Creating Systems that Work for Your Business with Holly Haynes | 95
This week’s guest expert is Holly Haynes, the CEO and founder of Crush the Rush. I loved chatting with her about creating systems in your business to increase productivity and make consistent progress growing your business. She is an expert in making the most of limited time and we talked all about how to implement and create theme days into your schedule, so you always know exactly what you’re working on.
Holly helps female entrepreneurs create simple scaleable offers and systems to grow to multiple 6-figures. An industry expert and featured Thrive and Entrepreneur.com author with a 20-year business consulting background with Fortune 500 companies, Holly runs her strategic coaching business, the Crush the Rush Planner company, and hosts the top 100 Crush the Rush podcast while raising her twin daughters with her husband in Columbus, Ohio.
Do you find yourself: 1. Stuck in a rut and your business isn't growing as much as you want it to? 2. Jealous of other people who have the freedom and flexibility to work how they want? 3. Frustrated that you're not making as much money as you know you could? Then this episode is for you!
Holly Haynes shares how she was able to achieve freedom, flexibility and ultimately make more money by working on her business for just 1-2 hours a day. Holly outlines her "Theme Days" system, where she dedicates each day of the week to a different task related to her business. This allows her to stay focused and productive, even when she only has a limited amount of time to work.
"I always say consistency trump's talent."- Holly Haynes
In this episode, Holly shares:
How to establish yourself as an authoritative figure in your space
How to create a schedule that works for you
How to be consistent in your business
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:06]
Hey there, I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Growth, a podcast created for ambitious entrepreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility and ultimately make more money with weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you. My goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dream.
[00:00:36]
Okay, so before we hop into the episode, I just want to remind you to download my free guide to Facebook targeting audiences. It has been created specifically for teacher business owners and I go through the warm lookalike and cold interest-based audiences that you need to have set up to be running Facebook and Instagram ads. There are checklists and brainstorming pages so that you know you have everything. But as an exciting special, I'm opening up some audience audit calls where you can hop onto a 15 minutes zoom call with me and you'll get my eyes on your audiences so that you can make sure not only you have all the audiences, but they truly are perfect for your business. So head to Marketscalegrow.com/Audienceaudit to book your free audience audit call today.
[00:01:39]
Okay, now into the episode. Hello Holly, how are you doing today? I'm so good. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I'm really excited to chat with you today.
[00:01:51]
So why don't you start by telling people a little bit who you are and what you do, who you work with, and then we can jump in talking about systems and taking back your time in your business. Yes. People always ask me this question at the beginning of a podcast and like, how do you explain your life in 1 minute? But my name is Holly, I am in Columbus, Ohio and my goal is to really help female entrepreneurs build businesses online. But I do it through very simple systems and strategy and that is doable on a part time schedule.
[00:02:24]
Because what I have found is that most business owners have very little time to actually work on their business. So if you're like me, I started my business when I was working fulltime and just for fun, it was also in the middle of the pandemic and so there wasn't a lot of time to do all the things that were learning on podcasts and workshops. And so it starts to get overwhelming. And so I really created this method that I teach to help you scale on a schedule that works for you. And so for me, what that looked like was sometimes I had an hour a day, sometimes I had 2 hours a day and that was it.
[00:02:59]
That's all I had. And so it's really being intentional with your vision and your mission and coming up with systems and processes that's going to allow you to get your business done so that you can go have a life. Right? I always say design your life first and then your business can fit into that instead of vice versa. I love it.
[00:03:20]
And you really made it work on those short hours. Yeah, I had to though. People are like, Is that for real? That really happened. I was like, Well, I didn't really have a choice, right?
[00:03:30]
So actually, one of my favorite books is, there's no Plan B for your A Game. And so in this scenario that I was in, like, I knew that eventually I wanted to leave my corporate job. And so I was like, okay, I can completely burn myself out and just work all the time, or I can come up with a way where I am able to enjoy the process of building a business and do it in a way that our family is on board and it works with my full time job. And then we'll sort of go from there. To me.
[00:04:03]
There wasn't a plan B. This was the plan. We had to figure it out. So is there a secret to making these short hours work? My secret I think you have to have and I know everyone hears it a lot, but you have to have the vision of what you want first, because if you only have an hour a day, sometimes that hour is going to be at 05:00 a.m.
[00:04:30]
Or at 08:00 at night. And it's probably not the most convenient time, especially at the beginning when you're really trying to set the foundation of your business. And so it's got to be your why and your mission and what you're doing has to be something that is strong enough to make you get out of bed in the morning or make you want to turn off Netflix for just a minute, right? Like, I'm not advocating we work 24 hours a day, but you've got to have something that is driving you, and I share that. Mine was during that pandemic.
[00:05:05]
I was obviously working my corporate job from home, and I had the chance to be able to put my kids on the bus and get them off. And it sounds really silly, but I had never done that before. They were in kindergarten before, and this is the first year they were riding the bus. And I was like, well, I want to be the parent that gets to do both. Like, I want to put them on the bus and get them off the bus, but I couldn't do that in my corporate job.
[00:05:29]
And so it's like, okay, well, what do I have to do to make the bus stop dream come to life? Maybe it's starting a side hustle. Maybe it's negotiating with your boss, whatever that is. But that's what drove me off, how do I figure that out? And then you come up with another one, right?
[00:05:44]
And then you're like, well, how do I figure that out? And so you've got to figure out what that thing is that's going to keep you going when you're not going to want to go? Because we all have days where we're not motivated. Yes, I love that. So how do you figure out if you just have that hour of time, how do you figure out what to do in that hour?
[00:06:04]
Yeah, so I think obviously it depends on your business. It also depends on what your goals are. Right. So it's not a one size fits all answer. I would say if it's at the beginning of your business, I like to think of how I can establish myself as an authoritative figure in my space?
[00:06:25]
Right, so if you're like you're brand new or maybe you're just getting started.
[00:06:32]
How do you set yourself up so that people know who you are and what you do? And there's a ton of different ways that you can do that, whether it be through creating content or being guests on podcasts. But you really, at the beginning, have to set that foundation of creating yourself as an expert and an authoritative figure in the area that you're in. And so there's like all different ways that you can go. But what are you an expert in?
[00:06:56]
What do you want to be the authority in, and then how do you share that? And so for me, it was, okay, most of that comes from content, right? Like how do you share on the internet? You have to create content or you have to create some place, some homebase for people to hang out. And so those are the first couple steps that I would take and I would always set what I call business hours.
[00:07:19]
So as an example, I was working full time, my kids were in school, my business hours were always most of the time in the morning. So it's like seven to eight in the morning. That's my time. Right. It's not my time to scroll, it's not my time to order birthday presents or make the grocery list.
[00:07:38]
Like it's the time where I'm going to work on my business. And my number one mission at the beginning was how do I set myself up as an authoritative figure? And for me that was creating a podcast, but for others it might be different, but every single day, Monday through Friday, from six to 07:00 A.m., that's what I was working on. So you have to have a little bit of discipline around when you are going to work and what does that look like? And I know you talk about theme days, so how do you work theme days into this schedule and help you show up and do all of those different things that allow you to have this cohesive business, if you will?
[00:08:21]
Yeah, so if you're like me, you probably listen to a ton of podcasts and you get a ton of emails of all the different things that you should do in your business and you're like, oh my God, how am I going to fit all this in? Especially when you have a million other things going on. And so I was like, okay, I've set this time aside. I'm going to work on my business. But I also have shiny objects in Durham where I'm like, oh, I should do this, or oh, I should do that.
[00:08:45]
And so I created this like, super simple strategy where I just created a theme for each day. So because at the beginning I feel like content is very important, I would just create a content day. So I knew when I woke up on Tuesday morning as an example, I was going to write content because it was a content day. So I didn't like scrolling through a journal or a trello board or something like, oh my God, what am I going to do today? I only have an hour to work and panic.
[00:09:12]
I was like, no, it's Tuesday, it's a busy day. I'm writing content. So I would dig in and I would write as much content as I could in 1 hour. And then I would create other themes based on whatever was going on in our business. So I will give an example.
[00:09:26]
I had a client who really didn't want to be on social media. And so we were talking about Pinterest, and I was like, well, just make Wednesday Pinterest day and just do as much as you can in 1 hour on Pinterest. Or make Thursday email day where you're figuring out what your email strategy is and you're writing emails and so you can create themes. For me, I tend to use the same theme every single week, so I always know Tuesdays are content days. Today's Wednesday is podcast day.
[00:09:55]
Like, I'm always doing the same things over and over and over again, which is easy because it's just set in stone now in my head. But I'm not switching back and forth between tasks, right? Like, I'm not going from how do I set up an email list to oh my gosh, I need to film a real one because I know that, hey, Tuesday's content day, wednesday's podcast day. And they kind of all flow together. So I just use my planning each week to set the themes of what I want to get done.
[00:10:24]
That is like these buckets in your brain. Yeah, like the switching of tasks and the lost time multitasking and just knowing exactly what you need to do allows for that hour, it sounds like, to just be fully productive instead of like. Yeah, I mean, there's theories behind it, right? So it's called context switching. But like, if you're going we were joking.
[00:10:51]
Like, we have 800 tabs open. But right before this interview, I was actually writing podcast episodes and I had 45 minutes since my last meeting and I wrote three episodes in 45 minutes, which is three weeks worth of content in 45 minutes. But it's because I wasn't looking at anything else. I was only focused on writing the podcast episodes. And so if you can turn everything else off and use the themes to help you set those boundaries, it just makes business, I think, so much easier.
[00:11:24]
And when you get to the point where you're like, oh, I really need to learn Pinterest or I really need to make this real, you can then just make a note and say, hey, well, Wednesday's Pinterest day or Tuesday's content day. And so you know that you have time in your schedule later on to get to the things that are most important. Well, that would give your brain a break instead of just running a to -do list or whatever. Or I mean, I use a sauna now so it's not in my brain. But sometimes that takes so long you just like, no, that can go to Wednesday because that's Wednesdays.
[00:11:56]
Yes. And I mean, I think I always say like, you know, you go to bed at night and you're like, oh my God, I have so much to do. But in reality, you could probably get two or three things done in an hour, but if they're all related to the same theme or content, you're going to get more done faster. Right? So I always say like, maybe you have two days where you're writing content, but you're going to have all your content done for like the whole week and you're not going to have to think about it again until the next week, which is going to give you a break and help you focus on something else the next day.
[00:12:28]
Well, and content such as you already said this, but like such a huge part of an online business that it could make sense to have two full days, those 2 hours just dedicated to making sure you have all the content you need. Yeah, I would say especially at the beginning, it's really important obviously, to write content going back to like how do you establish yourself as an authoritative figure in your space? Well, you have to share content. And so sometimes you might have three content days because you're so new and you're just like, I just gotta keep pushing it out. And then maybe you have a website day or an email day and so you can switch it around based on where you're at in your business and what that looks like.
[00:13:13]
So I would say at the beginning I would have a lot more content days. Now I only have one, but I also have a team day on Friday or a podcast day on Wednesday. My favorite day is CEO day. I always say one day where I don't really have a theme and it's just like catching up or planning. If you're working full time, I would say CEO days really help you get rid of this.
[00:13:38]
I call it the Sunday scaries where you're like, panicking that you have so much to do on Monday and you're like, how in the world am I going to run a business and get to all these meetings? And so I would very strategically move everything away from Monday, so I just had white space to think and plan on Mondays. I really like that. How do these theme days impact your business long term? Well, I mean, I started my business in January of 2020.
[00:14:09]
I still use theme days to this day. And I always say consistency trump's talent. And I truly believe that if you show up, let's just pretend that you have two content days every week. If you show up for a whole year with two content days every week, like, long term, you're going to establish yourself as that authoritative figure in your space. I have not missed creating themes or business hours for almost three years.
[00:14:37]
So I can tell you that the consistency of having a really simple, easy schedule that's not hard to figure out definitely is going to help keep you accountable, as opposed to having a to-do list of like 100 things. And then you wake up and you're like, I don't know what to do. And then you get overwhelmed and then you don't do it. And then it just keeps like it's like you're on a hamster wheel and you can't get off. So keeping it a super simple strategy, I think long term is the strategy that you want to have.
[00:15:09]
I love the idea of consistency over time because it really builds. It's like a snowball. It just starts out tiny and all of a sudden you're like, it's spinning out of control down the hill and I can't stop it. Yeah, but that's the momentum, right? I mean, we can use podcasting as an example.
[00:15:25]
Like, at the beginning, maybe you have like ten downloads and then you get 50 and then it's like this super slow roll and then all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, like 500 people listen to my episode today. But it's slow over time. But it's consistent because it's two episodes every week for two years. It's not like a secret sauce, and I think that's what people want to hear, but the secret sauce is actually showing up and being consistent in what you're doing because most people will not. Okay, so then another important question.
[00:15:58]
Aligning these theme days to your business priorities. How do you recommend going about that? Because you can sit here all day and say, like, have two content days, but if for whatever reason that's not a goal of mine. The content is not your goal, I would question.
[00:16:21]
And it doesn't have to be social media content, but I really do think, like, if you have a business, there has to be some way that you're putting yourself out there. So you have to think about, is it social media, is it podcasting, is it speaking? And events like how are people getting to know you? That would be my first priority is like, where are people finding you? Where are your clients hanging out and how are you getting yourself there?
[00:16:43]
That should be a theme day. So it should be writing content or something.
[00:16:50]
It was a terrible no, it was a good example. The other things that I like to think about are maybe email for me is a super big pillar and I think it should be for most businesses. So I always tend to have an email or a back end system day. I mentioned CEO day, so I like to have a CEO day where I don't have a theme and it's a day for me to catch up. That is in the middle of the weekend, not the weekend so that you don't have Sunday scaries.
[00:17:21]
And then there are other things that you as you grow that you can add in. Like maybe it's a client care day where you're just like I tend to do all my client calls on certain days of the week because I don't want to switch between podcast, interview, client, call it's different, you have to be in a different frame of mind. So it could be client care, it could be financials, it could be a back end system. It really depends on your business. But the whole goal of themes is that they're easy to pull out because, you know, when you look at your Todo list, they're going to fit in different categories and then you can take that category and make it a theme.
[00:18:01]
I was talking about it's a little bit like the content pillars. I was talking to a client about it. This yesterday of brainstormed a bunch of content that you could write, like blog post titles or ideas, and then you'll start to naturally see what your content pillars are, which will hopefully add more ideas to the ones you already came up with. But it sounds like the same thing. If you have your Todo list, you group things together, you can find things that make sense to go together.
[00:18:27]
And like we already said, release that brainpower of trying to do everything every day. Yeah, it's magical. Like, just try it for one week. I'm super curious what you guys think.
[00:18:41]
Like a month ago now, I saw you present at a summit and I was like, oh, I'm all in. I got your CEO day. Kit and I joined the Crusher Club. Little promo for her club here. And so I've actually been using the theme days since then.
[00:18:59]
And my work time is after my kids go to bed at 930. And often my brain is just like mush. And so there was previously times or just like I can't, like I can't think of something to do, but now I have just these buckets and I can just, when my brain is functioning, add things to the list so that when I'm tired and I don't want to have to, like, brainstorm ideas. I can just pull it out. So it is really helpful from a user point of view as well.
[00:19:29]
Yeah, I love that. The cool part is we actually made the whole I call my theme days and my method CEO Week, and we made the whole thing free. So you can just go to my website, Hollymarhanes.com CEO Week, and you can see how to create the theme days, how to set your business hours. I give you examples of different types of businesses. But yeah, it's really life changing.
[00:19:54]
And like I said, I do it for everything I create. Like, Saturdays are family theme days. Sundays are planning theme days. Even if you don't have a business, you can create theme days for like, okay, I'm going to clean my house today, or maybe my CEO Day is like, I'm not going to work and I'm going to do something for myself. And so it is very, very flexible.
[00:20:15]
One thing you did mention, though, and I talk about it in CEO Week, is figuring out where your energy levels are. So I am a ridiculously crazy morning person. Like, I joke that after 04:00, my brain just, like, turns off. I just can't think it's because I get up really early. So for me, working at 930 at night would never work.
[00:20:39]
Nothing would happen. So I think it's really interesting that you read all these books about, like, you have to get up at 05:00 A.m. And you have to set an alarm for whatever. But I think when you look at setting your business hours, set them in a way where you actually have the energy to focus for an hour. And that might feel super awkward and weird at first because it may be that you have to change some things around, or it may be that your days are structured a little bit differently.
[00:21:08]
Or I even have some clients who work fulltime and they're like, I just can't fit it in during the week. And so I'm like, well, you can work on Saturday, right? Like, it's your business. It doesn't have to be Monday through Friday. So don't work Monday through Friday and then work 2 hours on Saturday and 2 hours on Sunday.
[00:21:26]
It's the same thing. And so it's just like flipping the model and really thinking about, like, how is this going to work sometimes? For me, Saturday mornings from like six to 08:00 a.m. Are the most productive days of the week because my kids are sleeping and it's quiet and I could just be super creative. But for some people, that would never work.
[00:21:46]
I think it's looking at your energy levels and what works for you and your family and figuring out when the best time is. And you said like six to eight, my kids are also sleeping, but the idea of me waking up at 600, right, sounds horrible. But like, Friday night might be your time, right. Like, when they go to bed and you're like, oh, I can sleep in on Saturday morning. Like, maybe Friday nights you can make it fun.
[00:22:12]
I love getting up on Saturday mornings when everyone's sleeping and I've got a blanket and a tea, and I like being creative. So, yeah, it's weird, but you have to find the time that aligns with where you're most productive. Yeah. And it is interesting how it differs from person to person. Yeah.
[00:22:32]
Well, thank you so much. You shared about the CEO Week with us, so I will make sure that that's linked in the description. Lost my words there but in the description. And how can people find you? Yeah, so I would actually encourage everyone to go and design their own CEO Week.
[00:22:54]
So you could just go to HollyHaynes.com/CEOweek. It's totally free. It's five days. I literally walk you through, like, how to design your business hours, and what theme days will work for you, check in with you and leave comments so you can go there. I also have a podcast called Crush The Rush, where I talk a lot about business strategy and productivity and just sort of how we've built business differently, I think.
[00:23:21]
And then I usually hang out on Instagram, which is Holly_marie_haynes. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you for having me.
[00:23:40]
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