Do you feel like you never have enough time to get everything done in your business? Do you truly know what you use your time doing right now? Today I'm chatting with Colleen Carswell, CEO of Structured to Scale about how to audit your time, and become more effective in your wedding business.
Love it, but you still do it because it's the necessity of owning and running a business. The same is true for time. And a lot of the things that I talk about in business is quantifying and identifying the invisible.
Because just because it's invisible, just because we're not seeing it on a spreadsheet, we don't see time on a spreadsheet. Unless we actually do the time on it, doesn't mean it's imaginary.
Becca:
I'm Becca Poutney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker and blogger, and you're listening to the Wedding Pros who Are Ready to Grow podcast. I'm here to share with you actionable tips, strategies and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level.
If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business doing what you love, then you're in the right place. Let's get going with today's episode. Today I'm chatting with Colleen Carswell, CEO of Structured to Scale.
Her mission is to help business leaders optimize their systems and turnover proof their teams. With over 17 years experience in hospitality and corporate sales, she now helps transform chaotic backends into streamlined operations.
You all know that I love a system, so I cannot wait to get into this. Colleen, welcome to the podcast.
Colleen:
Hi. Thanks so much for having me.
Becca:
Thank you so much for coming on.
Now we're going to let the listeners into a secret because we are recording this just two weeks after Las Vegas and we had fun in Las Vegas and we got together and we had speaker drinks that we hosted together and we went out for dinner together. And so it's so nice to now have you in this more formalized environment. But we had fun in Las Vegas.
So let the listeners, because there'll be a lot of people listening who've never been to Wedding NBA, just give them a glimpse of what that week's like.
Colleen:
Yeah, that's a, that's a wild week. It's wild in all the most beautiful ways. But it is, it's crazy. And it depends on how you're coming to Wedding NBA.
If you're like us and you come as speakers or if you come as exhibitors, I was an exhibitor and a speaker or if you're coming as an attendee. So. But the energy is always really high. And my favorite thing about Wedding MBA is actually the connections.
Like the education is fantastic, but I just make the best connections there.
And that is what I hear from a lot of people is the Networking and the people that they've met and the ideas that they got just from those connections. So, yeah, it's a, it's a fun week.
Becca:
Yeah, absolutely is. And I think you have to have experienced it to understand it. I try and explain it all of the times.
People on the podcast and in real life, you just have to be there to feel it, both as a speaker, as an attendant and as an attendee.
Because you're right, it's the people you meet in the room, but it's also the inspiration you get from just being amongst such high energy people and such a high energy event for a few days.
Colleen:
Yeah, absolutely.
Becca:
It's so fun. So if you're listening to this and you've never been, get it on your bucket list for 20, 26.
And if you can't get to Las Vegas, get to a live event, come to my event in London. But being in the room with people and being amongst the best in the industry, there's nothing quite like it. So anyway, enough about Las Vegas.
Let's talk about all about you.
Because I always like to get my guests to go a little bit back in their journeys so that my listeners understand why they should pay attention to what you have to share with them. So I mentioned in the intro you've got a lot of experience in hospitality. Give us a bit more information. Where did your career start?
Did you start out in hospitality and what did that look like?
Colleen:
Yeah, funny enough, I did not start in hospitality. I had a very short stint in law. I was a legal assistant for a bankruptcy law firm and that was just not the right fit for me.
So after college, or actually during college, I started working on cruise ships and I started as a wedding coordinator on board Royal Caribbean cruise ships. So somebody else planned it shoreside and then people would come on the ship and I would execute the wedding.
And then I was also during that role what I now call the Hype Girl because it's way easier to say than what my title was actually crew staff, which tells you literally nothing about what it is I did. So I just say I was the Hype Girl.
So I got party started for like 70s night and theme nights and I danced in parades as giant margaritas and I MC karaoke and bingo. So like all the fun stuff that you do on the ship, I was the face.
I was, I reported directly to the cruise director who is like the celebrity on the ship. So that's how I got my start. And then I did that for two contracts, eventually moved into head office in Miami. For Royal Caribbean.
Then I went into luxury resorts and hotels and country clubs and conference centers and pretty much every sector of the hospitality industry I've been in. And it's typically been in the wedding and event capacity.
he events department. Then in:
He's all fine now, but during that time I was working in hotels and I realized I wasn't gonna be able to go back because I needed to care for him. And I thought, well, this is an excellent time to start my own business on of being a new mom to a kid who has medical needs.
So I started a wedding planning business and I anticipated that that was just going to be a, like a, an easy low key, not a lot of events, but just something to get me through, keep my mind busy off of what was going on. And it ended up that I was serving a very specific niche in the wedding market that wasn't, was very underserved. So we scaled quickly to serve.
We were in Austin at the time and then scaled to serve Houston and Dallas, Texas as well. So we have multi locations. And then fast forward to now. I own Structure to scale, which is an operations agency.
And a lot of our clients, not all of them, but a lot of our clients are wedding professionals. So that's kind of how I got here. And I've been doing this journey now for 17, 18 years and I absolutely love it.
Becca:
So fun. I just need to go back and talk about the cruise ship because I love stuff like this. I'm an entertainment girl myself. I love all of that.
Like what was life like on a cruise ship? And do a lot of weddings happen on cruise ships?
Because that's, that's not really a thing so much over here in Europe, but over there, Royal Caribbean. Do a lot of people get married on ships?
Colleen:
Yeah, at least they did. I don't know now, but when I was on ships, we had several weddings. So we would have weddings typically on turnover day.
So when we were at Portside, I sailed out of San Juan and I sailed out of Port Canaveral, Florida.
And so on those days, like the couple would join the ship, the family would join with them, they would do their thing and then most of the time the family would leave. Maybe a few people would stay on, but the couple would stay on and cruise with us. So yeah, we had lots of, we had lots of weddings on the Ships.
And it was, it was a good time.
Becca:
Yeah, I can imagine it was a whole lot of fun. And maybe we do have a lot of cruise ship weddings.
If you're listening to this and you're based in Europe and you know something about this secret cruise ship wedding industry that I don't know about, reach out to me, let me know because that sounds like a lot of fun. But I imagine you learn a lot in a short period of time as well. Being in that kind of very small, tight space environment.
Is there anything that you can say? Yeah, I definitely learned this from that time.
Colleen:
Oh yeah, I think I learned pretty much everything I know. And I do what I do now because of cruise ships for many different reasons. But you work 15 plus hours a day easy like it is. You are on all the time.
And if you're not on and you think you're off but they need you to be on, they can just walk right down to your crew cabin and knock on the door and have you come to work.
But what I really loved about it was it never like, yeah, it felt like work, but they also make it such an immersive environment in terms of like their, their team training and their team culture and their experiences. And like, for me, and I can't speak for everybody who's worked on ships, but for me personally, it was such, it was such an amazing time.
Like, I had so much time fun working and I had so much fun not working when those hours did happen.
So, yeah, I learned, I think if you're gonna, if you're interested at all in the hospitality industry, the cruise ship world is definitely the place to start because you learn from all different people, you work a lot, and you also get to work with people who have different backgrounds and different cultures. And I think that's one of the most beautiful things about it. Honestly, if I could go back, I would.
And anytime I run into somebody who's kind of like in that season of life, I always kind of nudge them like, hey, do you want to maybe Cruise ships are for you.
Becca:
So fun. I feel like there's this retirement plan going through my head where I need to go get a job on a Disney cruise ship.
Colleen:
When I, like when my kids get.
Becca:
Married, I just want to go travel the world for a little bit and go serve a bar or something on a Disney cruise ship. Right. Let's get back to where we need to be with the systems.
So you talked about becoming a wedding planner, setting up that business alongside your family.
It feels like quite a leap to me, to go from I was a wedding planner and now I set up my business in systems, there must be some kind of thing that made you take that leap or a process that you could explain to us as to why you realized that there was this gap there.
Colleen:
Yeah, I think planning is very, it's very systematized, it's very logical, it's very timeline oriented. Like you have to have your processes in place in order to be a planner. So I think that plays into it a little bit.
But I think when I started to really scale my business, I actually took a step back from being the wedding planner and I did more of the back end operations and team building and scaling and like, what does that look like? And then I had my team members who were the planners and we actually.
So when I said we served a very specific niche in the market, we serve diy and nobody at that time, and I don't know now, but nobody at that time was doing that because it didn't have the money per se. But the way in which we did it, it worked really well for both of both our company and for the couples.
And so when we brought in new planners, we really brought in entry level staff and we had a really robust training program to bring them up. And that is what I loved. I love the training, I love the culture building, I love the operations, I love the systems.
Like how can we build these systems and these foundations to really allow us to scale.
That said, the reason why I do what I did now eventually in the business, I got to a place that we were good, but because we scaled so quickly and we didn't have the foundations in place or the infrastructure because I was just a new mom, just like winging it because we didn't have all that in place. There was definitely some struggle that didn't need to be there. Right.
Had we done it properly, had we set those foundations up and the infrastructures up and the systems from the beginning and then scaled, it would have been a much easier process. We got through it. But I think that's why I do a lot what I do now as well.
One, because I love it, but two, because I know what that struggle's like scaling too quickly. And I don't want to see others make that same mistake.
Becca:
And I think we see it a lot, particularly in the wedding industry. You've worked with a lot of wedding businesses.
I've worked with a ton of businesses, both solopreneurs, teams, venues and that backend, when you dig into it can be complete chaos. Why do you think that is?
Colleen:
I just don't think it's everybody's sweet spot. Right. We get into business to do the things that we love and then somehow we get thrown into being all these other, all these other hats.
We have to make SOPs and we have to be a bookkeeper and we have to do marketing and we're stretched so thin and we're not able to really put forth the time and the energy and the resources to one specific thing. So I think that's why it's important if you have that financial freedom to be able to do that, to do that.
But yeah, I think we get in it with the starry eyed hair, going to be a wedding planner and then we really know we, we have to run a whole, a whole business on top of that. So yeah, it makes sense why the backends are so. Yeah, as you said, chaotic.
Becca:
Yeah. And I think as well, what I find is that people often decide to start implementing systems in IT five years into business.
Which makes it a whole lot harder is exactly as what you said is if you start with the systems, you know, you, you grow with it. But actually what happens is people end up with this massive business and then they're trying to like backtrack and work it all out.
And I'm guessing a lot of people listening to this episode are already in that situation. So we can say to them, yeah, from the start, set up all these systems.
But actually let's acknowledge that a lot of them are probably 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15 years into their business and running at this chaotic state. And so it's not going to be as easy for them as, okay, let's just start from scratch and start the systems.
And I think it's also important that we acknowledge at this point that when we talk about systems, and I'd love you to just share a bit more on this, we're not just talking about piece of technology as a system, are we? You're talking systems overarching in business. What would you say kind of comes under that label?
Colleen:
Yeah, so what I like to call it as I like to call it the macro sops. So your systems operations and processes.
We all know SOPS as standard operating procedures, but I see that as like a micro, like under that, that umbrella of systems, operations and processes. So yeah, it could be your tech, it could be your onboarding process, it could be your documentation, it could be a whole host of things.
Not just, not just your, yeah, technical systems. It's everything in the back end of your business that makes it run and makes it operate. And a lot of that is going to be your processes as well.
Becca:
Okay, so from some of the businesses you've worked with and you've gone into the backends and seen some of the chaos, what do you think are some of the common mistakes you see, particularly within the wedding?
Colleen:
I think before even getting to that, I think the biggest mistake, and not.
Not even so much mistake, but the thing that holds people back from reaching out and working with somebody like me, whether it's me or a different company, is that they're embarrassed of their backend systems and they don't want anybody in there. It's kind of like bookkeeping. Like, you don't want anybody to actually see the numbers behind the scenes.
And I think that that's so common, and I think I want to call that out. Like, if you're feeling that way, don't let that be the thing that stops you. Everybody feels that.
And I don't know if it's because of what I do, probably a little bit because of what I do, but everybody's back in. Systems are a mess. They're all some form of chaos. And I think.
And even the people I don't work with, because I go to a lot of events and I make lots of connections and I network all the time. Like, that's something that I absolutely to do.
Even when I'm doing that and I'm speaking one on one to people, it always comes up that, you know, they don't. They don't feel like they have the right foundations or they don't feel like their processes are where they need to be.
And oh, my goodness, I don't have SOPs. The number of people who don't have SOPs far outweighs the number of people who do.
So I just kind of want to mention that in terms of it's completely normal to have some shame built around it, and it's completely normal not to have it all together. And that's why, even more so, that you should either focus on it or reach out to somebody who can assist you with that.
Becca:
Absolutely. That's so true.
And you know what's interesting, if you want a mindset shift, if you're listening to this, is that actually if you do want to work with someone like Colleen, and I expect it's the same that you feel as I feel, I love going in and talking to someone and finding out they've got a really chaotic system because it means I can help them. And actually, when you're into systems and structure and planning, and you've got the answers in your head. That's a great thing.
Like, you don't want to go into a business, and then they've got it all perfectly together. So actually, the mindset shift is if you feel like it's Celtic and you need help, don't feel embarrassed because Colleen's gonna love that problem.
I'm gonna love that problem. I love to see a chaotic business and fix it.
Colleen:
Yeah, absolutely. I'm the same way. It's kind of like a.
Sometimes I just had our person come clean the house yesterday, and sometimes I like it to be a little extra messy, like a little extra filthy. Because then when. When it's clean, it feels really, really good. And I feel like that's the same way with systems. Yeah.
If I get in there and it's like, like, it's just like a beautiful. I don't know if anybody knows this reference, but, like the beautiful mime where it's just like the wall of madness.
And, like, I just love taking that and just organizing it into where things need to go. And yeah, it's fun. It's fun for people like us.
And I think that's so key, like, going back to what we were talking about when we started our business. And like, why do we think people's backend systems are a little bit chaotic? It's like, cause you.
You are meant to do the thing that you are passionate about. You are meant to do the thing that you love, and that lights you up.
And then we have people like us who are really good compliments for that, that can bring the backend pieces to where they need to be and help you be able to do more of what you love and the. That you love to do it.
Becca:
Yeah. So please don't be ashamed of your systems. If you're feeling seen right now, realize it's nothing to be ashamed of.
Actually, maybe it's a sign that it's time to get it sorted in your head and start to take control of it. So what are the first steps for someone then? If they are listening to this and they're thinking, I don't even know what she's talking about.
I don't have any SOPs. I do everything on a spreadsheet. I have 25 different systems that I try and do things on. I'm writing things on paper.
What's the first step thing they should do to try and get on top?
Colleen:
So I'm going to say something that nobody ever wants to hear, but it's, it's literally the thing that's going to change everything for you. And it's to do a time audit that, that will change everything because you'll be able to see your inefficiencies.
And what a time audit is, is just tracking your time, I like to say, for at least a 10 day period. And I like to do it during a time that's pretty indicative of what a normal day is.
So if you, if you're off on vacation for a week, that's not a time that you would do a time audit. Or if it's a really slow time in your business, probably the first one not going to be the time that you do the time audit.
But it's tracking your time in 15 minute increments. It's saying exactly what you did during that time. It's saying, does this, is this energizing?
I look at the whole picture, I want to know how it energizes and fuels you and if it drains and depletes you. So is this energizing or is it draining? What's the value of this time? Like, what's the value of the tasks that I'm doing during this time?
There's a whole system behind doing a time on it.
But if you just start to track it and reflect back on it and say, oh, here are some patterns that I'm noticing, here are some things that I'm doing over and over and over and I can probably automate or I can make that, I can batch it out.
You'll be able to free up a little bit of that time and really see where the processes and the chaos is living in your business based on where your time is going and how you're spending your time. So nobody ever really likes that answer because nobody wants to track their time. I don't want to track my time. I also don't want to do.
Well, I don't do bookkeeping now.
But like, if there's certain things in your business that you do, like maybe you do the bookkeeping, you don't love it, maybe you pay taxes, you don't love it, but you still do it because it's the necessity of owning and running a business. The same is true for time. And a lot of the things that I talk about in business is quantifying and identifying the invisible.
Because just because it's invisible, just because we're not seeing it on a spreadsheet, we don't see time on a spreadsheet unless we actually do the time audit. Doesn't mean it's imaginary, it's still there. You just ignore it because you can.
So I want people to get really crystal clear on where the time's actually going, because I think that's the first step in being able to solve for any kind of problems that might exist.
Becca:
I'm going to let you into a secret here because my husband is an engineer and engineers have to track their time all of the time. And I cannot tell you how many times he says to me, becca, pull up your time sheet and show me how much time you spent on everything.
I'm like, I don't have one. I don't want to have one. But I can see why it's important. So tell me why this is important. Do I need to do it on a spreadsheet?
Do I track what task is assigned to what? Like, do you have a structure? Do you have a system? How do we even get started with this? Because even this, this feels overwhelming to me.
And I like systems. I'm thinking, well, I do loads of stuff with my time. How on earth do I track it?
Colleen:
Yeah. So it really, again, it's putting on that lens of, okay, I can do this because I can do anything for 10 days. Right. So it's not, it's not long term.
It's being very clear, like, this has an end date. And I think that's important because a lot of times people will think, oh, my God, I have to track every 15 minutes. That's ridiculous. Yes.
And also, it's only 10 days. Like, put a little countdown calendar on your wall, check it off. Whatever you've got to do, just get it done for 10.
One rule that I always like to give people, if they. I mean, the biggest thing is taking action. Like, just doing it is. Is the biggest thing.
So don't get so hung up on the rules the first time that you do it.
But one rule that I like to give is like, as you start to track your time, you're going to start to really notice where there are inefficiencies, where there are patterns that you can correct. Try not to fix them in real time. Try to let those exist throughout the entire 10 days and then address them.
Because you want to collect actual data, real data of how you've been spending your time. So that can pattern correct if you correct it in real time just for sake of. It's like when you log your food, right?
Like when you're going on a weight loss journey and they say, log your. Feels like, I didn't actually eat that Cake, it doesn't actually exist. So like, same thing, like, just don't do that.
Just track your time the same way. Make sure that you're not changing the data.
So that would be one thing that I always want to mention, but it really is just tracking in 15 minute increments and just looking at what you're doing during that time. Because a lot of times people say, for example, social media, right? A lot of times people will say, I don't spend that much time on social media.
Well, probably you do.
Probably between the scrolling, just mindless scrolling, probably between the recording of the videos, the editing of the videos, you're probably spending hours and hours every week and then you can identify, okay, that is a place that's getting, I don't know, 15 hours of my week every week. How can I correct for it? What systems exist, what AI tools are out there that can help me make that process even more streamlined?
How do I not scroll so much? Do I put a time limit on my social media usage?
Like, you can start just to get really creative with how you identify that time and then as you're freeing up that time, then that allows you to be able to do more higher value tasks or things that align more for you, but you have to have the data first. And that's the same. Like you can't ever say, we always want to say time is money and money is time, but then we don't actually treat it that way.
This allows you to treat it that way because for your money, if you think about, you have bookkeeping and you have accounting and you have forecasting, you have your P and L for time, we don't have any of that, but we know that it's just as important, if not more important of a resource.
So this allows us to really get clear on, on that data so that we can, you know, when we say, I don't have the money to pay my people, will you find it because you have data? I don't have the money to pay taxes, will you find it because you have data? The same thing for time.
Becca:
Love it. Okay, you've inspired me. I need to do this.
So for 10 days we basically just need to note down every 15 minutes the tasks we've done, what we've done and what we feel like doing. Like whether we like doing it, whether we don't like doing it. Is that right?
So that we can then reflect back and go, oh, I spent a lot of time doing things I didn't enjoy or yeah, exactly.
Colleen:
And it's actually it's so important to do things that you enjoy from a capacity standpoint. You're going to be more passionate about what you do, you're going to like what you do more, so you're going to do it better.
Really, you're going to expand your capacity. Energy and time are very much interconnected and I don't think that that's addressed enough.
If we're spinning, I like to say I want to see more green than red, meaning more high energy fueling tasks than red draining task. Will you ever not have red on your time tracking sheet? Probably not. Ideally, yes, but probably not.
But I want to see more green than red because that means that you're living in the zone, that you really operate at an optimal level. And when you operate in that optimal level, then obviously everything, everything expands, everything gets better.
So that's the energy and timepiece are really interconnected in that way and I just, I don't think there's enough focus on that. So being able to track your time, putting red to green, putting a value on it, is, is an important piece of the time tracking.
Becca:
And so once you've got that data.
So I've got my 10 days of data, I've worked out where I'm spending my time and it's probably going to show me some things I didn't realize, like I spent too much time on social media or here's some things I don't enjoy. Once we've got that, what's the next step then? Is it identifying areas where we can outsource? Is it identifying areas to bring in technology?
Is it identifying areas to do? Just ditch completely. How do we take that data and do something meaningful with it?
Colleen:
Yeah, all, all those things, I call it dea. So delegate, eliminate and automate. So what can you delegate?
If you have a team member or maybe you need to outsource something, what can you delegate? What can you eliminate? Things that you're doing.
You're going to find things that you're doing that you don't necessarily need to be doing either right now, in the season or at all. So you can just eliminate those things and then what can you automate? And again, that goes back to what we're talking about with AI.
Like we've never had so many apps and tech and AI that support us in automating different things than we do right now. And that's only going to grow. So starting to train our mind to constantly be looking for the things that can make things can make this easier.
Like we don't have to just do something the way that we've been doing it, because that's the way that we've always been doing it. We can actually identify, oh, this pattern no longer serves me. This pattern no longer serves the business. How can I make that better?
And then you go out and you look for the things that make it better. Whether that's a human, whether that's someone that can do this for you, or whether it's tech.
Becca:
And what about for the wedding business owner that's not very good at letting things go? Because I have this conversation with people a lot.
I'm sure you do too, where you, you see all the systems and you see where they're spending their time. And sometimes they're spending their time on tasks which they can do well, but maybe their time isn't best spent there.
But they struggle to let it go. Cause they think, well, why do I want to pay someone else to do that when I can just do it myself? How do we address that?
Colleen:
Yeah, yeah, I see that a lot as well. I think if we can really start quantifying that in terms of what's the opportunity cost, what are you missing out on?
And when you do the time tracking part of it is also going through each task and similar to when you go to Google and you go like to a restaurant and it has a $1, 2, 3 or $4 sign saying if it's a really inexpensive thing or a super duper expensive thing, you kind of do the same thing for that task for you. And so I call those high value versus low value tasks. And you want to be spending as much of your time as possible in high value tasks.
Tasks, low value doesn't mean lesser value, it just means better, better allocated to somebody else or something else.
You want to be spending your, if you're a business owner listening to this like you want to be spending your time working on strategy and visioning things that actually align with you energetically, things that light you up, things that fuel you and are able to expand your capacity. Partnerships, vendor relationships, especially in the wedding industry, relationships are key.
So looking at your time and seeing, oh, these are actually lower value times, yeah, I can do them, but they're costing me. My time is better spent somewhere else. My time is better spent on these tasks that can move us forward. And this is actually more so for an admin.
And yeah, I'm going to spend a little bit of my time training this person. I think that's also where I get the kickback.
It's like, well then I have to like, I have to train this person and I don't want, I don't have the time to do that.
You really don't have the time not to do that because then you're just going to be doing this low value task forever and always and foregoing all the higher value tasks that you could be doing for your business. So what I like to say around this mindset is you are either wasting time, spending time or investing time.
And I think when you're training somebody up to take over the low value tasks that you've carried for so long, that's an immense investment of your time because it's going to come back to you once you get, once you put forth that time to begin with later on. That's what you're looking for, is that ROI of your time. Later on you're going to get all that time back.
So yeah, it is a little bit of time in the here and now. But I also like to think about the future and what that, what that means for your future if you put forth the time right now.
So that's how I typically handle that. And also I just let them know like, you don't have to do it all at once.
And I think that's the big thing, like identify the problem areas, the challenging areas, and then just pick one and start there and start as small as humanly possible. Because it's all a change in habit, it's all a change in mindset. So we were not going to be able to tackle it all at once.
Just baby steps is the name of the game with it.
Becca:
This, I think so much of it comes down to mindset and I think it kind of goes back to the overarching thing that you've been saying about how we don't really put a value on time and it's invisible. But actually when we say, oh, it's cheaper for me to do it myself, we're actually valuing ourselves and our hourly rate lower than the assistant.
Right. And actually, yeah, it's because for some reason we have this mindset. Well, our time is free, but it shouldn't be. Our time shouldn't be free.
We should be the most expensive asset in our business.
Colleen:
Yes, absolutely. And I do see that a lot as well. It's people are doing this because they think that it's not costing them anything, but it's cost.
If you look at again, the opportunity cost is costing you hugely.
If you were doing this, if you were spending your time doing these higher value tasks, building those relationships Doing sales, power hours, whatever it might be, versus, I don't know, taking pictures of receipts and putting it into your bookkeeping system or whatever, smaller tasks, checking emails. You know, now that. That's another thing, too. It's like a lot of times, people spend tons of times in their emails, just as an example. And it's.
There's. There are tools that allow you not to do that, that can. AI can come in and clean out your inbox for you.
You can turn it into a project management system. So that's why I like doing the time tracking, because it says. It shows me the data, it shows me the areas that I need to approve.
And then I get to get really curious about it and say, all right, well, where. What can I do to solve for this? And then that's where the fun starts.
Becca:
The fun starts for people who love systems, particularly. We could just geek out about these kind of systems all day. But it's so true. And also it frees us up to continue to be creative.
So as you were talking, I was just thinking about this podcast as an example. People say to me, how have you managed to get to 200 episodes of the podcast? How do you do it every week?
And it's because I ended up shifting how I did it to stay creative.
So I absolutely love doing this podcast because I do the hour where I talk to the guest, which I love doing, and it really fills me up and inspires me. And then all of the administration work goes to someone else.
So all of the bit that was draining me of that, which was the editing and the audio correcting and the exporting and the cutting it up for social media, all of those things which were important, they drained and they took away from me. And the moment I outsourced them, it meant I don't mind doing this a couple of hours a week.
I love having conversations with my educator friends and teaching and sharing and yes, I could do all of the other things, too, but actually I'm much more creative and free to have these great conversations because I then pay someone who's much better at it than me to do it in their time instead of mine.
Colleen:
Right? Yeah. And I think it's so important to do. Again, we've talked about this, but to do the things that light you up and energize you.
Not just in business, though, right? Also in your personal.
Because we have been conditioned, and subconsciously or consciously, we believe that we exist in two separate parts where one part is professional and one part is personal, when really we know that what happens in our personal influence is professional and vice versa.
And so we need to constantly be pouring into ourselves and to be fueling ourselves in ways that really energize us because it allows us to show up differently. I like to give the example of. And I never remember his name but the Lego guy from the Lego Movie. And he's like, everything is awesome.
That guy versus the. What was that movie? The one with all the emotions. It was a Disney movie. Maybe, you know, because you're a mom, but it was like a Disney movie.
And it had, like, angry guy anxiety. Yes, that one. And so then I like to think about those different emotions and how that energy plays.
And specifically around the sadness, the blue character. It's like those are two very different energies. So energy does impact how we show up. Energy does affect our quote, unquote, productivity.
And so we want to be pouring into ourselves and fueling ourselves in all of our energetic pillars so that we can show up fully and that we can do the best that we can do. So even, like, I love that example of your creativity because.
Because that actually is allowing you to be more, more energized to be doing all the things in your business. And again, to your point too, like, somebody else is really good at that stuff. Somebody else really likes that. Like bookkeeping.
Like, I hate bookkeeping, but there are people who geek out on bookkeeping and love bookkeeping. And I'm gonna. It is my gift. I serve them. It is my gift to them to let them do my bookkeeping. Right.
Becca:
Yeah, absolutely. So, so true. So how do we stop ourselves as well being busy? Fools.
Because I think a lot of the time we see time and then we fill time, but also we spend time on stuff that is wasting time as well. Or sometimes we just feel the need to tell everyone we're really busy. We're so busy at the moment, we. We can't be up because we're so busy.
And quite a lot of the time we're busy for the sake of being busy. Does that make sense?
Colleen:
Yeah, complete sense. And I think that's why I said earlier, like, quote, unquote, productivity. I hate the word productivity. I people, I think words matter.
So the words that you use influence. The actions that you take influence results that you get.
So if you say, I want to be productive, you're going to take actions that make you more productive, which are going to influence the results that you are a more productive person. But what actually is productivity, if you break it down to what productivity actually is, it came from A factory age.
It came from the industrial error. It's output per input. Like, that is ew. Like, I don't want to. Like, that's not something that I want to do. That just means you're busier.
Exactly to your point. I want to make sure that the things that I'm filling my time with allow me to be more the person that I want to be.
And I think that's the mind shift, set shift that you have to make. Because we can very easily just create all this time. We can use all the tools, we can do the time audit, we can create all this time.
But if we don't shift the pattern, if we don't shift the mindset, we are just going to fill it with more things to do.
Because we've been conditioned, especially as women, especially as parents, that the more that we do, the more valuable we are, the harder we work, the more effort, the better the result. And that's not always the case.
Sometimes just letting it be easy, sometimes doing less is going to be the thing that actually allows you to be more of the person that you want to be. And I don't think that anybody really got into business to do all the things and wear on the hats and be super.
Like, we didn't trade our very lucrative, cushy salary from corporate, if that's our background, to come into business ownership and to do and to just be busy all the time and to do all the things. Like, the beautiful thing about business is you get to create it to be your own.
But a lot of times we just, we value ourselves based on how busy we are.
So it really is breaking that mindset and understanding that as you create the more time, the goal is not to create more time with your time audit so that you can fill it with more things to do. The goal is to create, to create more time and then really assess.
Okay, now that I have this time, what can I put in there or not put in there that allows me to be the person I want to be? Do I want to be a more present parent? Is that why I became an entrepreneur and a business owner?
Do I want to be someone who is healthy and fit and runs marathons? Do I want to be someone who can care for my aging parents? Like. Like, what are the things that you want to be?
And then focus on that versus on, all right, I have all this time. Now let's do all these other 700 tasks that I really don't need to be doing, and somebody else can do them or they don't need to happen at all.
Becca:
Okay, I want to talk about something else that I see a lot and you mentioned earlier about emails and how there's AI systems that can help with your emails. And we both know that there are tons of systems just going back to Vegas.
You can walk around that expo floor and the system system systems for days in terms of technology systems.
And I think one of the things I see is that people realize they need some kind of technology to help and then they just get overwhelmed with choice and they don't know how to decide on the right system, they don't know what they should be paying for the right system. And then this becomes this huge barrier in itself. Do you have any advice on that?
Colleen:
Yeah. So twofold. A little bit. One would be lean into the system that is AI, right?
So like just use AI and give it a prompt and say, here's where I'm at in the business and here's, here's my tech skill and here's my budget and here's, here's the things that I have challenges with and see what it pops out. You can even say, here are the three things that I went to wedding MBA and the three systems that I am exploring.
Here's the information about myself and help me kind of look at these holistically. Now, does AI always have the most up to date, most accurate information? It's getting better and better.
We're not entirely there yet, so there is a little bit of a caveat there. But I do think leaning into something that is already a tool that exists is helpful.
What we do and what you could do on your own is we do a comparative software analysis for our clients who are in the process to say for bringing on a new CRM. And so you go to a show and I think that's one of the biggest issues is people go to the show, they find this new thing and they're like.
And the people who are at the shows, the exhibitors, and I know this because I am one, they're there to sell you, right?
Like, they're there to show you that your product is the best and your service is the best and it's going to look all shiny and sparkly and they're going to make it so that it sounds like it's the right fit for you. And maybe it is. But don't just jump into it because they said to, right.
You really need to sit down and do your research because it is such a big investment of everything, of every resource, of your time, of your money. And of your energy. If you get it wrong, that's going to put you in a bad place for a really long time.
So spending the time, investing the time like we've talked about, investing the time up front, doing that research, doing a side by side comparison and saying. And really understanding who you are, yeah, maybe that system works, works really well for someone else, but it doesn't fit your tech level. Right.
There are certain systems that we work in that are super robust.
And while we are able to work in there because that's our skill set, I would never recommend it for somebody to operate on their own because if they're not super techie, so really understanding, okay, here's my tech skill level. Here's the time that I have. Here's, here's who I've on my team, who's going to be able to assist me with this.
Here's realistically the budget that I have. And just make your columns and say, all right, column A, B and C, compare them side by side. Which one is the clear winner for you?
There are certain things that you'll want to like.
One tip that I always give to people is if you go to shows and they say, or if you just go online and they're like coming soon, this feature will be released at some point. Like I never, I never believe that, number one, because I've been in this industry long enough.
Number two, my husband is in tech development and the number of times I hear them say that they're going to release this new feature and then it never comes, or it comes like two years down the road when they gave the assumption that it was going to be, you know, a month later. So never go off of what's to come.
Always just go off of what, what's, what's existing here and now because things can change for, for tech development. But I do always like to give that little tip as well. If you're doing your own comparative software analysis for your new system.
Becca:
Yes, so true. And just understand all the things you want it to do because I think that's the other thing I see people make mistakes.
They go for a system and they say, I want it to do this. Oh, that system doesn't do that. I'm like, well, why didn't you, why didn't you think about that before we jumped in? But you're right.
And I think you're also right when you say don't just go on what someone else says. Because that I see that all the time.
They're like so and so said they use system and this system really works for them and they have a code for this system. Like, yeah, but their business is so totally different to yours and what they want to achieve is so totally different to yours.
So it's great that they've recommended that. But you got to look at it in light of your. Yourself for sure. Is that something you help people with clean in your business?
Is that one of the things that people work with you? Is that part of the strategy that you go down?
Colleen:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we do the actual comparative software analysis for them.
So if they come back from a show like Wedding MBA and they're like, oh my gosh, I saw all these great system, I need a new again, just CRM for an example. I need a new CRM. Here are some of the ones that I, that I picked.
I can immediately, because I've been in the space long enough, I can immediately say, oh, that's probably not going to be the best fit for you. Or this one is one that we can explore. Here's actually a few that I know of from my experience.
And then we put those side by side and we talk it out and we, and I approach it from the tech lens because that's what I know. I know the systems lens, I know the tech lens.
And then I take their goals, my clients goals and my clients everything, and we kind of put those side by side and then I make my recommendation. So that is certainly one thing that we do. And a lot of times some of that depends on.
I might have them do the timeout at first because I want to see really where those inefficiencies are lying. And do you need, do you need a new CRM or is it a different type of tool that you need actually?
Because I never just want to assume that you come to me and you're like, I need new CRM, but you don't even know why that is. You just have been told that that's the thing that you need, but you don't know the reason behind it.
I want to know the reason behind it so that I can make sure that I'm getting, giving you the thing that you actually need. And I think that's a really key piece of it.
Becca:
Yeah, I totally agree.
And actually sometimes it's nice to go and speak to you or to me as someone neutral who doesn't work for the software, because for us it doesn't, you know, it doesn't matter to us whether you go with software A, software B, software C, software D, software Z, because For both me and you, I'm sure we just want the client to get the best result and to, to solve their problem, whether it's their marketing, their sales funnel or their backend systems. And so often going to a neutral party who knows a lot is a, is a helpful thing to do if anyone has, hasn't listened.
Actually I did an episode, I can't remember the number.
You have to go back search through Google where I we actually compared three CRM systems and we just talked through some of the pros and cons of each of them. We're going to do another episode on that soon because again I think there's, there's so much information out there, it's so overwhelming.
But sometimes you just need some, someone reasonably neutral to just break it down and go in, in normal person language. This is what this could do, this is what this could do, this is what this can do.
So yeah, absolutely, I think, yeah, talking to someone neutral is super helpful. What about people that don't have any money?
Let's just talk about that for a minute because it's great, we can talk about the top ends of the market and I'm sure some of the people you work with are these big businesses with lots of budget. But there'll be a lot of people listening who have chaotic backend system but are very new and very lean in the amount of money they have to spend.
Maybe they're not in a place to start paying, to outsource or even to pay for someone like you to do this strategy for them. Are there some things that they can do that's not going to cost them lots of money?
Colleen:
Yeah, and I think that's going to be unique to them. I mean the one thing I'm going to keep going back to it, the one thing that's not going to cost you any money is doing a time audit.
It's not going to cost you anything. I mean you can hire a company like mine to do it for you, but you can certainly do it on your own.
And I think from there you can glean what is the time, tiniest tweak I can make that has the biggest impact. Right.
So I think that's where your mindset needs to be in terms of what's the tiniest tweak that I can make that gives me the most time, frees up the most energy so that I can pour this into the things that are higher value, things that either light me up or things that are revenue generating tasks. I think that's where it starts like not just saying, you know, I don't have time for this, I don't have money for this.
Okay, let's look at the data around that. If you're not doing those things right now to give you that data data, then that is where you need to start.
Because everything, whether we like it or not, I personally love it. I know you do too. But everything is data, everything is data driven and that's what helps us make our decisions.
But yeah, I think just having that mindset of it and I, I've been there. Right. I've been the solopreneur.
I think we all start in that space and it does feel overwhelming because it's like I want to do, especially as entrepreneurs, like I want to do all the things and I want to grow all the ways. And realistically our capacity is only so much.
So getting real, really clear with yourself about that, setting the appropriate expectations and saying, maybe I'm not going to be able to get there yet. One day I will. But what's the smallest tweak that I can make now that makes the biggest impact for me, my business?
Becca:
Really helpful. How do we determine then whether, when we're looking at systems, looking at these ideas, whether something is a must have or a nice to have?
Because I do think that there are some areas of business now where, you know, particularly for bigger businesses, I'm saying technology is now a must have. Like you can't keep doing stuff off paper.
But how do we make that differentiation in our business business over whether something would just be a nice addition, whether actually it's fairly essential?
Colleen:
Yeah, I think again, I'm going to come back to. It's really dependent upon you.
Like I do have people who work in paper systems and it would be against their best interest to move them into an actual piece of tech because that's not how their brain is wired. That is not the generation that they grew up in. So I want to know where you're at and where you thrive the most and does that.
I mean, there are certain things, certainly things we can optimize about that paper system. But just cold turkey, putting you into a new piece of tech, that's not going to feel good, that's not going to feel supportive.
So I think we have to just understand ourselves and understand, am I going after that shiny thing because I actually want it, because I actually believe that it's going to help my business, or am I going after it because somebody else told me to go after it and I don't know the why and then getting clear on the why, why you want that thing. And if the why you want that thing is because everybody else is doing it and you quote, unquote, should do it, that's not a good enough reason.
So I think understanding yourself and understanding what it is that serves you best is where you start with that. And I think for so long, I kind of call business, you have several different stages.
And one is the sponge stage where you're just like absorbing and you're like, all everybody who knows all the things, please tell me how to run my own business. And you're just like absorbing it all. And then you go through spaghetti stage and you're just like throwing it all off the wall.
And eventually you hit strategy and scale stage. But when you're in that sponge stage, it's really easy to look outward and say, okay, what's working for everyone else?
What are they telling me I should do? But they're not running your business. They're not you. They don't have your brain. We're all very uniquely wired.
We all have different skill sets, we all have different passions.
So I think we have to get clear on that piece of it first before we can make any real decision on is this a nice to have or is this a necessity for my business? Business really helpful.
Becca:
And also I think it's such a balance, isn't it? Because sometimes there are state.
There are times when we are resistant because we're stubborn, and sometimes there's times when we're resistant because actually it just doesn't work for us. And I think it's knowing in ourselves.
You know, sometimes I'll talk to people and I'll say, you know, have you thought about having this appointment calendar?
And they're really resistant, but not because they have a logical reason, but just because it's not how they've always done it and they want to stick with how they've always done it. And so, so it's that difficult decision as to whether is this me and this is the best way to serve me, or am I actually just afraid of change?
Colleen:
Right.
And I think too, you also, I mean, as much as you have to think about it from your own lens, you also have to think it about from your couple's lens and your client's lens. Right? You have to serve them and meet them.
And this is similar to what I talked about at wedding MBA this month, but you have to meet them where they're at too.
Like, just because you like going back and forth via email trying to find a time on the calendar that works and spending hours of your time doing that does not mean that your Gen Z couple wants to have any part in that.
And your Gen Z couple is very used to now going onto a website that's already there for them, clicking a button and deciding what time works best for them.
So even if you are feeling that resistance to doing a new thing, also think about it from your couple's perspective as well, because that's so important as we're, as we're getting more and more generations moving up the pipeline, making sure that we're meeting them the way that they need to. To be met.
Becca:
Absolutely.
Okay, there's one final thing I want to talk to you about because I was listening to some other podcasts that you've been on and doing some research this episode, and you talked about something that I want you to talk about here and give us a bit more information about. You were talking about starting your day with the four W's. So can you just walk us through what that means, what it's all about?
Because I heard it and I thought, yes, this is a really great thing that my listeners would benefit.
Colleen:
Yeah, this is my favorite hack that I've. That I've ever come up with. And I call it the 4, 4, 4 method. It's four minutes a day to do four W's to four extra momentum, clarity, and growth.
I also call it 4, 4, 4, because I love a good angel number. But it's basically starting every single day. You do not even need to create four extra minutes of your day.
You can do this in conjunction with other things you're doing.
Whether you drive into work, you can do it while you're driving, you can do it while you're making kids breakfast, you can do it while you're in the shower. But getting really clear, clear on these four W's. So W number one is your win. What was your win from yesterday?
And then I want you to celebrate that because we get really good at focusing on negative things and challenging things and being hard on ourselves. So the more and more every single day, we consistently tell our brains, no brain.
We're going to look for the positive, we're going to look for the good, we're going to look for the wins. The more likely we're going to start to build that habit as we go. And it starts with just quickly identifying what was my win from yesterday.
The second W is what will I do today no matter what what?
And a lot of times what we do is we put it onto Our day, we put 700 different tasks that we want to do and we're going to do them when we're super ambitious and the day comes and hits us in the face and we don't get them done and then we feel bad about that at the end of the day and that negative energy eats away at us. So if we can give ourselves just one thing, no matter what happens today, I'm going to get this one thing done. That's your will for today.
Typically, I recommend that that's connected to your weekly goals, which are connected to your quarterly goals, so that you're constantly and consistently moving your business forward. Now, there are going to be maybe 5, 10% of the time they're not related to that. But for the most part you want that will to be related.
The next W is won't. So what did you do yesterday that you're not necessarily proud of or it moved you further away from your goals? You just won't do that thing today.
So, for example, let's say I am really not wanting to wake up and look at my phone, but yesterday I woke up and I looked at my phone first thing in the morning and that didn't really start me off good. I got in some negative energy today. I just won't do that thing. It's a very simple thing.
You're self aware of the thing that maybe isn't the best habit for you, maybe doesn't serve you you the best and you just won't do it. And then the last one has a little bit more meat to it, but it's your white space and how I typically.
So I talk a lot about different time tools and those can be things like theme days and time blocking.
to:
So if somebody calls and wants to book your services, if you've booked back to back all these different things in your mind and you don't get them done well, because you had a really good thing come through. But at the end of the day you're going to say, well, I didn't get the things done that I wanted to get done.
When you have white space on your calendar, it lets you account for those. It Lets you tackle the challenges, it lets you do the emergency things. And white space is going to be different for every person.
I have done this practice for about a decade, actually over a decade now. I now know that my white space is an hour and a half like I need on my calendar.
Dead space, space, buffer room for an hour and a half every single day.
But I have some clients who's 30 minutes and I have some clients who's three hours, just depending on their industry, depending on how their brain's wired. But play around with white space, like start putting on your calendar, maybe an hour, maybe 30 minutes, reflect back. Was that enough?
Was that too much? Did certain days, do I need more or less and just keep moving forward from there?
But every single day I do this four W's to make sure that I'm set up for success and that it's a consistent practice. Because you can do. You can do four minutes, right? You can do four minutes. And it really is a huge impact. And it goes back to that.
We have it wired in our head that the harder the thing, the more effort something requires, the better the results. And so sometimes when we have something super simple come across our plate, we're like, no, that's too easy.
That won't have a good result because it's too easy.
But I promise you, if you start to do this, like, just give yourself a 21 day, like to give yourself a 21 day challenge, that you're going to show up and do four W's every day, it'll change everything.
Becca:
I love it. I'm so glad that you could share it and explain it because I knew that people would find that super helpful.
Colleen, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you. I could talk systems and geeking out about backends of businesses all day, but we must go.
So I will end my podcast like I always do, with the same question, which is what's one thing you personally wish you'd known sooner in your own business?
Colleen:
Yeah, I think I'll go back to when I had the wedding planning business and I actually learned it and I did it differently when I started this business. And that was the power of a community and a coach.
Like I having support people, it felt really isolating during that first, especially as a new moment, juggling what I was juggling, it felt really isolating. I didn't know the power of a coach. Like, that wasn't even something in my mind of having a community. It doesn't even have to be a page.
Like you could get A mentor. You don't necessarily have to pay for that. You can get a community of like hearted people.
Just join something, be around people with like hearted ambitions and goals.
But yeah, I think that would be the thing that and it was a thing because the next time I started my business I knew the three things I wanted was a community, a coach and a bookkeeper. And so that's exactly what I started off with.
Becca:
I love it. Galena, it's been such a pleasure. If people want to find out more about you, your business, where are the best places for them to find you?
Colleen:
Yeah, so you can connect with me at any time on Instagram. I love connecting with new people. So never feel shy to send me a dm.
But I'm at Colleen Carswell underscore and then my website is structured with a D structuredtoscale.com and I actually am going to throw in because we had a lot of conversation around this today. If you go to structure structuredoscale.com backslash TTT, you can get a.
It's very basic but it's a spreadsheet that helps you do your own time audit. So it's already broken down into the 15 minute increments and then it has your four W's to do.
It shows you how to do your energy and your time valuing. So that's@strructuretoscale.com TTT.
Becca:
Love it. I will put all of those links in the show notes. I hope to see you somewhere in the world, Colleen, very soon.
Thank you for your time and I'll speak speak to you soon.
Colleen:
Thank you.
Becca:
What a great conversation. You all know that I love to geek out about a system, so I hope you've enjoyed hearing us chat about it.
If you're sitting there and feeling like you are in that chaotic space, let me just encourage you to do something about it. Go grab that resource. Maybe we should make a pact that together we're going to start tracking our time. I'll see you all next time.
