Amanda McVicker (0:00)
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The OBM Educator. I am excited to get into today's topic. This is a question that I get asked all the time. What does a typical day look like for me as an OBM?
I'm really going to get into, you know, what does my call schedule look like? What does my work schedule look like? How do I balance it with kids and schools and sickness and camps and all of that stuff? So I'm really excited to get into that.
But before I get started, I do want to share that I am running a live round of my signature course, The Six Week OBM, in June and July. And doors are open right now. I'm so excited for this.I first introduced The Six Week OBM last year, last summer, and I did a live round with four amazing women who have all gone on now to be OBMs, you know, let go of their VA clients, raise their rates, some of them into the 100-plus an hour range. I'm so proud of all of them.
But that was the last live round that I did. And since then, it's been an option to be a self-study course, which has helped so many women as well. But I wanted to do a live round this summer to really help with kickstarting OBM businesses, especially now during the summer.
You know, it kind of depends on your industry, but summer is usually a somewhat slower time. And so it's an opportunity for you to kind of reevaluate your business and what's going on and where you want to take it. And so it's the perfect time to be in a program like this, that's taking you through not only the coursework, which is really powerful, but also the group coaching aspect of it, which is my favorite thing to do ever.
In this live round, we are going to have six group coaching calls. This is the hot seat coaching where you bring what's going on with you. What's your situation? What are your clients like? What are you struggling with? What are you celebrating? All of that stuff.
You bring that to the call. We talk through it. You're getting not only my insight, but the insight of all the other people who are in the program, right? You know, in a true mastermind type style.
So we have those six group coaching calls. But then we also have a Slack channel where you can ask your questions throughout the week and share your wins and really just create a community with other aspiring OBMs and newer OBMs in the industry. So it is a great time.
Doors are open right now. They will be open through June 6th. This episode is coming out on the 29th. If you're listening to it on the 29th or the 30th, I do have an early bird bonus of two private calls with me to use throughout the program. The group coaching is great and you will get so much out of it, but nothing beats a private one to one call where we are diving into your exact situation and how you should handle things or how you can handle things. So if you register by May 30th, you will get those two calls.
But regardless of when you register, you will be getting so much out of it. I'm doing bonuses for everyone who registers that everyone's going to get a customized VA to OBM transition plan. So if you have VA clients and you don't know how to transition them to OBM, I'm going to be creating a personalized plan for you to guide you through that.
It's going to take into account who your clients are, what you like doing, what are the rates, what are your goals, all of that stuff. And so that's a bonus to everyone who registers. And then you'll also get access to all of my past trainings and challenges and webinars, all of that stuff. So you have kind of, in addition to the course, an on-demand vault of trainings that you can reference. If you're interested in learning more about the six-week OBM and how you can join this live round, you can check out the link in my show notes. Okay, let's get into today.
Welcome to the OBM Educator. I'm your host, Amanda McVicker, a veteran OBM who serves six and seven-figure entrepreneurs, as well as educates new OBMs with the skills and competence they need to start and grow their own successful online business management business. Follow along as I share valuable insights, behind-the-scenes peaks, and proven strategies to help you build a better OBM business.
So my schedule as an OBM has definitely shifted throughout the years. So I have been an OBM for almost five years. I got my first client in July of 2020. So almost celebrating five years with them, which is super exciting. And the way that I have worked has changed, obviously, throughout those five years. When I first started, I had two toddlers at home.
It was the pandemic. And so there really wasn't much in the way of support around being able to have a nanny or a babysitter or anything like that. And so I was really running my business with my kids crawling around because they weren't even walking at that point.
And so I had to be a lot more flexible then with the work that I was doing and calls and how I was showing up, all of that stuff. Over the years, I've had nannies. I've had child care.
They're now school-age, so they're in school. I have another kid now, too, who's also in daycare. And so right now, my day looks more traditional of a working parent in that I do have free time during the day that is dedicated to work.
But I also am a mom of three young kids who get sick, who have holidays, who just sometimes don't want to go to school. And so I have to be flexible with how I structure my day. Right now, I am very fortunate that I have very understanding clients, whether that is being on a call with kids running around in the background or having to move a call if I have to go to a doctor's appointment or pick a kid up early.
And so I really love that flexibility. And it has been so helpful, especially during the school year when, you know, this year we had so many snow days and virtual instruction days and all of that stuff. And so I love building in flexibility into my schedule.
But what I'm going to talk about today really is more of like standard, if everything is going well, this is what happens. And so part of it happens on a monthly planning basis, and part of it happens on a weekly slash daily planning basis. What that looks like is monthly, I have a call with my clients.
I initially started with my clients having weekly calls with them. When I work with a new client, that's what we will do weekly calls. But as I get more comfortable in their business, as I know more, as they're more comfortable with me, we usually shift to monthly.
And so three of my clients, we are on a monthly call schedule. And I have those scheduled in the first one to two weeks of the month. Sometimes it's two in the first week and one in the second.
Sometimes it's one in the first, two in the second, you know, whatever it shakes up to be. But that's in the first part of the month. I have one client who is still on weekly meetings, but that is due to it being a larger organization.
And so I have that planned out. I also meet monthly with my team member. And so I have that scheduled to be at the end of the month so that I'm able to prep for the month ahead.
So when I look at my schedule, because if you have calls, you know, calls interrupt flows. I like having most of my calls grouped in the beginning of the month, because I know that during that time, I'm not getting as much, still getting work done, but I'm not getting as much like head down project work done, because I'm prepping for calls, I'm having the call, I'm debriefing from the call, all of that stuff. And so when I'm planning out projects, I know that it actually would be better for me that the last two weeks of the month are for more in depth work.
And so once you have like your monthly breakdown, and you might have more clients, less clients, you might have more calls, less calls, being able to know your flow is going to help you so much in the planning of things. So on a day to day basis, you know, if I'm looking at what am I doing for my clients, I try to average about an hour of work per client per day, this might be different from what some other people do. Some people do full blocks, like a day per client, I prefer having an hour a day for each client in their business.
Because as the right hand person in their business, they're not looking to me to be in their business once a week, they're looking for me to be in their business once a day, at least, and having a handle on things of things that pop up. I do have, you know, turnaround times, but I'm pretty flexible, if something pops up, and something needs to be done urgently, I can do that with my scheduled hour blocks. And so when I look at each week, and I'm planning out those blocks, I take, you know, what's in my ClickUp, what's in my email, what's on my to do list, ideally, these would all be combined, but we're not we're not always perfect that way.
And that's okay. But I take the things that are on my list, and I plan them out in my week so that I create I use Google Calendar. And so I can have a separate calendar, that's OPM work blocks.
And I can put things in there, like during this time, I'm working on client A's training updates. During this block, I'm working on client B's mastermind renewals, you know, so that I can plan out what it is that I'm working on. And I know, just looking at my calendar, what there is to do.
That also allows for flexibility, like I said, you know, in case in stuff, if something comes up that, you know, a client needs, or maybe there's not as much work for one client, or there might be a bigger project for another client that you want two to three hours to dedicate to at a time, right, this allows for flexibility of moving things around as needed. And so you're able to structure it depending on how you work best or what your clients need that day, or that now something that I do, that sometimes OBMs will not take on as I do admin work. So I actually just got off of a call with a client, and she's wanting me to take over more of her inbox management, and going in twice a day to, you know, pull out the emails that she her attention needs to be on, right? Some people think that, you know, if you're an OBM, like you're not doing any of those admin tasks or those VA tasks, and that's not true.
Your client really is looking to you for sometimes those repetitive tasks, especially if there's not someone to pass those along to, if there's not another team member, if there's not another VA, if you don't have someone on your team. And so when you're filling in those spots on your calendar, you need to include things like that. So for me, I have weekly recurring things like on Mondays, I gather analytics, I update content for a membership, I send event reports, things like that, that every Monday I am doing.
So I put that on my calendar, and therefore, on Mondays, I try to keep my calendar a bit light, so that I'm able to get to those weekly recurring things that I know I need to do. I'm going to be putting in like this client's check emails, I'm going to put that in the morning and in the afternoon. And so when you have like those weekly recurring things, you want to make sure that they're in your calendar, so that you have those scheduled out, and nothing is put over it, so that you forget it or don't get to it that day.
So in the list of things that we have on our calendar now, we have calls, we have weekly recurring tasks, and we have work blocks. And that's going to be a really good foundation of how you set up your day, so that you're getting all the work that you need to get done. For me, in my business, I typically work about three to four billable hours a day.
And that's like when my toggle clock is running, it does not include switching tasks, taking a five minute break, posting on Instagram for my business or anything like that, right? So those three to four hours are like billable client work. But I have found that that is a really good amount of time for me to be able to focus on the work before one having to go get my kids or before having to switch my mind over to something else. So I hope this was helpful as a little bit of a behind the scenes of how I set up my week as an OBM, how I set up my month, the task wise of it is always changing.
And so it's a little hard to go into that specifically. But I think that if you can get this structure down for or a structure that works for you down in planning out your time, you're going to find so much more ease in doing your work and staying on top of things. So as a reminder, six week OBM is open until June 6. We're going to be starting the week after that and going for six weeks during this live round.
I'm so excited for it. If you have any questions on it, you can send me a DM @amandamcvicker_OBM on Instagram, or send me an email at [email protected]. Happy to chat through anything with you on whether this would be a good fit, no pressure, anything like that. Just want to help you figure out what is best for you.
So I hope you guys have a great week and I'll talk with you guys next week. Bye.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of The OBM Educator. I hope what you heard today is helpful for you on your OBM journey. If you loved today's episode, I would so appreciate you sharing it and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Want to be a guest on The OBM Educator, fill out the form in the show notes, and I'll be in touch. Join us next time on The OBM Educator.
