I hear you, love. You’re drowning in content. In quote tiles, free downloadables, and ‘how-to’ guides. You don’t need more voices; you need an ear. But not your girlfriend’s or your partner’s—they can’t give you answers or solutions, they can only offer you their opinions, however well-intentioned.

Take a look at your business and at yourself as the leader of your business. Where are your pockets of opportunity? Have discernment, where do you truly need development and advisement? Be intentional about which problems you want to solve in your business and then invest in them.

In this episode of Leadership is Feminine, I’m teaching you how to reinvent your relationship with time so you can prevent and reduce overwhelm as a woman entrepreneur.

Kris Plachy: Hey, they're beautiful. How are you? Welcome. This week let's talk about your time and your availability. Let's go.

Well, hi, I'm Chris Plankey. Welcome to the Leadership Is Feminine Podcast. I wanna talk about your time. Okay, hear me out. If you're running a business, you don't have a lot of time. I, I have it on good authority based on just maybe, I don't know, anecdotally my own life, right? Like I have three kids, two are in high school.

I have married, I have two dogs. I have a business. I hope to have some sort of life and then all the commitments that go with that, the team, et cetera. And I'm watching a lot of women do a few things. This is gonna sound a little strange because I have something that I offer women like you to encourage you to come work with me, right?

But I wanna talk to you about an objection that I'm concerned about, that I'm hearing a lot that I've never heard before, and that is availability, capacity, bandwidth, time. And I know that we're really cresting over an exhausting period in everybody's life. I can hear the, that voice of I don't have time to do something new.

And so as the c e o of your business, as the founder, as the president, whatever you call yours, You have to find resources that help you achieve the goals of your business, right? Like that's ultimately your responsibility as the person in charge. It's not to be at the ground floor doing crap and getting it done.

You, you need to be organizing the resources of your business to achieve goals and seeking out. What I call trusted advisors to help you along that process. And as you evolve and as your business evolves, those advisors evolve and there's a difference between an advisor and a teacher. Okay? And one of the reasons that I'm not terribly crazy about large group programs, Is because I, those focus on teaching and they focus on minimal advisement and personal attention because of the scope and size of the program.

Like it's just not possible. And listen, that's fine. Like there's a time and place for that. That's about content consumption, right? So the onus is on you. To direct your time to, to, to plan. This is when I'm gonna learn this thing. But what I'm watching is a lot of women who are in the leadership space in their company are investing in.

Being taught how to do things they don't need. You don't need to learn how to be that person. You need to learn how to hire that person. There's a difference, right? So I just had a little exchange, she's probably gonna hear this with the client and she made the investment to learn how to write, how to be a, how to write copy.

And she's realizing as she went through the program, like, oh, I probably don't need to get good at, I don't even like writing copy. Right? What you, what you need to spend your time and attention on is working with an advisor, a support person, a trusted advisor, right? That will help you figure out what kind of copywriter you need.

What are the skill sets? How do you find them, how do you interview them? How do you hire them? But I think for so many of you who are solopreneurs first, you're used to having, you're used to learning it all and then doing it. I, I mean, just think about the scope of your business. You can't do that. And then the other piece I'm watching is, is so many people, women are, are getting involved in mastermind programs, which again, I've been in them.

I, there's tremendous value. As long as it's achieving focus, you have a focused goal. I'm in this mastermind because I need to figure out how to increase my revenue. I'm in this mastermind because I wanna expand my network, but I think that what's happening is a lot of people are making investments in things because they need help without that discernment.

And I am, again, I'm not a groupy person, right? I run a program called How to C e O, but it's never gonna feel like a group to you because it's intimate, it's small. It's more like a coach on retainer. That you get to come to four times a week, like, oh crap, this happened today. What do I do about it? I have to make this decision.

How do I go about it? I'm looking at my organization and the design of my business. What do you advise in terms of the human, human assets of this team? 10 minutes in, we ask. We go through your question, then you're done. It's not a program. Do we provide you resources and tools? Yeah, and I like to think more about it as like your guide.

You don't have to like finish it or cuz if you don't finish it, you're not like accomplished. It's compliment to what you're already gonna be learning through our advisement calls. So as you are looking at where, because I just like, I don't have time. I don't have time. Like, what are you doing with your time?

Because my perspective is I know you're talking to someone about the problems on your team. I know you are. You're talking to your spouse, your partner, your your best girlfriend, your your team members. Please Lord, all mercy. You're talking to your mother, you're talking to someone. Your business partner, but you're not getting an answer.

You're not getting a solution. You're just getting a bunch of people's opinions. And so what, what we do and had a CEO is you come in and you say, okay, here's my issue. I have this person on my team. I have asked her to do something 12 times and she still doesn't do it right. How do I handle that? Now you can go talk to your spouse about that and you can go talk to your best girlfriend about that.

They're not gonna be able to help you. So you're spinning on your problems and the longer you don't address this employee who isn't getting you the result that you want, the more you have less time you. You follow me? You just lose my mind a little bit. I know you'd understand why I say this, right? So you have to really look at what you're investing in and what are the problems you're trying to solve in your business now, right?

To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And I get that. And that's my perspective, right? Like if you go to a surgeon, a surgeon's gonna tell you, oh yeah, I for sure need to cut you open. If you go to a chiropractor or a chiropractor's gonna say, oh, for sure you need an adjustment, right? Like we, we. We do do that.

And I will tell you that developing pathways for more revenue is a brilliant idea. But if you don't know how to manage the people that are gonna help you deliver on the promise of that artery and that revenue, then you what? What is the point of the money if you can't deliver? Too many people think they need to figure out how to make money before they can hire anyone.

I think you have to do them at the same time. So I, I just want you to be like, you could get a piece of paper out and look at your commitments and you have to weigh this stuff. You know, a couple weeks ago, right, we did reinventing and really looking at keeping with love, keeping out of fear, and where are you spending your time and is it really getting you the results that you want?

Or are you spinning on problems, right? Like, I made the decision this quarter to hire a marketing trusted advisor. Not a marketer, but an advisor, someone. And so that is not extra for me. I get to have a call with her and on that call we solve problem for marketing. I have a money coach that's not extra.

I'm gonna figure out what to do and how to, how to plan and how to manage money. I do it with her because she's smarter than me at it. She's more experienced than me. I have a personal coach that isn't extra. That's me working on me so that I can show up right here with you. But you can't buy results. You guys.

You have to, and you can't go through a workbook and change your life and then use that same workbook against yourself because you didn't do it. It's like all the books that on your nightstand, oh, I'll be a better person once I read through these books. No, just do a chapter. You know, I was thinking about self-help and I don't think it's helping self peace.

And here's my biggest reason I would say that. You know, when the self-help industry started, the access point we had for self-help was books, right? Like that. I mean, when we go back, but now it's books, it's podcasts, it's downloads, it's videos. It's in my social feed, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn.

It's workshops I sign up for. They're so we are like overloaded with it. And I think as a, as a consumer and as a leader, you have to have this discernment of where you need development. Where do you need advisement? Not more information. We're drowning in it, y'all. And it's not applied. It's, it's like information unapplied.

It's absolutely burdensome and heavy. So if you look at your business and you're really honest with yourself, where's your biggest pocket of opportunity? Where are the most of the problems that you work on every day sitting in your business? And again, I believe that a lot of them are sitting in UN team resources.

Which isn't because you're incapable. It's because you just haven't learned and you don't have the resources to support you. So as the c e o of your business in your life, I want you to think about, right. I'm sure you hear about people who have their, we advise you, like have your board of directors. Who is your trusted advisor team?

These are not extras in your life. These are your pillars that help you go into the world and do what needs to be done, and you deserve every bit of that, and you do not have to learn everything. You don't have to be taught everything. You don't have to sign up for all this content. What you really need is someone who will just listen to you.

And help you make decisions from your wisdom, cuz you're a genius. You just need a little extra, that's all. All right, love. Those are my soap. Those are my, that's my soapbox. It was a little preachy on this one. But I'm watching you all the collective, a little bit drowning, a lot of yeses to maybe a lot of things that are not really gonna get you where you need to go.

Okay, we'll talk to you next.