Episode Summary

In this episode of the Make Space for More podcast, Melissa Swink discusses the importance of creating “white space” for business owners. This is defined as time to think strategically and innovate, outside of work time and meetings. She shares insights from her own experience and evolution as a business owner, emphasizing the need for delegation and how she uses her team’s support to free up time for higher-level thinking. Melissa also provides examples of tasks that can be handed off to others to enhance productivity and reduce bottlenecks in business operations.

Key Highlights:

• According to HBR, CEOs spend 72% of their time in meetings.
• Creating white space is essential for strategic thinking.
• Delegating tasks can free up time for innovation.
• Hiring a senior team can alleviate bottlenecks.
• Regularly auditing your calendar can reveal time wasters.
• It's important to let go of tasks that don't serve you.
• Effective delegation leads to better team performance.

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

Thanks for listening!

If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcast review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are really valuable and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review.

Hi everyone, welcome to the Make Space for More podcast where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink, and in today's episode, we're gonna talk about leveraging team to create white space. And white space is my word for it. You might call it thinking time, you may call it free time, but regardless, when we're talking about business owners, executive directors,

CEOs, people at that high leadership level in a company or organization, this becomes increasingly important because we are spending less time working in the organization, doing the work of the organization, and we're spending more time on strategy and innovation and planning because we really want to be able to continue the growth and success of our companies into the future.

Sometimes I just love those. just told me exactly what I needed to know. And as I was diving into the information, it's no surprise that CEOs spend a significant amount of time with people. On average, according to the study featured in the article, 72 % of their time is spent meeting with other people. And of course, that could include, and this depends on,

where you are at in your business and organization as well. So this might vary a little bit, but a lot of it is spent on some of their direct reports, maybe other senior managers within the organization. It could be strategic partnerships or collaborators, but the point is we're spending a lot of time in meetings. And so if you feel like, gosh, you know, as my business continues to grow, I'm spending a lot more time with my people. I know, and we're going to talk about this, how

my team structure has ultimately impacted some of the white space that I've had and shifts that I've had to make over the years. But I know I have heard other CEOs say, I'm hesitant to bring on more team members because every time I bring on another team member, that requires more of my time. And the point is for me to free up time and it's kind of this delicate balance. So know that you are not alone if you're feeling like, gosh, I spend a whole lot of my time with other people in meetings.

And so anyway, we have 72 % time on average spent in meetings, which leaves about 28 % of CEOs alone time. And so ideally, this alone time, according to the article, and I happen to agree with it, is not meant to be spent on miscellaneous tasks or routine tasks. Ideally, this time is for them to think and reflect and plan.

So it's really easy to fall into the trap of I'm in meetings all day, I'm talking to people all day, I'm answering questions all day, and then whenever I can fit it in, when I'm not meeting with another person, talking to another person, I am getting caught up on email, or I need to get that thing over to the client, and all these things. And so I think what we have done, and I say we because I have certainly fallen into this trap many times, and it's easy to...

add a team member or to outsource or to delegate something and then have that time get filled in by something else. And so this is something that's constantly evolving. Priorities, time structure is always going to be evolving as your business or organization continues to grow. So I just wanted to share with you that that's totally normal too. I'm in meetings and then now when am I gonna actually do my heads down work time? And as you continue to advance your role within your company or organization,

more and more of your time alone should be spent on some of this thinking and reflection and all of that. And so when I talk about thinking bigger, this is something that has become clear to me is a true priority for me this year. And I am currently reading, I'm just getting into it. So don't ask me too many questions yet. I'll share more information as I'm learning and reflecting and really integrating the information. But

I am currently reading 10X is Easier Than 2X by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan. I'm only about two chapters in, but really the point overall so far is if you want to truly make significant headway on something, you have to look at the 80-20 rule. so basically 20 % of the things that you're doing are creating 80 % of your results. And so...

we're looking at the other 80 % of what can I let go of in order to really propel my business forward. So again, I'll reflect on that, but that's something that I'm reading as part of that thinking bigger priority that I've set for myself this year. And so as I'm sharing how I plan to create more white space in my day to do this and how I've done this in the past,

I did not have consistent help in those early years of business. So that meant that I was doing all of the things myself. was working as a virtual assistant. That's what I own. I own a virtual assistant services company. So I did a lot of client work and that's ultimately of course how I got paid. And so I was, no matter how I structured my packages, no matter how innovative I tried to be with my schedule and the way that I structured things, ultimately at the end of the day,

I could only earn as much as I could bill out per se. So that kept me in a feast and famine cycle as well because ultimately as client projects wrapped up, which they naturally do, or a client got to a point in their business where they were able to hire a part-time, full-time employee, my business would kind of drop down then, and then I'd have to spend all that extra time that I had freed up to find another client to fill that gap. And so it was that feast and famine cycle.

and I remember putting together a job description and I put down really a general list of all the things that I was doing for clients and things that I was interested in getting extra help on. And it came down to two candidates who had very different skill sets, which by the way, was all included within that job description as well. It was like some of this and some of that and some of this and some of that. It was really kind of a hodgepodge general job description of all the miscellaneous things I was doing for clients. But anyway,

I narrowed it down to two candidates. One was very creative and loved creating graphics and social media captions, things like that. And then I had another who was extremely analytical and organized and great in kind of that light bookkeeping organizational space. So ultimately I onboarded them both, which was really, really smart on my part because then it wasn't just I hired one person and I put all my eggs in that basket and then maybe

over time and neither one of these team members are still with me today. They both moved on into other career opportunities or I think one of them, ultimately she just continued growing her family, which was super exciting for her and she had no more time to do VA work. But it was great to not have all my eggs put in one basket right out of the gate. So if one person was at capacity or didn't have time to do something, I could ask the other one for help within reason, of course, within their skill sets.

But that was a really good eye-opening experience for me because that's something that I share with my clients on a day-to-day basis is, hey, we want to make sure that we have good coverage in terms of availability, capacity, and also skill set. I am sharing all of this because it's a lesson that I've learned over the years and it's something that I hope that I can impart to you and encourage you to do as well. So I had my first two people.

And then over time, the team continued to grow as did the business. And my team was still very much behind the scenes. So I was meeting with clients and I was strategizing with them and planning projects and receiving the tasks that they wanted to outsource to our team. And then behind the scenes, I would basically reassign all of that work to the team, or I should say the vast majority of it, let's be real. And so I became almost like a dispatcher.

You know, at first, when I had behind the scenes help doing client work, that did free up my plate. And I was able to start working on the business again and bring in more customers and things like that, which was great. But then eventually, it got to the point where I was spending all of my time communicating back and forth, communicating with clients, sending it off to the team, receiving questions or completed work from the team, reviewing that.

sending it off to the clients. And I just became like this air traffic controller all the time. And so then the next iteration of my team was that my team members started to become more client facing. Yes, it was scary. I thought my clients only wanted to work with me and you may be feeling the same way. I hate to say it, but it's really not true. At the end of the day, I found that as long as my team was doing the work

just as well, if not better than I could do, which proved to be true as well in 99.9 % of cases, they were just as happy to have somebody from my team doing the work. It didn't have to be me. They were just grateful that it was done. And I have a wonderful team. And so I am always confident that no matter who I have working with the client on the account, they're going to be professional, respectful, and so on. And so when I...

finally peeled back the curtain and had clients working directly with team members, that freed up my time again because I was nowhere near at the point of the amount of communications that I was before with the back and forth between clients and team and all of that. And so then my team continued to grow. We started bringing in more clients, teams started growing again, and I found that I was spending a lot of time leading and managing a team. So,

answering questions, offering feedback, helping troubleshoot when needed. I was having a lot of one-to-ones with each team member finding out, you know, how are things going with this client? What do you need support on? What's working well? What's not working well? And so I completely understand when clients tell me, hey, I do need to hire somebody, but I'm hesitant to do that because it's just gonna add more and more to my plate. And so again,

In the interest of freeing up my time in order to be able to grow the company some more, I implemented a senior VA team. And so I was able to promote some of our most experienced, our best performing team members and get their help with leading the rest of the team. So they have become the first points of contact for team members to ask questions or get some additional feedback or maybe some.

an extra set of eyes on a particular project or helping to come up with a solution to a challenge that the client and team members are facing. My senior BAs are also doing one-to-ones with the team. And so rather than having, we are at 23 people, I think, on the team as of this recording. And so rather than having 22 one-to-ones every month and having 22 people coming to me with questions,

which I absolutely want to be available for, it just got to a point where I became the bottleneck in so many things. And so the senior VA team has been a game changer for me. And again, I freed up my time once they started taking these things off of my plate. And I was able to grow some internal team members, which means that they are not client facing. They are only working with me on my business. And so I have my executive assistant. I just hired a new bookkeeper as well. So

And now I'm spending a lot more of my time with them and our senior leaders and such. But I have realized that there are areas in my business that, again, that I need to let go of, again, in order to think bigger and more strategically and innovate so that we can continue growing and scaling the company for many years to come. And so a couple of weeks ago, I did my calendar audit of 2024.

So I have described this in other episodes as well. You can go back and listen to those. But I ultimately went through week by week, looked at my calendar and put down, you know, I made basically three lists. I made a list of what was worth my time, energy and money, what was not worth my time, energy and money. And when you do this for yourself, feel free to be brutally honest. You don't have to show this to anyone. Okay. But

Then the third list was self-care and just happiness, like things that I just really enjoyed, would like to do more of and things like that. So I had my list. And then when I reflected on things that I am currently doing in my role that I really need to release yet again to create white space for the strategic planning portion of the work that I do as the CEO of my company, I reviewed the not worth my time, and energy list.

And then I also took a look at my Asana task list. So as I've shared in a previous episode, our company uses Asana for project management and that manages all the internal and client tasks and projects that we are doing throughout the day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year even. And so I reviewed my Asana task list and I came up with some key areas and some key things.

leave what doesn't, but I hope that it kind of gets your creative juices flowing for how this might apply to you and your situation. And so, as I mentioned, I recently hired a new bookkeeper because I realized that one of the areas that I am still holding on to, because I actually really like it, I like accounting. I like business budgeting and forecasting, planning. I like metrics. I like numbers and all of that. And so I have happily retained this over the years.

And I'll be honest, it's something that I still plan to stay involved in pretty extensively because again, it's something that I enjoy and I do think it's important for me as the owner of my company to know our numbers. But that being said, I realized that by doing so much of the accounting on my own, that that created a bottleneck and it also created some risk for my overall company.

And so one of the things that my new bookkeeper is going to be cross-training with me on is executing team payments. So we have automated our client payments for the most part. Every once in a while, a client will need some extra hours from us for a particular project or something like that. But 95 % of the time, our client invoices are automatically sent five days before the due date. Payments are processed on the due date. That is pretty automated. But on the other hand,

our team payments are not. And we're working on processes internally to make this more smooth and less time consuming for everybody. But ultimately at the end of the day, I am executing on the direct deposit payments to my team. So we've got everybody's, know, invoicing totals added up and I set up a direct deposit system with my bank. And so I'm going in and I'm paying out team members. This does not take a significant amount of my time.

However, currently, I am the only one who has the systems access and really the training, if you will. I would need to cross-train somebody on how this is done, which again, if I can figure it out, there's always somebody else out there who can figure it out as well and maybe even better than me. But right now, I'm the only one holding this piece. And so what happens if someday, God forbid, I'm unable to do this?

You know, it could be as simple as, well, rather than going to the dark side right away, let's go to the positive. What if I decide to take a month off over the summer and travel with my daughter? I would love to travel and see my team. I think I've told you guys that on this podcast before. It keeps coming to mind. And so maybe that's a lead in. That's something that I should set for the summer. Maybe a goal that I need to set for myself is, you know, traveling a little bit more and seeing my team members in person. That would be amazing. But maybe I'm on vacation.

Do I really wanna stop what I'm doing in the middle of my vacation because the team has to get paid? Right now, that hasn't come up, but I would happily do that. Is it necessary? Probably not. Now let's go to the dark side. What happens if something happens to me and I am not able, I am not physically able to execute on team payments and get money into their accounts because...

Their families require this money in order to put food on the table, pay bills, and so on. Extremely important that my team gets paid on time. So by having a bookkeeper cross-train with me and grant her access to the systems that she needs access to in order to do this, that eliminates me as the bottleneck and also the overall risk of team member payments. So that is just one example of something that I am going to be handing off this year.

That is pretty much what I hand off on the accounting side. I'm also going to be spending time with her on reviewing some of our current processes in terms of cashflow and team budgeting and things like that, and just get an extra set of eyes on, is there something else that we can be doing differently? I know that we also have plans to upgrade our QuickBooks so that we're gonna be able to do some more extensive tracking. So just a few things on deck on the accounting side of things.

I have things on the marketing side of the business that I'm going to be handing off as well. I don't have a formal plan in place for this as of yet, but I know overall strategy is something that I would love to get an extra set of eyes on. That may be something that I review with my business coaches first before I get another party involved, but looking at our overall marketing strategy. And then also handing off more completely some of the campaigns that we're doing, whether it be

Email newsletter campaigns or gift giving campaigns that we've done. We do for our clients and team members, some key vendors and strategic partners, we do an annual gift giving campaign every November, for example. Events, we're going to be doing, I think we're going to survey our clients and our subscribers to find out what types of topics are you interested in? And then most importantly, how do you prefer to receive that information?

Right now I'm debating, do we do a 30 minute mini workshop in and out, a live call, 30 minutes, we can record it, send it out to people who couldn't make it and just have that really bite-sized piece of information? Or do people like to really set aside some thinking time or white space time to work on their business and they wanna do maybe a 90 minute or a two hour workshop where they really dialed in and 100 % focused.

on working on a key area in their business for that amount of time. That's something that I'd like to survey and find out. But regardless, once we make that determination, I need to be doing more to hand off some of the promotional and the prep work for some of these things. Again, I mentioned gifts. We do send out gifts to new clients when they come on board and client anniversaries.

That's something that I am in the process of handing off to my executive assistant so that she can run with that. Again, releasing some of the recurring things that I am doing in my company in order to create white space and more thinking time for myself. Sales is another area that I am primarily responsible for. I think this is going to be a process because I really do enjoy doing consultations with potential clients, really getting to know them.

business, more about the work that they do, who they serve, and then really what needs to be taken off their plate? How can we do that if we're a good fit or if we're not a good fit, making a recommendation for another resource so that they can get the support that they need. I do enjoy those conversations. One thing that I found that I can take a lot of time on, or I should say that takes a lot of my time that I can easily become the bottleneck for, is the quoting process.

So after consultations, I'm taking information, sometimes involving members of our team if I need somebody to review a very specific area of where they're looking for support on, maybe they need marketing help, maybe they need bookkeeping help, and I'm getting those team members involved to tell me like, hey, this is what I recommend, and here's how I think that we need to set that up. Here's what I think our deliverables should be. I'm getting their information and I'm getting their feedback on how we can best support that potential client.

And then I'm combing all that together, putting together a quote and ultimately delivering a formal proposal. And I am recording a video overview of that proposal for the client so that they're able to share that with any other decision makers. And then we come back to the table and we iron out any questions, maybe make any changes to the proposal and then look at what the onboarding process looks like. So that's kind of our sales process in a nutshell, but I am spending a lot of time

on reviewing with team, quoting and drafting those proposals. That's something that I would love to get more support on this year so that again, I can free up some more space. Also on a final area that I'm looking for additional support on, again, just being fully transparent with you guys about the things that I'm spending my time on that I need to ultimately release and free up, initial team member interviews. I plan to get my senior VA team involved with those more so that

they can maybe pre-screen a potential team member, have a conversation with them, determine what is their availability, what's their skill set, what types of work are they looking for, kind of doing some of those pre-screening conversations to make sure that the potential team member is a fit before I come into the interview process. Another thing in regards to team development, I'm going to be having my executive assistant helping set up systems access.

A bottleneck thing again is that I am the admin on say our Google workspace and our Asana. There's so many systems that I'm the admin on. And so I am needing to upgrade my assistant's access to moderator or admin level, editor level, whatever is required in order to be able to add new people to those systems. Again, it's something that doesn't take a significant amount of my time, but I am the bottleneck in that area because I'm currently the only one who can do it with the

permissions that are currently set. So those are some of the things that I am looking into this year for getting additional support on. I'm sure you have your own list as well. If you take a look back at your calendar from the previous year, where your time has been spent, even if you make a list of things that you don't enjoy about the work that you're doing, it would be really revealing to see, okay, these are the things that I just need to free up my time, my energy, what have you.

in order to do the things that I truly enjoy and will actually move my business or organization forward. So all of that being said, if you know someone who has big goals for this year, they're very motivated people. They have a lot of exciting ideas for what they want to accomplish, but maybe they're struggling to make some true progress in those areas just because they're so busy with all the things. Would you please share this episode with them? I really hope that

There are some key takeaways or this gets some creative juices flowing in terms of what can be handed off again with the purpose of creating white space for our innovators to truly do the strategic and forward thinking work that they need to do. So thank you so much for tuning into our episode today. I will be back next week with more tips on how to grow and scale your business in a way that is aligned for you. Have a wonderful day, everyone.

Bye bye.