In today’s episode, we’re tackling a problem every solo operator knows too well: those never-ending workweeks where you wear every hat in your business, from CEO to janitor (sometimes with dirty dishes on your desk as proof!).

But what if you could shave four hours off your working week?

Without hiring a single person or losing a cent?

I’ll walk you through the exact process I use with my clients (and myself!) to strip your workflow to the essentials, document what actually needs to be done, and spot the tasks you should automate, outsource, or cut entirely.

We’ll dig into two practical strategies: mapping your business processes step-by-step, and doing a brutally honest audit of your calendar, so you can see where your hours are really going.

You’ll hear real-world examples of solopreneurs who slashed a full workday off their week and the surprisingly simple tweaks that made it possible.

We’re talking lean methods, light-touch automation, and a no-jargon approach to getting your time, focus, and freedom back.

If you love your business but hate those 10-hour days, this episode’s for you.

Let me help you clock off early.

No staff, no pay cut, no drama.

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In this episode, I'm going to help you save four hours in your working week

and I'm going to give you the tool that I use to help you get

there. So today I want to

talk to you about what it means to actually cut down and understand

what you're actually working on in your business. I am an utter

process nerd. So get used to me talking about processes

to you because. And this is probably my most valuable asset

that I'm going to give to you and I'm giving it to you in the

first episode, which is probably not a good idea. But anyway, here we are.

Process first.

So your business is made up of a series of processes.

That is everything that needs to get done in your business. And all those things

that need to get done in your business take time. It's the

processing of pay runs for yourself. There's the admin,

there's the emails, there's the looking after clients, there's onboarding clients, there's

looking after them and serving them, there's doing the whole delivery

thing to them, there's offboarding clients, there's billing clients.

Everything is something to be done in your business and it takes time.

And when you start out, every single one of those things is manual

and you have to do everything. You're a solo operator. You are the

CEO, you are the janitor. I'm talking to you right now with dirty dishes

on my desk. You do everything. And the

reason why solopreneurs get into the position where they're running 60

hour weeks and they feel like they're trapped. It's the golden handcuffs, right? You're

earning this money, you're doing great, you've got your revenue, but you're spending all this

time. It's because you're not scaling, you're throwing your body

at the problem, you're throwing people at the problem. And that people in this

circumstance is you. I've worked with businesses that do this. Their

philosophy is, we have this problem, we're just going to throw people at it. You

know what they do? They onboard entire teams, they do all this sort of

stuff. And you just end up with loads of

teams sort of spinning their wheels. They're not doing anything. And

labor is actually the most expensive resource that

you have, especially in your business, because you're the only

labor. Think about that. You're the only person

who can deliver and you don't want to hire and that's fine. But if

you want to really get used to the idea of taking time off in your

business and not losing that revenue. You're going to have to get used to really

looking at what you're doing every day. So this is where process

comes in.

There's two ways that we can tackle the problem of freeing up time in your

day. Number one is you can just list out everything

in your calendar that you could do every day and you can order that.

And I'm going to have a resource on my website that you can go to

and you can download that and you'll be able to see everything that

you do throughout the week that takes up time and how much time it takes.

And that's going to start to get you to think about, oh, maybe this is

something that I shouldn't be doing anymore, or I don't have a good purpose of

doing that, or I can actually start to think about outsourcing that or

automating it. The second one is, is looking at your end to end

processes. So I've got my processes

documented in my little Obsidian app and my managed content

process is here and I have every step of that process

listed out and how I do it. Now what this

means is I can be very clear now about every single activ

that I need to do to deliver. And if I'm doing something out of that

scope, it means that I should not be doing it. I stop myself

immediately and go, maybe this is not something for today or

ever. Does this add value to my business? No. Yes.

No. I can list it out and I can get it down on the page.

There's a good reason for every single activity on that process map to be there.

So I'm a little bit of a process mapping whiz and I can normally do

this sort of stuff within half an hour. It might take you a little bit

more time to think about the types of things and the order of

doing things. I'm going to walk you through now how

to actually do that for yourself now. And then

we can circle back and we can break it down to see how that actually

works. So here we go.

So we're going to look at how breaking down your process in your business. Now

the most important one for you right now is your client management

process. So we're going to be looking at the time from the time

that a lead signs a contract or signs on with

you to the time that they're not with you anymore.

Okay, so let's make an assumption here that you've done your sale

and you've signed a lead on and now they're a

customer. What do you do now? Just take a moment to

think about that. Are you writing the contract or are

you filing that contract somewhere or

are you calling the client to say thank you? I, with my

clients, I send a gift box with candles in it

and I say thank you for your business. I really appreciate it. I'm looking forward

to working with you, et cetera. That's my first step, is I organize that to

be sent to them. What do you do next? Do you set up their dates?

Do you establish what other stakeholders you'll be working with? With this client, are you

going to be doing xyz? Okay, list it out in order. Think about

every single thing that you need to be doing to be able to deliver the

value to that customer. And now as you go, you're going to have a

list of tasks. So you can list this out either in a big list

or you can draw little boxes on a page with arrows between them to show

how it all flows. Now against each one of those tasks, you can

put in there. Well, this is going to be easy for you because you're a

solopreneur. Who does it? You do. So you're going to put your

name against all those tasks. Normally in a corporate setting, I've been working with a

team recently in a really large organization. They have

17,000 employees. And I have to put down

a role for every single task that's involved in that process.

Right? So they have a series of, you know, 20 tasks within a process

and there'll be different lanes with different roles, the responsibility for doing

that. And there's going to be like other things built into our racy

matrix which is, you know, responsible, accountable, consulted,

informed, and there's going to be relationships

between all these different things. Your business is not that complex,

right? You've got a series of things done by you. The second

thing that you're going to put against each one of these steps is any

systems that you use and any documents that you might be using.

So if you're sending an email, what you're going to do is you're going to

list those documents and artifacts against each task. Now what we're

doing here is we're building up a library in a scope. If you're working 60

hour weeks and you want to get that down to 30, there's a lot of

stuff that we need to streamline here. Every minute

counts. This is like budgeting. Budgeting your time is like

budgeting your money. If you're not budgeting your money,

you don't know where it's going. The Same thing is with your time. If you

don't budget your time, you don't know where it's going.

So now we have each of our steps. We have down who is performing it.

That's you. And then we're going to have the artifacts and the

systems that we're using, Right? So we're very clear now on our scope of what

it means to actually complete that task. The other thing to keep in mind

when documenting down is how long each step takes you.

So I might ask a stakeholder in any one of my workshops.

So you're doing this activity, you're organizing the gift box. How long will that

typically take you? I'm not asking for exact metrics

here. I'm asking for just a good idea. Be pragmatic here. We're not

trying to collect data on every single task right now. We're just trying to get

an idea about what might be the best place to start. So now you've got

every step, who does it, which is you. You've got your artifacts, you've got your

documents, you've got your templates, all that sort of stuff, and how long each one

is taking you.

Now you can really start to be targeting which place might have

the most benefit in improving. That's a process map and all

of its artifacts sort of outlined for you in five to

10 minutes. Now you can ask yourself the question,

when I'm delivering to a client, am I doing

things that are outside of this scope? And if I am,

I either need to add them to the model or I need to cut

it completely. And you can cut your time down

immediately by not doing those things. This is

why process first is the most important sort of thing that you

can be doing in your business. A lot of

businesses have different approaches. You know, we're seeing people first or process first or

culture first, or now we're seeing AI first.

Thanks, Duolingo for a solopreneur. The biggest thing

that you can be looking for in your business is process first, because everything

that you do in your business is done by you, and it has to be

done by you. So start having a think about that. The second approach is doing

the calendar audit. So you can take all the tasks that you sort of do,

paint your day into your calendar, do that for two weeks, and

then do a review on what each activity is. You'll be able to really

start to see where you're spending your time. That's a really quick win that you

can get. I've used these different tactics with a general Manager at

a manufacturing plant. She was responsible for

sales. The business is our only team at the time of around 24.

This approach saved her two hours a day.

So my question to you is, what would you do

with two extra hours a day?

You know, this customer, they turned around and use that two extra hours a

day to make more sales. Those sales turned into a million dollars.

What does that mean for you? How would you spend that two hours? You can

either spend it working more on other, more higher value,

adding things or you can do it with things that actually add more

value to your life. Time with friends, going for a walk

more exercise, a hobby of some kind, getting out on the golf

course, driving up a mountain. It doesn't really matter what. Have a think about what

your primary aim is. Right. There's a great book out there, it's called the E.

Myth. Michael Gerber wrote that book and

he has this thing in there about the primary aim. The primary aim is why

you decide to start a business. And it's not business

focused. Why did you start your business?

You started a business. I'm going to guess you started your business thinking, I'm

going to start this thing and I'm going to make the money and I'm really

good at what I do. And because I'm so good at what I do, I'm

going to do it in less time than all these other suckers have to do

it in. And that means that, you know, I can take the time off and

have the freedom and all of a sudden, oh crap, I'm, I'm working 70

hour weeks and I'm stuck in this thing and I'm the worst boss ever

and what am I going to do? And I can't turn back now because my

pride will be too damaged.

You started a successful business business, you've got your revenue,

now it's time to work on the other side of the equation. That's your costs

and your biggest cost right now to you is your time.

What could you do with that? I'm going to talk

to you now about another process that I've covered. This is with the same client

as before, but I was working with their marketing person. You know,

being a small business, you know that they do have a team and things like

that, but you sort of have people who are sort of doing cross jobs. You

know, they don't have a dedicated role. So this particular person was on

reception and doing marketing work and, and having to like log in

after hours to do like checks of social media and all sorts of stuff and

it's just, you know, we've got new laws in Australia here that have, you know,

the right to disconnect after hours. So I'm sitting here going, it's probably not

the best thing that you're logging in after hours. Like you should have the option

to not do that. I appreciate that some people like what they do and

things like that, but you're not always going to have people in those roles that

sort of are happy to do that. So one of the things that she was

doing was she was throwing her

copy through ChatGPT and then having

to use other tools to try to change the formatting for

specific social media tools and things like that. It was

probably a two hour turnaround on each one of their social posts, which is

just absolutely insane. Sitting down and working with her, I

started to realize, oh, you're actually doubling up steps because

there's capability in these other tools to do what you're doing across all these other

different tools. What we were able to do is we formed up a

custom GPT prompt based on about 5 of

their previous social posts and we just trained a

GPT to conform their

post to that format. And then when she got her copy she

would just throw it through that and it would automatically format. She would then be

able to just straightaway copy that into her social posts and

upload her file that she'd done through Capcut and she was done.

So we've turned a two hour content making process

down into about 20 to 30 minutes. That's writing the

copy, that's running it through ChatGPT. It's getting ideas, it's getting

approval, it's all that sort of, it's end to end. We've done that and now

she's saved an hour and a half and she's doing that three times a week.

How much time have we saved us? 4 and a half hours a week on

one simple process. Think about now the content that you do for your

business. What sort of marketing activities do you do? What could you do with four

and a half extra hours of marketing activity or not? Use that four and

a half hours for business at all. Use it for something else. For this

client, they've now had a person who can spend four and

a half extra hours they're employed regardless of how much time they saved and so

are you. Technically. She can now work on other things in the business

that are meaningful to that business. They've had a whole bunch of backlog of other

stuff that they would like to work on. You Know, including, like, manuals for their

product and all sorts of other stuff. She can now dedicate her time to doing

that, which is actually ultimately going to support their customers better. You got one

side, which is focusing on leads and trying to, you know, get social

presence and branding and things like that. And there's the other side of the equation

where she's actually going to be working on something that is tangibly going to make

a difference to their existing clientele.

It means that their existing clientele are going to be happier. They're going to come

back and they're going to go, I want another product. And the chances of them

landing repeat work is going to go up, which means that their sales

cycle is going to reduce and things like that. So it

ultimately means that there's going to be more revenue for this business over the

coming years. Since I started working with them, they're at

$6.5 million a year. Right now, they're on track for

8.7,

and I've only been working with them for two years. So there's

great benefit in looking at the different processes that your people are

running to have benefits like this just across two people. This is before

we get to automation. This is before we get to outsourcing. Right.

This is just looking at smarter ways of working and being intentional about

what we're looking at, what we're working on. Being disciplined enough

to say no to the things that don't add value. Be intentional about the things

that you're working on. If you're really, really serious about saving time in your

business, budgeting your time, being intentional is going to be the thing that

makes the biggest difference. And this is before we even get to technology.

Are we going to talk about technology on this podcast? Absolutely, we are. We

are going to be talking about different tools, we're going to be talking about different

IR bros and why they're wrong. The best thing you can do today

is to not worry about technology. There's a big overhead that comes with learning

it and implementing it. The biggest benefit you can get today is

by looking at what you're working on today in your business and being

intentional about what you're doing in that space. So there you go.

We've covered off on how to do your first process map. You can do it

now for every sale. Okay, so from the time a lead is made to

the time that you get the contract, how do you do the sale? How do

you do your client management, client delivery? From the time that you get your contracts,

the time you off board the client. How do you do your marketing, how you

do your finances? All of those are processes. Start

to document. Write down the things that you do. You can record

yourself doing stuff. You know, narrate what you're doing.

Take the transcription of what you're doing, throw it through ChatGPT

and ask, how can I do this better? Your business. I hate to break this

to you, but your business is not that unique. Your business has problems

other people have solved before, so there's no reason why you

can't go through and do these activities and get immediate benefit out of

it. So have a go at that today. If you're interested in doing the

calendar audit that I mentioned earlier in this episode, you can get that

in your inbox. Lonewolfunleashed.com for forward slash

Calendar. Thank you for listening to this episode, and we'll see you next time.

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