• Questioning the idea of work-life balance
• What designing your day means
• How you can turn your dream day into a reality
• How starting our day and ending our day is most important
• Step by step on how to design your day
• Prioritising yes for you

Full Episode Transcription

Nicole Smith 0:02
Welcome to take control with Nicole, as business owners, we experienced firsthand the fine line between our personal and business life. During our conversations, we will look at simple hints and tips to create time, reduce overwhelm, and help you to navigate through your journey to where you want to be. If you’re looking for smarter ways to work, and create space and time freedom in your day, then you’re in the right place. All right, let’s go.

Hello, hello there. And thank you for joining me for this fabulous episode of take control with Nicole. Now today, I wanted to create a space for you to start to ponder, start to imagine start to think about why did we start our businesses and have we designed these in a way that is actually going to support the way that we want to live. There are so many examples of fabulous business owners jumping straight into the doing, doing doing doing doing and all of a sudden, they’ve created this fabulous business, but they’re working all the time, and running themselves almost into the ground, which is not what we do, or what we want to do when we ideally set out to create this beautiful world that will allow us to be doing the things we love spending time with the people we love outside of COVID, of course, and also to just be able to have that time for you. So grab a seat, grab your coffee, whatever time at your grab a wine, if it’s the evening and you’re tuning in. And let’s have a chat about designing your day.

Good morning. How are we all on this fine Tuesday morning, I’m coming to you live from lockdown in Melbourne. And I am going to be talking about designing your day. Now when we talk about being able to build a business that truly supports the way you want to live. It can seem to be this really massive undertaking when we’re first first starting. However, what this is telling me popping up, you’re telling your followers that you’ve started a live video. Okay, cool. Awesome. Thank you Instagram for that note. So yeah, when we start our business, you know, we create this idea of what it’s going to be who we’re going to work with, what does it mean for us personally for our families, for the way that we we work and live each and every day. You know, we talk about that sort of the buzzword is that work life balance. But you know, I’m going through a bit of a time where I’m questioning that because especially as a business owner, it’s really just part and parcel of our world. So we’re like at the centre and off on every little point is a different element that together combined creates who we are what we are. So let’s talk about designing your day. But I actually want to talk about it a little bit broader than that. So when we do start up businesses, and we have these ideas, what would your ideal day, your ideal week, your ideal month, your ideal year? What does that look like?

Are you working from your home office and you work 2, 3, 4 hours a day, and you’re working with the exact clients you want to work with? You are when we’re out of COVID you are travelling and you are working from each port around the world, as they used to say, and you’re connecting in and you are working from absolutely fully remotely. You’re living that Nomad life that Mariah and I talked about last week. Are you living that? Or are you wanting to stick to the traditional nine to five and have a physical office have a team that you want to grow and you want to support? Whatever it is, it’s completely unique to you and how fabulous that we have that choice as business owners to really map out how that looks like. So once you have given yourself some time to really be honest and think about how you could see yourself not only working day to day, but that bigger picture, how you want your business to really support the life that you want to live. Then we can take it a notch down. So we created this beautiful design of what our world will be, how do we actually Oh, good morning, Kathy. Hello, your wave. How do we now transition from the bigger picture of what this ideal world is into the day to day of actually making that a reality?

So the first place that we should really have a look at is, are our services and our products actually supporting that goal to have that ideal work? ideal life, the ideal life that you want to live? Are you working with the right clients? Are you supporting yourself in developing and designing the way that you run your business? Have we thought about the actual operational elements? So how are you working day to day? Have you designed it in a way that it’s really nice and seamless and easy. So you’ve got systems and processes in place that can basically run without you have really little in little involvement from you or your team. And then if we talk about it, from a daily point of view, how you actually planning your days to support that a good morning, hello, way, still getting used to this live thing. Instagram keeps telling me things keeps popping up telling me messages. So yeah, how are we actually planning our days to support all of those little, little stepping stones to reach that bigger ideal goal of what our world what our life would look like if we had the ideal, no boundaries, no limitations right now. So one of the activities that I go through with my clients is actually called the designing your day process. And we don’t just look at a day, we actually look at a week as just a general, if you had if your week was the same, for instance, each week, how would it look? Well? How would you like it to look? And so we start with the things right at the morning, in the morning, from the moment you wake up? What are the things that you do that really support you to be your very best or be just as you are today, because we go through all the ups and downs of business life of being a human of being just generally us. So what is it that you need each morning to really get you up and ready and raring to do whatever it is that you have planned for that day.

Just interrupting this episode for one little message, if you have been listening and love what you hear and want to come in Connect, we have a tight control with the Facebook community, right over there on Facebook, that I would love to invite you to come and join us. We are a supportive community, we are looking to really take action in our businesses, and change the way or evolve the way we’re working right now. So I invite you to come on over and join our community and connect with us all community is the essence of everything in business, being able to really build those relationships that you can nurture, and grow and support and celebrate each other are how fabulous, I hope to see you over there, pop on over to Facebook, take a troll with Nicole, see you soon.

The next thing I look at is at the other end of the scale. So sleep is very important. Now that’s something I have been struggling with of recent times because the old monkey brain won’t stop. So I’ve been putting into place some measures before I go to bed. And these things, all of these things as we go through different stages. as we evolve as we explore, as all the things as we evolve, basically, in a nutshell, we need to support our changes as well with our habits there. So at the end of the day, what day do you want? What time do you want to go to bed? And what are you doing just before bedtime to really support you to hopefully reach that ideal sleep that you are actually looking for? Once we have the morning and the night time taken care of. The next thing I want you to put in there is your breaks. So your lunchtime is your any sort of particular times during the day where you’re going to have some breaks and also your personal activities. So are you going to a yoga class? Do you like to spend the morning writing your book? Do you want to go for a walk just before dinner time each day? Or do you want to go out the jetski out in the water and really enjoy that fresh air and you know, whatever it is whatever is the thing that really makes you light up and shine. They’re the things that need to go into your diary first because again, we have had this conference Yesterday, I was, you know, yes, I know that jetski calm it was for you. I’m a bit jealous of saying those beautiful pictures of you out in the water. I remember that from our childhood being out on on rhythm Bay there on the jet skis. So Oh, gosh, sorry. got us.

Yes, yesterday, I was on a call with the We Are One roof community. And we were talking about adaptation. But we’re also talking about the fact that we, especially with COVID, of recent times, we have created this real online buzzy world of all the doing things. And we have all these opportunities to connect and go on to zoom calls or, you know, be online all the time. And we may have not realised what we are doing, we are putting everybody else first by saying yes to all the things whereas sometimes we need to say no, because no is such a powerful world, which you would have heard me talk about it before. But being able to say no to some of those things that he has maybe deep down, we’d love to go to them. But you know, really, that you need some time for yourself, or you need to go and finish off that thing that you’re wanting to do. Or you just want to go and have some lunch by yourself out in the garden in the sun, or yet sunny here today. So like yesterday, I went outside and I sat with Charlotte as she was jumping on the trampoline, she disappeared back inside. And I stayed outside. And it was beautiful. Just sitting there by myself with my laptop, doing just some small little admin tasks that I was wanting to complete on the day.

So yeah, and then of course, now you’ve got all the personal stuff in you’ve got your morning, you’ve got your night, you’ve got your personal stuff, you’ve got your breaks in now you have space for your client activities or your work activities to pop those in there. Absolutely. Kathy no means a yes to something else. And how fabulous the yeses. What do we want to say yes to you? No, no, Yes. No. Yes. No, is of course a powerful word. But how fabulous is yes, being able to say yes to that thing that really should makes you shine, being able to say yes to that coffee date that you’ve been wanting to go on? And that, you know, your diary may have been full in the past, but you’re now prioritising that yes, for you. And it’s such a good feeling when you really do put yourself in the forefront. I think as business owners, and just in general, we tend to want to support others, which of course is such a fabulous thing. However, if we’re not supporting ourselves, who is we need to be we need to be making our or creating ourselves as our number one Gold Star Platinum member clients. Because if we’re not putting that energy into ourselves, who is will end up in a pile over in the corner. And having a little bit of a moment, which we all have moments, I have moments. So moments of great being in the moment and present and active. And Anyway, I digress. So yeah, we’re now popping in all of the things that we do for our business. And remember as well that we’ve got on our business and in our business and the ratios, from the last time I checked to a 5050. So if we’re going to be 50% in our business, we want to be 50% on our business. So how does that actually look? And again, if I go right back to the start of the conversation, are we pricing our services and products in a way that we are going to be serving the way that we want to be living, we’re not back to back each and every day and really working all the hours and hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, suck, suck, suck, suck, suck? How is that going to be able to create the life you want to live? So that’s it in a nutshell. I love supporting my clients to discover this obviously, with building systems and processes This is the ideal is to really be able to create simplicity that remove some of those, you know, those lots of little tangley beats that create make lots of time take up lots of time in our day. And it’s really great to be able to explore that bigger vision of where my clients want to head and what does that actually look for look like for them and be able to build and support their worlds to reach that the goal. Alright, well that is it. Thank you so much for tuning in ladies and I hope you have a fabulous rest of your day. And I’m sure I’ll speak to you both soon. All right. Bye, everyone.

So what was your key takeaway from all of that? Being able to give yourself that space? And actually ask yourself this fabulous question. Have I designed my business to support the life I want to be living? I would love you to take some time today, five minutes, do some journaling, really create that space or grow that space, grow that curiosity around? What does my ideal world life look like? And thinking then back in tying all those little lines together to really hone in and say, Hmm, maybe there’s a few little things that I need to tweak right now. Well, thank you so much for joining me, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day or evening, and enjoy creating space and time freedom by now.

Well, there we go. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we connected on socials? Yes, if not, please come on over. Say hi, I’m on all the platforms at the artisan solutions. So I’d really look forward to see you over there. And if you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I’d love it if you could leave a review. And of course, share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, then everyone. Have a fabulous rest of the week, and until next time, see you then.