity, not just time-wise, but energetically, emotionally? How much energy and time do we wanna put into that particular thing?

And therefore, do we wanna do it at like max optimal version, or do we wanna do it in a, that's good enough for now version, right? So capacity is another piece. And then what is going to have the biggest impact? And I've kind of spoken to that a little bit in relation to your goals, but out of a number of.

Competing priorities that you might have, which of those, [00:09:00] once you've looked at capacity, so you might go, I can only do one of these three things today. Which 1:00 AM I gonna choose? So we need to run through, well, which one is going to help you most towards your goals and that plan that you have to towards your goals.

Which one is sticking with working with something that is of highest value, uh, one of your highest values in your business? Uh, you've identified maybe you have capacity for one out of three things. This piece is important, which is what's actually going to have the biggest impact, because there's always many levers that we can be pulling within our business, but which of those competing priorities, for example, at any one time, is going to have the biggest.

Impact, and this is one to be really careful of because we can feel like we have a lot of things that are urgent or that are on our to-do list that are important. But when we look at them and we break it down really a little bit, uh, detached, like emotionally detached, [00:10:00] and we think about those goals, we think about those values and we look at our, the reality of our capacity.

And then we are able to also look at, well, which one is really, truly going to have the biggest impact. You know, if you need to send an email to your list and make a post on social media and check over something for a client or deliver something for a client or a customer, and you need to be able to do some other activity in your business.

And maybe all of those are, are. Priorities, and they might all match your goals. They might all be kind of high values within your business, but you've hit the point of capacity. So how do you then choose? Because you can't do them all within your capacity again, timeframe, emotionally, energetically, all of those things.

So then it's looking at, well, which will have the biggest impact. And many times when we look at that. [00:11:00] Uh, in a logical way. There are things that we're doing that yes, would be ideal. Yes, it would be ideal to make that post on social media, but what's going to have the biggest impact? The email to your list or the post on social media.

Or could you do a simpler post on social media and still be able to then expand your capacity across two things. A really good example of this one for me recently has been this podcast. I have not recorded an episode of this podcast since the end of last year. Currently at recording, we're at the beginning of February, so uh, in December, 2025.

It was the last time that I recorded and released a fresh episode of this podcast. Now it's really important to me because one of my goals this year is to increase my reach and my authority in the space that I'm working within and build my [00:12:00] community, uh, and. You know, be front of mind in the space that I'm working with in relation to growing online offers and live launching.

And so the podcast is really important to me. And so when I'm looking at my goals and I have a value in my business of community and service. So the podcast fits within those things, but I also needed to look at capacity. So I've been working solo without a team, and so I also have as a next step, as part of my bigger goals to hire someone.

And so I've prioritized doing things like putting out the job description and getting clear on what that job description is and interviewing for that. I have prioritized also serving my current clients because within a four week period, I grew my number of one-on-one clients, [00:13:00] uh, by like 70%. And so it was a big shift in.

My output energetically, uh, time-wise and et cetera. It's also been school holidays here in Australia, the summer school holidays, so I had less time capacity, and so really when I looked at priorities and biggest impacts. The bigger impact was really making sure that I was across all of my new client's businesses that I was servicing to them as much as I could be in the best possible way, which I will always do.

Uh, but until I had support from a new team member to be able to get on with some of the other areas in my business, my priority went towards servicing my current clients. It wasn't a high necessity in my business over this last month to be putting out content to attract new clients in because I'm currently at 90% capacity [00:14:00] with my one-on-one.

So before I get ready to move into creating and launching group programs and et cetera, I need to set up some other support with team, with structures and et cetera. And so. While the podcast is important to me and I absolutely love showing up and sharing it needed to take a backseat while I prioritized other things.

So that's an example of something that is aligned with goals and values. Didn't fit within capacity, and it wasn't going to have the biggest impact within my business for me at the moment, like over the last kind of six weeks or so. Same thing with social media. I've been completely quiet besides some stories and about two posts for the first six weeks of January.

Same thing. That wasn't where the biggest impact was going to be for my business. The bigger impact is in having personalized conversations with [00:15:00] potential clients to move from that 90% to a hundred percent, booked out one-on-one, or putting my energy into internal systems so that I have the time, space, energy, et cetera, to be creating that external content out onto social media.

So again, it's going to be different for different people at different times, but these are some areas you might like to look at when you've got competing priorities. What are your bigger goals and what's your plan? What are your business values? What's your capacity and what out of your competing.

Priorities is going to have the biggest impact. You might find that you have some other factors that you bring into deciding your highest priority, and I would really love to hear what they are for you, and I really encourage you to take away this question and think about it to journal on it. How do you, you know, and think about how [00:16:00] you've been doing it and if it would be a good idea for you to be more thoughtful and intentional around how you decide between competing top priorities.

All right. I hope today's episode has been helpful and thought provoking, and as always, I would love, love, love to connect with you over in the dms on Instagram. You can connect with me at Jada Business Mentor. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode. Please leave a review. Uh, give me a five star rating, share it with a business bestie, and I will be back with you again with more next time on the podcast.

Until then, stay aligned and keep on thriving.