How I Cut My Work Week by 40% in 5 Simple Steps

Show Notes: 

STOP wasting time spinning your wheels in business. You don’t need to be successful. 

I get it—you’re working round the 🕡 because you’re passionate about your business and you want nothing but success. I get stuck there too sometimes. 

But lately, I’ve realized 💬 

❌Working longer hours doesn’t equate to productivity

✅ I owe myself and my family time too

✅ There are ways I can work less without sacrificing the quality of my output

So I became intentional in reducing my workload without sacrificing my productivity. And guess what? From an average of working 50 hours a week, I’ve significantly reduced it to 35 hours now.

I did that with these five steps.

🎧 Tune in to the latest episode of Marketing on Tap to learn the 🔑 steps I took to reduce my working hours while still efficiently leading my team and helping my clients.

Key Takeaways:

Five key steps to reducing your work hours without sacrificing quality and efficiency

✅ Step 1 — clear your goals. Instead of arbitrarily setting a specific number as your goal, align your goals with how you want to live your life.

✅ Step 2 — reduce your work meetings. Communication is key, but having too much is also counterproductive.

✅ Step 3 — reduce your workweek. Allocate some time for yourself and your loved ones. You’re allowed to breathe and enjoy too.

✅ Step 4 — create a system. Make SOPs and organize every little area of your business for a smooth, seamless workflow.

✅ Step 5 — learn to delegate. Being the CEO doesn’t mean you need to know it all and do it all. Designate experts from your team to work on certain areas of your business.

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Get the Transcript here:

How I Cut My Work Week by 40% in 5 Simple Steps

Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies.

Jessica Walman: Hey, hey, hey. What is going on everybody? Welcome back to the Marketing On Tap podcast with your host, myself, Jessica Wallman and . I always feel funny when I say that with your host myself, I’m talking in third person, but that’s how it goes, right? today we are gonna talk about, I thought I would change it up a little bit and something that I’m actually really proud of and that, I’ve had a few people kind of just ask me how I did this recently.

I thought I would talk about it on today’s podcast. So it’s a little bit change of pace. It’s not necessarily marketing related. More, business owner, small business owner related. And so if you are a small business owner, I would assume most of you guys are while listening to this. this will be hopefully somewhat unhelpful.

So I was able to, over the last year,  and I’m still refining things because it’s never going to be perfect, but over the last year, I was able to kind of reduce my working hours by 30 to 40%. So I went from like 50 plus hour weeks, sometimes 60 hour weeks, but 50 plus hour weeks down to about 35, sometimes less.

because sometimes I can just kind of take off. So, but 35 hours per week on average and that’s huge because just for those of you who need a little bit more context on what I do, so I run an advertising, Facebook, Instagram advertising agency where we’re helping, six, seven, and eight figure coaches, consultants, course creators, and service providers,  manage their paid ads.

We help them sell their digital products, coaching programs, services, and we run their paid marketing as well as helping them with their overall marketing strategy. Funnels and, ensuring that everything is aligned and cohesive and converting. Because as we all know, and as I’ve said multiple times, ads and funnels go hand in hand.

So we don’t only look at your ads, we look at the whole shebang, the whole piece, the whole pizza, the whole pie. And so there’s a lot that goes on with that. And outside of that, we also run, I also do coaching. I’ve got, a couple different coaching programs that I run ads on tap. And so I’m able to help, my students who maybe aren’t ready for the agency yet or who don’t really want to do the agency.

and, either they wanna run the ads themselves or how they have somebody else running their ads internally. get support from me and my team to run their ads, like the support and running them and how to run them and, creatives and that kind of thing. And so, obviously there’s a lot that I do.

There’s a lot of people that I’m supporting and my team supports and. . sometimes, you when you’re running paid ads, you’re spending money every single minute of the day and and nothing, it’s never gonna be that. ads are always perfect. There’s, there’s always gonna be a fire of some kind.

There’s always going to be something that’s not working. That is the life of marketing in general, but for sure paid advertising. And if if you don’t know that yet, I mean you haven’t been in the paid advertising or marketing world that long, because that is a way of that. And so, , there’s always something happening.

So yeah, I used to work a lot of hours.  I used to also have a larger team, I wanna say close to 20 people. for me that was larger, right? And so it was just a lot to manage along with, 40, 50 clients. It’s just a lot going on, and so, I had to make some changes. I am a mother of two.

I’ve got a, as of right now, they’re 12 and 13. He will be 14 in less than a month. so I’ve got a 12 and 13 year old and they keep me very busy, with all of their sports in academia. And I’ve got a husband and, you running the business and I’m busy and. working 50 or 60 hours a week is not ideal.

It’s not, well, I don’t think it’s ideal. It’s definitely not ideal for me, but I also don’t think most people wanna do that. I enjoy what I do, it’s not that I don’t want to work cause I actually love what I do. But I love my family and I love other things as well. I don’t want to always work 50, 60 hour weeks.

If there’s a week that has to do that because I’m launching or because something’s happening, that’s totally fine. That still happens. But on average, that’s not what’s, happening and I don’t want that to happen. So there are about five different steps that I kind of did to be able to reduce my number of hours working and really reduce my.

when you go down to 35, that usually means there’s less stress happening, because, that means you’ve got some things dialed in, which I do, which I’m gonna go over. So, the first thing I had to really do, and may or may not agree with this, but I had to get really clear on the goals.

That I really wanted and what was needed to attain them. I asked myself, do I want a 10 million plus business a year? 10 million a year business? Hmm. I used to, right? I used to, whenI was ambitious and I just wanted to work all the time. And at one point I was working 60, 70 hours a week, but we won’t go.

That was a crazy time. But now, now I want a business that provides me with the financial means to live the life that I want, but also that provides me with the time freedom so that I can leave at 3:00 PM and either work out or go pick up my kids, go to their games or competitions, make dinner. Enjoy hobbies that I like, like hiking and walking and reading, and just be with my family.

So that means I had to create new goals. Ones that,  where the number isn’t an arbitrary number, where did 10 million even come from? I don’t know. Right. It was an arbitrary number in my head that like, I need to hit this, So instead I had to create a new goal, a number that reflects my life goals, and I suggest you do the same.

Okay? Figure out a number that works for you that really reflects your life goals. So that number meant for me that I didn’t need as many clients. Which means I didn’t need as many employees to manage, which meant overall less, less people to manage, less energetic and time output and less financial output, which means less stress,

I then analyzed my life goals, determined a new annual revenue goal that fit with my life goals. Hey, if I want to work this many, Then, what would look like if I cut down our clientele to hear, how can we do that and still make the goals that we want I had to figure that out, right.

And then design the business around my life goals. is it perfect? Not by any means. I am still working on it. I am still perfecting it, but as of right now, and as of the last few months or so, I have maybe four or five months, I have been working about 35 hours a week on average, leaving the office daily by 3:00 PM.

having weekly two hour coffee dates with my mom, , all because I figured out what my true goals are and how to reach them, and that is gonna lead me to what else I implemented to create a more balanced work week for myself and, for my team. so the first one was getting clear on your, real goal, your true goal, and what you need to do to obtain that goal.

And then next was reduction in meetings. I felt like we had a meeting for just about everything. there would be. at least five to seven meetings on my calendar per week, just to like meet and recap, update, determine next steps, all those things, right? That was outside of client meetings and et cetera.

And I don’t know about you, but that’s a lot. In all honesty, some of those meetings just didn’t feel as productive as they could have been. So I went and reviewed the type of meetings we were having and was able to reduce meetings by like 75%, and that includes internal and. Both internal and our client meetings while actually increasing production and communication.

How? Well, first off, clients don’t need to meet as often as you think they do. They don’t wanna have to meet all the time. They don’t have the time either. And so if you’re meeting just to meet cuz you feel like you’re trying to over-deliver with that, you need to really take a step back and say, Does my client want to meet every single week or every other week?

Is there another way I can provide them with an update that still, allows ’em to know, be in the know and feel like we’re being proactive all those things without having to actually get on this 30 minute, 45 minute call. And so that’s what we were able to do. We went from, weekly to, we switched first to biweekly, then we went to monthly meetings with our clients, but we increas.

Our internal communications to them. In Slack, we communicate with all of our clients in Slack, so we now have this system in place where they get multiple updates throughout the week with exactly what they need to know, being proactive on things. And it takes the team way less time to create this update than it does to get on a call with them.

that has. Been a huge win for us. That was just the external, in regards to internal, again, we started using Slack again, more to update each other by creating specific threads. You can create threads, inside of Slack. And we kept each other in the loop on specific topics. we also started ensuring that all things.

We discussed that needed something done. Were in Asana. We use Asana, and we created a task and updates were made there with specific due dates so that we were all being held accountable. Now this requires trust that your team will stay on task and update where necessary, which my team is very good at.

Because my mind, like I always say, we’re all adults. We all hold ourselves accountable for what we need to do, right? So without trust, this system won’t work. But now we don’t have all these frivolous meetings and my team loves it cuz they’re like, I just got back more of my time. Cause then I felt like I had to prep for the meeting, which was time before the meeting.

Then we had the meeting and then really the meeting wasn’t really that productive. And then, you still have things to do after the meeting. And so we were able to really save a lot of time. So just look at your calendar, look at the meetings, or is there anything that you can do to reduce the meetings?

Can you combine meetings? Can you do internal updates in what. Communication tool you are using that has been really helpful for us. another thing that was helpful was we reduced our work week, but we can only reduce it so much. Like we can’t go, okay, we’re only working four days a week. We run paid advertising.

So really we work every day. Like my team is in ad accounts every day. that is what they do. That being said, We try to reduce, the work week sum by saying, Hey, Fridays, no meetings whatsoever. No internal, no external. Get your stuff done, get your client’s reports out. Optimize your account. Do what needs to be done.

Communicate internally so that we’re all updated on anything that needs to be updated on, and then hit the road. go hang out with your family. Do what you need to. And maybe just have, slack open on your phone if for any reason, some of us that are working, cuz we have stuff to do and we have questions.

You’re not just Mia for four or five hours during the workday, so you can leave, have your slack on you if just check it every couple of hours in case we need something from you. But really trying to make Fridays this kind of get stuff done and go. And that’s been really powerful because I feel like, now my team and myself really have this just.

Ah, day. It’s not like five full on work days. Fridays is just kind of let me just work at my bubble, get it done, and go. but of course, just still somewhat be available. So for us, I I kind of call like four and a half work days. We do call. Thursday, Friday Eve, because Thursday’s the kind of last day we all actually talk on a call.

but one of my team members made that up. They’re like, Thursday Eve is my Thursday’s at my Friday Eve, or whatever, But anyways, that has been really, really helpful. I love my Fridays and now do, I start mine a little bit later and I do a two hour coffee date with my mom in the morning, and then I get back to the desk and I work.

So for me, it’s been really nice cuz I can just, get up, take my kids to school, go meet with my mom for a couple hours, and then come to the desk and not feel super stressed that I missed anything. Super important because I know most people are kind of, not really communicating a whole lot that day.

next is super important. This takes a lot of time or took us a lot of time to put together. Doing step by step will kind of get you there eventually is we have insane systems in place. I say insane because it’s insane. It’s just really done well. But you just having systems, I don’t have to be insane.

We’ve taken a lot of time and manpower and energy and finances to kind of create this. It’s just taken a lot of practice for us, but creating a system. Right, even if it’s just a PDF doc or whatever, like an SOP on a process, that helps. So creating systems to ensure that everything has a process, it is dialed in and it’s automated as much as it can be, as well as being set up as efficiently for each person involved as it can be.

So for us, like for the team, the system, for connecting with our team and staying on top of things every day. It’s a quick daily huddle. instead of trying to communicate with everyone all the time in different channels all the time, we just do a quick daily huddle. that actually really allows 30 minutes a day.

sometimes they’re less than that. We have a slide deck, we have a process, then the system we go through and it allows us to know what’s red, what’s alert, what do we need to focus on, where do you need support? we talk about wins and we talk about other things. But you it allows for me and my management team to say, okay, where do we need to help my team?

And we could get all of this information in 30 minutes or less. So it’s a really, really great way for us just to connect super quick. we also have a system for our team staying up to date. with what’s working now in the marketing world. so we have a specific Slack channel that where we can each individually provide updates that we find, whether it’s an article or a podcast or a YouTube video or, updates from meta, Facebook or whatever,

So providing updates that we find inside of the Slack channel, but we also do weekly, 30 minute trainings on various topics. we tried to do more trainings than that or tried to make them an hour. try to have team members, and some of our team members do actually create some of the trainings.

but this weekly, 30 minute training allows all of us to stay up to date without feeling like overwhelmed. know, I have to read all these things and do all these things. It’s been a really great system for us, but really the crux of what’s kind of made. everything really fast and fine tuned is our system for new campaigns.

When a client wants a new campaign set up a system for requesting creative assets from our creative team, a system for creative team to process assets, a system for setting up new campaigns, a system for onboarding new clients from A to z, a system for client meetings to ensure we stay on track and go over the important stuff.

So there’s an actual system and slide deck for that system for auditing client accounts and funnel. Assistant for my podcast creation and my social media production. System four, my email creation and posting, I didn’t have a system for some of those latter things like my podcast and my email.

And so that seemed like it was all over the place. And then once I said, I’ve done this many times, let’s now just take what we’ve done and write it out in a document, and then create a system, wherever that system’s at, whether you’re using Google Drive or project management tool or whatever it might be, creating that system.

Relieves this pressure from you of being like, I don’t know what’s next. I don’t remember this. And I have a girlfriend, Molly, who, creates a system for everything. Like, she’s like, it’s me. Sometimes I had to do it like a dozen times before. I’m like, okay, let’s create a system for it.

just, I’m sometimes a slow learner like that and I’m like, oh, why did I do this a bazillion times before I created the system? Whereas she will do something one time and then, I’m creating an SOP on this done. She’s so good at that and I just feel, I wish that was like my superpower. then she creates SOP and then hires a va and boom, they’ve got it and they do it.

It’s so phenomenal. So be able to create a system like figure out. , what are things that you’re doing on a daily basis that you don’t really have a written system for, but you kind of do it repetitively because what you can do then is you can create the system and create automations in Asana.

I’ve got so many automations set up for all of the things I had just talked about where, creative assets and setting up new campaigns and onboarding, et cetera. We have got. Automations that automatically do due dates or zap to this person and assign here or create subtasks or things that are just, ugh, so beautiful.

I’m such a geek. I geek out when it comes to organization and, project management. And I remember back in the day this was. Crazy cray. But back in the day when I was a business analyst, yes, yes. I was a business analyst working for, a city job. And, I was thinking about getting my project management, my pmp, project management planning certification.

I just love project management. I think it’s so much fun. so he is creating an Insane Systems is kinda that fourth one. And then last you guys I’m gonna say, this is for me personally, but really I think this is probably all of us CEOs, Is that, know, I am so good at saying, oh, I can do that.

No, no, I got it. that’s something my can do. I’ll take that task, I’ll put that on my to-do list. But I was doing that and had to realize, wait is first, is this an efficient use of my. Is there something else that I should be doing that no one else can do? And then can I delegate this to a team member who is an expert in this area now by asking these three questions?

This kind of does a couple of things. One, I’m not an expert in all things. I will tell the, yell it to the mountains, tell everybody that I am not an expert in all things. So if someone else on my team can do it better, they should. That is their area of expertise and that is why I hired them.

And two, it allows for me not to be the bottleneck because, come on guys, as CEOs, we are usually the bottleneck. especially because I will overt task myself, I’ll say I can do all these things and then I get behind. Because again, I think initially, oh, I can do that, but then I. I don’t really have the time, then the deadline passes and my team is frustrated, and then we are behind schedule and it’s all because of me.

So I have gotten good about delegating. Or automating or removing it completely if it doesn’t serve the business and our goal. And I have to really evaluate, does this really serve us? do we actually have to be doing it? So being able to delegate and really figure out if the task is even something that you guys need to be doing, can you automate it?

is this something that you actually have to do? asking yourself those questions and then saying, now if this comes up again, I know what the answer. I know what I need to be doing. So those are kind of like the things, right? It’s really just to recap, getting clear on your goals that you really need and that you really want, like I figured out my life goals first and then said, now how do I design my business around that?

And really what does that mean for my business goals? Cause now my business goals have. Change because they’re not based on an arbitrary number anymore. They are based on my life and what I’m looking to do. I was able to do a reduction in meetings, which was huge, and I got back such a huge chunk of my time.

we actually reduced our work week because we were able to get more efficient. and honestly, Fridays. I work less in that day and I get way more done because there’s less communication happening from team members and from clients. There’s just so much less happening that I can focus on my actual tasks, which feels so good sometimes to do.

Right. fourth was in creating just in systems, creating SOPs and processes and systems for things that, you do repetitive. and being able to create a system. Can you create automations for it? Can it be delegated, know, externally, elsewhere? And being able to just create really streamlined and efficient systems for everything.

And then fifth is just you not being the bottleneck. And you know, as a CEO, it’s like we want to do it all. Well, we don’t want to do it all, but we feel like we can do it all right, and we want to know how to do it all. That’s for sure. I know I always want to know how to do it all, and I’ve had to get really comfortable with knowing that I will not know how to do it all sometimes, and I have to be okay with it.

I want to know the crux of it and gist of it, but I’m not gonna be the expert in it. Nope. And I don’t have the time or desire really to be the expert in all things. I have the desire to be the expert in what I’m an expert in, and that way I can serve my clients and my customers, to the fullest by being an expert there and being able to have the time to serve them.

So hopefully you guys can, gain insights from this and, walk away and hopefully maybe reevaluate what you’re currently doing with your business, what your current goals are, and see if you can save yourself, 3, 5, 7, 10 hours or more a week. I feel like by implementing some of this, you can just sit down, write out each of these and say, how can.

save a couple of hours in each of these. How can these help me? And I really feel that everyone nowadays, we shouldn’t have to work these 50 plus hour weeks. It’s, I don’t think it’s necessary anymore with all the tools. And support and systems that we have at our fingertips, we should all be able to get more done in less time.

and no, doesn’t mean that you have to add more on top of that, get your work done and that’s it. I tell my team all the time, I don’t care how many hours you work it,I don’t need you at your desk all day. That to me, that doesn’t mean, oh, they’re such a hard worker. What matters to me is if you.

Five hours that day and you got everything done and you were communicative and on top of everything, I’m happy. it doesn’t matter. And I want you to know this too, because I think as business owners sometimes we just want to work a lot and the more we work or the more we have our fingers and things, we feel like we’re productive when that is the opposite.

Okay? I feel more productive now doing less because I know things are being taken. , I know things are being taken care of and my team is on top of it and the systems are in place that allow us now to work less and still have amazing production. hopefully this is helpful for you guys.

Hopefully you guys can, work a little bit less, still be as productive as you are. wish you the best of luck in implementing some of these and like always, I will see you in the next episode. Bye.