059: Reduce the work that keeps you busy (featuring client Jenny Collins)
Mini series part 7.
What if you could cut the time that you’re currently spending on marketing and admin tasks in half, so that you could spend more time on your paid client work, on your dreamy business updates, or just free that up for your life outside of work?
During the past 6 episodes, I’ve been diving into what productivity actually looks like for business owners and how we can keep growing our businesses without having to resort to hustle and overwork.
But I know that it can feel really hard to trust that it’s possible to work less and to simplify, or even to let go of some tasks. It can feel like that would be the opposite of being productive, and that it would affect your income and your progress in a negative way.
So I asked Jenny to come on the podcast with me to talk about her experience. She’s an architectural designer based in Cape Town, South Africa. We teamed up to simplify and streamline some of the things in her business that were taking up more time and energy than she’d like them to, because she needed to spend more time on invoicable client work.
It’s been about 6 months since she did an intensive with me, and I was excited to get to chat to her about what’s going on and what changes she’s made since we worked together. I hope that you’ll also walk away with some helpful nuggets from her process.
We covered:
why Jenny needed to shift from a 6-day workweek to a 5-day one
the desire to reduce her work hours while still increasing her income
the three simple shifts she made to her most time-consuming marketing and admin tasks to make this plan a reality
whether or not these three shifts felt doable, and were they enough?
how these shifts have impacted other things in her business and life
realizing that there's always a different way to approach work, even when it doesn't feel like it
seeing that running a business without hustle and feeling balanced is possible
Architectural designer Red Cat Design in Cape Town
Productivity Ecosystem summary
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Shownotes
What if you could cut the time that you’re currently spending on marketing and admin tasks in half, so that you could spend more time on your paid client work, on your dreamy business updates, or just free that up for your life outside of work?
During the past 6 episodes, I’ve been diving into what productivity actually looks like for business owners and how we can keep growing our businesses without having to resort to hustle and overwork.
But I know that it can feel really hard to trust that it’s possible to work less or to simplify or even let go of some tasks. It can feel like that would be the opposite of being productive, and that it would affect your income and your progress in a negative way.
So I asked Jenny to come on the podcast with me to talk about her experience. She’s an architectural designer based in Cape Town, South Africa, and we teamed up to simplify and streamline some of the things in her business that were taking up more time and energy than she’d like them to.
It’s been about 6 months since she did an intensive with me, and I was excited to get to chat to her about what’s going on and what changes she’s made since we worked together – and I hope that you’ll also walk away with some helpful nuggets from her process. So let’s jump in!
Before we dive into our work together, could you tell us a little bit about what you do?
For as long as I can remember, design has been part of my life, specifically the design of homes. I remember as a young child visiting the homes of family and friends. At night, I'd fall asleep mentally redesigning them. Once I'd got the architectural side correct, I'd move on to the interior design part.
I started off working in interior design, but I ended up shifting into architecture because interior design felt too much like fixing poor architecture. And that’s something that’s really important to me; getting to the core or root of something rather than just applying a band-aid.
In a nutshell, I practice architecture and design homes based on solid architecture and interior design principles. And I do what I do because I believe that your home can either add to the way you experience your life or take away from it. And I really want my clients to experience the best quality of life possible.
I design either new homes or do large scale renovations to existing homes, usually heritage homes, and create homes that make our lives simpler and more beautiful. And I do that in Cape Town, South Africa.
That’s so cool! I’m just realizing this is very similar to time management: how people spend their time can either add to their life experience, or take away from it.
Can you share what was going on in your life/business that made you want to get some 1:1 support?
I remember a boss telling me that she worked 9am till 11pm on weekdays, 9 till 5 on Saturdays and a couple of hours on Sundays. And that was what was needed to be a successful architect. I didn’t agree with it, but I realized that I was following in her footsteps and for many, many years, I worked 6 day weeks.
Eventually, I realized that it was both not sustainable and that there was more to life, but I wasn't sure how I could reduce the amount of time I worked and still get everything I needed to get done and still earn what I needed to earn.
I’ve picked up that I tend to battle with time scarcity and it causes a lot of anxiety for me. Literally thinking about it now makes my chest feel a little tight. This obviously influences how I feel about having not enough time to get through everything!
Before our first call, I had you do some prep. I asked you to describe the main things you’re working towards right now and you brought up two things that stood out to me:
Refining your clients and projects to make sure they’re more in line with my abilities and personality and attracting clients who value your expertise.
Finding a way to only work a 5 day week but still increase your income.
And my ears of course perked up as you mentioned wanting to work less hours but increase your income – I love figuring that stuff out!
Could you talk a bit more about how your work time was divided at the time?
I needed to aim for 25% of my work time to be on business related tasks and 75% to be on invoiceable tasks, but it was about 50/50 at the time. Prior to 2021, it was probably 80% client work, 20% business tasks, and probably because I caught up over the weekends…
Ahaa – so basically your Mon-Fri the time was split 50/50, so you’d catch up in client work on the weekends to bring the client work part up?
Yes!
Why was it important to you to reduce your workweek to 5 days a week, and within that also bump up that invoiceable work to 75% of your time?
I realized that I needed time off to recharge in order to be healthy and lead the balanced life I now wanted, and that actually helps me to produce better work (covid, turning 40 and illness have changed my priorities drastically). I still really battle with the concept that taking time out actually makes me work faster and produce better work, but it does.
Yessss!!!!!
In your prep questionnaire, I also asked you what were the top 3-5 tasks that were taking up more of your time than you’d like to.
You listed 5 things, and three of them were the ones that we identified as things that made the most sense for us to simplify or streamline to take up less time. I thought that we’d talk about how we tackled those three a bit more in detail.
1 – Marketing
I get a lot of new projects through referrals but clients always look at my social media to get a better feel for me, my style and what I do. And often when we meet, it’s like meeting an old friend rather than a stranger. And I love that! So social media is an important marketing tool, but I found that creating content and the interaction that goes with it was taking a big chunk of my time.
And not only was it taking time, but I wasn’t really 100% liking what I was putting out there so it felt like a lot of wasted energy.
I know that when I’m more aligned and have more clarity on what I want to post, the message I want to get across, etc, it goes quickly. I used to spend much less time on SM because I just posted randomly and I think I posted more what I wanted to post rather than what I thought I ‘had’ to post. It was probably about 1 hour then but it went up to about 6 hours.
We talked about ways that you could repurpose content to not only save you time, but to make sure that you were sharing some of your most important thoughts, ideas and values *and* your origin story repeatedly so that new people would also see them. Especially since you wanted to build that know, like, and trust faster, we talked about how repeating the same themes and messages will help keep these things top of mind.
We also talked about how if you scheduled a couple of posts per week up front, you could then still dip in and do those in-the-moment posts that you like to do without overwhelming your feed.
What does your Instagram creation look like now, and how much time are you spending on it?
I’m spending so much less time on it! I’m probably back to about an hour. And I’m also more comfortable about what I’m posting, it feels more ‘me’ and I think that comes across.
I agree!
2 – Fee proposals
They were very time consuming. I would meet with a potential client for about 2 hours and then easily spend 2 days preparing a fee proposal. And then meet with them again to work through the fee proposal for another 2 hours or so. Fortunately I have a high success rate on my proposals which helps, but it’s hard finding the time to fit that in.
I remember that you were a bit skeptical about being able to spend less time on proposals, especially since every house project is so different that it’s not just a matter of creating a template and adding some personal touches.
When we talked, it came up that when a client has come as far as a proposal with you, they’re already fairly set on working with you and just want to know what it will come down to. And that you deliver the proposals in person anyway, so it’s a good chance to clarify anything that you might have included in the proposal before.
How much are you spending time on the proposals now?
I’m spending about half the time and my proposals are about half the length they were.
That’s great! Which I can imagine is more easily digestible for your clients, too!
3 – replying to emails, mostly queries from potential clients.
We talked about creating a bank of email templates that you could use and personalize. And idea that was a bit overwhelming at first?
I agreed with the concept but I couldn’t figure out where I would find the time to sit and create templates.
We talked about how you could instead save them in the moment you’re already creating them for a client, and slowly build that bank up – vs having to sit down for a day and come up with all the potential templates you might need.
I’m curious to hear about how you felt, when we focused heavily on simplifying just these three things in your business? How did you feel as we were in it, and how are you feeling about it afterwards?
I knew that simplifying would get me closer to how I wanted my life to be so I had to try. But to be honest, I didn’t think it was possible. I thought your suggestions sounded great in theory but I didn’t think they would work in practice. I wasn’t sure that small simple changes could make the big difference I needed. But I was very wrong and I’ve seen brilliant results.
I love that you’re so honest about this!
What tangible things have changed as a result of our work together?
I'm more intentional about how I spend my time. I consider whether the energy a task takes will give me enough of a reward. It’s less about plodding through tasks and working a set number of hours and more about how I can go about achieving the best result in my day.
My time on marketing has been hugely reduced so I can focus on the drawing and design work that I really love.
I'm feeling more confident about ignoring the 'shoulds' and sticking to the 'what works for me'.
Asking for help is always hard for me, but I've learnt how valuable it is because for instance, you see a challenge differently to how I see it, and you're able to offer great advice because of that.
It's so incredibly helpful working with someone who has a different background, experience and looks at things from a different perspective. You were able to offer solutions to things I thought had no easy solution, and that's gold!
There were some less tangible things that we also talked about, like how you felt about sometimes working outside of the weekly schedule that you try to follow. Could you speak a bit about what that used to look like and how that’s changed?
I think in quite a black and white, all or nothing way sometimes. And I felt like if I ended up doing a 6 day week I was letting myself down and that I’d go back to doing it all the time. I still battle with this, but the truth is, sometimes it’s needed. Sometimes a few hours of work frees up more than that in headspace. I guess it’s looking at the big picture a bit more. And maybe giving myself a little more grace.
What have you redirected your freed up time and energy towards since our work together aside from the client work?:
I've also had more headspace/ bandwidth to think about ways I'd like to improve my service to clients. I haven't had a chance to act on any of these thoughts, but I'm now more confident that there will now be time and energy to do this.
It also sounds like you’re taking more time off during the weekends?
Yes, I am and I’m loving it! And time off over the weekend has a direct impact on how well my week goes.
What was your biggest AHA, or a key insight you got from us working together?
I think, overall, that there's always a different way of doing things that will help me to create the life I want. Sometimes it takes a bit of time to find the right way, but it's there.
I'm filled with a sense of hope that it's possible to live a great life without the constant hustle.
Anything else you feel others should know about working with me?
Your approach and support is gentle, which I really needed. I didn't feel like working with you was adding to my overwhelm and load, also important!
What does balance as a business owner mean or look like to you?
It means that every day I get to do things that I love, that fulfill and energise me. It’s not just designing homes, there’s space for the other things that bring me joy: like being outdoors, reading, exploring. It means that I’m more than just my occupation.
As of right now, you’re only serving clients that are local to you – buuuut you might potentially start offering some pick-my-brain sessions for people who’d like ideas for redesigning their spaces, which means that anyone anywhere could get your eyes on their stuff.
Where can people find out more about you or follow along with your design projects, and maybe reach out about picking your brain?
They can head to my website which is redcatdesign.co.za or find me on IG as redcatdesignct.
I enjoyed chatting with Jenny and hearing about how things are going for her and her business right now – I loved working with her and it’s awesome to see that she’s experienced such big changes with just a few simple shifts.
If you liked what you heard, if you’d like to be able to spend your work time more productively so that you’d have more free time outside of work, I’d love to support you.
Together we can figure out ways to get some time-consuming things done in less time and with less effort. You’re also probably just a few simple shifts away from being more productive and we can team up through my 1:1 intensive to figure that out. And like Jenny mentioned, my intensive comes with a gentle accountability and support period which I think is essential when it comes to changing the way you do things – it’s hard on a brain level to change the way we operate and having support through that I think is helpful.
Thank you so much for spending your valuable time with me and Jenny, I hope you have a beautiful week. Bye.