If you constantly feel like your wheels are spinning and you’re not moving your business forward, you are not going to want to miss this episode. I’m talking about why leaving room in your schedule is SO important for building a sustainable business. You’ll learn why margin is a key element to growing a successful blog. 

Leaving room in your business for the unexpected is something that a lot of business owners struggle with. 

Why margin is important

The first and probably most obvious reason that margin is important is because emergencies can happen you never plan for emergencies and it’s very typical that having to be removed from your business for a few days or even a few weeks at a time can completely derail any sort of progress that you were making in your business.

The other huge reason that margin is really important is because having margin in your business allows you to have space for ideas and space for creative energy. It really creates the balance between the working on your business time and working in your business. Without having that white space it’s very easy to get caught up in the day-to-day tasks that you have to do in order to run your business.

The most important reason that margin is important is that I think it is really the key to avoiding burnout in your business.

How to add more margin to your business

The first step is really being intentional about what you spend your time on. I have talked about this in a couple of different places but I really hold on to this idea for my food blog for a very long time that I had to do everything and that I really had to follow all the strategies that everybody was teaching if I really wanted to see growth for my blog an idea has only followed me and my business is over the last five or so years just as idea of always needing to do more and always needing to follow the next big strategy.

Regularly track your time

You can use an app either on your phone you can just use your timer and manually track this or you can use an app like Toggl which is a Chrome extension that you can get right on your browser and so you can start and stop your timer every time you are switching tasks.

This can help you to realize where you are wasting time or getting distracted and it can also help you to realize some of the things that you maybe are not as good at that might be a perfect thing to outsource. (Related: Which Position to Hire First with Emily Perron)

You can really start to see the trends of where things take you a lot of time where it might be smart to get help with that particular task so that you can have more time for things that really move the needle forward for your business like creating more content or creating a product or connecting with your audience.

Set a daily 3 list

If you find that you are struggling to use your time intentionally, set a daily list of three tasks that I am going to accomplish that day.

If I have more time and I can get through more of the list that’s great but at least I know that no matter what I’m going to get those three things done. The rule for that should be that these should not be items that you would otherwise get done either way.

You should really be things that you are prioritizing getting those items done that day, no matter what. This will help you to not feel overwhelmed by your week’s to do list and be able to get more done needing to “only” accomplish three things. 

Spend time ON your business instead of in it

Regularly spend time thinking about your business and working on it, rather than working in it doing things like content creation or client work. I’ll talk more about these types of tasks in the future, but just think of it as the time you’re working “for” your business, instead of for your readers or your clients. 

Say no more often to opportunities that are not a good fit 

When it comes to saying no this is something that is really hard to put into practice a really good example of this would be if a sponsored post comes out of nowhere and you have a really tight deadline. What do you have to say no to in order to say yes to this opportunity?

Outsource as much as you can in your business

When you go back to the timer that you used to track your time, figure out where you’re spending your time and what trends you see. 

The things that are taking you a long time or you do not love doing are the first things you should outsource. 

If you aren’t doing things efficiently it could be because you are overwhelmed and burnt out with all the things on your plate. Freeing up that time will immediately give you more white space! 

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