Why We're Pivoting — And Why It's the Best Thing I Could Do for You

Welcome back to Beyond Product Management. I'm your host, Heather Miller, and if you're new here, I'm so glad you found this little piece, this little corner of the internet. This is a space for founders, builders, and for women who are out here trying to create something real— a business, a life, a legacy— all at the same time. I'm your host, Heather Miller. I am also the CEO, co-founder, and product management strategist at at PDRM Consulting. Today's episode is a little different. We've had a lot of guests, but today is just me talking directly to you about something that's been on my heart and honestly something I think you need to hear because we are making a pivot over here at PDRM Consulting. And before you panic and think I've lost my mind or abandoned everything we've been building, Hear me out, because this pivot, it's actually for you. First, let me take you back, probably back to high school, actually. I remember being told, probably in some class, maybe even by a well-meaning teacher, that everybody has the same number of hours in a week, 168 to be exact. And that exercise was this: write down how many hours you sleep, Write down school, write down your activities and your responsibilities and your commitments, and then look at what's left. That's your free time, and that's where productivity lives. And honestly, that kind of time audit when I was in school, when I was in a corporate environment, it probably worked. When your schedule has a built-in structure, when you know you have to be at a certain place at a certain time, when your boss sets the hours and HR defines your role, it makes sense to map your time, find the gaps, and fill them in intentionally. But here's the thing nobody tells you when you leave that world and step into entrepreneurship. That model completely falls apart. Because when you're a founder, especially if you're building within the margins, fitting your business into the hours between your family, your full-time job, and everything else, your week doesn't look the same from Monday to Monday. Some weeks you have 20 hours to pour into your business, and some weeks you have 4. Some weeks everything is on fire and you're just surviving. If you're in the Northeast, think back to January with negative temperatures and school being closed for a week. Or FID days. And a traditional time audit doesn't account for that. And it doesn't ask what you can automate, and it doesn't ask what you can delegate, doesn't ask where your priorities need to shift depending on the season of the business you're in. It just gives you a blank grid and says fill it in. And for the— a lot of founders that I work with, the blank grid becomes one more source of overwhelm. This conversation happened when I was talking in my mastermind about making this pivot. Someone was overwhelmed just about the conversation. Now, before I go further, I want to be crystal clear about something. I still believe in our strategic intensives and strategic planning with my whole heart. We're not walking away from the concept of them. That's not what this pivot is all about. But here's what I started to notice. When I would sit down with a founder inside a strategic intensive, we'd get into the work, the real work, the 3-month plan, the 6-month vision, the annual goals, and I kept hitting the same wall. Not because the founder wasn't smart. Not because they didn't have the vision. But because they couldn't see past next Tuesday. They were so deep in the day-to-day, so overwhelmed by everything on their plate, so buried under the weight of doing all the things that the idea of planning 3 months ahead felt like a joke, or worse, felt like one more thing to fail at. Some founders couldn't even get past the conversation or more than liking a post because it was scary. And when we tried to do a time audit as part of the intensive, it became overwhelming almost immediately because a real time audit done right isn't just about hours. It's about prioritization. It's about values. It's about figuring out what actually matters to you and where you're spending your energy on things that don't. Energy and time are related. That's a big part of the conversation. That's a whole journey and we were trying to compress it into a piece of a larger intensive and it wasn't landing in the way that it needed to. And I wasn't doing a service to you or myself. So I started asking myself, and luckily I had some great help, what if we flipped it? What if before we ever talked about strategy, we make sure you actually have the capacity to execute on it? I want you to hear me on this. Time is the greatest asset you have as a founder. Not money, not connections, not your product. Time. Because everything else— money, relationships, momentum— can be rebuilt. But time, time you can't get back. And so many of the warm women I work with are bleeding time. They're pouring it into things that don't move the needle. They're saying yes to everything because no feels scary. They're working in their business around the clock and still feeling behind. Even if they stop and maybe play with their kids, their brain is still churning. Their mind is still on that one task. Everything is still going through their head. Whether they're still sleeping. That's why you wake up at 3 AM. It's because your brain's not shutting off. And here's what it looks like. You're lying awake at 3 AM and your brain's not stopping. Every task, every client, everything you didn't get to, it's all just running on a loop. Does that sound familiar to you? It's not ambition. That's chaos, and it's not sustainable. I talk about it a lot, the idea that you built a business to create freedom, to have more presence with your family, and to do work that matters, and then put it down at the end of the day. But so many founders end up building a prison instead of a business, and it starts with not having clarity around their time. Here's the thing, when I I am sitting here at my desk and have the forethought to— the ability to work or the time and the energy to work. I do. If I'm not being productive, it means I need to take a break. Yes, if I have deliverables, I'm delivering them to my client. If I owe somebody something, I'm delivering it. However, yesterday, for instance, I had a terrible headache. Finished a couple of meetings and then stopped. Went and laid down for a couple hours. When I woke up, I I went back to working because I had clarity on what I needed to do. Now, could I have stopped working because it was 6 o'clock? Yes, I could have because the time said. But being an entrepreneur, the time doesn't make a difference. What I knew was that I had amazing ideas. They were things I wanted to work on. And so this is where one of the things that I do maybe differently than a lot of people who preach balance and time and all these things is I don't look at the clock. I go based on other boundaries that are important to me. What my kids need, what my life needs, what my energy needs. Those are the things that are more important to me than anything around the clock. The clock is not as important. My husband took care— I made dinner. My husband and I actually tag-teamed dinner last night, but— and my husband took our son to Scouts so that I could take care of a few things because of the headache earlier in the afternoon. Now, if I hadn't had the headache, I probably would have done Scouts because But he knew that I wanted to get things done to launch this new time audit because I was so excited about it and it was making me excited. I also have some work around our PDR and Protect product that I'm working on because now it is partially in my court to get some marketing materials out and to get some launch things done. So we are now tag teaming that work. So that is part of being with a time audit is how does your— what do your boundaries look like and what does that look like? And that's part of what we discuss. Here's the pivot and here's how— what we are doing differently with our time audit versus other people. I have built a time audit experience that's nothing like what you've seen before. And I wanna be really clear, this isn't a spreadsheet you fill out alone at midnight. This is not a track every hour for 2 weeks and then stare at the data. Because here's the thing about traditional time audits, they require you to spend a significant amount of time just collecting information before you can do anything useful with it. 2 weeks of logging, and then you need more time to analyze it. Most founders simply don't have that in their margins. What I've designed is a 4-hour high-intensity guided experience. 4 hours, that's it. And in those 4 hours, you're going to walk away with more clarity than most people get from 6 months of journaling. Because what we're going to build together— first, your boundaries. And I know that word gets thrown around a lot, but let me tell you what I actually mean. I mean, what are you going to say no to? Because every time you say no to something that doesn't align with your priorities, you are saying yes to something that does. And that is the hardest thing for most entrepreneurs, especially women, especially recovering people pleasers. And Lord knows I include myself in that category. Every no still gives me a pit in my stomach, but I know now that the no is protecting something sacred. And we're going to get really clear on what that sacred thing is for you. For me, it's my kids and my husband. My kids will always get mom. You will find me. On the football field or on the band sideline. I will always say no if it interferes with me being present for them. I have said no to things and I will continue to say no to things that take me away from them. Second, your priorities. This kind of goes with boundaries, but it's a little different. Not a list of things you should care about, your actual priorities at this particular, particular season of your business and your life, because priorities aren't static. They shift. What mattered in Q1 might not be what drives Q3. What you needed when you were in launch mode is different what you need in growth mode. We're going to get honest about where you actually are right now. Right now. Third, your ideal week. What does a genuinely good week look like for you? Not perfect, not unicorns and rainbows, because I don't believe that week looks like— that week exists. I'm going to be honest. But what's the version of the week where you feel in control, where you're moving the needle, where you're present for the people and things that matter most? To you. We're gonna design that. For me, that would be time where I get to make a really good dinner, maybe do a little bit of baking, and some time outside. For me, reading, coloring, doing something. But I also get some time playing games with my husband and kids. Those are the things that are important to me, but I also get time helping my clients. I get time recording the podcast. I get time doing the things that I love in my business because those things are important to me too. I am a person who loves being productive. And so those things are important. I need a good balance in my week to feel like I am aligned. And fourth, and this one is important, your minimum viable week or minimum viable day. Because we all have those seasons, the weeks where a family member gets sick or a client blows up your inbox or the universe decides just to test you. What does the floor look like? What's the minimum you need to keep your business moving on your hardest weeks or days? Because if you don't have that defined, those hard weeks are going to derail you every single time. I am so grateful that I had those defined back in January because I don't know how I would have survived having even my high schooler home and the calls from college and dealing with stuff going on with Scouts and band and trying to figure out what was going on if I didn't have those for my business. Here's what I know to be true after years of working with founders: you cannot plan your way forward if you don't have the capacity to execute. Full stop. The biggest thing that holds female founders back from growth is not a lack of strategy. It's not a lack of ideas. It's not a lot, even a lack of resources. It's the fact that they are completely maxed out and they are trying to pour from an empty cup. They cannot think past this week because this week is already too much. Prioritization is the first step and being able to move forward with intention. And what this time audit gives you, what we're building in those 4 hours together, is a stable foundation. Not a plan for your business, a plan for your time and for your energy, for your life. And once you have that, once you know your boundaries and your priorities and what a real sustainable week looks like for you, everything else gets easier. Decision-making gets easier. Saying no gets easier, showing up gets easier because you're not guessing anymore. You have a framework, you have clarity. This is the work that needs to come first, but— and that's exactly what we're starting here. It comes before everything else we do with strategic planning and all of that. We still offer it and we're still going to talk about it, but the time audit needs to come first. So here's my ask for you today. If you are lying awake at 3 in the morning with your business running on a loop in your head, come work with me on this. If you feel like you're always running behind, always reactive, always one crisis away from dropping all the plates, let's fix that. If you know you have a vision but you cannot figure out how to actually execute on it because you can't even see past this week, or this day. This is your starting point. 4 hours, we do it together, and you walk away with a framework for your time that gives you your life back. Because your time should not all belong to your business. You should still get to be a person, a mom, a partner, a human being who does things she loves. The business should serve your life, not the other way around. The, this, the link in the show notes will let you get started. Come find me on LinkedIn or Instagram if you have questions. I want to hear from you. And if this episode hit home, I would be so grateful if you'd share it with a fellow founder who needs to hear it. I'm Heather Miller. Thanks for listening to Beyond Product Management. I'll see you on the next episode.