The Importance of Routines for High Performance

Starting the conversation:

From knowing what you don’t want and shifting your mindset to be growth-oriented, rewrite the rules you play by from this candid conversation about pivots, decision-making, and building a future-ready business. Amber De La Garza, The Productivity Specialist, shares her experiences growing a business through the internal and external ups and downs successfully, even during challenges, by being consistent and true to the long-term goal.

It’s not just about efficiency or organization. True productivity comes from intentional behaviors and habits that align with what you AND your team need most. Your business positioning is never one-and-done; it’s an ongoing process that grows with you.

The BOLD Business Podcast is where you will hear real conversations behind what it takes to run, evolve, and scale a growing business. In this episode you will learn that growth happens when we adapt and change what business does; what the “voice of success” is and insights to strengthen your five- to 10-year outlook; and how planning every day can still accommodate the unexpected.

Jess Dewell talks with Amber De La Garza, The Productivity Specialist, about how being consistent and vigilant in maximizing your time is BOLD.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Amber De La Garza

What You Will Hear:

05:20 Positioning and Messaging Matter in Business Growth

• Amber de la Garza highlights early challenges: why is this so hard?
• The role of messaging for positioning and marketing matters so much.
• Assumptions early-stage businesses start with.

12:10 The Mindset Shift from Scarcity to Confidence in Business Decisions

• Decision-making grows with company size.
• Everybody has a different perspective, and everybody has a different goal, and everybody has a different risk, and everybody has a different interpretation of what this goal means.
• Productivity systems create an anchor to work from.

18:00 Clarity of Vision Guides Both Business and Personal Decisions

• Clarity leads to easier decisions.
• Accept the unknowns — you won’t know all the steps or the exact plan.
• Visualize the future, even the details to have an idea of where you are going.

24:05 Use What You Don’t Want as a Starting Point for Setting Goals

• Flip the negative to create goals
• Start with pain points like if you’re a business owner currently working fifty hours a week or more start there.
• Build momentum from honest reflection to demonstrate positive proof and momentum of work effort.

28:00 Time is the Most Valuable Resource in Business and Life

• Time as a finite, valued business asset.
• Priorities drive decisions personally and professionally.
• Protect meaningful moments and activities that are important to you.

39:35 It Takes Iterative Stress Testing to Build the Lifestyle You Want

• How to take small steps to build a new process.
• Find cracks and support needs with adjustment and refinement.
• Protect high-value time blocks.

44:00 Having a System for Capturing Ideas Increases Focus and Reduces Waste

• Allow creativity while staying disciplined by giving yourself permission to be creative while also maintaining discipline-taking, consistent action.
• Pitfall: If you can’t answer the question, if not now, when? We default to doing it right now.
• Only take action on the right things so you can focus to reach the finish line.

51:00 Be Ruthless with Priorities: Not Everything Is Productive Work

• Productivity is high-value, not high-volume so invest your best time into your best activities.
• Focus on a few, impactful actions that are clear to you so they can be clear to the team.
• Busy isn’t necessarily productive — be diligent to find places where work is not on purpose.

53:00 It is BOLD, to find routines to maximize productivity.

Resources

• Connect to Amber De La Garza on LinkedIn
• Meet the internal deadlines you set. Here are 6 quick tips.
• 10 Questions for Accountability, Facilitate Your Own Present Retreat™

Transcript

Jess Dewell 00:00
It’s awesome. You have a whole new view. You got to the top of the mountain and you realize there’s another one. So you’re going to go back down and you’re going to climb the next one. That’s all.

Amber De La Garza 00:07
This is actually more common to know what you don’t want than to know what you do want.

Jess Dewell 00:13
I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for stopping by. At the Bold Business podcast, we are normalizing important conversations. Yes, there are tips. Yes, there are ways to solve problems. More importantly are going to be what do you need for yourself to be able to solve those problems and make the most of the education, the training and the programs that you are already using? This is a supplement to that. It can sit on top of it, fuel your soul, fuel your mind. And most importantly, regardless of where you’re at on your journey, maybe you’re starting out, maybe you’re ready to scale, maybe you’re going through reinvention. The conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages. So hang around, see what’s going on. I look forward to seeing you engaging with our videos.

Announcer 01:05
You are listening to the Bold Business podcast where you will hear firsthand experiences about what it really takes to ensure market relevance and your company’s future.

Jess Dewell 01:17
When I say productivity, something specific pops into your head. Let me just tell you it is right. And let me tell you there’s more. Amber de la Garza. She is a productivity specialist. In fact, she is the productivity specialist. She has more than a decade of experience helping small business owners maximize profits and reduce stress. And here’s the deal. The deal is everything that we talk about in this program, you can use. It doesn’t matter if you’re two years in. It doesn’t matter if you’re 20 years in. It matters that we can always improve. Times are changing. Who we are is changing and we want to meet that person and we want to support who we’ve become. Because if we’re not supporting who we’ve become and what we are right now, there’s no way we can support who we want to become, where we want to get to. And that means productivity is going to take on a whole new lens. In this program, Amber and I are talking about the fact that we are evolving and that we get to do the work and we choose what is the highest and most valuable use of our time by the work that we plan and the importance of a plan. Another thing that we talk about is a framework for activities to get done for the results that we want. And by the way, that’s as detailed as everyday planning, work day planning, and even when you’re not working the working on your other goals and your five-year plan or ten-year plan and engaging with it on a regular basis. And the third thing is that the unexpected is going to happen. And so all of those plans that we made are actually incredibly important because it helps us navigate all of the stuff that actually shows up in a day to make sure we’re staying committed to the work that we have chosen and that we can recognize that there’s always going to be external influences influencing what can be done. We get to choose what we will do. I’m super excited for this conversation. I can’t wait for you to hear Amber. So here we go. So talk to me about when you knew productivity was important to you.

Amber De La Garza 03:34
So when I first started my business, what I knew was important was efficiency. And I knew organization was important. And it wasn’t until I journeyed and started working with clients that I realized that it really rooted in the result, which is we can be organized, we can be efficient, but the result is we want to be more productive. And much of that roots into decision-making, behaviors and habits. And so once I, my business had evolved. I’ve been in business for almost 15 years, so after the first few years it evolved into the productivity specialist and wanting to continue to get results for clients. And so I had to dig deeper and deeper into what do they really want. In fact, there’s a funny story. When I first started out, I titled myself an organizational consultant. I was going to come into businesses and I was going to help them be organized, which included business systems. Because in my mind, like of course every business wants to be organized. And what I found is that most business owners see organization as a luxury. So I then pivoted and called myself an efficiency consultant. And that literally changed everything in my business. That’s actually what got my business off the ground, was doing that switch, even though I was providing the same results and same services. Because business owners don’t see efficiency as a luxury, they see it as a necessity. And so then after doing that for some time, I realized that it was, it really. That’s all great and we want to be efficient, but what can I focus on that’s going to get sustained, lasting results? And what behaviors and habits will serve you, not just in your business, but all areas of your life? And that’s how I landed on productivity.

Jess Dewell 05:22
What a cool journey. Because what we think we’re saying and what we’re actually saying, it’s our responsibility for both. Even though it’s a two-way street.

Amber De La Garza 05:31
Those milestones early in my business where I was like, why is this so hard? Doesn’t everybody want the thing or need the help? And man, the positioning and the marketing matter so much. They really do.

Jess Dewell 05:44
Let’s jump forward. How often have you had to come back to over the course of your 15 years?

Amber De La Garza 05:49
I have not changed my lane of the productivity specialist since the first three years of business.

Jess Dewell 05:55
Can I just tell you I’m excited about that.

Amber De La Garza 05:56
I am locked in. But I will say with a caveat of doing small pivots. And the pivots were actually, as I got more and more experience actually broadening how I served my clients, I didn’t ever step away from the productivity specialist. And then I also have a podcast and I’ve been podcasting since 2017 and the podcast name up until cheese January of 2024, so well over a year was productivity Straight Talk. So strictly time management productivity. And I did that for many years and then I actually pivoted and expanded and now it’s small business Straight Talk. So I could expand on other business topics. And to answer your question shortly, I feel like we always need to pivot and here’s why. I’m not abandoning what my expertise is, but I’ve grown as a woman, I’ve grown as a business owner. I think that since my business is a reflection of how I serve my clients and help business owners in the world, it makes sense that I’m continually looking at does the business still reflect where I’m at and how I help people.

Jess Dewell 07:03
All right, what I just heard was if I’m not evolving, I really can’t serve more people and serve the same people better. And at the same time, if I’m not evolving, I’m actually going to get in my own way and hold my back.

Amber De La Garza 07:20
To your point and your question, that’s a very different reason to shift your messaging than when in the first few years it’s like scramble. Hold on, the phone’s not ringing. Nobody’s called what? Hold on. Like I’m not commanding the pricing or it’s more literally trying to figure out what’s going to land by trial and error and a lot of experimenting and the energy around making these other shifts is I get to expand the topics that I’m talking about. I get to see if this shift while still an experiment. And honestly, we changed the name of the podcast and I this is my own business coaching to Myself is. I was like, the people that are already listening will continue to listen because the content’s not changing. So if this was a really bad business decision, we’ll walk it back. And so when we did the whole transition, we had a checklist of what had to be changed so that we could reverse it back if we had to.

Jess Dewell 08:15
I love pragmatism. That is right. And there’s something to be said for what is the worst case that could happen. What is the worst case? Can I tell you? I think one of the biggest decisions I ever made, it was a life decision, not a business decision. Even though I’ve made pretty big ones of those two, that stays with me to this time because it floored. The other person in this conversation was, I decided a long time ago to drop out of college for my first business adventure and move across the country for this business adventure. And my mom was sitting across from me in a restaurant. She drove. I was in college and she drove from five hours, first thing in the morning to have lunch with me. She thought I was insane when I told her and she was going to talk me out of it. And she asked some question. And my, the only thing I remember about the conversation is I said, what’s the worst that can happen? I have to come home. Is that so bad? That’s not bad. That means I tried and I went for it and it just didn’t work out yet.

Amber De La Garza 09:12
I’m not sure how old you were. I’m assuming you were a lot younger. This was earlier. Like, I totally love. I love that you had that perspective that young. I did not. So my natural personality is, oh, my gosh, if it’s not right, it’s wrong and it’s going to burn it down. And I had a business coach early on, and he explained to me, he’s, you think every decision is a permanent decision. He’s. There’s very few decisions in life that are permanent. And outside of those very permanent decisions, he. He said, it’s like walking in a door and choosing to walk back out the door. Now I get chills. This is over a decade ago. A coach told me this, right? This is the power of coaching, is they see things differently, they’re on a different path. They can say those few words that resonate with you a decade later. And when he was able to give me that perspective and permission to say, hey, okay, now when I’m thinking of a decision and is this a permanent decision?

Jess Dewell 10:16
I’ve never had a decision be permanent.

Amber De La Garza 10:18
I don’t think I’ve had one. You’re like, oh, well, that just took all the stress off of this. And so the worst case. So that checklist I was joking about is actually a direct reference to choosing to walk back through the door if we needed to and being able to do it productively.

Jess Dewell 10:34
That’s actually right. We don’t have our hair on fire. There does not need to be drama. It is just a thing. We chose the next thing. We chose because it was the next thing and it was the best thing at the time. Oh, that’s so I am. I’m a big fan of your approach, Amber. And, man, I wish I had somebody like your coach, your first coach did, to tell me those things. I think I just learned that decisions were not set in stone. Like, it occurred to me in the last five years.

Amber De La Garza 11:02
That’s why I said, with your perspective, what’s the worst case scenario is I come home. That’s great perspective at a young age because that’s not where I was at. It’s not like someone tells you that 13, 12, 13 years ago, and you’re like, oh, I’ll never have to use that information again. No, you get. You have to test that out every time you go to make what feels to you a big decision. And you’re like, okay, am I falling back into my natural tendencies, or am I going to move through this decision of nothing’s permanent. You’ve been in. And at this point, and I will say, I’m not sure everyone listening is at a different point in their business, but if you’re newer in business, it will not always feel this way. At some point, you’re gonna get enough time under your belt where you’re like, I haven’t burned it to the ground yet, so you might be willing to take a few more risks. And that’s where I was at. I was just super confident in my business. I was super confident in my business decisions that even if I had burnt some something to the ground, I’m like, now it’s a challenge to build it again. Let’s go. Different attitude than when you first start and you’re like, what if I make the mistake that. That this isn’t a thing anymore? Your business isn’t in business any longer.

Jess Dewell 12:14
That is a big mindset shift early on of, I don’t know if I can afford this. And it’s part of decision-making that actually gets in the larger companies. With a lot of people involved in executive-level decision-making, that still trips them up. It looks different than we’re early in, within an early business that has a few employees before they start growing. And maybe they stay small and they don’t get big, but it does show back up because everybody has a different perspective and everybody has a different goal and everybody has a different interpretation of what this goal means. And that’s where I really think what you’re doing with productivity and systems helps. Because what does it do? It brings everybody back to the anchoring. Here’s the way we work here. Now what?

Amber De La Garza 12:57
And to your point, I think that it’s a challenge in both ways, but for different reasons. Like the larger the company is, it’s not just like you’re not using words like just my company, it’s your team, your employees, how those families that the business supports. And so those weights can also be weighted on you when you’re thinking of quote, unquote big decisions. And the way that I have navigated it in my own business and with my own clients is a decision needs to be made. And you often know that the clearer you are with your goals, the clearer you are with your vision of success. A decision needs to be made because something doesn’t feel in alignment. And the larger the company you are, you can bring everybody together through those shared visions of success and shared goals.

Jess Dewell 13:43
You’re listening to the Bold Business podcast and I’m your host, Jess Dewell. This is your program for strategizing long-term success while diving deep into what the right work is for your business.

Announcer 13:55
Right now you are listening to the Bold Business podcast hosted by Jess Dewell, a nationally recognized strategic growth consultant. She works with business owners and executives to integrate just two elements that guide business through the ups and downs of growth. Number one, know what work is necessary. Number two, do all the work possible. Schedule a complimentary consultation to find out more at reddirection.com I’m excited you are listening.

Jess Dewell 14:28
To Amber De la Garza. Amber is a productivity specialist with almost 15 years of experience helping small business owners maximize profits, reduce stress and bring back joy to their business. Now let’s get back to the program. If we chose, regardless of where we are and what our risk comfort zone is, right decisions are hard. And for whatever reason, to your point earlier of oh, I thought they were set in stone. And even though I have a high risk tolerance and I will always just go and be like that didn’t work. However, somebody says, how would you solve this problem? I get stuck sometimes in that, especially when it seems like it’s complex and so that actually then there’s that extra weight of, well, now we have all this complexity now what now and we get that’s actually where we or our team will get in our own way. And so then it’s almost about it is I want to go down this path of goals right and clarity of what the goals are. And before we go that direction I am just curious how far out do.

Amber De La Garza 15:35
You set your goals Hardcore goals that are created with specific metrics is a year and they’re usually and they’re updated quarterly. So it’s a rolling year and a hard reset at the beginning of the year if that makes sense. Everybody does their business but my vision of success and knowing where I’m going where that map is 5 to 10 years out and it that’s been a rolling 5 years 100% the lens in which I look at it through, is through my vision of success in my personal life. Like where do I see myself, where my son’s going to be at his age where is my husband and I going to retire or move to like those types of things because I work because I love what I do but also it provides for our lifestyle. And so I’m always taking that into account of what needs to happen in the business. What does it look like? What does the support look like? What are the revenue numbers? What is the profitability numbers? What is the demand of my time to get it to X when the context of my also personal vision of.

Jess Dewell 16:39
Success peer pressure at that point, whether somebody’s sitting across from you giving you that peer pressure or whether you’re reading about everybody else’s success and the wrong lenses in place and you as the collective you and you’re feeling that peer pressure and you give in to that or have a reaction to that in relationship to maybe I don’t have what it takes or I and that actually goes takes us back to that fear place takes us back to that moves us out of the I get to it moves us out of what it is actually bringing us. So that clarity on success is important. Can I ask you so where do you want to be in five years?

Amber De La Garza 17:16
So in, we three to five years we will I’ve born and raised lived in Las Vegas. My son will be graduated going to college or starting his life. We’re moving to Tennessee. I want a lot of land. I’m going to continue my business. I’m going to work. My husband will retire and start something else. And so around that is a lot of logistics of what is that time investment to uproot our family. We took a two little over a two-week road trip all through Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee last summer with nothing but a literal paper map in front of us with highlighters saying, do we like this? Do you like that? And part of that is just like narrowing down that vision. And during that trip, it was clear as day, Tennessee is where we want to be. We thought it was going to be Texas. So to answer your question, why did I do that when I know for sure my son’s graduating high school in Las Vegas. And so that was four years. He hadn’t even started high school when we took that trip. Things that I know I’m going to want in the future easier. And I don’t know all the steps and I don’t know the exact plan, but I do know the clearer I can get about that plan, the decisions I’m making now in my life and business, I are easier because I’m anchored to something further down the road.

Jess Dewell 18:29
I appreciate that immensely. I’m all about acting to plan, and I use it just to gather data most of the time. Do I have a prototype? Is it worth setting up a system for? Do I like how it feels? What is the response to this? Are we getting any of those things? And I feel you talking a little bit about that, but I actually think you’re talking about something different, too. I feel like there’s this ebb and this flow of what you’re talking about, about what’s right right now to make the future easier, since I don’t know the way. Very astute. And at the same time, I’m always looking for ways to evaluate and assess the demand on my time. I want to hear about the interplay of those, because there I don’t know if it’s a philosophy, I don’t know if it’s experience. And I’m very curious about that. So how about if we start there and then I’ll come back to my other question.

Amber De La Garza 19:15
I want to answer all of that and I just want to put this into context with what just shot us into this conversation, which was about goals. Goals have everything to do with being productive. My definition of productivity is you’re being productive when you’re investing your best time. So you’re like when you’re showing up your best undistracted, focused work time into your best activities. And so it’s less of a definition and more of a framework. And your best activities are the ones that are going to propel you towards you reaching your goals. If you don’t know what your goals are, then we lie to ourselves and we dilute. And so that literally leads to what you were saying about if you don’t are not clear about your goals or what your own vision of success is, you may find yourself comparing to what somebody else’s is. And you’re just not clear about where you’re going. And what I shared with you was I have an idea of where I’m going. I can probably even tell you what color the house is going to be we built. But there’s a lot of other stuff that is very vague, like very unclear. And so what did I do to get that clarity? It’s the same thing I do in my business, which is how can I take steps today to help get clear on where I want to go? The very first thing I did was got, I got a 3-foot by 2-foot map of the United States and hung it in my office. And we went through based on weather and geographic taxes because I we have no income tax. So what are the states that have no income tax? Politics, like whatever. And we’re like, hey great, where do we want to be? And then we started narrowing it down. And I was like, that’s not getting us that much clearer. Let’s go on a road trip. This analogy follows very closely to a business in the fact that you may know where you’re going, but as you take steps and you’re figuring it out, you’re getting more and more clarity about what you envision your business success to be. And when we can get clearer and clearer on that success, we no longer have to borrow somebody else’s. We now have a clear filter of is this work we’re doing either pushing us towards what we consider a vision of success or away from what we consider a vision of success. So it’s a true anchor. I use very similar same strategies in my business. I used to get caught up on the fact that I must be doing it wrong because these other people that have a clear vision of success in five years, why isn’t mine crystal clear? I must be doing it wrong. That is not like I can tell you now with almost 15 years of doing this, I have done well with not having crystal clear five, ten year plans. But what I do well, and this is what I would recommend anyone listening, is that I’m always revising it, I’m always checking in with it, I’m always pursuing it. So crystal clear would be like, I got so clear about where I wanted to be and I never revisited again for five years. We are different. We are different people. Five years later. So that seems to be that we would want different things. So long story short, as much clarity as you can get, pursue more clarity and then along the journey keep checking in and asking, is this what you want?

Jess Dewell 22:34
Like you, I have a similar framework with similar steps that allows that 5-year and 10-year vision. And when people will say, how do I, why would I make a hundred-year business plan? Nintendo did it. What did they do? They’re keeping people together through games. It started out as what I think it started out as Dice, then it moved to cards and then it moved to technology. It’s an old company. And to be able to stay on track and ebb and flow and reinvest and look for new opportunities along the way, as long as you know where you’re going and what’s important at the core, it can go out more than 5 and 10 years. Mine does not either. Mine only goes out 5 to 10 years as well. And I will tell you, even next year, there are things about next year in my business that I’m like, I don’t need to know that right now. And I’ve gotten really good at saying I don’t need to know that right now. Because sometimes it’s like, ooh, how do I listen for that? It’s not necessary to seeing the result. It’s not going to add or take away from any decision. So just being able to set it aside and have that move out of the way, it’s a discernment factor that helps with, here’s what is showing up, here’s what I have said we will do. How are we going to communicate that? What else shows up that we have to prioritize or evaluate or stay in the middle somewhere. All of that happens. Just like in our personal lives when we say, yep, let’s take a road trip and all the roads close or the airport closes, that’s okay.

Amber De La Garza 24:08
Anyone that knows me, they’re like, you did what? Like we flew into San Antonio and flew back out of Tennessee, but we had no in between. That was it. We didn’t even know where we were staying each night. It was like an exercise of doing everything. Opposite of in my business where I have plan and a schedule and everything. But I do think it’s relevant because you said that you had a framework too. And I’m curious if you have found this in the work you do with your clients, is that I wish somebody had told me that it’s actually more common to know what you don’t want than to know what you do want. Okay, so the framework that I share with my clients is actually like three pages of questions and it says in a year from now. And that’s the top of the page where it says in five years from now a typical week looks like. And then there’s two boxes, what you don’t want or what you do want. And sometimes people, and this is what I’m encouraging our listeners to do, is why don’t just answer the things you know for sure that is what you don’t want. And then flip the opposite. So if you’re a business owner currently working 50 hours a week, you’re working weekends, you’re working after the kids go to bed, you feel like there’s no business life boundaries, wow. Start there if that’s what you don’t want a typical week to look like. Now you’re getting your creativity of what does a week look like? And maybe for you it’s like, hey, if I could work 40 before I said I wanted to work 3 quarter days like my brain couldn’t even go to, you work less than 20 hours in your business, I couldn’t take that leap. But what I could start with was what you don’t want. And then you start building upon that. And that’s what I’m saying is that also because our brains play tricks on us, is that we have to have some positive proof and momentum so that we can actually see that far out. Because a normal day, like just a getting going, a typical day in the office working would have literally outpaced any dream I had for my business when I started. I could not have imagined what a normal day is. That, that’s literally cracking my voice and bringing tears to my eyes. But my 15-year-old younger self could not have imagined that. And it’s just been through continually showing up in business, proving to myself what we can do, seeing that much further out. And I think that has a lot to do with why it’s hard to see five, 10 years out for ourselves. Because we would shock ourselves at how much we can actually accomplish in that time.

Jess Dewell 26:38
And so this is where I say, regardless of children, regardless of parents, regardless of dependence, regardless of your extended family and friends having a vision for yourself today, it might look different in two years. Without today’s, you’d be two years behind when you got there. And that’s a piece that I think is incredibly important too. So how as far as, no, there’s going to be things that we can’t control, no, they’re going to be things that are going to happen and, and that’s okay. When you don’t. When you know what you don’t want and being able to flip, that’s so huge. I appreciate that you shared that and I love that we now have a challenge. And because this is actually something I like to do in the Bold Business podcast. So what are you going to take away and use if you do nothing else? You don’t even have to figure it out this time, people. You can just do whatever just said.

Amber De La Garza 27:27
Write down the things that you don’t want in. In business. Here’s just some starters. What is a typical week look like? What is the support in your business look like? What is the revenue? That’s profitability look like. If you have products or services, maybe you don’t love the way you’re delivering your services now. What don’t you love about it? Just get that out and journal it. Okay. What’s the opposite of that? Oh my gosh, did I just create a new service offering? Just allowing yourself to see that it’s a process. By asking those questions, those types of questions.

Jess Dewell 27:59
How do you quantify the demand on your time when you evaluate it?

Amber De La Garza 28:03
How do I quantify it? I did want to say this when you said this earlier. Time and money, like, I value my time even far more than money. And so when you kept hearing me throw in things like what is the time demand on my business? And things like this, I literally see it as a finite resource that is incredibly valuable. And I do make most business decisions through my own time investment or that of my teams. I’m not sure if I quite understand the question, so I want to make sure I answer it correctly. But quantifying the time for me right now, how I make decisions is where I’m at and what my other pursuits and goals are. I have a son that’s in high school. I have one child. I don’t want to miss these sports events and wrestling and like all of these things that he’s doing. What does that look like on our schedule and travel for me, I also have other passions of learning and investing and doing some other things. And those things take time as well to pursue those on a personal level. I need to make sure the business is successful, is profitable, and it’s not monopolizing my time. So I can’t have these other things to pursue. That is part of my overall arching goals.

Jess Dewell 29:19
I’ve never heard anybody really talk about assessing the demand on their time. So I really want to know this. So maybe we’re. And I didn’t Know, until I had the freedom of time, that time was the most important thing, that if it’s going to go on my schedule, I chose it. If I make a commitment, I will keep it. Even if my past self was overeager and I end up with really long days, that’s a conversation between me and my past self to keep working on in the future. It’s not to drop commitments. It’s not to cancel what I decide I’m not interested in or too overwhelmed with. It’s, oh, no, I chose to do that. I get to do that. I’m going to make it happen because that’s what I said I was going to do. And I chose it. My time matters and that’s what I chose. And so I have to think about it like that. And I become much more selective about what I say yes to. To ensure no matter what, I always start from the this is my choice. This is my choice. Freedom.

Amber De La Garza 30:16
I wish more business owners felt like they could prioritize that there’s a tipping point.

Jess Dewell 30:22
There’s a tipping point that happens in business that it will be, and usually it’s a revenue number. I have a client who didn’t believe me that he would ever have cascading money coming in, more money than he could know what to do with. When he hit that, he goes, I don’t even know what to do now. And I said, it’s awesome. You have a whole new view. You got to the top of the mountain and you realize there’s another one. So you’re going to go back down and you’re going to climb the next one. That’s all this is.

Amber De La Garza 30:46
It truly is all a journey. And to your point, man, I’ve seen it time and time again with the work that I do is it becomes our identity. How we show up in the business business, how we move in the business, what our schedule looks like, what we have our hands, and what is our responsibility. Do you realize it’s a question to ask ourselves? Is your identity tied to how you’re working or your relationship with quote-unquote working is because no matter what the goal is, there’s going to be another one. We literally just spent the first half of this conversation talking about goals and how they evolve and they change. I’m a girl with a bone. Give me the Once I have this goal. I do not. This is actually the dark side of being very ambitious is even if the bone is wrong, it’s not the right goal anymore. I’ve had to learn. Okay, is it the right goal because I used to just hold on to it at any expense. Then you catch it and now you’re onto the next one and the next one. Well, when I get here, I’ll cut back. When this happens, I’ll do it. When I hire this person, when I hit this revenue number, when I launched this product, after this marketing campaign, we can tell ourselves anything. And so we just keep kicking it down the curb. So my advice is, this is literally my wheelhouse is you have to identify what it is you want with your time, claim it and then you work towards it. And what I mean by that is if anyone could just wave a magic wand and go from 60 hours to 40 hours, they would. You can’t. You are probably going to break some stuff in your business. So taking it from 60 to 55 to 50 until you get to your 40 is your stress testing the business. And now the business is going to start telling you exactly what you need to be focusing on to fix. Whether it’s a hire, it’s a system, it’s a process, it’s your business model, it’s your own work habits and how you manage your time. That’s the work and that is the magic. Because now the goal is not just making X revenue or X profitability. Hey, I’m going to make x profitability and work X time. And when that becomes the equation now you can see what needs to happen in the business to make that possible.

Jess Dewell 32:55
And I’m going to take it a step out and say this is important regardless of the kind of business you have. Lifestyle business scaling business, it could be SaaS, it doesn’t even write a service-based business. It some people are like, oh, that sounds like a lifestyle business. I’m going to call it out and say sure and yes. And it doesn’t have to just be that. But we have to understand if we have really aggressive goals and we’re going to claim our time, we have to make sure that they’re aligned. Because what I end up working with Amber a lot is people who do claim it and then they’re frustrated, they can’t get to where they’re going because what they have effectively done is kink their hose enough for their business so that they have the time for the other things. But then they’re really ambitious, ambitious, realistic goals feel incredibly far away. And so I think that’s a big part of it too is yes, claim it and just go in with eyes wide open. Because I’m doing this. Here’s the trade-off. Am I okay with this trade-off and right now. And the answer, add the right now because it doesn’t have to be this way forever.

Amber De La Garza 34:07
There’s something called Parkinson’s law. So Parkinson’s law says that tasks expand the amount of time given. So if you currently give yourself permission to say you want to get off at 5 and now it’s 7, or you’re not going to work the weekend, but you take your briefcase home, you are expanding and you don’t have hard boundaries on the work and the work will always expand. Once you actually create the formula of I want to make X and I want to work X or why now it becomes how and what decisions need to be made in the business to still reach my goals. And pardon me, I’m using profitability as the goal. Your goal could be anything. It could be to get into a new marketplace, get a specific project.

Jess Dewell 34:50
I followed you right into profitability. But I think that’s a good call out because you’re right, it could be about anything.

Amber De La Garza 34:55
That is the number one goal any business should have. It means that you’re healthy, it means you can make decisions, it means that you can hire support, you can get help. And the way in which you do that are going to be these other goals too, and how you see your business creating that profitability. But ultimately we’re doing it so that we can have healthy businesses that serve the world in its unique way. And so oftentimes it’s like, hey, I’m so ambitious, I’m going to go reach this X goal. But it’s half the equation. And so now we’re left with someone that may resent it, be burnt out, not have work, life balance, their health is being affected, they no longer have hobbies. Everything is in the business now. If someone looks at me and says, hey, this time in my life and this season, this is it. It’s my hobby, it’s everything. I’m good. Then green light, thumbs up. You do you. But that is not actually the case for many business owners. Many business owners have ripped the joy right out of being a business owner. And it’s the time component. It’s because they have guilt when they’re at work and guilt when they’re at home. And they feel like, why don’t I have friends? Or I don’t have enough time for friends because everything is about work. And I do believe with everything I have, it’s literally when you were talking about Nintendo, it has its saying, no matter what version of it, my version is bringing back joy. To business owners so that you can go do the thing you were meant to do in the world. Because if you are overwhelmed and you are even anxiety and depressed, how well can you actually show up in your business? This dream that you had when you started your business and I believe it can be much more joyful and oftentimes it has everything to do with profitability and time.

Jess Dewell 36:40
I’m your host Jess Dewell and we’re getting down to business on the Bold Business Podcast. This is where we’re tackling the challenges that matter most to you with actionable and achievable advice to get real results that lead to your success focused on growth.

Announcer 36:58
Listen to more programs like this which support the challenges and opportunities you are working with right now. Search Bold Business Podcast for the key terms at reddirection dot com or your preferred podcast listening app.

Jess Dewell 37:12
I’m excited you are listening to Amber de la Garza. Amber is a productivity specialist with almost 15 years of experience. Experience helping small business owners maximize profits, reduce stress and bring back joy to their business. Now let’s get back to the program. Share a time when you’ve experienced a challenge with this equation because I know, and your equation, my version, whatever it is, I still hit these hard times too. So will you share a time when things were out of whack and you went back to your equation and what is this journey that you went on to get it where it needed to.

Amber De La Garza 37:50
Be to get to the next 100%? And I so appreciate you asking that question because I never want to say, oh, just look at where I’m at. So we’ve established I’ve been in business almost 15 years. When I first started my business, I had just had my son and I worked at 3 o’clock in the morning. I would work from 3 in the morning till 7. And the first two years I would only work on nap times and night times. And I never actually launched the business until a second birthday. On his second birthday is when I could send him to preschool. But my business wasn’t making money. So two days a week it was. He got, he went to preschool two days a week and then it became three and four. And so there was a restraint on time. And so what did I do? I went to bed when the infant went to bed or the toddler went to bed and I was up at 3 am building the business. Well, soon thereafter my business took off and he was going to preschool. I didn’t stop waking up at 3 o’clock because now I was actually delivering the services I was trading money for when he was at preschool, but I still had a business to build, all the other things that it takes to run a business. And so I did that for years and there has been every variation of that. But as the business took off, I got clearer and clearer. Okay, it’s only when he’s at school five days a week. And then since September of 2021, I run my business on three, three-quarter days. So I drop them off at 8, I pick them up at 2:30, and I work Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays. And in that is my coaching and my podcasting and my interview. My schedule is completely booked minute by minute for three days, but I get a four-day weekend every weekend. And so what that means is everything else is delegated to the team. That did not happen overnight to where I could run a schedule that was only my high-value activities and the rest was being handled overnight. It was gradually building up to that. And how it started was taking off a Friday a month and then it was like, maybe I can take off a little more or. And it was stress-testing the business and then seeing where do I need more support to be able to hit my goals for this to be what my schedule is.

Jess Dewell 40:10
How do you take into account the unexpected stuff that comes up?

Amber De La Garza 40:14
Yeah, the first thing is stop fighting reality. No day has ever gone as planned. So this is coming from a girl that plans her days, teaches her clients the planner days. I have a whole framework on how to plan your day in 15 minutes. I actually believe that found the foundational strategy to all time management and productivity is planning our days. And yet, Jess, not a single day, not a single day goes exactly as planned. And so why do most people stop planning their days? It’s because they are believing the lie that it should have gone how they had planned it. The reason is in fact, that you are putting yourself in the driver’s seat and being more proactive than reactive. And I would argue all day, every day that when you have a plan, you are a better decision maker as the unexpected comes in to rapidly reprioritize as it requires every business owner to do. Because emails come in, phone calls come in, someone calls out, you name it, anything can happen. And in those moments, you need to be able to be so present and understand your priorities that you can pivot and move through decision-making quicker.

Jess Dewell 41:27
I have one day a week that is dedicated to working on the business. It started out as two hours, it is now six. And so basically 20% of my work week one of the things that happens is I actually, throughout the week, I am determining when all these ideas are always coming in. Whether they come from in my mind, whether they come from in my heart, whether somebody brings it to me, whether it’s from the team, whether it’s from a client. It doesn’t matter where it comes from. My immediate thing is now, near in the future, or in the bin.

Amber De La Garza 41:56
Say that again slower for everyone that’s listening. I love this.

Jess Dewell 41:59
Okay, now and near in the future or in the bin. Every single time. Right now and near in the future or in the bin. Okay, so if it’s a now and near, or I can’t decide if it’s a now and year in the future, I’ll stick it in a now. I’ll stick it in a folder now and year. And some people do this electronically. I literally write them down. And I have a little box on my desk that says now or near. I also have one that says future. And if it’s a future, I’ll stick it in the future box. Guess what? Now and near happens on Mondays. Every Monday is part of. I call it a present retreat. My work, my strategic day, my present retreat. There’s a section of time that I go through my now and near, and I confirm, is it now near? Does it actually align with what we’re really doing in the next four to 12 weeks? Or is it farther out? And if it’s farther out, it will go in the future box. It will also go. It also might go, that one’s actually not for me. Or it might be three years down the road. Guess what future is not three years from now for what we’re doing? So it goes in the bin. Somebody else gets that idea to work with, and I can let it go. And only I would say 20% of the ideas that come to me actually get into a box. The other 80% start out in the bin, and then I do it again on those Mondays. What more can I actually weed out and see? Say this is not now or it’s never, and get it go. Get it gone. And quarterly, I go through the future pieces because that’s when we’re looking out at that rolling quarter. We’re looking forward 18 months, 24 months, and then they get slotted in there, and off we go. And there’s stuff that goes in the bin from that too.

Amber De La Garza 43:39
Literally took the strategy of parking lot your ideas to a whole new level. This is like a parking lot with a facelift.

Jess Dewell 43:46
I had a client come to me and say, I literally have A drawer that I want to go through because they’re great ideas. And I was like, I think you should bend the drawer and start over.

Amber De La Garza 43:59
Can I just unpack that? Like in how I hear this in my lens of time management and productivity for your listeners. Is that what Jess just shared with you is a goldmine strategy? Because has she not had this, she would be distracted with those ideas. She’s got clear filters that she’s running this and visuals. So I don’t know if you’re listening into this, you’re not seeing the audio. She literally pulled up this little bin that she’s keeping notes in. And so this is allowing you to move quicker and faster the rest of the days of the week. Because you have this system that you can depend on and you’re training your mind, literally practicing it every week to get in touch with your priorities, filter the creativity through your priorities. Without that, let me paint a picture of what normally happens for business owners.

Jess Dewell 44:49
I’m ready. I like where this is going. Okay.

Amber De La Garza 44:52
A super creative person will go from one start or false start or not a completed start, right to the next. And they’re going to have a ton of started projects and not much finished because there’s something, and I teach this, and this is a phrase, if not now, when? So she’s not tempted to take action on the idea now because worst-case is it sits for until Monday. Now she’s got her filter that she can say, great. If not now, when it’s not in the next four to 12 weeks, it’s a little further out. Or actually, this is brilliant. I needed at best case, four days to determine it goes to the trash bin. But you didn’t waste your time putting your important resource of time into taking action on something. When we have unfinished projects or we have these starts without finishes, we didn’t get an asset for it. So when we don’t finish something and we put time into it, we’re not able to get that ROI back. You have found a start simple system to be able to be able to ensure that if you’re taking action on it, you already have determined you’re probably taking it to the finish line, you will get an ROI on it. There was so much there that I can see on why that was brilliant. And I wanted to unpack it for your listeners.

Jess Dewell 46:12
You know what? I love hearing it through your lens because I have because that’s exactly how I think about it. But it’s not how I talk about it. Basically, all I say is, hey, it takes the average person, 7 to 12 minutes to transfer between activities. And it’s longer when you’re going from deep work to quick action or specific task work. And that is in a day. I did that one day and it was, it turned out to be like three hours of my time of interruptions and everything. I was like, hell no, I’m out. That I got to change something here and people don’t like it. So this will be a thing too. If I’m in a dialogue and I’m like, I got to think about this more, I’ll be like, I can get back to you on Monday. Last two hours of my Monday, right? I do work an eight-hour day and in that last two hours I can say, okay, I’m ready or no, this isn’t going to work out. And if people don’t even want to wait for me to get to my time to give it what it’s due and actually think about it, then they don’t really want my contribution anyway. And it’s easy to say no. And if this is another filter for boundaries of what is it urgent or?

Amber De La Garza 47:19
Is it important that’s honoring your own decision-making. I’ve done several episodes about decision-making because actually not making a decision is one of the most unproductive things we can do. Just energetically it can really weigh us down. And so you’ve intertwined in this and included in this your own honoring your own decision making of I don’t want to be put right on the spot. Why did it on the spot if we’re people pleasers? I don’t know that you are.

Jess Dewell 47:46
I am.

Amber De La Garza 47:47
I am. If anyone’s listening and they’re like, hey, I’m a people pleaser. When you’re put right on the spot, the answer is a default yes. And I just did an episode called Pause to break the people-pleasing cycle. And I did not include a Monday two-hour review to pause. But this is exactly in alignment with that is like we just need to create some distance so that we can properly make the decision. And I wanted to speak to your switch tasking that you were talking about from deep work to quick action work, what you were feeling. I don’t want to tell you how you were feeling, but what you may have been experiencing was it was a real drag and it’s a major stressor and in fact you could have gotten the same amount of work done. But when we work in that fashion of start, stop going from one thing to the next, we are far more exhausted. It takes much more mental bandwidth to work in that way than to, you know, plan your day out and have some rhythm to it and understand that switch-tasking. Like, I think we’re past calling things multitasking. We do know we’re switch-tasking. So even switch-tasking at that capacity is really exhausting. And it’s going to be the difference of laying your head down and you’re like, today was a good day or today I am exhausted. Like, where’s the pillow? So are you celebrating? Are you?

Jess Dewell 49:08
Like, and back to your point about the decision-making process and owning that too. Whatever that avoidance is that we have will show up more in the decisions that we really need to be making when we’re tired because we’ve expended that energy.

Amber De La Garza 49:23
So when you plan your day and you separate the planning from the doing, you are giving yourself the gift of the next day. You get to use all your willpower on following your own plan because that takes enough willpower in itself, right? And so when you can separate the two, what I like to think of it is your better self is like, look, today could have been really hard and really crappy, but if you’re anything like me, tomorrow’s a better day. So I like to use that optimism for I’m going to plan the best day then because I separate it, I can tomorrow. All my energy is either dealing with what came right in front of me because of the unexpected, or ensuring that I do the thing that I knew the best thing was for me and my business to do when I made.

Jess Dewell 50:11
The plan I got once was plan your day. And however you plan your day, understand what those priorities are and in that priority set, what can we bring to the table? Because if we can’t get the highest priority or highest value things done, we haven’t kept our commitment to ourself. And that is a whole other element of where we get in our own way. We can only capitalize and catapult forward with amazing grace and speed. When we’re starting from a place of I trust myself, I’m committed to myself, I’m clear about why I’m doing what I’m doing and I’m ready to go. Even if today failed, I can commit tomorrow. That’s the thing you mentioned, the positive outcomes, having that thing.

Amber De La Garza 51:03
You said that so beautifully. And so I will just add that is why it’s so important to be realistic with what can get done in a day by adding so much to your to-do list. That is just not that it rolls over and it’s not Actually able to get done is not helping you. The best thing you can do is be particular and ruthless with what are the exact highest priorities and let it be a shortlist. Get those done and then all the other stuff too, that’s going to come up and you will feel so much better and have moved further towards your goals than just creating a list where you leave and you’re like defeated again and you’re like, and I never get it done. Because just as no day goes as planned, your to-do list will never end. And if it does, well, you’re out of business, most likely. So we don’t want that. But we think we. And intellectually we’re like, yeah, we know that there is a bigger to-do list, but that’s not how we navigate and how we talk to ourselves at the end of the day when the list didn’t get done. My belief is that we are not meant to be productive all day, every day because being productive is investing your best time into your best activities. There are high-value activities that will move you towards your goals. And the reality is we live real lives and run real businesses and there’s a lot of other things that need to get done in the business. But if we tell ourselves that’s the productive work, you will never get to the actual high-value, highly productive work. And so I’d rather you be so clear with what those are and let them be few, but show up consistently with them and then feel the rest of the day with the other stuff that you need to get done. But don’t fool yourself saying being busy or working hard is the same as being productive and very purposeful with how you are investing your time.

Jess Dewell 52:59
What makes it bold? What makes it bold to find a rhythm to maximize our productivity?

Amber De La Garza 53:06
It’s about how we show up consistently. So being bold, doing literally. I’m just going to repeat back to the amazing things you said. Honestly, this is, you said this so well is that when we show up for ourselves, when we’re showing up consistently, consistently when we’re doing what we say we’re going to do, that is bold. That is all we can ask for ourselves. And that is the hard work. Showing up after a bad day, showing up after someone calls out, showing up after you lost that contract, showing up consistently to work on the work that matters most is bold and it will serve your business well.

Jess Dewell 53:41
Every single time I have a conversation, I take away something that I want to share with you. With 25 people I know when you’re listening to this podcast, you’re also listening for that and will have something that you want to share in the comments. I would like for you to engage with us. What is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program? Here’s why it’s important. It’s important because yeah, there are going to be how-to’s. Yes, there are going to be steps. Yes, you’re going to be like, oh, I wish I wrote that down. I wish I wasn’t doing this and I could actually take action on that right now. But guess what, you’re not so engaged right now because that one thing you want to share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business, in your workflow, in your style. Tomorrow.

Announcer 54:32
Jess hosts the Bold Business Podcast to provide insights for building a resilient, profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance and your company’s future. It is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy with your host Jess Dewell. Get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at reddirection.com thank you for joining us and special thanks to our post-production team at the Scott Treatment.