Mastering Time Management and Energy for Business Success with Donna Eade | EP287

Can mastering time management truly transform your business growth as we edge closer to 2025? Unravel the secrets of impactful productivity with me, Donna Eade, as I share actionable strategies designed to maximize every precious minute, even during the year's darker, chillier months. Discover how a deep dive into your daily activities can illuminate time sinks and help pivot your focus toward high-yield tasks, leveraging both simple tools like pen and paper and tech solutions such as Toggle for streamlined efficiency.

Ever felt overwhelmed by procrastination or the daunting task of goal-setting? Together, we'll explore the psychological barriers that hinder progress—like fear of failure and perfectionism—and explore dynamic techniques to overcome them. Learn how simple practices, such as breaking down tasks into even smaller chunks or using the two-minute rule, can unleash your productivity potential. And for solopreneurs, setting realistic, achievable goals aligned with your energy cycles could be the game-changer you need for sustained growth and balance.

Join us for a personal journey into understanding energy cycles, drawing from my own experiences with health transitions, and learn how aligning tasks with your natural rhythms can amplify productivity. Diane Watson, our upcoming guest, will also provide invaluable insights into personal finance. As we gear up for a strategic new year, prepare to embrace a structured yet flexible approach to your personal and professional development, ensuring you're ready for a successful 2025.

Jenny Ditzler Your Best Year Ever
Small Business Marketing Planner by insights2marketing

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Chapters

• 0:00 Time Management Tips for Business Growth
• 12:50 Efficient Time Management Strategies
• 26:13 Overcoming Procrastination & Setting Goals
• 36:33 Goal Setting and Energy Management
• 42:16 Understanding Energy Cycles for Productivity

Transcript

Donna Eade: 0:30

You're listening to the Mindset in Action podcast, the place to be to grow and streamline your business. I'm your host, donna Eade. Let's jump into the show. The key to time management is to see the value of every moment. Bryant McGill, welcome back to the podcast. Everybody, I'm really excited to have you here today for this episode. If you listened to Monday's Mini Mindset Monday with Viv, you'll know that we were talking about time management and today I want to give you some practical advice, tips on how to handle your time management going forward into 2025.

Donna Eade: 1:15

I know we're all kind of in a bit of a reflective period right now. We're coming to the end of a year, a new year is going to be beginning and, although I don't go in for the business goals being set in December for January, it is really hard to get out of that habit of feeling like a new year is beginning and it's only the month. That is all that it is. Is this a change in month? But the weather really does say we are supposed to be in hibernation right now and I don't know about where you are, but currently where I am, we have had snow this week at the time of recording, so it is looking like a proper wintry Christmas season this year, so fingers crossed for that. However, it is very hard to kind of start looking, or easy to create the goals, but very hard to start implementing them in January, february, March, when the weather is still so cold and gloomy. And so if I can help you in some way with some time management skills, techniques that you can put in place that might be able to help you when you get into those slumps in those first few months, if you are somebody who does do your goal setting in December for the year, then this might help you. So we're going to jump into it.

Donna Eade: 2:35

I think it is really important to look at this from a number of perspectives. So we're going to be looking at it in terms of you know things that you can do, but we're also going to be looking at it in terms of you know why we might be faltering when it comes to doing these things as well. So we're going to kind of have a look at it from two sides today. So the first thing that we need to do when we are looking at managing our time is we have to do a time assessment. We have to actually see what we're doing with our time, and this in itself can be a challenge, because if you are somebody who struggles to find the motivation to sort of sit down at the computer and start working, when you do start working you're in the zone and you go, go, go and before you know it, all the time's gone. But you've been working and so you're like.

Donna Eade: 3:29

Just the habit of tracking what you're doing is very difficult, so this might take you some time. So try and do it sometime between now and when you break for Christmas. Try and take a day where you literally catalogue every single thing you do. Whenever you change tasks, you jot it down, and I would recommend just having a notepad and pen set aside on your desk specifically for this, so that when you change you can just do it. Because if you do that, you're much more likely to get it down than if you've got to go and find the spreadsheet that you're using on your computer somewhere and do it. If you've just got to pick up a pen, write it quickly. That is probably going to be your best bet.

Donna Eade: 4:12

There are apps out there. If you want to use an app like Toggle on your phone, you can do that. Some of them cost some of them are free. You'd need to do some research. Pen and Paper works perfectly well for this little time audit that we're going to be doing. So you need to do it, at least for one day if you can do it for a couple of days so that you've got kind of a better overview of the things that you do throughout the week on your business and where you're spending your time across the days. That's going to give you an added advantage when you come to evaluating where you're perhaps wasting time or how it is that you are utilising the time that you have. So that is the first thing that we need to do. We need to really do a time audit and track it and see what's happening in our business. Then we can make some decisions, because we can look at it and say, oh OK, actually it's not as bad as I thought. I'm actually getting quite a lot done and I am focusing on the things that are important, or it's going to highlight that actually there is a lot of time that's being wasted on things that you don't need to be doing. So that's really important.

Donna Eade: 5:18

Then we want to look at the parental principle. The parental principle there you go, getting my P's all mixed up. So the parental principle is that what you do 20% of the time is going to yield 80% of your results, and if we are to assume that that is the truth of the matter, then that means if you work five days a week, then it's actually the work that you do in one day that is actually having the biggest results. And you can see that when you think about the different things that we do during the day. So we might do some social media posts, we might be in our emails, we might be doing some admin, we might be working on a new project, a new course, a new program, a new client acquisition. So of those things, there are going to be certain things that are going to be income generating things and other things that are just going to be time sucks. Like your email inbox, that's a time suck. It's something that is not going to be generating you income Now. Granted, there could be emails in there from potential clients that would then turn into income, but you don't need to be the one sorting it all out to actually get those results.

Donna Eade: 6:33

So we need to look at what we're doing in that time audit. Where are the things that are a waste of our time. Where are the things that are a really good use of our time? And what can we do in terms of making it that we use more of our time to do those things that are a good use of our time and we do less of the time wasting things? And if we can do that, if we can look at hiring a VA to take care of some of that stuff, if we can look at automating some of that stuff, that's going to stand us in really good stead to make much better use of our time and, potentially, that we can actually reduce the amount of hours that we are working and still get the same results.

Donna Eade: 7:15

So we could turn around and say, okay, well, if the 80-20 rule works, then I'll just work one day a week, I'll really focus and then I don't have to work for the rest of the week. You could absolutely do that, but you know you better than anybody else does and I know personally that wouldn't work for me because I know that I would get distracted. I know that there are times when that just wouldn't work for me. And to be hyper focused to the point where you need to be, to get that 20%, that what you do 20% of the time and make that a full day's worth of work rather than the 20% that is spread out across a week, is going to be really draining, really energy heavy. So if you're somebody like me who's an introvert, where a lot of energy expenditure really takes its toll on you, that's probably not going to be the best way to do it because you will struggle with keeping that up over time. But it's about balance. It's about OK. Well, actually I could knock a couple of hours off my work day if I pull in a little bit more focus during the day and I stop wasting my time in these areas. So that is something to really look at.

Donna Eade: 8:30

And I have spoken about time blocking in detail before, so I'm not going to go into it in depth. And I have spoken about time blocking in detail before, so I'm not going to go into it in depth. But time blocking is a great way to batch your time for the things that you really need to focus on. So I would really look at maybe that being something that you take into the new year and look at how can I block my time off for those tasks that are going to be bringing me forward in my business and making the biggest impact. How can I block time off regularly to make that happen?

Donna Eade: 9:02

And also having time to actually work on your business. This is something that I think we always forget to do and is usually the thing that gets pushed off the plate first if we are feeling overwhelmed. It's like I haven't got time to look at the projection for the next quarter. I haven't got time to look at what my social plan is going to be for the next quarter. I haven't got time to look at what I'm going to promote in six months time. That's just not my focus right now because I need to get xyz done, so it is usually the thing that falls off. But I would highly recommend having an hour a week where you sit down, check the plan, check where you're going, what you're doing, has this week gone to plan? Is next week ready for what you need to do?

Donna Eade: 9:48

And having a look at your business. But then having, maybe once a fortnight or once a month, having a good chunk of time, maybe three, four hours one afternoon, book it in your diary and that is your planning time so you can say, ok, where have I got to with my goals? And where am I going to with my goals? Because I think a lot of the time, the reason that we fall behind or don't reach our goals is because we don't actually make the time to reassess them. And you might have them on a pin board right in front of you so that they're there every day, but we get so used to seeing that that we don't actually pay attention to it. So subliminally it might be going in, but you're not actually taking the actions to get you there because you're not reviewing it at regular intervals. So making sure that you have got your chief executive officer time on your calendar so you can actually look at what you're doing and if that is actually taking you to where you want to be is really, really important. So, moving on to some of the techniques that you can use to help you with your time management Batching you know I am a big lover of batching.

Donna Eade: 11:02

Batching is your friend If there are like for like tasks, if you can batch it, it is something you is just going to change your world really, because it's it just takes so much energy out of it. So I like to use podcasting as an example, because it's obviously something that I do on the regular, but when I show you my setup and if you have followed me on socials you will have seen how I set up for a podcast I bring in two of my massive cushions off the back of my sofa because they're all loose cushions and I put them either side of my microphone. I put a blanket underneath in the middle, so that's under my microphone, and I wear something woolly and warm and you know I've got cushions around me and I bring all that in my office looks an absolute state and I certainly couldn't do any regular work in here while I'm set up like this and it takes me, you know, good five, 10 minutes to get it all set up. If I was to do this every single time I had an episode to go out, it would take up so much time because there's the setup and the pull down. That's at least 20 minutes every time. So if I do that for every episode, say there's 10 episodes 20 minutes times 10, that's 200 minutes. I'm not going to convert it into hours, I haven't got the brain capacity to do that but 200 minutes that it would take me to do 10 episodes just with the setup. Yet if I batched 10 episodes, it would take me 20 minutes to set up and take down, you see, so all of that time is saved and I would then get 180 minutes back, if I've calculated right, and that is time that I could do other work.

Donna Eade: 12:50

Yeah, so if you can batch like for like tasks and keep on just doing that one thing over and over again until you've got a good batch done, you are going to save yourself time in the long run, and that could be writing blogs, it could be podcasting, it could be creating videos. I know a lot of video creators that batch their content because it saves them time, it enables them to get it to their editors so that their editors have a bit of extra time to work on them and stuff. So it really is something that can save you a lot of time personally, but can also help with the production line. Depending on if you've got help and I would say that with blog posts, with podcasts, with videos, there is definitely help you could get on that as well. So, depending on whether you want to edit or not yourself, you could have it that somebody is doing your show notes for you. So if you could batch them 10 episodes and get them edited and say here's the raw. You know the audio for it. This is what I said Write me some show notes for these podcast episodes. Or you give them the transcript or something, or you want to do it by AI. You have that ability to do that and knock that out so much quicker than if you were to do it one at a time, so it's really good at saving time.

Donna Eade: 14:08

The next one is the two minute rule, so that is, if a task takes less than 10 minutes, do it immediately. Now, this is a really good one, but you have got to make the time for this in your diary. So you've heard me talk about time blocking before. We mentioned it a little while ago. However, one of the things I do talk about in there that I would like to bring up again is the white space. So what white space is is time where there is nothing booked in your diary.

Donna Eade: 14:38

So I've spoken before about how I have white space on a Friday afternoon. It is my time to catch up on anything that I haven't got done during the week, but my aim is to actually have everything done so I can take Friday off. So Friday morning is kind of a work morning. I try and keep it quite light. I try and have everything done by Thursday night really, and then I have white space on Friday afternoon. So the idea is that if I do have anything to do, I will get it done in the morning and then the afternoon is mine to do with what I want.

Donna Eade: 15:10

So what you can do is you can also have maybe an hour blocked every day. That is white space. Now, this isn't an hour that you're going to get to go and do something you want to do. It's not an hour that means you get to finish early, but it's an hour for those bits of time that get lost through the day.

Donna Eade: 15:28

So, generally speaking, people forget to block out time on their calendars for checking their emails or doing their banking or you know these different things that catch our attention that are like two minute tasks that we don't actually factor in and they can put us back and behind. So if you put yourself an hour at the end of the day, that's white space on your calendar, and then you're doing your two minute tasks as and when they come up and you're just kind of keeping an eye on that, then you're doing your two minute tasks as and when they come up and you're just kind of keeping an eye on that. Then you have that extra hour at the end of the day if you need to claw it back to finish something. So if you are getting pushed back a little bit by these two minute tasks, you need to respond to an email or you need to just finish off a project plan, whatever it is. There's something that you need to take from one file and put in another so you don't forget where it is.

Donna Eade: 16:18

All of those little things are like two minute tasks that you need to do then and there, because they're tiny little tasks that can get done really quickly. And they're usually things that could really trip you up if you don't do them when you're thinking about them as well. So if it's a task like that, you just have to get it done because you know you're going to forget. It's really important to get it done, but give yourself an hour a day where that's where that time comes from, so you can always continue to work through that hour at the end of the day if you haven't finished the project stuff that you wanted to get done, but if you have and you've done your two minute tasks, then, amazing, you can have that hour to do something for you.

Donna Eade: 16:57

But, really important, to block in that time for those things that you know take time that we never really count for when we're looking at our time. And then technology is a great way to manage your time, to manage your time. So if you are not a technophobe and even if you are, I would say there are so many useful resources out there that it is worth taking the time to actually learn because of the time it will save you in the end. So really have a look at that. What can you automate in your business and this would be a good thing to do along with your time audit is to go through that time audit and go okay, how many of these things could I have automated? So a lot of the times there are emails that we send out regularly that could be at least templated so you don't have to keep repeating yourself.

Donna Eade: 17:48

So for me, my podcast guest emails are templates. I can just adjust them for each guest when I'm sending them out and then they go out. All I've got to do is copy and paste. So I'm telling them the same thing. I want them to set up the same way for the podcast episode. I want them to know how the podcast is going to run. I'm going to want them to know when it's released. All of those things are things that I tell every client or every guest. So it's all there in the template. I just need to fill in the gaps. So that saves me a lot of time and that is something you could do as well.

Donna Eade: 18:25

Weekly emails If you don't have weekly content, like a podcast or a video or a blog, one of the things that you can do and make your weekly content is your email. So what you could do, if you wanted to, is actually to create 52 email templates that are one for each week. You know, know, maybe it's 48, because maybe you don't send any over Christmas or Easter or something, you know, however many for your weekly emails that you want to send out, and you could literally write those 52 emails and you could get the help of chat GPT to help you do that, by the way and they could just go out once a week, every week, for the entire year, and then, when January 1st rolls around, you just start back at email number one. Why? Because not everybody reads your emails. You are going to have new people on your email.

Donna Eade: 19:30

By the time a year has rolled around, your email list will have grown, so there will be different people that didn't hear those first ones, and what you can do is really pull into your core knowledge and what you want people to know. So, for example, if you are a nutritionist, there are definitely 52 things that you could talk about over the course of a year. That would be relevant every year. So January you know what are people doing. They are getting over Christmas, they are looking at making better choices for themselves, but it's cold, it's dark, it's dull and we all are lacking our vitamin D. There is plenty of you to talk about in January. February time that is going to help people, but that's going to be the same every year. So, even if people have read it, they're not going to remember that they've read it. So it's going to apply and you could do that throughout the year, and all of those emails are going to be relevant and they're going to keep you in somebody's inbox and keep them ticking over with you.

Donna Eade: 20:38

It could be that something specifically happens that you want to add in to the email. That's a timely thing that you could go and add into the bottom of that email and once it's been sent you could go back in, take that out, so it's back to its basic template and ready for the next year, and you could do that with any email throughout the year. So if you want to add something in, so you've got the basic email, and then anything that is time sensitive can be added on that week and then removed again and the template left and the cycle continues. So that is a really great way of saving so much time, because I think a lot of people spend a lot of time writing their weekly emails and it can be something that is really time consuming, but it doesn't have to be. You know brand new content every week, every year, content that you are putting out there again because it's valuable, because it is still true and you haven't had to sort of rethink it really and that's all it is is. Generally speaking, if you have that kind of seasonal thing, especially like in the nutrition world, where certain times of the year certain things are going to be better to talk about, you're probably likely to be talking about very similar things at each point in the year, but you're starting from a blank page and you're like, oh, what am I going to talk about? And that brain like it's just such a waste of brainpower. So I definitely think there is something in that 52 week cycle of emails.

Donna Eade: 22:10

Then there is the delegation and outsourcing. So we have talked about using technology to reduce the amount of time that we're spending doing things, but there is also the opportunity to delegate or outsource things as well, which we spoke about earlier when it comes to podcasting, show notes and things like that. So are there things that you could give to a VA to do that takes you just? It's just stuff that takes you time, that doesn't need to take you time. So, for example, one of the things that I wanted to look at doing was outsourcing my Pinterest, because it's basically the same thing. I had the template set up. It was basically drag and drop, but it was stuff that took me time. That just wasn't worth my time. So if I could have paid somebody else to just drop the title onto the pin, drop the pin onto Pinterest, do the um, the little description and add the link in, that would have saved me a lot of time, would have given them a couple of hours of work and would have had my podcasts going up all the time on Pinterest. Instead, I've kind of let my Pinterest go, guys. So that was something that I was talking about.

Donna Eade: 23:24

Earlier in the year I was going to come back and do a full episode on. You know how it was going? Well, I was very consistent with it for at least six months. Six months, I want to say like I was very, very consistent and it it just wasn't picking up At all. So I don't know what I was doing wrong. I might have to have a conversation with a Pinterest expert and see what I was doing wrong, but the stats just weren't improving and at one point they went through the floor, even though I was still uploading two to three pins a day. It went through the floor. Then it creeped back up a little bit, but it never really recovered. So I was just like I was up to about about 2000 views, I think, a week, and then it just plummeted to something like 500. And I was like what? And then it crept back up, never really broke a thousand again, and then I kind of fell off the wagon with it. So that's a brief overview of Pinterest, but that would be a great reason to have somebody else do it, because the consistency could stay there. But obviously that's got to be a budget thing.

Donna Eade: 24:36

But there are certainly other things in your business that you might think actually it would be better to outsource this. So, potentially, your inbox, that you could have all of your emails come through to one inbox, which your assistant would filter out ones that you actually need to reply to, ones that are just spam or, you know, promotion or you know aren't relevant for you, and that's a bit of trial and error. You want to make sure that you're checking that up in the first instance for the first few weeks or something. Make sure that they're not getting rid of anything that is important to you. So you need to have some sort of system for that, where they could put them in folders, perhaps, things that you need to look at, things they don't think are important and things that they would immediately delete, and then you could just check through those for the first couple of weeks and just make them aware of anything that you do need to see. But again, that's a trial and error thing and it's a cost thing, so you need to look at what the budget is for that.

Donna Eade: 25:36

So next I want to talk about something that can be a big issue for a lot of people when it comes to their time management, and that is a procrastination station. This is one that I suffer with a lot, and it could be because I'm a little bit neuro spicy. I mean I've not been diagnosed. Because I'm a little bit neuro spicy, I mean I've not been diagnosed, but there are certain things that would definitely put me there somewhere, and I have done some of the online sort of the NHS online things that say that yes, I would be a candidate for it. So definitely that plays into it.

Donna Eade: 26:13

There are times when I will get into a project and I just go and I've like lost three hours and got loads done and it's felt like two minutes. And then there are other times where my brain is just like I just don't even know what I'm doing. I'm kind of flailing around like from this app to that app I'll just go over here onto Facebook what's going on over there, and I just have absolutely no idea what I'm doing myself, even if I've got it blocked in my diary that this is what this time is meant for. I'm just like I don't really want to do that right now and it just yeah, that's kind of what I deal with on a weekly basis. So I understand that procrastination is a real thing that can really hinder people's advancement in their business.

Donna Eade: 27:06

So one of the first things that we need to look at is what is it that is making us procrastinate? Is there a trigger behind it? Is it something that we can put our fingers on? So, is it fear? Is it perfectionism? Is it overwhelm? Are any of these things a factor for you? So it could be that you've got time in your diary to create a new program. Do you have a fear of failure around that? Is it like you don't know if it's going to work? You've tried programs before and they haven't worked. So what's going to be different from this one? So that fear of failure puts you in a standstill and you don't want to actually get started with it because you're worried that it's not going to be different from this one.

Donna Eade: 27:46

So that fear of failure puts you in a standstill and you don't want to actually get started with it because you're worried that it's not going to work out. Is it that you've just got an awful lot on your plate right now and even though you know that you're supposed to be doing this one thing, you are so overwhelmed with everything that needs to be doing. You're kind of frozen in that fear state of I can't start anything because I just don't know. Or is it something that is just like you can't get it quite right. You want some, you want to put something out, but it's not quite right, and therefore you've kind of got yourself frozen because you don't want to keep trying and failing at getting it right in your own mind. All of these things can keep us stuck and therefore procrastinating when it comes to our businesses.

Donna Eade: 28:34

So it would be really good to understand the why before you try and fix the problem. Because if you don't know what the problem is and this has been very prevalent in my health journey, which I will definitely talk about at some point but if you don't know what the actual root cause of the problem is, often the solutions that you come up with are just band-aids that aren't going to help you in the future, because it's not really getting to the root cause of the problem. Because if you know that it's fear of failure, then you can look at it and go okay, where is my evidence for this? Oh, there isn't any, because I've never done this before. So how would I know that this is going to fail? Just because that failed doesn't mean this is going to fail.

Donna Eade: 29:19

You can kind of start to work on the mindset element of it. If you're overwhelmed, you know you might be able to sit down and go okay, it's overwhelm that's getting me. Let's write down everything that I need to do so I can see it, and then let's put it into some order of things that have to get done, things that don't matter, et cetera, and you can kind of make some system, some you know sense of the overwhelm. Then, if it's perfectionism, then maybe you just need to talk to a friend and get them to let you know that it's fine just the way it is, because my friends done is better than perfect. So there is just a way of getting around it if you know what the problem is in the first place. Another way of helping you and again, you know, first of all find out the why and try and work through that will often help to kickstart you.

Donna Eade: 30:09

But another thing this one would relate to overwhelm is chunking down big tasks. So sometimes if you write OK, today I'm going to create a course. Oh my goodness, that sounds overwhelming. Like I haven't got time for that, like, like I'm not going to get finished, it's not going to get done, and all of a sudden your brain is overthinking it. Instead, I'm going to create a course. So what are the steps that I've got to take? What are the things that I need to do? Let's write a list. Write a list of all the things you've got to do, break it down into those smaller chunks and go. Today I'm going to work on creating the title for my course, for example, and one of the things that a friend of mine worked with me on ages ago was putting three things on my list a day and just working on getting those three things done. And if I got those three things done, then anything, anything else was a bonus and that really helped me to kind of reduce the overwhelm.

Donna Eade: 31:10

The five minute rule so committing to doing a project for five minutes, set a timer, do it for five minutes and then see how you feel. And the thing with those kinds of things and people say about exercise and stuff is like, well, what if I just do that five minutes and then I walk away? That's okay, but a lot of the time, once you actually started, you'll start to get in the flow and you will continue. Some days that won't happen. Some days it'll be five minutes that alarm goes off and you say thank God for that, right, I'm going to go and make a cup of tea, absolutely fine. You know, at the end of the day it's your business, it's run your way, you're setting your own deadlines. So unless it's client work that has a deadline, you are in charge of those deadlines. You can move them and I think a lot of the time we put way too much pressure on ourselves to get things done so much quicker than we can actually do them, and especially if we've come from the corporate world where there was actually a team around us and we were all working towards something and maybe it only took a week.

Donna Eade: 32:21

In your business that might take four, you know, because you're the only one doing it. So there is, there is definitely expectations around our time where I feel that we put too much pressure on ourselves to get things done in a certain time frame. That just isn't right for a solo entrepreneur and therefore that can cause procrastination as well, because you don't feel that you're going to be able to do it in the time that you've given yourself. So the five minute rule is a great one for helping you get started. Accountability partners is another great one, and, alongside that, co-working spaces, events online, in person, whatever. But co-working and accountability can really help you focus. And I don't know what it is about it, because when I used to work in an office, you'd consider that co-working. But, my goodness, could I stand and talk with a good cup of tea for ages, chatting to my colleagues, not doing any work. But when you go from a business where you're on your own at home, and then you go into a place and you're like, right, I'm going to work on this today, and people go, ok, sure you. Just I don't know what it is, you just feel compelled to sit there and do the work. It's, it's quite magical. So that is an option for you as well.

Donna Eade: 33:38

And the other thing to remember is to celebrate your progress. Oh, my goodness, so often in business we don't take time to celebrate what we've actually achieved, from the smallest thing to the biggest thing. We tend to just get it done and then we're on to the next, on to the next, on to the next, and we do not take the time to go. Do you know what? I did a bloody good job there. So I would love it if one of our collective goals for 2025 is to celebrate the little wins, even if that is just. You know. You got a project started today, you know. Go into a Facebook group you're in, go on your own social media and say do you know what? I got this done today and just celebrate it because it's worth celebrating. And when you celebrate the little things, it really helps you to see how far you're going and how far you've come, because I think a lot of the time we just don't see it, like I said, because we just on to the next, on to the next, on to the next. So celebrate. So let's look at setting ourselves up for success in 2025. So I want you to have a look back, review 2024, what worked, what didn't, what went well, what didn't and what do you want to carry forward into 2025?. So have that reflection period.

Donna Eade: 34:59

And I've just gone and bought a book that was recommended to me and I can't remember who it was that recommended it to me, and I can't remember who it was that recommended it. Oh, I would think it was in a Zoom room in one of my networking meetings. They mentioned it and it was a book called. I'm going to find it for you, give me a sec. It's called your Best Year Yet and it's by Ginny Ditzler. Ditzler, d-i-t-z-l-e-r. Um. Whoever mentioned it to me, if you're listening to this, I apologize that I can't remember, but I do believe it was in one of my breakout rooms in a networking event that I was in. She recommended that that she's done it a couple of years and I bought that book, and I have also bought um, that marketing book that I mentioned. I I'm sure I mentioned it last week, but let me see if I can find it. I will link both of these in the show notes for you as well, guys, so that you can have access to them.

Donna Eade: 35:58

So this is by V. I don't know your surname, v, I can't remember it, so I haven't got that. But her website is called Insight2, as in the number two, insight2marketingcom, and in there she has a brand new marketing planner for small businesses and she told us that this is in its seventh year. Ok, it's £ pounds and it just looked fabulous and I was just like I would love that because it's one of those things that I try to plan out.

Donna Eade: 36:33

And then you need to kind of you know your marketing plan. All of all of the plans need to kind of work together. So my podcasting plan needs to work with my marketing plan, which needs to work with my program plan, and they all kind of need to work together. And I don't really have, and they all kind of need to work together and I don't really have anywhere where I kind of write it out together. So I thought this book might well help me. So those two books together, I'm going to be taking some time over the Christmas period to work through them and get it planned out. So I will link both of those for you in the show notes because they may well be something that you would like to do.

Donna Eade: 37:10

And then it's setting realistic goals. So going back to the fact that we often don't account our time properly as solopreneurs and think that we can get more done in the time than we can and then often feel like we've procrastinated, even when we haven't, because we haven't got as much done as we thought we should. It's a minefield out there, guys, but setting realistic goals. So whatever amount of time you think something's going to take you, maybe double it and see how you get on and see if that is more realistic. But yourself, those realistic, smart goals that you know we've all heard being talked about to death. But it's really important that we actually set the goals out that we can achieve, because that's part of helping motivate us to move forward if you've set unrealistic goals that you're never going to reach.

Donna Eade: 38:04

And this is why it always bothered me when people will say like, oh, I just want to hit you know X amount per month, and they would be like, why only that much? Why not? You know 10k a month? You know blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like because that's just never going to happen. Is it Like? From where I am now, that's never going to happen.

Donna Eade: 38:30

And you know people could say that there's my mindset around there, etc. But in reality, when you look at businesses, there is growth that happens from zero to fully established. There is growth and, yes, there are people out there that start a business one month and then within a year, have hit the million dollar mark, you know. But that's not everybody. That is a very, very small percentage of people that hit on something that just happens to work, and then they sell their programs on how you can do it too, which to me, isn't. You know, I'm not going to go into that, we're going to go down a dangerous rabbit hole there. But my fact is I know that there is no point in me saying a 10k a month goal, because even if it was possible, you know my mindset isn't ready to believe that that's possible, so therefore it wouldn't happen.

Donna Eade: 39:29

So you've got to set realistic goals for yourself that are based on where your comfort zone is, pushing yourself just outside it. Because definitely, you know. For example, if I was making 2k a month, setting a target to hit two and a half k a month and a stretch goal of 3k a month is much more realistic than saying I'm going to go from making 2k a month to making 10k a month. Now, by the end of the year, could I take it from earning 2k a month to earning 10k a month? I expect that would be absolutely possible, but it's not going to happen in one month, you know. So you've got to make the realistic goals for where you are, based on your knowledge, your feelings, your interpretation of how the year's going to go and how often you're going to set these goals because is this a goal for the year or is it a goal for the next couple of months, next quarter, the next six months? You've got to make those calls, so make sure that they are smart. Then make sure again.

Donna Eade: 40:41

I just want to reiterate what I said at the beginning about having that CEO time in your diary, because all these goals, this review, nothing of this is going to come to fruition or be worth the time you're going to put into it. If you haven't got set time set in your diary and do it now for next year, like I've got stuff in my diary for next year already. Put stuff in your diary for next year. That is chunks of time for you to spend reviewing your plan and putting systems in place to help you in the next stages and reviewing as well, because you may well find that you hit certain targets quicker than you thought, because maybe you know there was a magic nugget that you want to take on board and go OK, this worked this time. We're going to try that again this time and that means I'm going to stretch that goal, because this is what this did. It was over and above what I expected. I know that sounded really vague. I hope that made sense, guys, but that's what you've got to kind of look at when you're setting your goals is adjusting them as you go. And then the other thing is to protect your energy. So this is something that is definitely for all my neuro spicy friends out there and my introverts, and that is to be really conscious of your energy. And, if you're a woman, I would highly highly recommend looking at what your cycle is doing and working with your cycle. So that is something that I will be definitely tuning into more in 2025.

Donna Eade: 42:16

Again, along with my health journey, which I will probably talk about at some point, especially if it's of interest. So do reach out and let me know if you want to hear about what my health journey has been like in the last few months. But I have come off of my birth control, come off of HRT. You know there's a lot of things that have been going on, and so now my body is trying to get back to doing what it does naturally. Trying to get back to doing what it does naturally, and I have been listening to a lot of stuff with regard to working with the lunar cycles, working with your menstrual cycles and it is really important as women that we understand that our hormones are going through shifts on a weekly basis and for men, they go through their hormone cycle within 24 hours. So they are, you know. They might be grumpy in the morning and really effective in the afternoon, and that's pretty much going to be them every day, whereas we might be really grumpy for one week of the month and really hyperproductive in another week of the month, and then there's two weeks that are kind of a bit meh. So it's like really important for us to monitor that, monitor your energy with your cycle, see what is working for you, see how that is playing a role, and then what you can do is you can map it out over the year. Okay, do you know what? In the week before my cycle, before my period starts, I don't want to book any meetings in that week. That week is not a meeting week because I just feel so lacking of energy, I haven't got enough to give. But the week after my period, that's the week where it really works for me. You know, have a look at that and see, because you want to be balancing your energy as much as possible At the end of the day, one of the big things that we are doing here with our businesses is trying to create a life we love, not create a headache for ourselves, and I think a lot of the times we kind of come into business with this rosy glass half full idea of what business is going to be like, and then, when we get in it, we're stressed, we're flustered, we're overwhelmed, we're feeling exhausted all the time and it's like that's not what we signed up for.

Donna Eade: 44:43

So we have to kind of reel it back and look at what's important to us, who's important to us, who's important to us and where we want to be spending our time. So anything we can do and this could be a pull for some people is actually, I want to be there for my children's activities and I want to be there for my family at the weekends. So therefore, I have to make better use of the time when I'm working. So have a look at that. Go back and listen again, if you need to, to some of those tips. Have a look at when you are going to sit down and plan your 2025. Make some time for it. I know that there are people that actually take themselves off for a couple of days, not in their house, like off somewhere else, to actually go and do this kind of planning so that they're in a fresh environment. If you haven't got time to do that, then maybe work from a different room on this. So, if you're always in your office, maybe go and sit at your dining table and plan this out so that you've just got a bit of a different environment. So it puts you in a different frame of mind so that you can set yourself up for a really successful 2025.

Donna Eade: 45:51

Next week I have a guest coming on the show. Her name is Diane Watson and we're going to be talking about personal finance. So that is another big one, for, obviously, when we're looking at our money and what we want for it and what we want to do with it, and you know how we can look after it, so she's going to be talking to us all about that. She is the author of the she Can Prosper book and I'm really excited for you to hear that one. And then I've got a goal setting one where I'm, you know, my quarterly goal setting, one where I'm going to review my goals for the last quarter, set some goals for the next quarter and then we are into the Christmas holidays, guys, so it's coming around really quick. That's it for today. I'll see you again in the next one. Bye for now.