MBA2537 Q&A Wednesday: How do I find the time to start a business?

0:05Hey everyone, welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host Omar Zinhome and welcome to another Q &A Wednesday episode where I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners, one of our viewers. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead to 100mba.net slash Q, and you can submit your question right there, and I'll answer right here on Q &A Wednesday. Today's question comes from Greg, and Greg asks, how do I find the time to start a business? Listen, I totally get it. A lot of aspiring entrepreneurs struggle with this, especially because they're juggling a full-time job. They got family.

0:40They got commitments. They got responsibilities. I know I've been there. I was in a full-time job as an educator, as a teacher. I had a lot of responsibilities. I had a lot of things to take care of. I totally get it. But in today's lesson, I'm going to give you some practical strategies to carve out time, the time that you need to give yourself a fighting chance to have a successful business. I'm going to actually throw away a lot of conventional advice when it comes to this topic. I'm going to tell you, do not do this because really it's a waste of time. It's not really going to move the needle.

1:13I'm going to give you the things that actually worked for me and hopefully it'll work for you. So let's get into it. But first, did you know that 72 % of entrepreneurs start their business while still employed as a side hustle? This is a statistic by The Balance, a study that they did. And I love the statistic because it shows that most entrepreneurs, most business owners start on the side, right? You don't have to risk it all and put all your time and effort. I know there's some people that do that and that's fine, but there is a way to do this as a side hustle, as something that you're working on the side until it becomes your full-time thing.

1:48And that's exactly what I did. I took a leap into full-time entrepreneurship after side hustling for over a decade. And today I'm going to show you how to do the same without feeling overwhelmed with a game plan that you can stick to. The first thing I want to convey to you is I want you to forget this traditional advice of like, find out where you're wasting your time, you know, track how much time you're spending on watching TV or on social media or on YouTube. What is that going to do? Okay. I look at my phone. I find out I spent six hours on YouTube this week. Then what, right? Am I supposed to like now work on a business every time I have five minutes spare when I usually watch YouTube?

2:24No, that doesn't work, right? This whole idea of like, oh, look how much time you're wasting. you got plenty of time. That's just some sort of guilt thing that doesn't really work. Okay. What really works is carving out dedicated focused time. Okay. And I'll talk about how to do that in a moment. But first thing is, it's just forget this whole thing about, Oh, you know, figure out where you're wasting your time and know that you're okay. You're wasting X amount of hours, X amount of minutes. That's good. Then what, right? This is a horrible, horrible advice. do not do that. Okay. Instead, what you want to do is now prioritize your business time.

2:59You want to make it a non-negotiable time. We're going to talk about carving out time to work on this business of yours that you want to work on. Okay. You want to treat this time like sacred time. Like you have to do it, right? Like you will really suffer really bad if you don't do this. And the thing is, is that that's really what moves the needle with anything in life. You want to lose weight? You want to get fit? You're going to have to carve out time to go to the gym and you got to use that time and see that time, a sacred time, right? Time that you cannot negotiate with. It's a must do. Okay.

3:32And this is how you want to see a building your business, especially when you're getting started. You need momentum. You need enough wins under your belt, enough positive outcomes that from the actions that you're putting into your business in a row for you to get momentum and for it to actually be successful. So this is really a mindset shift of thinking, okay, I need to start thinking about working on my business as a priority, just like I see my job as a priority, just like I see as paying my bills as a priority, just like I see as a priority to go to the gym if you feel that health and wellness is a priority for you.

4:05It needs to be a priority, especially in the beginning. This time needs to be super sacred. So how do you structure this time? How do you get this time? Right. Well, I like to create a specific time block and I like to ease you into this. OK, you want to carve out at least 90 minutes. The reason why I say 90 minutes is 90 minutes is enough time for you to have some deep work time. This is very important. You need to carve out 90 minutes at a time. I'm not saying that you have to do this every day, but maybe you can start with, you know, two or three times a week. I would say three times a week would be ideal because this will give you enough momentum.

4:45So maybe this is like one day in the week, a Wednesday, and then Saturday, Sunday, maybe something like that. 90 minutes. In these 90 minutes, you need to make sure you're in a distraction-free zone, okay? This is very important because in order for you to actually get things done, you need to be distraction-free. So if your house is chaotic, if you are going to be interrupted, if you're a mom and your kids are shouting out mom every five minutes, then maybe that's not the best place to get this deep work done, okay? So the first step is to think about where are you going to do this 90 minutes, right?

5:20A lot of people are like, when? No. First, where? Because the where might dictate the when. So where are you going to do this? So for me, when I was teaching, I took about two hours after work and I went into a co-working space. So I went from my teaching job, went from the university I was working at, right? And I was teaching there. At three o 'clock, I finished my job and then I went to this co-working space and I spent two hours there. So it took me about 15 minutes to get there. I got there at 315. I spent two hours, 515. I was done in 15 minutes. I was home and there you go. 530. I was home.

5:56So I made sure that before I went home, I knew if I did this, if I went home, I'm going to get distracted. I'm going to get busy. I'm going to get tempted by whatever entertainment that's out there. Right. The point here is, is that if you carve out a place, maybe it is your home. If you have a distraction free zone, maybe it's the library. If you want I'm going to do this on a budget. Maybe it's somewhere else. Maybe it's a friend's place. It might be a cafe. Whatever you know that if you go there, you can actually work and not be interrupted. So for me, it was a coworking space. I went there.

6:28I got my work done. And I went home knowing that I got my deep work focus time done. So this is why I'm saying that it's important for you to know where first so that you could say, OK, when can I go to this place where it's distraction free? OK, maybe it has to be your home for you. And I understand that. OK, and in this case, what I want you to do is think about when during the day will it be distraction free? Maybe it means you got to get up 90 minutes early when everybody's sleeping and you can be able to have a really focused time with nobody shouting your name. OK, and I really recommend this because it kind of gets things out of the way.

7:07I love getting up early and get things done. I like to kind of get my workout done or get my journaling done or get my thinking time done in the morning, get it done out of the way. The rest of the day is a win. Now that's done. So maybe that's for you. Maybe it's late night when everybody's in bed. So think about where and then when are you going to do this based on where you are? And of course, you've got to work around your job, your nine to five job or whatever the hours are. OK, so just keep that in mind. Now, you want to treat this time, again, a sacred time, and it's like an appointment.

7:39You have to go to this appointment, right? This means no cancellations. That means no rescheduling. That means you have to go unless there's an absolute emergency like somebody is being rushed to the hospital, right? Think about your own job right now. If you had an appointment or a meeting at your own job, very little will stop you from going to that meeting. You have to go. It's your job. Your boss told you you have to go, right? So you have to be your own boss now and you got to hold yourself accountable and make sure you go to that meeting. You have to go to that deep work time, that 90 minutes that I'm prescribing to you as you get started.

8:15So make sure you put it in your calendar. If you don't have a calendar, by the way, I'm shocked by how many people don't have a calendar. They can use Google Calendar, which is free, or even just a physical calendar in their notebook or in their phone. It's super simple. OK, but if you put it in the calendar and you get a reminder that, hey, you have this appointment you have to make, it's going to hold you accountable. So once we've carved out at least 90 minutes, three days a week, and you can do more if you want, but start out there. What about other times? There's some times that you could do things while you're doing other things.

8:50So, for example, you might be on a lunch break at work. OK, now be very careful when it comes to working on your business at work. Do not use your company computer. Don't actually document anything, okay? Because this is the time that is allocated for your job. And they own anything you do at that work site, at that job, even during the hours. And it may even extend if you're working remotely. So be careful, okay? Do not work on your business at your job. This is something that you should not do. Instead, what I recommend is work on yourself, okay? They can't take that away. So meaning this is where when you're eating lunch, you can watch an online course, right?

9:35You can maybe listen to a podcast episode. You could read a book. So this is when you could do multiple things at one time when you're commuting, when you're eating lunch, when you're at the gym, right? When you're folding laundry, all this time where you don't really need to be focused. You could do something else and listen to something else or watch something else. This is where you can invest in yourself. Remember, when you get better, your business gets better. Next, involve a support system, right? Communicate with your loved ones. You are about to embark on a journey of entrepreneurship, of changing your life, okay?

10:10This is just the beginning. Right now, it's a side hustle, but it's going to be your full-time thing. And trust me, you will have to sacrifice something, some free time, maybe some outings, maybe some late nights with friends. You need to meet with the people that are closest to you, especially the people in your household. Maybe your partner in life, your wife or your husband, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, whatever it might be. You want to meet with any roommates you have. You might meet with your parents if you see them regularly. Meet with your very close friends that you go out all the time.

10:41And you have a serious meeting with them. You tell them, hey, I'm about to embark on this journey. This is what I'm about to do. And discuss with your partner how this is going to happen. Right. I'm going to take 90 minutes and I'm going to go to this place and I'm going to work on my business every other day or three times a week. This is my schedule. OK. And this is my plan. And I would love for you to support me. Right. And the reason why you need to get them on board is that it's really hard to do this alone. When I mean alone, I'm alone in terms of moral support, because there's going to be moments where they're going to be like, hey, we got invited for game night with Greg and Paula.

11:18Can we go? And it's just like, well, maybe that's during the time where you are working on your business. That's not an emergency. Remember we said you have to make that appointment no matter what, right? So that means, hey, I can't go. Maybe you go. Or maybe we can go next week and I'll shift the appointment to go do the work a little earlier or whatever it might be. But the point is that you have to get this work done, okay? And they have to be on board. And it's very hard for them to be on board if you didn't have this discussion with them beforehand. hand. You have to tell them, Hey, there's going to be some sacrifices sometimes.

11:51And I'm gonna have to say no. Sometimes this is one of the things that new entrepreneurs struggle with is saying no. And when you're starting out and you're trying to build something significant, you need to just say yes to one thing, which is building this business. And that means saying no to everything else or most of everything else. Because when you say no, you open up the time, you open up the opportunity for you to say yes to the thing that matters most. The opposite is true two. If I say yes to game night, I can't do anything else during that time other than game night. That means I say no to every other opportunity.

12:23And it's called opportunity costs. This is temporary. Okay. This is not going to be your life for the rest of your life. Okay. This is just so you get the ball rolling. Then you're going to have more time. Once you let go of your full-time job and you're working on your business full-time and you're earning a good income and you start hiring staff and you start building and scaling your business. And then you have systems in place and then you can go to game night, right? This is not like the end of game night forever. Okay. But the point I'm trying to make here is, is that you need to communicate with your loved ones, with your circle of friends so that they can support you.

12:52Say, Hey, I get it. I got your back. No, no worries. We won't go to game night. We're going to chill at home because I know this is important to you. Lastly, you are changing your life and becoming an entrepreneur. This means you need to change the people you know. You need to change the circle around you. If most people around you are not entrepreneurs, are not business builders, are not creators, it's going to be very hard for you to be motivated because it's going to feel weird. It's going to feel strange what you're doing. You're going to be the odd person out. And what really is important in this process is for you to make it so normal that of course I should be successful.

13:28Of course I should be building a business. It's normal for me to make a million dollars a year on a business or 10 million or a hundred million. This is something I see all the time around me. And that doesn't happen by accident. You need to build that circle around you. Let me give an example. When I was starting my side hustles and I was building business on the side as a teacher, right? My normal life, my day job, I'm surrounded by teachers. They're not building businesses, right? So they're not showing me what's possible, okay? They're not showing me this is normal. They're showing me that I should push myself.

14:00So I had to join a coworking space, like I mentioned, do my focus work. But in that coworking space, they would have events on weekends, on Friday nights, pitch nights. People would talk about their business. I would mix with other people that are doing the same thing, building businesses. And it just seemed normal now. And I was inspired and I felt like I had a new circle of friends and I'm meeting new people. By the way, not easy. When I was doing this, I was trying to make new friends at 25, 26, 27, 28, 30. Not easy, right? But you have to do it so that you can start building a new life, building a new standard for yourself.

14:35When I moved to New York and I became a full-time entrepreneur and I left my full-time career as a teacher, I started to really find communities in New York that I can just get to know people that are building businesses. I joined a basketball meetup group of people that have startups, right? We used to play basketball on Saturday morning. And afterwards we would talk about our startups over breakfast and it was cool. We played basketball. I got to know people, but you're not going to meet these people. You're not going to have them a part of your life if you just stay home, right? If you just never meet these people, you never make an effort to go to these events.

15:08And sometimes all you need is just to go to one event, one conference in your area or in your city. And when you meet all these people at the conference, take down their details or email, stay in touch, you know, send a messages on, you know, Instagram, whatever it might be. But the point here is, is that sometimes it just takes one event to start building a community to recap, forget about all this traditional advice of like, Oh, figure out how many minutes you're spending on Snapchat. No, that's not really going to do anything. What you need to do is prioritize your business, carve out the time, find the place and the time that you're going to do this 90 minute focus work three days a week to start with.

15:43This is your first task. Do this right now. And by the way, if you want a checklist for today's episode, we have it over in our worksheets. Just go to 100mba.net slash worksheets and you can download a checklist of all the things you need to do to get started and carve out that time. Okay. The second thing you're going to do, of course, is create that schedule. I said, put it in your calendar and make it a non-negotiable. Okay. Third thing, you're going to find those micro moments, like when you're folding laundry, when you're having lunch, when you're commuting, when you're working out, where you can invest in yourself, learn, grow, take that course, listen to that book so that you can be able to become better as a person and as an entrepreneur.

16:23And then lastly, you're going to have that talk with your family, with your friends, and also start expanding your friends by meeting new people at events, at meetups, so that you can start normalizing success in business. Finding the time to start a business might seem challenging, but with the strategies I shared with you today, it seems doable, right? You could do this, right? I did it. It's not super easy, but it's also not impossible, right? And if you really care, if you really want to build a business, you want to start this new life and be an entrepreneur and create that independent wealth for yourself, then this is enough motivation for you to just get going, right?

17:02To carve out that time, right? By forging your way and making it happen, okay? And to add to this, just to add a little bit of an extra tip here, understand that it takes some initial push. It takes some initial effort to get a boulder down the hill, okay? A boulder just standing there at the top of the hill is not really going to move. It's pretty heavy, but it's going to take a lot of effort in the beginning just to push it, just to get some momentum. And then once it starts turning, it's going to start rolling, rolling slowly and then faster, faster, faster as momentum builds. The same thing goes with building a business, right?

17:36In the beginning, it takes a lot of effort just to get going, to get off stationary, right? To get off this like not moving at all to moving a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. And once you give yourself that push, continue with that momentum and be consistent with your appointment, with yourself to build on your business. you can't lose. Okay. It's just a matter of time. Love it. Thank you so much for listening and watching the$100 MBA show. If you love these lessons, if you want more valuable lessons, just go to 100mba.net. We got a ton of business lessons. And when I say ton, I mean 2 ,500 business lessons for you to choose from.

18:10And you can filter by genre, marketing, finance, whatever you might be. And don't forget, you can download today's worksheet, the checklist for today's lesson over at 100mba.net slash worksheets. Thanks for tuning into the$100 BA show. You got this. I know you do. This is a beginning that you'll never forget. I'm kind of envious a little bit because this is a fun, interesting, challenging time where you grow tremendously because of your commitment to build your business. Enjoy every minute. Be thankful you have this opportunity in the first place to even do this, okay? Because a lot of people, they just dream and they never do.

18:46But you're a doer, and I know that you're gonna follow through and make this happen. Take care. I'll see you in the next episode.