Tell me - do you actually treat your business the way you should?
Focusing on your business's growth and health should be your number one priority, but when you're a service provider, you're often getting caught up in your clients' businesses instead.
These last few weeks especially have been a doozy for me. I have goals and visions that I want to enact in my business, but I don't take the time.
So this week, I'm doing something slightly drastic and I'm sharing what it is with you.
Tell me - do you actually treat your business the way you should?
Focusing on your business's growth and health should be your number one priority, but when you're a service provider, you're often getting caught up in your clients' businesses instead.
These last few weeks especially have been a doozy for me. I have goals and visions that I want to enact in my business, but I don't take the time.
So this week, I'm doing something slightly drastic and I'm sharing what it is with you.
You're listening to the captain coder podcast each week, I take you through actionable strategies that can help you grow your online business. I'm your host Marisa VanSkiver, AKA captain coder. Today's episode is just a little different. So this week I'm actually recording this from an Airbnb in Colorado. Um, I live in Kansas if you didn't know that already. So it's not that far of a drive. It was about nine hours to get here. I'm outside of Denver and there's a reason <laugh>. There is a reason that I'm here this week. So it has been probably about three years since I've left the Kansas Missouri area. Like I, Missouri doesn't really count when you go to the Kansas city area, that's the same as Kansas, but I just really needed to get away and do something different. If you know, you know what it's like as a service provider to put everything that you are into your business and taking care of your clients. The problem with that is that you often put your own business on the back burner. You forget that you need to take care of yourself and you forget the things that you even wanna work on. I had a meeting today, my monthly strategy meeting with my online business manager <laugh> and she pulled up my goals and she's like, okay, where are we at on those? And I was like, okay. So definitely forgot about that one. And that one, it has been a month. And it's just one of those things where when things get busy, it is so incredibly hard to put yourself and your business first while you're taking care of everything else and everyone else. Now I'm gonna pre apologize during this episode, cuz I'm just gonna be really short. But Mack is annoyed in the background. We've been on like six walks today and he wants to go on another one, um, which is not gonna happen. I'm too tired.<laugh> but so some of the reasons that I'm I'm here in Colorado, so I am working, I'm working remote, but I'm working a whole lot less. One of the big things I needed to do is I needed to reinvigorate my business. I needed to put my business first and I needed to set some different habits in my day so that I wasn't working from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Like I have been over the last month. I am trying to as well, move more into the CEO role CEO role in my business. Um, made up an org chart with Erin today. And I literally sit in at least six spots really more because I just now realize we did not talk about bookkeepers, um, <laugh> and invoice sends and whatever else and sales, but, um, you know, I sit in a lot of spots in my business and the spot that gets neglected all of of the time is the CEO role, the visionary role. And so one of the big reasons that I wanted to get on this trip was to really retake reevaluate and just reinvigorate my business and give myself a different location, different scenery, different air, and just a totally different environment in which to make that happen, to put things first. So this is part one next week, when I get back from Colorado, I'm gonna record part two and talk about how it went. Um, so I just wanna break down a few of the things that I am trying to do this week and a few of the things that I am trying to, that I did up leading up into this trip to, to make this successful. And if you can't tell, I am working off of very bare minimum notes. So I apologize for the ramblings, but the first thing I did was I actually took, so I'm here it's Monday. Um, I actually took Friday off. I did not work on Friday. I don't even think I touched my laptop on Friday and I didn't touch it on Saturday. And of course I drove on Sunday. So I didn't, I literally did not touch my laptop for three days. I had an out of office responder on, I let everybody know that they would not hear back from me until Monday at the earliest. Um, and my, you know, I have Nicole and I have Erin, I have a team taking care of things, but for the most part, it was an understanding that, you know, this is, this is definitely not, um, a working weekend. Like I needed to take that time in that space because when I'm already in the workflow, I wanna stay in the workflow. But if I break that habit, I knew it was gonna be a lot easier for me to break that and keep that broken while I was here. So I drove up yesterday Sunday and got here about three o'clock Mac. And I went for a couple nice long stretch walks around the neighborhood that we were in, which is up a mountain, um, outside of Fraser, Colorado. So it's a smaller town about an hour-ish, um, Northwest of Denver. And I had a rough idea of what I wanted to work on this week, but I didn't have anything really fully mapped out. I just knew that I wanted to focus on my own stuff, but I wanted to follow my feelings and my intuition more this week. So I didn't even have like hikes planned. I didn't even have like where I was gonna eat planned. Like normally these are all things I would do when I go on a trip. Like I know not down to the minute, but I know pretty well what I'm gonna go do. And I, I did none of that for this trip. Like it is all flying by the seat of my pants, which is absolutely not how I normally travel. And it's only messing with my head a little, but I'm trying to focus too on moving a lot more and getting outside more. I'm trying to really break the idea that I always have to be productive to be an effective business owner. And that's not the case. And today, honestly, just I'm I'm one day in. So I already have a little bit of data, which is messing with this introduction podcast, but one day in and I already can tell you that it was so nice to work a little bit this morning. I had a couple calls today with my team. I had another call with a client really quick, um, check in, you know, we managed to still launch a website today. I still did client communication, texting and stuff. While I was hiking with Mac on the site of a mountain, like work still happened, but I literally went on four different walks today of at least a mile and a half each. And we got out for a nice hike this afternoon while it was a little hot. Um, I was able to stop and get some pizza from town and just eat that and kind of rest. And I've not really overdone it at all today. It's, it's been very nice. Um, and that was the main point is to get past and I don't feel unproductive. I feel like it was a good day. Tomorrow's gonna be slightly different. I think we're gonna go for a hike first thing in the morning, and then I'm gonna work most of the rest of the afternoon, but it was good to start my trip and start this out just a little bit differently. Now, if you're still with me, the things that I wanted to get done this week and one was already done, I wanted to set up an org chart. I wanted to get an idea of what jobs I'm doing in my business and what I wanna hire for next, what places I need to fill, um, where my team members are now and what their roles are. And so, like I said, Erin, my online business manager and I, we did that today. So that's already done. I would also like to work on my own website this week, but I've decided that I'm gonna give myself grace, if that does not get coded and launched this week, like, that's fine. That's totally fine. This week is not about a sprint. It is about setting aside a time to focus on my own business, but being okay if the destination doesn't quite happen, I'm also don't have the best wifi ever. So that's a little harder to do and it's fine. <laugh> um, and then my other main goal this week was to set aside some time for some learning, for some restructuring and how I do things and diving into some online, an online course, um, that I have access to that I literally have had access to for over a month that I have not touched. So just three things. I have some client work that still has to get done that will kind of be chunked out. But all of my clients know that I'm away this week, that I'm gonna be shy a little slower and you know what? No one is mad about it. In fact, I cannot tell you how many people I'm surprised are telling me good for you. I'm so glad you're getting away. I'm so glad that you're getting out and taking time off and you know, nobody's upset. In fact, most people are kinda like, why are you aiming me? <laugh> um, but you know, this is a working trip, so they still get contacted. And my team is still doing great work while I am doing a little less this week. So I just want you guys to, this is part one I'm gonna check in next week and kind of let you know how part, how the rest of the week goes and whether or not I managed to hit my goals this week, whether manage, I slow down, I was managed to slow down because the hope is that I take this slow down and I move more. I get outside more. Maybe even get back to the gym, um, a little bit after I get home and I have those routines built in and I don't just stay here on vacation. So, um, yeah, that's it. This is what happens when you don't have any kind of bullet points in a script. You just have a rough idea, but this is the full Marissa unplugged. The workaholic is trying to work on her workaholic things. And now I'm gonna go pay attention to a puppy who is I'm very depressed because he's only walked like seven miles today. Just ridiculous. All right. Talk to you all next week. Thank you all for tuning in to our show this week to catch more cap coder, you can subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now, if you have any questions or you wanna learn more about digital marketing and how it can help grow your online business, follow us on instagram@captaincoderorvisitusonlineatcapcoder.com. Can't wait to talk to you all again next week.