Amanda McVicker (0:00)
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The OBM Educator. This week we are going to be talking about some routines that you can add into your business, into your schedule, that are really going to help you feel like the CEO of your business. So I know from personal experience that when you start your business, especially as a VA or an OBM and it's just you, it can kind of feel like an extension of say, like a nine to five, right? Not necessarily from like the working hours, but from the employee mentality.
So you might feel like, okay, I am just, you know, someone doing something in someone else's business. And that's all I'm doing. When in reality, you are now a business owner, you are running a business, whether you call yourself CEO or owner or founder or whatever, you are still the head of a business.
And so as the head of a business, you have certain responsibilities that you need to do. And I've had previous episodes on like the business behind an OBM business. And so what I'm going to be talking about today is more like routines that can help you really step in and embody that CEO role that by virtue of having a business, you now are, right? You can choose to embody it or not.
You can choose to act like one or not. But at the end of the day, you are the head of your business. And if you want a business that has longevity and sustainability and staying power and be here in five to 10 years, you do need to focus on the business side as well as the client implementation part.
So that is what we are going to get into today. Let's get started.
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 confidence they need to start and grow their own successful online business management business. Follow along as I share valuable insights, behind the scenes sneak peeks and proven strategies to help you build a better OBM business.
So I'm going to be going through three routines that I have incorporated into my business at some point throughout the last six years.
Some of these I've been doing longer, but they all have drastically changed how I show up in different ways. So the first routine that I want to share is how I do weekly planning slash check-ins. And so I've been doing this for a few months at this point, and by far it is the most effective way that I have planned my week in my entire time being a business owner.
And it's really simple, like there's nothing spectacular to it, but I do time based on my clients. And so I have four OBM clients, and then I also treat my own business like a client. So I do five hour long blocks each day, one for each client.
And so this lets me work about an hour each day in each client's business, as well as my own business. And I am able to schedule tasks based on when those blocks are. So I do use ClickUp in my business, but for this particular routine, I have been using Google Tasks.
And so in my Google calendar, I'm able to have these blocks, and then I create Google Tasks on Sundays when I do my planning for things that I have throughout the week. And I place those in the time blocks. And so this gives me a visual that I'm able to see each week, each day, whenever I log onto my computer, I can check my calendar and see exactly what it is that I need to be working on.
And using Google Tasks, I'm able to create repeating tasks, I'm able to plan things out in the future. Sometimes I will get emails from one of my clients of something that, you know, they're planning, they're giving me for the future, for an example, like adding in Zoom links for training. And so when I get those emails, it might be months away from that training.
So I can take the Zoom link and put it into a Google Task for, you know, a week and a half before the training, which is the typical time that we put the Zoom link in. And I just have it as a task for that day. And then I don't have to remember it or come back to it or snooze the email or anything like that, you know, very similar to what you would do in like ClickUp.
But because it's all in my calendar, I keep everything in one central location. And this also helps with weekly check-ins. So I have done more formal and less formal weekly check-ins throughout my business.
But I think that a good rule of thumb when doing weekly check-ins is on a Monday morning, giving your clients an update of, hey, this is what I worked on last week. This is what I'm working on this week. Let me know if anything needs to shift in priority, right? It's not saying like, hey, what am I working on? It's, hey, this is from what we discussed, the schedule of events of what I'm working on.
Let me know if anything shifts in priority. This like maintains a leadership role. If you're on my newsletter, I sent out a really good email on this earlier this week.
So check that out. And if you're not on my newsletter, you should be. But also send me an email and I will send you that newsletter because it was really good.
But I use the time blocking and the weekly planning like the Sunday planning to create my weekly check-in, right? Because I can go look at last week and see everything that was checked off of the Google Tasks. Like I did this, this and this. And this week, I can see everything that I have scheduled.
And if a client comes back and says like, okay, this actually needs to shift in priority, I'm able to move those things around. No problem. So the whole scheduling, planning, time blocking routine has really shifted how I am able to work.
You know, when you don't have something like that, and you're just entering each day like, okay, what am I going to work on today? One, you're wasting time. For me, I have limited time. I have three young children, and I only have a certain amount of time that they're out of the house each day.
And so I'm working against the clock, and I need to have my time organized. And so this has been really helpful for me to be able to attack the day with a plan. The second routine that I do that really helps me feel like a CEO is I track my monthly analytics.
Now, this has looked like different things throughout the years. Right now, my analytics are more focused on my mentoring side, right? They're more on my lead magnets and my ads and all of that. But previously, when I was tracking more OBM metrics of like, finding clients and how much time I was working for everyone, like I still do that, but not to as much of an extent, I was tracking hours per client each month.
I was tracking how many hours my team member was doing, and how many hours per client my team member was doing. I was tracking my income. I was tracking hours to strategy sessions or VIP days or project packages.
And then the income from that, I was tracking discovery calls and the conversion rates. But it was just a time each month that I set aside to look at all of my numbers. And so for you, you can think about like, what are the important numbers that you want to be tracking and set aside time each month to put that together.
The importance of tracking monthly analytics is going to come down to ultimately what you do with that information, right? You can track analytics all day long and never do anything with that information. And that's just time wasted. But if you can look at the analytics and see from looking at the hours, right, seeing, wow, my team member is really focusing a lot on this one client or this type of task, and maybe, you know, getting another team member shifting around work is going to make things more efficient.
Or on the flip side, say showing that you're working a lot on more admin tasks, maybe it is time to bring on a team member. Or, oh, my discovery call conversion rate is actually kind of low. Like what is it that I can change on my discovery calls to be landing more clients, right? So when you look at the information that you're collecting in these analytics, you do need to have a plan to do something with it.
And that's what really makes you like the effective CEO of your business is putting all of that together. So having a routine to plan out those monthly analytics is going to be really crucial in helping you to make informed decisions in your business. And then the third routine that I do that it's a little related to analytics, but it's more focused on the money portion, right? So usually as service providers for long term retainers, we pretty much know how much money we are bringing in each month, we have that monthly recurring revenue from our retainer clients, and we can usually expect that to come in.
But it still doesn't mean that we don't need to track it, right? It's good to track that if you have strategy calls or VIP days or project packages, you know, that could add things into it, but it's always good. And what I've implemented is like a weekly money date. And so this is where I go through my QuickBooks, and I clean up my QuickBooks.
But in the process of that, I'm able to see, you know, all the money that has come in and all the money that has gone out. Now, if you have a bookkeeper, they might be doing this for you. But if you don't, it's really a good thing to like kind of get in the habit of because especially with QuickBooks, there are certain things that you have to do with tracking like strike fees or you know, whatever.
And so keeping on top of that is really helpful, especially when it comes to tax season. But then also seeing like what money is going out? What subscriptions do you have? Are they all necessary? Are you saving up for a big ticket item? Are you wanting to see if you can add in coaching or add in a team member or something like that? Having a money date really just lets you see what is going on in your business with the money, right? Money is crucial for a successful business. And so we need to make sure that we are watching it and staying on top of it and knowing where it's going and where it's coming from.
And so having a weekly money date is really going to help you with that. So these are my three routines that have really helped me kind of embody being the CEO in my business. And it's always going to look like something different depending on where you are in your business, what offers you have, what you're doing.
But I think that these three things are kind of universal depending on where you are and what you're doing. So I encourage you to try implementing them maybe just one at a time to kind of like build it up, but see what difference it can make and how it can help you to truly run your business. I hope this was helpful for you all and I will talk with you all 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.
