Why Entrepreneurs Need to Incorporate Weekly Planning in Their Business – in Just 7 Minutes with Megan Sumrell

Related Links and Resources:

I got a 3-step process that will get you out of overwhelmed instantly and kind of get you to calm down and get back in action. I call it "Ditch the Overwhelmed Cheat Sheet" and everybody can go grab that at the www.theworklifeharmony.com. I run every six or seven weeks what I call the "TOP Bootcamp", this is totally free and you can sign up for it at www.megansumrell.com/topbootcamp  

Summary:

Megan Sumrell is a former corporate techie turned entrepreneur.  As a business owner, mom, and wife, she knows exactly how hard it is to juggle #allthethings while still maintaining your own sense of self and purpose. As a Time Management and Productivity Coach, Megan teaches specific strategies to help others get on top of their time, their calendar and their goals while getting rid of stress, overwhelm, and exhaustion.

She is the creator of the TOP Program and TOP Planner, a program that teaches her proprietary system and processes regarding time management, organization and productivity for female entrepreneurs.

Here are the highlights of this episode:

2:00 Megan’s ideal Client: Basically, it's overwhelmed women that are feeling that they got all the plates spinning between work, home, trying to grow a business or a career. They are exhausted, they might even think that they're getting a lot of things done but every day feels like a race to the finish line; it's just never ending.

2:30 Problem Megan helps solve: The problem is, how to strategically look at your task list, your schedule, and then apply the right structure to it. The traditional ways that productivity and time management are typically taught in a corporate setting don't translate well when you pull it out into entrepreneurship, particularly as a 'mompreneur' when you're joggling family and work life at the same time.

3:25 Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Megan: A number of things. First of all, what I think I hear the most often is "I'm just overwhelmed; I'm overwhelmed or I'm exhausted." You may look back on your day and go "I got things done but I don't know if they're the right things" or that kind of feeling of 'busy being busy' but you don't feel very productive. And what I think what brings women and moms in particular is a tremendous sense of guilt. You think "here I am, I have the job, I have the family, I have all that, and I feel like I've lost myself and I'm unhappy."

4:20 What are some of the common mistakes that folks make before finding Megan and her solution: So the first one I guess "I just need to work harder; I'm going to get up earlier, I'm going to stay up later" which translates into "I'm going to stop taking care of myself." So, we think that if we could just work harder, work smarter, work faster, and do more that it's actually going to solve the problem but in reality, what's happening is that you're over committing and over scheduling yourself. And because you haven't created that space and time for you, for personal development, for self-care, the problem gets perpetuated.

5:10 Megan’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): So, the number thing and the core of everything I teach around time management is the concept of implementing weekly planning. So many people think that they are a really great planner or organizer, and they do it on a daily basis. They're walking up in the morning and say "Now let me figure out what I'm going to do today" and when you're stepping foot there, it's too late. Because now you are in the 'reaction mode' because what you're going to end up doing is what is the loudest in front of you at the moment, instead of what's the right thing to do. When you learn how to implement a really good weekly planning system, it allows you to focus your time a lot more intentionally.

6:05 Megan’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): The common thing I hear is "I'm overwhelmed, I don't know where to start", so I got a 3-step process that will get you out of overwhelmed instantly and kind of get you to calm down and get back in to action. I call it "Ditch the Overwhelmed Cheat Sheet" and everybody can go grab that at the theworklifeharmony.com

6:45 Where can people go to actually start learning the right principles and systems to put into place particularly as an entrepreneur with a family to joggle all of this? It is something that I'm really passionate about, and it is a free week-long bootcamp that I run every six or seven weeks. And I call it the TOP Bootcamp, and TOP stands for ' Time management Organization and Productivity' but during that week, I introduce to you what I call the 'productivity pyramid'. I mentioned it earlier but it's really taking a deep dive and understanding how to take the 3 sides of productivity which is your task list, your schedule (those things that you can't control) and then learning how to apply the right structure to it. So, for everybody that's interested in really starting to get their head around, how to get a better process and place for managing your calendar. This bootcamp is totally free and you can sign up for it at megansumrell.com/topbootcamp. And if there's not a current one running, you can just sign up for the wait list for the next one as well.