When your house is a wreck and your kids need you, the first thought you may have is that you must choose between your business, your family, your sleep, and your passions. Maybe you can have a few of those things, but not all of them. I remember being in a time in my life when I couldn’t consistently show up in my business because I didn’t understand how to navigate my kids needing me and my house always being a mess.
I know all the things are calling you. Your dreams are big, your passions are even bigger and there’s no giving up now, friend. You may need to just stand still for a minute and that’s fine. But we are not going back. We are going to move forward one small step at a time.
You don’t have to give up your passions, your work, or your dreams to be able to make money from home. Its possible to show up for your business consistently even when everything is screaming at you. Today I am going to get you pumped and prepared to do this in your life and business by sharing some best practices for showing up consistently in your business.
Listen to the entire episode on The Systemize Your Life Podcast
I get it. You have all these things that need to be done in your house and you’re trying to focus on work. Emphasis on “trying” to focus on work. Despite having all my systems in place, I still sometimes have to go to a coffee shop and work. Our nature as moms, keepers of the homes, and wives is to always be doing something for our home and family. We can convince ourselves that nothing is ever truly done. I understand the pull to take care of everything and everyone. But I also know the burning desire to show up here on the blog, on the podcast, in my Facebook community, and for the women in the Systemize Your Life Academy.
To show up consistently for the people that are in my community has truly become just as important to me as showing up to do the dishes. I want you guys to learn how I bridged that gap from feeling like my business was this little thing I couldn’t show up consistently for, to being a priority that I am absolutely showing up for.
Sometimes I’ve got it together emotionally and I can draw a hard boundary between work and home while I’m in my house. Sometimes I can’t. I think a lot of us learned that through the pandemic, when so many people were displaced from their corporate offices and had to come home. Some people were eager to get back to work because they can focus better at their office and some people loved being home.
3 Things You Need to Show Up Consistently in Your Business
Now we will jump into three things you need to show up consistently in your business. The first two points will be overarching points since there are a lot of resources covering these two points in previous blogs and podcasts. The third point is what we’re really going to break down today.
1. You have to systemize your house.
If you want to show up consistently in your business, you’ve got to start with getting your house systemized, which is why I created the Systemize Your Life Academy. It is my home management system that I started with. I knew that if I wanted to create margin in my day and open a window of time when I could work, it would have to be during nap time or school time. Which meant I couldn’t be cleaning or cooking during those times.
Both you and I must have a home management system to do that, because we are not using our sleep time to do that (which means we can’t use our nighttime routine time for that work either, because that ends up eating into our sleep).
2. Your time management needs to be solid.
Your time management is part of your home management system, and it is incorporated into the Systemize Your Life Academy home management system. However, there is a huge difference between your home being clean because you hire a house cleaner and are a minimalist as compared to using the hours in your day to manage your home well. I can have a spotless home while still having the busiest schedule on planet earth because I have no discipline and spend my time shopping on Amazon, scrolling on social media, or hanging out with friends.
You need to evaluate what is in your life that doesn’t need to be there so that you can fit in the thing that you want to do, requiring you to be laser-focused from the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep. I have so many other resources on time management including my five-block time blocking method and several podcast episodes on time management that can be located via my podcast vault.
3. You have to systemize your business.
If you want to show up consistently in your business when you have many things calling for your attention, you must systemize your business. A thousand times over, you must be able to sit down, crank out work, close your laptop, and move on with your life. You must be able to show up, and show up well, in a very short window of time because you probably don’t have hours every day to dilly dally.
You may be in a season of your life where you have more time on your hands to spend on your business because your children are older and are in school and sports. But I can guarantee you that if that is you, you’re wasting a ton of time when you show up to your business because you don’t even know what to do when you’re there. Same problem (no systems in your business), same solution (put systems into place).
Now we will talk about some of the most important systems that you can put in place that will make an immediate change in how much time it takes you to run your business.
Create Your Main Workflow
This is your hub, your cockpit, your command center. You will come back to this over and over again. Imagine sitting down in the cockpit of a commercial airplane. You sit down and there are all these buttons and knobs that give you information about flying the plane.
My daughter just got to do this in an airplane. The pilots let her sit down and they turned on all the lights and moved the chairs around. It was so cool! Side note: Southwest is amazing. They’re so great with kids.
My workflow acts like a cockpit for me. I get in and click a couple of buttons and it tells me what to do. It runs my business. I don’t know what to do in my business without looking at my workflow. None of it is in my head anymore which allows me to show up well for my family. A workflow is the number one system I want you to get in place in your business.
Your workflow needs to tell you what you need to do every day and every week. You repeat it every week of the month. It’s a weekly workflow. I help students build workflows inside of the Systemize Your Life Academy and have several podcasts on workflows which can be found in the podcast vault. The Systemize Your Biz portion of the Systemize Your Life Academy is getting a huge facelift. We’re upgrading all the content in there and we are going super in-depth on all the things we’re covering today.
“To show up consistently for the people that are in my community has truly become just as important to me as showing up to do the dishes.”
Don’t let creating a workflow stress you out because it shouldn’t. Here’s how you start: sit down and ask yourself, “What do I need to accomplish every day in my business?” Write it down. “What do I need to accomplish every week in my business?” Write it down. “What do I need to accomplish every month in my business?” Write it down.
Then you take those things and start grouping them into categories. Do you have a lot of social media tasks every day that you do? Cool. Create a daily social platforms card (grouping of tasks) in MeisterTask. When you click on it, it will open a list of social media tasks you’re responsible for that day. That’s not overwhelming, is it? You have a checklist of all the things you need to do, you do those in 30-60 minutes and you’re done. Boom.
I’ve used Asana, Trello, and MeisterTask, and the latter is by far my favorite. It is so, so easy to use. You can create an account for free and get started with a business workflow right now. The paid option with all the team add ons is only $8 a month.
Then you move onto your next card on MeisterTask. Your weekly tasks for that day of the week. You work through all your routine tasks without having to think. You should not be thinking about all the tasks you have to do for all of the people all that week on a daily basis. That sounds like madness. That sounds like nothing you can show up consistently for. But I bet you could show up for client Susy on Mondays, client Charlie on Tuesdays, and so on. When you have a workflow, the following systems can be used on top of the structure of that workflow.
Show Up Consistently for Your Content
I use the same system for my content that I used when I had 300 followers that I carried over from my high school days. Has the type and amount of content changed? Yes, but the system is the same. It has adapted with me, and your system will adapt with you. Sit down and create a system that allows you to show up consistently to your content without being fussy about how perfect it is.
Batch producing may be the method that helps you the best. If you need to produce thirty social media posts a month, maybe you sit down and create six a week, every Monday. Or maybe you sit down one day for 4 hours and create all thirty of them because that is how your brain works. Experiment with different systems until you find the one that works best for you and your business.
Every system of every part of every huge company did not work when they first tried it. They started with trial and error. And that’s how you will learn and grow, too; but you must show up consistently for your content. You can’t right now, because you haven’t systemized it. It’s too overwhelming to think about what you’re going to share or post or write about today. You’ve got to systemize it so you can show up to it once and be done with it. Whether that’s once a week or once a month, you can decide.
Show Up Consistently for Your People
Regardless of who your people are (students, free Facebook group members, or your team at your 9 to 5) showing up consistently for your people stays the same. This can be as simple as a card in MeisterTask that tells you that you need to do a team check in. Inside the card is a list of all the people you need to touch base with. Before I had a team, that card told me to check my relationship spreadsheet, where I kept track of all my relationships in my direct messages. Relating to people is important to me and following up with these people is important to me.
There is one specific email that you guys get when you join my email list that most of you guys respond to. There used to be a few and now there are more. I personally respond to every one of those emails. I have a system for it. I don’t get to every email by the end of every day like I used to, my system has changed, but I am still showing for the people I want to show up for.
Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t have this,” or “I’m not there yet,” or “I don’t know where to start.” Start with what you do have. You want to be there for people in your direct messages Instagram but you don’t have anyone there yet? Go start direct messaging people Instagram and be consistent in being there for those people.
Don’t have a Facebook group that people are showing up to? Start one! Consistently show up every day and post something. Make a goal to earmark thirty minutes of your kids’ nap time to respond to comments. No comments yet? Great, you just got nap time back! This is what I did, and this is what you can do, too! You just keep doing it day after day after day after day.
One day your kiddos are sick? Bummer. You guys have seen what I do. I hop in the groups and tell you what’s been going on. I apologize and jump back in. And that’s okay! You just keep showing up because you have this workflow that tells you what you need to do.
Outsourcing
The last thing we’re talking about isn’t technically a system. When we’re talking about showing up consistently to your business when you have all of these other things in life demanding time of you, you’ve got to take risks and outsource. In the same way that I teach outsourcing in my home management courses. Think about what you can delegate. You have to create more margin for yourself if you want to grow in any capacity at all. You’re reading this blog because you want to grow, so start delegating.
I started delegating in my business before I had any funds to pay my family or anyone else, and I brought on an intern. In exchange for their work, I did anything I could to benefit them as they benefited me, getting super-duper creative. I fair traded with people, getting them to do things for me that I couldn’t do and doing things for them that they couldn’t do. Seriously, I do this as often as I can and anywhere I can. Whenever you create a system for what it looks like for you to do the work, it becomes incredibly easy for you to hand it over to someone else to do the system the way that you did it. Please start systemizing your business so you can create opportunities for you to grow. That’s why you’re here and that’s what you need to do.
Recap
- Get a home management system in place.
- Get your time under control.
- Systemize your biz.
I love systems in home, but I love systems in business even more! They’re so much fun! Yes, I love spreadsheets. Yes, I love all the things. I would love to help you figure out where to begin and what this would like for your business.
Questions? Hop over to our Facebook group and comment them there! You can also check out some of my other podcasts to for more content about getting your life systemized. Interested in knowing more about the Systemize Your Life Academy? Check it out here. No matter where you are in your walk towards systemizing your life and business, I’m here for you, friend.
Frequently Asked Questions
I want to outsource, but don't think I have anything to offer people in return. What recommendations do you have?
First, try cataloging your skillset. Is there anything in your skillset that someone else could use? Get super creative! Secondly, check out this podcast on the Top 5 Things You Can Take Off Your Plate to Have More Time.
