How To Prioritise Your Time (when you work for yourself) – The Critical To-Do List

Time and Prioritising – Knowing what’s critical and what isn’t from the list of – what needs to be done.

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This list is different for everyone but as an online business coach (and mentor to personal trainers for the past decade as well as running a physical personal training business since 1998).
I’ll tell you how I prioritise my time, and it’s not too dissimilar to how I recommend the health coaches (who I help) to structure their day. Literally, around their face to face sessions when they have very little ‘computer time’ to work on the business.

For example, what comes first? Following up inquiries? or making a post? or sending an email? If you have 15 minutes, what ‘should’ you do?
Here’s how I break down those critical items when you have little time, to ensure that you don’t totally drop the ball with regards to your business. Most importantly keeping your current clients happy and keeping a steady flow of leads coming in, should you need them, (in this post I am presuming you do).
Know that all of the following can be done separately over the day or week or over even the course of an hour, if you give each segment just 10-15 min.

1st – Mindset work

Eg, routines where you might listen to something upbeat, positive or thought-provoking, do journaling, goal writing or anything that reminds you of your missions and or provides you with that ‘juice’ that you need daily when you work for yourself. (Believe me, this is critical as no one is positive all the time, I have noticed that the ability to ‘let sh*t go’ is actually the difference between peoples success in business, or not.

Hence the mindset work. Meaning, learning how to let things go, fast. Simply so you don’t hang on to past mistakes and failures. Instead, you pick yourself up and get on with what needs to be done, not ignoring your feelings, but allowing them and allowing them to move through you and be processed fast – this is critical to get good at if you aren’t already. Throw whatever techniques at it that you need to do (eg, resenting something from years ago? – get it away! – get it processed, feel it, forgive it and move past it, if it triggers you, it’s still there.)

2nd – Marketing / Sales

Meaning – put out some content for the people who aren’t yet your clients. Teach them something helpful. I won’t go into the nuances of marketing and words to use (see this video here for more info on that if you are a health coach) – but becoming consistent in your approach will allow you to sell whatever you want, down the track. Plus it’s simply important to give value and be considerate of helping and contributing to the lives of other human beings, for your own mental health.

Included in this topic is customer care – meaning reaching out to say ‘hi’ to your fans, audience, clients and actually ‘care’ about them, but DO NOT sell anything. << I can’t believe I am putting this topic into the list at all as it comes naturally to most female coaches, but it does need to be on some people’s list’s because they don’t think of it automatically. Yet it’s crucial for a customer or service-based businesses.

3rd – Work on back end courses/content

This includes your website or any other internal material or Q and A that you need ot do for your current clients. It’s not a lot of time, so I suggest if you need ot ‘work on your website’, or go deep into anything like, build course content or in-depth material, then you actually set aside 1-2 hr blocks of time for that stuff, but DO NOT waste time on it daily and ‘miss’ the items which are more important (a.k.a marketing)

4th – Admin (eg, Emails.)

Replying to emails is NOT critical… well only the ‘OMG someone’s leg has been chopped off’ emails. You cannot possibly clear your inbox in this time, and that’s not something I suggest you even attempt to do daily. However, if you prefer to clear it then set aside time 2-3 times / week if you are the ‘clear your email’ type of person, to get this done. Do not attempt to do it daily, or you will have zero time to build your business. Instead, once per day go to your inbox for 10-15 minutes and answer what is critical.

5th – Learning

Learning the new thing (Eg, Taking time to do that extra bit of networking or research that you needed to do, possibly because you told someone you would, or you need the info to help a client etc.) Again this is something that if you need a larger chunk of time, then block it out in your diary. Otherwise, I suggest putting it last on your list of ‘what is most important’ as you do not need to do it every single day if business growth is your goal.

That’s it!

Have you found this list helpful? Most coaches I speak to are spending time on soooo many non-productive tasks!

Feel free to comment below or send me an email at kate@katemartinmentor.com and let me know your thoughts.

Want my 10 tips to make working for yourself easier? Here is the article

Are you a fitpro or health coach that’d like some more ideas for marketing?

Here is a great video about ‘How to market WITHOUT using food and exercise pics’

And here is another longer more detailed lesson, if you have 30 minutes, which talks about how to easily alter what you offer in your business (think packages, online and events) to greatly increase your income as an experienced coach. Especially if you are currently only offering low-end priced services (eg, group or 1:1 training). The content I share in it has greatly impacted many personal trainers businesses.