In this episode, we discuss the importance of taking time to work on your business instead of entirely working in your business.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how we need to take time to work on our business, instead of only working in our business. This can be applied to your job and your personal life. Most people just go from thing to thing, without really having a plan. So then we become unaware of what we are doing and then we end up in a place that we ultimately don’t want to be at. For me, it’s real easy to just go from thing to thing. I won’t feel bored but then I might be wasting my time.
It’s important to take time out and reflect on your activities. One hour a week, just look at your job and see what is going right and what is going wrong. Then come up with a plan to remove those things slowing you down from your life. You might not be able to do it right away, but at least you moving in the right direction. Then once a quarter, you should take a weekend off, where you can do some more serious planning. Then if you want, you can take a week off where you dedicating your time to changing your life around.
When I was working at my last company, my coworker kept talking about taking the time to work on your business instead of working in it. For me, it was important to look at my client database and see where I should be spending my time. It’s important to look at my procedures and see what I should eliminate from my life and what I should keep.
I think this is super important to do in a relationship as well. Take time and see where things are heading and then trying to resolve any issues before things get out of control. This could have helped my out with my last serious relationship or it might have caused us to separate even faster. I don’t know, but it’s important not to be carried away by the day to day. If you have a crack in the foundation of a house, then eventually things can get bad enough where the entire building falls down. That’s messy and expensive to deal with.
I need to do a better job of this myself and I can’t wait until I can hire my first assistant to do some of this admin work like post my social media and updating my website. This will free me up to do even more stuff down the road and make sure that I’m doing the things that I really enjoy and provide me more opportunities. I can’t wait for this moment.
When I was at my last firm, I was struggling so badly because I had to figure out these things and it was stressful trying to get clients. I didn’t really have the time or the energy to work on my business. I was worried about surviving. But going through that experience made me realize the value of working on your business. It sucks to be running from thing to thing trying to get things done, and then you realize that your income isn’t increasing that much from all your hard work. I know that pure hard work doesn’t create success. It can help you survive but it’s not going to give you abundance. You need to know how to work hard and smart.
I would put like 60-80 hour weeks into my last firm and I was making that much to live in DC. But know, I’m in a better position because I don’t have to worry about $3500 in monthly expenses at my last firm. Since I don’t have to deal with that, I’m ok with growing my business on my own. I have an office but my MBA covers my WeWork membership and MBA is paid for by the GI Bill. So now that I don’t have to worry about that $3500 expense, I can take more time to work on my business instead of in it.
One thing I need to do is just time block my schedule again. I got away from it since I moved to Latin America but I don’t have any more trips I have to take and I can finally settle into a location. So I should start getting more productive. So I’m going to make sure that I’m putting on my calendar, time to work on my business. So that I work more efficiently and that I think of new ideas that I can implement. Things are always changing and if I don’t take the time, then eventually I will fade away. And I don’t want that for me and you shouldn’t either.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, make sure you take time to work on your business and your life instead of working in them. This will ensure that you taking advantage of life so life doesn’t take advantage of you. It sucks when you realize that life is taking advantage of you. You’ll be overworked and you won’t be doing what you truly want to do in life. This is not what life is about. It’s about enjoying it while you work on your purpose. So if you want to reach nirvana, take some time out of your life to reflect on what is going on and make sure that you’re getting rid of the garbage in your life.
So in your journal, ask yourself, are you working on your self? Are you allocating time? If the answer is no, then ask yourself how can you get this time in your life? If the answer is yes, what have you found out from working on yourself through this self-reflection? Once I found out that I should start my own financial planning company, life is so much better but that came from working on my life. If you want the same amount of joy as me, then take the time. If you don’t, then just don’t complain to me about how your life sucks.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
