Work Smarter, Not Harder: Reclaiming Your Time As A Busy Entrepreneur

Time is your most valuable resource as an entrepreneur, but it often feels like there’s never enough of it. In this episode of Not Nice, Clever, we’re sharing actionable strategies to help you “buy back” your time and focus on what truly matters in your business. From reviewing your calendar to identify time-draining tasks, to hiring the right people who free up your schedule, we’ve got you covered.

We also dive into tools and tactics like having an executive assistant, creating SOPs, and leveraging time-blocking to protect your time and energy. Plus, we’ll share how frameworks like Dan Martell’s 1-3-1 method can streamline decision-making and keep you moving forward. Tune in to start working smarter, not harder, and reclaim your time today!

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• Candice Carcioppolo
• Kat Torre

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Time Management
• 2:50 Hiring for Time, Not Growth
• 6:11 Leveraging Technology for Efficiency
• 9:17 Creating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
• 12:05 Time Blocking for Productivity
• 13:28 Taking Action and Making Decisions

Transcript

Hi, I'm Kat, marketer turned brand storyteller. And I'm Candice, educator turned entrepreneur. And you're listening to Not Nice, Clever. As CEOs and leaders, it's your job to always have the answers. But sometimes you need a little help. Leverage, if you will. We get it. This is the place for you. So wherever you're listening, 530 AM Club at the gym, on your way to your next meeting or putting out today's fire, let's get into it.

In today's mini episode of Not Nice Clever, we're talking about how to buy back your time. Because we know that time is your most valuable resource, especially as an entrepreneur. It always feels like there's never enough time to get all of it done. I know my to-do list is a million miles long. So in today's episode, we're breaking down easy ways you can buy back your time so you can focus on what truly matters in your business.

And so if you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and start working smarter, not harder, which you know is a clever crew credo, this episode is definitely for you. So we're going to just be giving you a few tips on how to do that. Yes. So tip number one, your calendar. me say it again. Your calendar, your calendar, your calendar, your calendar. Proactively pull out your calendar and look at the next

weeks, not the whole month, just the next two weeks. And if you have never used your calendar, welcome to using your calendar because my goodness, being able to look at your calendar for the next two weeks and look at when maybe you are really stacked with meetings on a certain day or you haven't buffered in travel time to and from certain meetings, right? Or if you're going on vacation, you're doing business travel, just because you're back in town doesn't mean you're always back online immediately.

And then also looking at activities that maybe you've committed to things you said yes to Maybe that you don't really want they weren't really a full body. Yes, but you're like, let me postpone Let me reschedule or let me actually say this is not a good fit for me right now, you know Yeah, we recently did an episode about knowing where you're going If you know where you're going then it's easier to say no Thank you to things that don't fill a line to that so

That's definitely something you need to be doing when you look at your calendar, deciding if what it is you have on your calendar and how you're spending your time is in full alignment with where you're trying to go. Huge. The next one is hiring for time, not growth. And this is an interesting one because we are often talking about how to scale and we absolutely believe that

Scaling is important and it's something that you wanna do in your business. But sometimes you just wanna hire literally not for growth necessarily, growth might be a byproduct of this, but you want to hire for just getting tasks off your plate. So what are those things? Is it help with email marketing? Is it help with managing your own inbox? Is it help with maybe your calendar?

those small tasks that are taking up a lot of time that don't actually require your skill set. How can you get those off of your plate so that you can use your energy towards what matters most in your business? And a byproduct of that will likely be continued growth and scalability. Yes, I

will live and die by being able to outsource not fully not a hundred percent, but being able to outsource the majority of the administrative tasks when it comes to managing my inboxes and my calendar. Those two things. I can't tell you like people underestimate the seconds, the minutes. Oh, but I can just do it really quick. Really quick, really quick, really quick. And how much time that sucks out of your day. And like that type of task.

is not like the creative task. not like the client interaction or not task, like activity, you know, it just pulls you out of flow. It pulls you out of focus. So yeah, outsource that shit. Outsource that shit. And a lot of times the conversation that Kat and I are having with clients is, but I don't have the money to do that right now. And you have to think of it as an investment in your business.

One story that we probably tell a lot on Not Nice Clever is Ryan's story. So Ryan Serhant hired a driver in New York City because when he did a time audit, he realized that he spent so much time trying to get from point A to point B on subway or taxi or running, all of the things. Now I'm picturing him like running through central park. Yeah, I mean, I could see it for sure. True.


And he realized that if he invested in a driver and he was able to actually work during those commutes, that he would have more time for more business. And before he even had the budget to hire a driver, he invested in himself because he knew that that investment was going to have a huge ROI.

His driver is Yuri and he's had him for many, many years. He's still the same driver. And it's just a story that demonstrates the investment is like a bigger picture type of thing. It's not that you need to have the budget for it now. It's that you know that this investment is going to give you that ROI. Yep. And that brings us to our next tip. And this can look.

a lot of different ways, right? Based on where you're at, based on what you can invest, is having a gatekeeper. So that you're not on the front lines. Now, let me tell you a digital version of this that I had recommended to a client because like we walked through her finances, we're doing an audit of Q3. And she was like, I just don't have the investment to hire an assistant right now. I'm like, okay, cool. I'm like, but what if

because you're getting lost in all of your DMs. What if we get a scheduler for 20 bucks a month that has a social inbox feature and you are disciplined in that you are only going to check those DMs three times a day and you're going to go to that one place, you're going to knock out all the DMs at once because we know we're more efficient if we're like stacking tasks rather than just like doing it here and there. And that

social inbox feature on that schedule is a digital form of an assistant, right? So you're not you're turning off the notifications on your phone. She started sweating when I told her that I know that there's someone who's like, wait, what platform is that? So can you give them the social be? So social be like honeybee. I actually just started like playing around with it for my own business too. Because the other one that I had been using or had used in my past agency life was Sprout social, but they've gotten big now. And it's like a couple hundred dollars a month.


So if you want to go Mac Daddy, sprout social, if not social media. Mac Daddy, you're showing her age, Well, your age. I'm much older than you. know. I still don't believe it. Y'all card Candice when you invite her to your events, whether or not she's speaking, I don't care, her because it's wise. She's going to fond of you. Okay. So yeah, a gatekeeper. And I love that suggestion of like, hey, doesn't have to be a human right now. And another human.

This is making me think of another digital tool that's kind of along these lines that our friend coin who we didn't episode with before he suggested to us, which is sane box for your inbox management. And I don't know how this works, but it does work y'all. Sane box actually gathers all of your emails and asks you.

Basically, do you want this in your inbox or do you want this somewhere else and it trains it's like AI that trains? to put Things where you want them to be put And like maybe put them in your spam folder if that's where you want them anyways, it's Really really good because instead of seeing like hundreds of emails in your inbox You only see ones that you have trained to go to your inbox

Yep. And that's Great precursor to an actual human sorting your inbox. Yeah. Leverage tech people like a tech gatekeeper for sure. Yeah. we'll drop links to both of those platforms in the show notes.

Okay, next tip. this is big. And this is going to be one that you probably aren't going to think right away is high value, but it's so is building SOPs, aka standard operating procedures and playbooks for how you do business, how your business operates. Essentially, if you do something more than once in your business, it should be written down. And because then you're planning for the future, right?

Writing those things down are the materials with which you're going to train your first team member, whether they're virtual, contract or full-time, in-person, intern, whatever it is. And my cheat code way of creating SOPs, because the word SOP just makes me like, you know, not excited by it, is I just voice note or I use Loom to record myself going through it.

And then actually loom has a new feature, Candice. Did you know this? Where they will create an SOP from the loom video. Okay. I did not know that, but I was going to recommend another platform that does do that. So I love if loom, if loom does that great because I already use loom and I have it and people know loom really well. There's another one called scribe how. And basically kind of same thing. It records your, it records what you're doing on your screen. Yeah. And then it writes it all out.

Um, so you have an SOP, but yes, either one of those ways are a great way to do that. And you might be thinking, but kind of, don't even have a team. Like I don't need SOPs right now, but the time to have SOPs is before you have a team, not when you have a team. Cause what do you think they're going to learn and train on? Like they're going to ask you all the questions and then it's going to feel like such a burden against the wall. It's not good. Not good.

Not good at And so right now, because I am in this organization phase in my life, when I do the thing, I am making an SOP at the same moment. Okay, I'm calendaring people, I'm making an SOP so I can send this to my assistant so I never have to do this again. So but she can hear and see why I'm doing what I'm doing so she can learn because I can't have three meetings back to back without a break. Or I can never have. Yeah, like

Just things like that right now at all. Yeah. And they can't meet me for 10 a.m. obviously, but there's the 11 a.m. for me. you know, yeah, there you go. OK, two more tips because we're going to keep this short and tight as a mini episode for y'all. Time blocking huge. Love it. It's amazing. I only do certain types of tasks on certain days and certain times of day.

Now this goes into understanding your chronotype, right? How you sleep, what your natural circadian rhythm is, how your business operates, when you need to be present for clients, when you need to protect your time and recharge. There's a lot that goes into it, but starts with just thinking about themes for each day. That's kind of how I like to organize my calendar where like Mondays are me days where I'm planning, it's admin, I'm forecasting, I'm looking ahead. Tuesdays get shit done.

Wednesday is day of communications. I have all my client sessions there. Thursday is like brainstorming and project planning. Friday is like my spa, take care of my money. Like I look at my finances, you know, I get all like judged. Saturday is for errands and Sunday is the day of rest. Yeah. So that's my quick little spiel on calendar blocking. And calendar blocking. You want to treat any block you put in your calendar that is just for you like you would a client meeting.

That's the most important thing. If you would show up for your client and you wouldn't back out and you wouldn't flake on them, don't flake on yourself. Very hard to keep promises to other people when you can't even keep them for yourself. Yep. And lastly, because this mini is going a little longer than expected, but lastly, it's so important. Don't get hung up on overthinking. Make a decision.

Do the damn thing, collect the data, then maybe do it differently next time. That's it. But you got to just take action, take action, collect data, take another action. Boom. Also leave us a five star review. Thank you. Love you, Clever Crew.

Thanks for joining us on Not Nice, Clever. Remember to follow Not Nice, Clever wherever you listen to audio. And if you haven't already, drop that five star review. Share your takeaways. Tell us your story. We love to hear it. Signing off, you're not so nice, but so clever besties that mean business. See you soon.