CEO Time: What You Really Should Be Doing Each Week

Guest: Feeling overwhelmed every time you sit down at your desk or pull that pile of papers onto the couch to work on your business, Are you drained of the energy because you hate managing the operational details? You are the visionary, the creator, the heart and soul behind your passion. You thrive on doing what you love, and that's why you started this journey. You're great at envisioning the big picture, but get, uh, bogged down by the nitty gritty can be a drag. Right, here's where I can step in. Imagine having someone who can be that steady voice and steady force in your life, keeping you accountable and aligned with your vision to ensure those big dreams get attained. That's exactly why I'm offering a free operational audit. Let's spend an hour together where I can help you gain crystal clear clarity on the results that you want to achieve in your business and your life. Let's turn your dreams into into plans and your plans into reality. Join me on this journey.

Jen Taylor: Welcome to the Design youn Wedding Business Podcast. The podcast for wedding professionals and creative entrepreneurs ready to build a business that is as intentional as the experiences they create. I'm Jen Taylor, business coach, system strategist, and former luxury wedding planner turned certified operational expert. I help business owners like you get out of the weeds, own your CEO role, and build a business that supports your life, not the other way around. Each episode, we'll dive into strategies, systems, and mindset shifts that bring clarity, momentum, and sustainable success. So grab your favorite beverage, get comfy, and let's design a business that you're excited to wake up to.

Jen Taylor: Hello, Jen Taylor of the Design your Wedding Business Podcast. If you're spending your week answering emails, fixing timelines, fixing client work, putting out fires, but never actually thinking about your business, we need to talk. Today, we're breaking it down of, uh, what CEO time actually looks like for a wedding professional. For a business owner, it doesn't matter. It's the same. Because if you don't schedule time to lead your business, you'll always be stuck working inside of it. You'll never find, quote, unquote, find the time to work on it. So the difference between technician time and CEO time. I like the term technician because that's where we're at. We are the technicians of what we're doing, our business. Whether you're photographer, a florist, a caterer, a plumber, a H VAC guy, whatever, this is the time you need. So technician time is you are working on the business, client meetings, client going out to see clients, emails for wedding Professionals, timelines, doing the work, being there for the wedding. CEO time is planning, forecasting, reviewing numbers, refining systems. Most business owners are 90% technician and 10% CEO, if that. So what does CEO time actually include? They're like, jen, what does it include? I've got a little document that shows what I do or, uh, what I did when I was a wedding planner. Daily, monthly, weekly, quarterly, and yearly. And it kind of gives you those tasks. So if you're like, I don't know what to do, you look at that task and say, what do I need to do? What haven't I done in my business? So weekly CEO tasks. Revenue tracking, lead tracking and conversion rate. Reviewing the pipeline, reviewing your marketing plan, calendar, audit systems, reviews, team check ins. If you have a team, we're like, that sounds like a lot. I don't have the time for that. I barely have time to do what I need to do. Okay, do you have an hour? There's a lot of things I'm doing right now in my business or not doing in my business. I'm like, you could just get off the phone and do an hour of this, whatever this is. So here's your power hour. So whether this is great if you're in the midst of wedding season or you're in a really in the midst of any busy season in your life, do you have an hour to sit and work in your business? An hour a week. So here we go. You're spending the first 15 minutes on your numbers. So you're doing your revenue tracking. You're looking at all of that 15 minutes. You're working on your lead tracking and you're reviewing your pipeline. Who do you need to reach back out to? Who is questionable? Reaching out to those people that you want to connect with the next 15 minutes. So now you're at your last year at 45 minutes. You're working on your marketing, you're working on your visibility. And then the final 15 minutes, you're working on your operations. So your audit of your calendar, your systems review, your team check ins if you need to. Any of those things are considered operations. So consistency is better than the marathon planning days. I still like to see marathon planning days because those are the days that you can get away. And this is where you get away. You go to your favorite hotel or you go to your favorite coffee shop, or you're like, I just, I just need to get away. This is the marathon planning day is to do that. I know a lot, a lot of CEOs, uh, a lot of business Owners one I know takes a day, a quarter, and reviews what she's doing, what she's done in the past quarter, what she's looking forward in the next quarter. And then she takes like a weekend and does the whole review of the previous year and looking forward to the next. So really set aside those times to do that. And it doesn't have to be the end of the year. It doesn't have to be the end of the quarter. It can be whenever it's going to fit in your schedule. Like, for me, I kind of do one in the beginning of the year. It's when I write my letter, I really go through and think about what I want in the next year. And then I actually review it around my birthday. So in the end of April, I go back and go, okay, is this still what I really want? Because things might have changed in those first four months, or if I wrote it in December, that, uh, five months, uh, like, what does that look like? Is it still, uh, you know, is it still what I want my year to look like when it's done? So why avoiding CEO time feels safer than doing the CEO time? Because it's where everybody is avoiding this. It's not just one person, it's all of us. It's uncomfortable, it requires looking at numbers, it forces decisions, and it exposes the gaps in your business. But it gives you clarity and hopefully with that, it reduces the anxiety in your business. M. So here's some reflection questions for YouTube to look at. When was the last time you reviewed your profit margin? Do you know your booking rates? Are you leading or are you reacting? Reacting is you're getting up and you're just reacting to anything that comes your way. You're not looking at, here's my goal for the next week or the next day. Like, I just sat down and I have an ongoing list and I cross things off and I'm like, okay, where am I on this list? And it's slowly getting shorter and shorter. I probably wrote it for the whole month or, uh, maybe I was like, really excited. I'm like, I'm going to get all this stuff done this week. Eh, it's not going to happen. But I'm not sitting there going, what am I going to do? I mean, I've gone from a full page of stuff to probably about a half a page. It's not like your normal standard 8 by 11. It is.

Guest: Let me measure it.

Jen Taylor: Here it is, uh, eight by. It's not even eight. Yeah, it's a little over eight Long and five and a half inches. So that's a little, it's a little spiral notebook that I keep and I just write things in it. Things that I want, things that I need to get done. Maybe business or be, you know, work or it can be whatever. I'm like, these are the things I need to do. Like right now I'm going to be working on my newsletter, I'm going to be working on my social media. I'm going to be, this is what I want to promote. And so that's on the list. Whether I do it today, tomorrow, I just know I have to get it done by a certain day because it needs to be scheduled and needs to go out. So look at how you're structuring your days. If you're reacting towards it, you're going to have that anxiety about your business. If you're leading, if you are jumping in and going, this is my business, this is how I want it to run. You're going to have a lot less reactive, you know, like when you're driving in a snowstorm, if you know how, if you know what that looks like. Or the Star wars, you know when the beginning of the Star wars and you have all those stars flashing by you, that's the reactive. It's everything's flashing by you and it's just, you're just trying to react. You're just, oh my gosh, if you're leading, you're more calm, centered, all of that in your business. So this week, block one CEO hour, non negotiable, put it on your calendar. Whether it's a Monday, whether it's a Friday, whether it's uh, a Tuesday, whatever, the beginning of the day, end of the day. See what works for you and stick with it. Mine, I usually like to try to do it really. I kind of like to do it on a Sunday during the winter. House is quiet. I don't have anybody here. I can really sit down and relax my nervous system and do the work that I need to do. I'm recording this on a Saturday. House is quiet, don't have anything going on and it's great. So find a time for you that's quiet. If you have kids and it's not quiet, then you know that's where you're kind of like, I gotta get out of the house and go do this. We're mobile now. You can do a lot of this stuff from other places. So I ask of you to block one hour for uh, CEO hour this week and work on your business. Have a great day.

Jen Taylor: Bye. If today's episode sparked an idea or gave you a nudge you needed, I'd love to hear about it. DM me on Instagram en Taylor Consulting or leave a review to help more wedding pros find this show. And if you're ready for the next level clarity and support, head over to jentaylorconsulting.com to book your free business audit. Until next time, stay focused, stay intentional,

Jen Taylor: and keep designing a business that works for you.