Today, we’re starting a series of dispelling some myths around being a mom and an entrepreneur called Fact or Fiction. The first question of the series is:
Fact or fiction – you can run a successful business in an hour a day?
I am going to say that this is fact with a little asterisk next to it and I’m going to run you through a couple of reality checks on what running your business an hour a day would look like.
Exceptions to the Rule
I think this is highly unrealistic that you can launch your business by working an hour a day. If you’re serious about launching a new business, there’s going to be a learning curve. That means investment in your personal time to get up to speed on the systems and the tools. Getting some background information on the products, really getting your groove on how to most efficiently run your business. That curve is not necessarily directly related to what is going to create income inside of your organization. If you are looking to build a significant income then there is a pace that you launch your business at and a pace that you maintain your business at. For example, if you’re in the launch phase and you’re really serious about creating a six-figure income, working an hour a day is going to take you longer than if you really invested some time.
Also, there are times in your business when it makes sense to dig in a little harder, around promotions, special opportunities, and onboarding a new team member. Those are times when you pace out a little bit faster than what the regular maintenance time would look like.
You Can Run a Business in an Hour a Day
With all being said, can you actually run your business in an hour a day? I’d say yes.
Here’s why.
There’s a finite amount of activity that creates income in any kind of social selling business and they go into basically two kinds of buckets: attraction activities and conversations.
- Attraction activities are marketing activities. That’s mostly your social media postings. If you’re more of an advanced skilled entrepreneur, it could be a free offer, a workshop, or an event that you’re attracting people with.
- Conversations is the second piece of it. Those are, for most of us, conversations that are happening inside direct messenger or any other channels you use.
Doing that consistently, for an hour a day, would absolutely grow your business in a significant way. If you are really intentional about posting on social media, being active in your stories, getting out in the real world and networking, having conversations with people, asking good questions, and inviting people to take a look at what you’re doing (your activities that grow your business), and you do that for an hour day, you can absolutely grow your business.
IPAs vs Non-IPAs
IPA stands for Income Producing Activities. There are a lot of things that we consider work but are not income-producing activities aka IPAs.
Personal growth and development is one of them. My argument is, your job as a human is to grow. That’s not part of your paycheck, that’s part of your human experience. If you decide to invest in your own personal knowledge and grow, that is awesome. However, that does not count in the hour a day of doing your business.
Thinking about your business, worrying about your business, comparing yourself to other people, stressing out about your business does not count as doing your business. This is one of the reasons why I, as a leader, really lean into giving my team a lot of tools, language, and ideas on how to get into action. I try to eliminate the amount of time that they need to sit and debate on what they should or shouldn’t say because we can waste a lot of time and we can waste a lot of energy second-guessing ourselves.
Social Media posting. The same applies here. I find that for a lot of entrepreneurs, figuring out what to post is very time-consuming and stressful. I get it, if you haven’t come from a branding background this can be very overwhelming at times. I’ll encourage you to listen to some of my earlier podcast episodes and if you’re interested, take a look at the Magnetic Marketing Academy which can help you feel more comfortable as an entrepreneur on social media and the key to that is really getting clear on your personal brand and understanding what your content pillars are.
My ninja tip for creating content is to save other people’s content and be really deliberate about that. When you’re on social media, as you’re prospecting, as you’re connecting with other people, when you see something that you love, you save it. You can either repurpose that directly as it is or you can use it to prepare your content in advance in batches.
Time Blocking
The last piece to doing your business in an hour a day is time blocking. If you are a mom and you don’t have a lot of time during the day, figuring out those moments where you can get some work done and knowing what you’re going to do in advance is the only way you can really truly grow a business and in an hour a day. By being organized in advance, you can use that swim practice to crank out a little bit of work. If you’re in the carpool line, you can use that time to leave five voice messages. That is the income-producing activity.
The key here really is eliminating the things that are not driving your business forward. The best way to do that is to stop spending time on social media comparing yourself with others, and spending time on things that aren’t necessary to your priorities.
Hopefully, this has sparked some curiosity in you and if you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch with me.
In the meantime, remember, you are magnetic and people are waiting to hear what you have to say.
Love,
Tracey.
