The Importance of a CEO Day
As many of you probably do, I follow other entrepreneurs and small business owners to learn new ways of growing my business, different systems to take my business to the next levels, and inspiring strategies to help my clients grow.
One amazing human I’ve been following for a while is Tasha Booth — she is fabulous coach, agency owner, podcaster, launch genius, and all around awesome person. If you’re not familiar with her, you can check her out at TashaBooth.com or at the Launch Guild.
I started following Tasha about two years ago. While she’s now one of my coaches, one of the very first things I really learned from her was the importance of regularly implementing CEO days. I share this because I want to be sure to credit what I’ve learned and my ability to be here to talk to you about CEO days to Tasha.
Since first learning about them, I’ve made it a priority to have one CEO Day set aside each week where I focus on MY business — working ON it, instead of IN it. And the longer I’ve done this, the more I've discovered that many of BizMagic’s clients don’t currently do this and that is something I’d like to change!
YOU are a CEO!
Before we dive into what a CEO day is and why you should be doing it, I think it’s important to stop and remind you that you are the CEO in your business.
My favorite gift ever from a client!
As entrepreneurs, and especially solopreneurs, it’s easy for us to overlook that we are actually running a business. We are individuals who decided at some point to share our services or products with others in the world. Maybe we weren’t exactly aiming to start a business in any official capacity. We were just helping others.
The reality, though, is that by sharing your services with others, you have started a business. And since you are likely the person who makes all the decisions for said business — what the budget is, what services you’re going to offer, the tools you use to deliver those services or run the internal side, whether or not you hire people, etc. — YOU are the CEO of your business.
Going from looking at myself as simply a Business Assistant that was helping female entrepreneurs to acknowledging that I was running a business that is supporting other businesses was a game changer in how I showed up for my business AND for my clients.
But we can go deeper into that another day. For now, let’s learn more about CEO Days.
What is a CEO Day?
First off, I think it’s important to clarify that you don’t necessarily need a FULL day set aside for a CEO Day. A few CEO hours once a week could work just fine too.
The main goal of a CEO Day (or CEO Time) is to set aside regularly dedicated time to work on your own business. During this time, you want to take care of things like content creation and scheduling/posting, business planning, financial matters, networking, etc.
Basically, you focus on all the things that are important for your business’ success, but often get overlooked. Those tasks and strategies that actually make your business run.
During that designated time, you want to focus on both the higher level aspects of your business and also the small granular details that make or keep your business successful. We’ll shortly go a bit deeper into what those types of tasks could be, but next, you need to know the why.
Why are CEO Days Important?
Now that you understand both that you ARE a CEO in your business and what a CEO Day is, I want to talk about why exactly a CEO Day is important.
If you’re a fellow service provider like me, then you likely spend the majority of time in your business directly supporting your clients. It’s part of what makes you great at what you do.
However, we can get so focused on helping our clients and doing the actual work that we started our businesses to do, that we completely overlook those items in our business that are critical to its longevity and growth.
Because, like it or not, we are running a business, we have to think about what we do from that perspective. And when you’re always in the action of supporting other people or their businesses, we lose that space and time to focus on us and our own.
When you start looking at what you do as a business, and yourself as a CEO, it changes how you approach your clients, tasks, purchases, and systems.
What would you do differently in your business if you stopped and thought about how long you actually would like to do this type of work? Are you in it for just a few years? The next ten years? Is this your retirement plan? How does viewing the work you’re doing from the perspective of making sure it has longevity change the way you think about your daily tasks, the money you’re spending, the resources you’re utilizing?
This may all feel a little overwhelming, but that’s another reason that having time set aside each week to think about these things and make important moves can drastically help you, your clients, and the future of your business.
How to implement CEO Days
Ok, so now you’re convinced! CEO Days are a must in your business. But how do you get started on CEO Days — especially if you barely have enough time to keep up with your current client work? And how do you know what to do when you find that time?
In terms of scheduling your CEO Days, as I mentioned at the start of this post, you can start small! If you either can’t afford a full day each week dedicated to working ON your business or you’re not yet sure how you would fill that day, start with a few hours.
Where can you find 3-4 hours per week to focus on your own business? If you can’t find that time all in one chunk, can you find 2 hours on two different days or one hour a day? Break it down into digestible bits of time that work for your schedule and your mindset.
Meet yourself where you’re at!
The more attention you give your business, the more you’ll find areas you can focus on and the more you’ll be able to carve out time for your own business as you and your business both grow.
Now that you have your CEO time set aside, what the heck do you do next? What if you have no clue where to start?
Make a list.
Think of all the things that you know have needed to get done, but you’ve avoided because you haven’t had time or haven’t wanted to do. Those are things you can do during your CEO Time.
Think of things you’ve wanted to do for your business, but haven’t had time for.
Start asking yourself some questions:
“What could I do to show up better for my clients?”
“How can I get more clients in my business?”
“What are my goals for this month, quarter, year and what steps can I take to achieve them?”
“Are the systems and processes I’m using in my business working? Or “Do I have any systems and processes set up in my business?”
“What is something I’ve thought about offering to my clients but haven’t done anything about? What is the first step to make that happen?”
“What can I outsource to a VA or other support person that will enable me to focus on supporting my clients better or bringing in more money?”
Once you’ve asked those questions, answer the ones you can and the ones you can’t start figuring out the answer for. Spend your CEO Time doing marketing research, or learning how to create successful passive income for your business, or reading about authentic social media strategies that help you learn to show up as your are in a successful way.
Other things you can do with your CEO time:
Read blogs about business growth
Create blogs or social media content (bonus points if you’ve figured out that you can write a blog post and use that to also make social media content — yay time-saving!)
Learn more about advancements in your particular industry or niche
Engage on social media to connect with potential clients, business partners, or colleagues.
Take a course to grow your skillset
Create a list of items you can delegate to your VA.
Brainstorm new services you can offer or potential passive streams of income
Review your pricing and be sure it still feels in alignment with your growth and where you’re currently at
Clean up your inbox and unsubscribe to unnecessary emails
If you don’t have one and are ready, hire a support person for your business to take the small or specialized tasks off of your plate
Co-work with other business owners to keep the juices flowing
Got everything under control and moving forward? Use your CEO time to take a damn nap! You’ve earned it!
Again, start small and allow yourself to grow into your CEO pants (or skirt). Don’t forget you can always google ideas or ask fellow entrepreneurs.
Most importantly, remember to own your CEOness and keep kicking ass!
So the next steps — stop right now and decide when next week you can schedule a few CEO hours for yourself and list three things you could do for YOUR business during that time. I promise, future you and your business will thank you!
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions about CEO Days or feel like you’re ready for some help and want to talk to BizMagic about helping to clear your plate or manage more specialized projects, contact us today!
