We all have ‘that’ one book which changes business for us, or I hope you do – as I’ve potentially had more than one over the years. The most recent being – ‘Build your Business in 90 Minutes’ by Nigel Botterill.
His principle is that every morning you spend 90 minutes working solely on your business. Uninterrupted, totally selfish and precisely planned work for an hour and a half everyday only on tasks which will contribute to the growth of your business.
Now, I’m a mum and I work within school hours which gives me under 6 hours in a working day, sparing 1.5 of them every day just isn’t feasible for me. Nigel himself gets up at an ungodly hour that I’m just not prepared to do, no matter how much it would apparently transform my ‘success’. Also it’s worth noting as I said before, much like a Jamie Oliver ‘5 minute’ recipe – everything needs to be planned beforehand to allow for smooth working within those 90 minutes, so, make of that what you will.
So instead, I spend 90 minutes once a week. I usually do it on a Friday as I’ve worked my way through client work by this point, and I collate my ‘90 minute’ to-do list throughout the week – popping things on it as they come to mind and knowing they’ll get done promptly. I do always make sure that my to-do list is prewritten the night before, but I do that every single day anyway. It’s supposed to be a really good way to round off a working day but honestly? It’s just a habit I think I randomly formed.
I’ve been doing this for 2 months now and honestly, yes business is back to growing steadily. Steadily being the operative word, new leads are always wonderful – but when your marketing is sporadic, so are your leads. If you rarely focus on selling yourself and go hard when you do – you’ll get a huge influx of leads which can be overwhelming to deal with. I’ll list the activities I do within my 90 minutes below, but basically because I’m consistently working on my business, the new clients are consistently coming in at a rate which feels completely manageable. It’s also made the tasks so much more enjoyable – I used to stress and feel guilty whenever I worked ‘on’ my business – like every working second should be dedicated to my clients. But because I know it’s ‘only’ 90 minutes per week, I do so guilt free and focused. It’s also the perfect amount of time for me to keep on top of my marketing, so it’s no longer a rush or a stress when I realise how long it’s been since I sent a newsletter.
Again, I think that your perception of ‘business growth tasks’ is entirely personal. So I’m not going to tell you what you should be doing within these 90 mintutes but, these are examples of the activities I do…
Write emails & newsletters (I aim for one a fortnight)
Targeted outbound social media engagement (not just commenting on my friends, real targeted activity to grow my accounts)
Compose blog posts – hello this here has been written within one of my 90 minute slots!
Plan and schedule my social media posts. I take one entire 90 minute block per month to do this for the next 30/31 days.
Create story templates, I don’t always feel like showing my face – so I create story templates to pop up when I’m quiet and need to remind them who I am.
Create reels. I like to put one up per week so I batch create them every so often so they’re ready to go.
Make any website amends. I look through my website and make any changes necessary. Dates, prices etc.
Obviously, I don’t do each of these in every 90 minutes, that would be hectic. One day I’ll batch some blog posts, others will be spent all on Flodesk writing newsletters etc… I make sure I’ve got enough content everywhere and then work on whatever I feel called to. More about that in my ‘working intuitively’ blog post…