5 Easy Ways to Find Time to Build Your Funnel When You’re Already Overbooked

In today’s post, I’m going to share with you 5 strategies I use to find the time to build my funnels and get consistent with my marketing, even when I am feeling overscheduled, overworked, and overwhelmed!

Do you struggle to find the time to complete projects like building a funnel, finishing your lead magnet, creating that opt-in email sequence, or similar marketing projects?

Do you need more leads to reach your revenue goals to have the business you want that allows you to create the life you want for yourself?

It can feel like a catch twenty-two. You need your funnel to give you some of your time back, but you need the time to build your funnel.

This dilemma is all too common among business owners!

59% of Business Owners Struggle to Find Enough Time to Focus on Their Marketing

81% Don’t Have Enough Leads to Reach Their Revenue Goals

After surveying my audience last month to get some insights into what you all need, it’s apparent that the struggle to find the time to prioritize marketing is a common challenge for new and seasoned business owners!

I asked our audience, “What is your biggest challenge or desire with your business right now?”

Based on each person’s response, we checked which bucket their struggles fit into: not enough time and focus, not enough leads and revenue, and/or confusion about how to market their business.

• 81% percent of people said they weren’t generating enough leads to hit their revenue goals.
• 59% of them mentioned not having enough time to focus on their marketing.
• 43% of people mentioned they didn’t know how to create a marketing strategy for their business.

If a lack of leads and/or not having a marketing strategy is your biggest challenge, I’m hosting a Live Interactive Build Your Appointment Funnel Workshop, you should check it out! I’ll tell you more about it at the end of this post.

If a lack of focus and time is your challenge, keep reading…

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Here are the 5 strategies I use to find time to focus on my marketing and systems:

1: Put limits on your work time

There are benefits and challenges to working from home and choosing your hours. The flexibility is awesome, but the line between work and time off is fuzzy. It’s easy to end up working 50-60+ hours and missing out on the good things in life with family and friends.

When I was starting Wise Owl Marketing, I dreamed of the day when I could leave my 9-5, imagining that I’d have so much time to do “all the things!” In reality, I ended up working longer hours than I ever did when I worked for someone else, and I felt so much more overwhelmed.

I’ve worked with clients who are the exact opposite. They procrastinate doing their work and end up at the end of the day feeling like they did not accomplish anything of value.

It takes discipline, but setting specific work hours is helpful to overcome overwhelm in both scenarios.

Parkinson’s law states that work expands to the time it’s allotted. If you have all day to do something, it’s going to take all day.

If it absolutely, positively has to get done in a specific timeframe, you’ll ditch the procrastination and perfection and find a way!

It sounds counterintuitive, but when I put limits on my time, it forced me to prioritize the important things because I didn’t have all day and evening to get them done!

Take Action:
Set a start time and an end time for your work day, and commit to it as if your life depended on it to keep work from bleeding into the margins.

2: Use time blocking to get more done

I totally envied the coaches who hired me to design their websites. They could have a call with a client each week, and aside from a little bit of follow-up, they were done.

When I had a call with a client, I’d leave the meeting with a list of revisions and more work that needed to be completed before we spoke again.

This made it hard for me to hold firm on my promise to myself to have consistent start and stop times for my workday because my days were filled with client calls. I had no time left to do the design work they were paying me for unless I worked in the evening.

Projects for my own business, including my marketing, were forced to take a backseat to client work and to-dos. My inconsistent marketing was stifling my business growth and kept me trapped in a game of chutes and ladders with my cash flow.

I was out of balance, big time until I learned about time-blocking.

Blocking my time allowed me to make sure my business got the attention it needed, and I still had time to get into flow with my creative work without burning the midnight oil.

I simplified the task categories and created 4 categories of time blocks during work hours depending on which “hat” I was wearing in my business at that time.

• Maker – time spent coaching clients, building websites, and fulfilling the services my clients hired me to do for them. Within this category, I like to schedule client calls back-to-back (with a 10-minute buffer between each one) so that I can get all my calls for the day done at once and have the rest of the day to work on their projects.
  
• Manager – time spent managing projects, our team calls, creating quotes, sending invoices, answering emails, etc.
  
• Marketer – time spent marketing MY business, which included setting up systems, creating content, building my funnels, monitoring my FB ads, reviewing my metrics, etc.
  
• Me – time spent taking care of myself and my mindset, like sitting down to lunch, reading a book, taking breaks to stretch my back, napping, etc.

Time blocking helped me take my schedule from scattered and inefficient to much more focused and productive, but I was still struggling to squeeze it all in. Until I added a fifth bucket, Buffer time.

Giving myself plenty of buffers throughout my week allows me to accommodate tasks that take longer than expected, work on bigger projects, like building my funnel, and say “yes” to rush projects for clients that pop up from time to time.

Here’s a screenshot of my current time-blocking schedule. My Tuesday afternoons are still a bit scattered because of a standing counseling appointment I have every week, but it’s working for me.

It can also be helpful to block your time according to how much energy you have at various points of the day. If you’re an early bird, plan to do your best work in the morning. If you’re a night owl, afternoons or late at night may be better for you to focus on challenging projects.

Take Action:
Open up your Google calendar, planner, or a blank sheet of paper and map out your week. Use the “pay yourself first” mindset and block off time for lunch, personal commitments, etc. Then create blocks of time when you’ll focus on your business. Finally, map out times for clients and buffer time to catch the overflow.

Step 3: Throw away your to-do list

It feels so good to make a to-do list and then check things off. I’ll even sometimes add things to a list that I have just completed for that zing of satisfaction I get marketing it as done.

But, a to-do list on a piece of paper is way too easy for me to procrastinate or ignore.

My solution is to actually schedule tasks and appointments in my calendar for the projects I need to work on. This way, I get reminders of the appointments. I know I have enough time to get things done.

Here’s an example of what my calendar looks like today as I’m writing this post. I’ve blurred out client names and zoom links, but you can see what’s on my agenda.

Asana, the project management tool I mentioned above, even has a way to add your “My Tasks” to your Google Calendar. If you look at the screenshot of my calendar above, you will see the yellow “Touch base with ____ about maintenance” task. That is how my Asana tasks show up in my Google calendar.

Here’s a screenshot showing you where to look in your Asana account to find the link to sync tasks to your calendar.

Take Action:
Grab your to-do list and your calendar and schedule in time when you will complete each of the tasks on your list. For example, if you need to finish your lead magnet, schedule it in the time block you’ve set aside to focus on your marketing. If you have a task that needs to get done for a client, schedule it during one of those blocks. Schedule everything on your to-do list and throw the list away.

Step 4: Make your business a client

If you had an appointment with a client scheduled, would you just skip it?

I never would, but I used to skip “appointments” I made with myself to focus on my marketing all the time if a client needed something instead.

My reasoning was that my client was paying me, so that took priority. (Looking back on it, that mindset was ridiculous because my business pays me too! Right? LOL)

I still wouldn’t have a funnel live 7 years later if I didn’t put my own business on the same priority level as my clients.

The biggest thing that helped me make this mindset shift was setting up my business as a project in Asana, just like I do for my clients. (Asana is a tool my remote team uses to manage our clients’ projects.) I assign myself tasks with a due date and schedule time in my calendar to get that work done.

My commitment to myself is that these appointments are non-negotiable. If I am on a client call that is running over, but I have an upcoming appointment with myself to work on sales page copy. I will wrap things up, just like I would if I had a call with another client.

It’s also important to treat these appointments with yourself as tasks you cannot do while multitasking. Turn off notifications to avoid distractions and focus for this hour. You wouldn’t ever consider catching up on your latest Netflix show while you were on a coaching call with your client. Don’t do that to yourself or your business either.

Take Action:
Find a tool that works for you to organize the projects you want to compete for your business. Some popular project management tools are Asana, Trello, ClickUp, Airtable, etc.

Add in the projects you need to complete for your business and break big projects down into manageable tasks. For example, if you need to build a funnel, create a task for each of your website pages, such as an opt-in page, your thank you page, your appointment scheduler page, etc. You’ll also want to create a task for each email sequence, your lead magnet, etc.

Set due dates on these tasks and schedule when you will be working on them in your calendar.

Step 5: Outsource and automate

I’m as fanatical about automation as I am about appointment funnels! I’m always asking myself, is there a way to automate this?

For example:

• Setting maintenance clients up on a subscription payment plan instead of sending invoices each month.
• Or linking the support ticket forms to my asana account so that when a client request comes in, a task is automatically created.
• I also have dog food and other consumables like vitamins, shampoo, and toothpaste delivered via auto-ship so that I can get those tasks out of my mind.

One of my favorite benefits to having a funnel, aside from making selling easier, and getting more clients, is that it helps you to optimize your productivity by saving you time on follow-up and nurturing your leads. I don’t have to remember if I sent an email to so-and-so; my email automation does that for me!

However, not everything can be automated.

If you’re struggling to get your funnel built or be consistent with your marketing, spend some time reflecting on why.

If you’re the bottleneck in getting it done and it is stunting your business’ growth, it may be time to get some help. (If you’re ready to hire someone to help you with your funnel, book a clarity call with me!)

The missed opportunity cost of waiting over a year to build my funnel was probably in the six figures.

Take Action:
Look at all the things you’ve done in the last week. Which tasks could you take off your plate with automation? Which tasks, if you were to complete them, would make your future life easier? Where are you the bottleneck in getting these tasks done? Which tasks should you outsource?

Schedule into your calendar when you’ll work on the tasks that need automating and start seeking out support for the tasks you want to outsource.

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Benjamin Franklin said once upon a time, “If you want something done, ask a busy person.”

I hope these ideas help you create some breathing room in your schedule to launch your funnel and market your business. If you want help building your funnel, be sure to check out the Appointment Funnel Workshop below!

You’ve got this!

♥️ Heather

Join me for a Live Interactive Appointment Funnel Workshop!

I’m designing this workshop to show you the strategy that goes into an appointment funnel and help you actually create and gather all the marketing assets you’ll need to build it. We’ll be digging into landing page copy, email sequences, lead magnets, thank you pages, and more!

It’s a live workshop with time to get feedback on the content we’ll be creating together. Replays will be available to you if you can’t make the live Zoom calls.

If you’d want to have more of your dream clients booking discovery calls, you don’t want to miss this hands-on workshop!