The Critical Connection Between How You Value Your Time and Your Ability to Create Real Business Sustainability

INTRO: [00:00:00] After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host, Katherine Thompson takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you're ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen, heard, and a sought after entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you're in the right place.

Be the sought after entrepreneur podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter one size fits all approach to marketing and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this, you can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life.

Welcome to be the sought after entrepreneur podcast. And here's your host, Katherine Thompson. 

Kathryn Thompson: Hey, hey, Superstar Theta 2 in this week's episode. I cannot wait to dive into today's topic [00:01:00] because I want to talk to you about something that I have observed in my own entrepreneurial journey. And that is my relationship with time and how that relationship with time was impacting my ability to realize the vision that I wanted.

And. Part of that vision is not buying into hustle culture, stepping off of that hamster wheel, something that I lived through for many, many, many years as an entrepreneur, but also something that I feel like came via my corporate career, which I spent 15 years in corporate to some degree. And I want to share with you that realization or that aha moment, because I do believe that if you're in the stage of business right now where you feel like You were hustling really hard to create success in your business and hustling hard doesn't necessarily Have to mean you're putting in all this work and you're not seeing the results right and you're grinding hard to make it happen I'm talking [00:02:00] about hustling in your business and creating really epic results But getting to a point where you're like frick this isn't sustainable and not really sure Or knowing how to sort of step off that hamster wheel.

And I want to share with you my observation in hopes that it'll help you. Because I feel like I have stepped off of that hamster wheel. And I want to share with you how I was able to do that. And it has everything to do with changing my relationship with time. And really understanding my relationship with time and what I Was putting my effort towards in terms of believing that I need to create success in a certain way.

So, and why I believe that that happens, right? So when we enter into entrepreneurship, for those of you that always knew you were going to be an entrepreneur and that's what you've been doing since you left school, graduated high school, kudos to you. But for those of you that are listening who potentially took another route to get here, like being in [00:03:00] corporate, left corporate, or maybe you had Other jobs where you were responsible to answer to somebody else, it wasn't your own company or your business that you were started, then you will probably resonate with what I'm about to share with you because we are conditioned based on the environment that we are in and we exist in, right?

So I spent 15 years in corporate going to an 8 to 5, whatever you want to call it. I never really had to consider my time because my day and started my day started and ended. With the parameters of my corporate career. I had evenings off. I had weekends off, right? They weren't asking me to work evenings and weekends.

Maybe some of you have a different experience with corporate But oftentimes I would volunteer myself to work evenings and weekends because I needed quote unquote to get the work done Right, there was lots of demands coming through and quote unquote not enough hours in the day But if I actually look back on my corporate career [00:04:00] there wasn't a lot of My positions where I was required to work evenings and weekends and therefore I got to clock in and clock out like everybody else and then I could forget about it or Maybe I went home and worried about it, but I didn't actually have to put in hours, right?

So I never really had to cultivate my relationship with time because somebody was always telling me where I needed to be when I needed to be there and And I was working within the confines of an eight hour day, let's just say. So I knew that there was an off button and a start button, right? I knew I could turn off at five and I had to be on at eight, let's just say.

And so I didn't have to think beyond that. Similarly, right, if we think about growing up in the traditional school system, you went to school, you showed up to class. If you didn't show up to class, your parents probably got called saying, You know, your son or daughter skipped school or they weren't at [00:05:00] class today.

What's going on? Yada, yada, yada. There were people holding you accountable to being in class. And if you weren't in class, you got a phone call to home and probably had parents going, what the heck's going on? You skipped fifth period or you skip third period or whatever. Like, what were you doing? Don't do that anymore.

But then when you transition into university, Right. And you go into college or university, there are, aren't professors taking attendance. So you could enroll in an undergraduate in arts or undergraduate in commerce or whatever, and you could enroll for a year and never go to class, and no one was calling your parents going, hey, your daughter or son isn't in class, what the hell's going on?

That never happened. And you see that pattern happen with a lot of kiddos that went off to university and were like, I have this freedom to skip class when I want to and all the things. I'm not being quote unquote forced [00:06:00] to go and attend class. And so. This identity of then having to step into an identity of taking responsibility and accountability to go to class for some people that didn't work.

And then they failed out 1st semester. They failed out 1st year or whatever, or they got really crappy marks and then they. Went on to do something else, or they picked their socks up and went, shit, I'm learning from my experiences here and I need to be accountable now to my classes. There's no one holding me accountable.

Similarly, if you're working in corporate or you were working for somebody else, you didn't necessarily need to be quote unquote accountable for your time because you were told when you needed to be there and you were often told what you needed to do when you were there. So there was no relationship with.

The effort and time you were putting into things and you're starting to end time, sorry. So if you left corporate to start your own business, which I did after 15 years and I stepped [00:07:00] into my brick and mortar business making wine, I had no concept. Of time, meaning while the store was open, you know, five days a week at the time we first kicked off might have been six days a week.

Can't remember. Now again, a little forgetful of my experience there, but we had time that I needed to be in the store and then there was time after and outside the store that I was doing a lot of the work as well. And I was working 15 hour days. Right as an entrepreneur, because that's quote unquote, what we need to do in order to be successful in our business.

Yada, yada, yada, all of the things. But I also never had a relationship with time. So if I was in my business, right? And there was shit that had to get done. It had to get done and there was no one else doing it. When I was in working in corporate, there was shit that needed to get done, but there was a whole group of people that were supporting me in that vision of getting it [00:08:00] done.

I wasn't working solo in isolation, but I also had a team of people, but it also wasn't just contingent on me. It wasn't a hundred percent my responsibility to actualize and realize the vision. When you are a solopreneur, you're starting a business solo and it's your vision. The responsibility does fall on you, therefore you have to cultivate a healthy relationship, not only with that responsibility, but you also have to cultivate a healthy responsibility with time.

I didn't know when to shut off, because there was always things to do, but I never had that responsibility in corporate, because I could always shut off, right? It's like, again, stepping from high school into university where there's that accountability. I didn't have the accountability. I went to class because I wanted to go to class.

Right. So I had that accountability, but I know a lot of people that didn't and then didn't know how to navigate that because they were like, well, no one's telling me I have to go. So I'm just not going to go. Right. Similarly with [00:09:00] the brick and mortar coming from corporate into my brick and mortar. I had no relationship with time.

It was a totally different identity. I was stepping into a different identity. I was going from corporate to entrepreneur. And so for the first four years of my entrepreneurial journey, I worked crazy, crazy hours to quote, unquote, make it work until I hit a cap in that journey where I could no longer sustain that.

And that was around four years. I mean, four years was like the, the end. piece of it, but probably the last year of that business, I was like, I can't operate like this. Like it, something has to change. Similarly, when I stepped into the online business and I started to work from home now talk about time creep, right?

Cause the store had set hours. There were hours I needed to be there. So there were still some parameters around time that I needed to be at the store because it was open to the public in that way. [00:10:00] But then when I transitioned to my business where I was working from home and I was working online, there was no separation between home and work, right?

I was at home. There was no separation there. So I could work all hours of the day, right? I could work. My day could start at any point. And there would be no start and end time. And that's what I started to realize in my online business very early on, was that a lot of the work that I was doing as a solopreneur in that business, I was doing on evenings.

I was doing weekends. I was working Monday to Friday. I was working all of the time. Now, that will only get you so far, especially when you start to hire team. And this is probably one of the biggest hangouts that I see a lot of entrepreneurs face who have reached a level of success where maybe they've already hired team and they're struggling with the team they've hired because they got to a point of max burnout or, or cap capacity, which I did.

And then I hired people just to like [00:11:00] save. Rescue me, save the time. I don't actually know what I need you to do. I don't actually know what, what I want you to spend your time on. I just need help. And that often ends in a disaster because the people you're hiring don't really have clear expectations of what you want them to do and where you want them to spend your time, but they also, you don't have perception around the time it takes to actually do anything because You're just doing stuff.

You're just working really hard in your business to do things. And so you forgot that when you went to write your sales page, it took you, you know, five Saturdays and a couple evenings. You don't remember that because you were just doing it and it got done. Right, or you might not remember that, you know, you worked all day on a Saturday and got it done.

But it was a 12 hour day straight with, you know, a couple cups of coffee and snacks here and there. And then when you go to hire a team to support, you're like, well, why is it taking so [00:12:00] long? That shouldn't take. You know, two days to do it should, you should be done in 24 hours. Right. And that's where you kind of wreck havoc, not only on your team, but the biggest havoc that I see that this causes is the miss expectation that things will happen a lot quicker than they will.

And I think that's the problem in all of this is that oftentimes we have no concept of time in that we think. Well, I want X, Y, and Z. I want vision X, right? I want to build this six figure business and I want it to be sustainable and I want it to work around my lifestyle. And I want to launch next week.

And I often will look at clients going, great. I don't want to kill your vision. I think you've got a beautiful vision. I just think we need to make sure that it's congruent with your relationship with time. And [00:13:00] that if it's not, we need to realign because What I have done and I know what a lot of my clients do and a lot of people that I've supported through this journey is, is that we have a vision and then we just start working towards that vision based on this identity of hustle, work hard, grind, and then we get to this point of success and we're going, but I'm still just hustling and grinding in order to realize a different vision.

And we all know this, right? We all know this conceptually. We can't operate from the same operating system if we want to get there, which is why for me finally being in my business where I feel like I have the space to breathe and I actually have space in my day and I have space in my weekends and I can go on holiday and all these sorts of things where I'm not working Monday to Friday evenings and weekends required me to change my relationship with time and change my relationship with time.

Work and [00:14:00] change my relationship with how I approach that. Similarly, when I went into university, I needed to change my relationship with who was going to be accountable for me. Right. It was no longer gonna be the teachers who then told my parents. Right. I had to, I had to take ownership and responsibility of that.

I had to step into that. Similarly, when I left corporate, I had to really struggle in my first business and really, really struggle with asking for help, knowing how to ask for help, knowing how long things would actually take, right? I had to really, really change my relationship with that, so that I could then.

Bring that into my online business, but I fumbled a lot in the online business, probably for the first four years, because I was still operating from that identity, that operating system of hustling hard. I'm going to make it happen. I'm going to work really hard to do it. And if that means I've got to put in long hours and weekends, that is exactly what [00:15:00] I'm going to do.

And if that means I need to spend X amount of dollars on Facebook ads and Google ads and getting support and learning all the things I will do that. Right? And again, time and money to me are interchangeable. If we're looking at money and we're looking at time as energy, they're both just energy. And so, how do we value money and how do we value time?

Because if you don't value your time, it's going to show hugely in what your money situation looks like. Now I'm not a wealth and money coach by any stretch, but I'm just, I'm just saying from my own experience and from observation that if you do not value your time, that means if you're willing to work 18 hour days for free, you don't really value your time.

Or if you're packaging your offers in a way that. You know, has you working over the top [00:16:00] for what you're being paid for? You're not valuing your time. And that is going to translate to then your money story and that money, your money issues, because you don't actually value the time that you're putting into things.

Right. And we often, most of us don't. And if you're a heart led. solopreneur, solpreneur, like really, really heart led. Maybe you're a bit of a people pleaser. Maybe you like to overcompensate and over deliver. And that all again, comes back to our relationship with, uh, with time and how we value our own time and also how we value our expertise.

And so if there's a hangup. And I've gone through this and I continually reevaluate this, but I've gotten to a really great place in my business and in my life where I can see a vision. I'm like, that's a vision. That's a great vision. And then I can go now we have to consider what it's going to take to [00:17:00] implement that and realize that.

And then based on that, Is that, quote unquote, worth my time and energy in order to get to X, Y, and Z? Or is this the best path for me to take, in a lot of ways, in order to realize that? And I think where a lot of us get hang up, get hung up, is we have a vision. And then we don't take a beat to like, really look at how do we implement this?

We just start taking action because that's what we do to make it happen. I'm just going to take this step and this step and this step and this step. And then before you know it, sure. You might get to the goal of your money goal, or you might get to the goal of client success goal, whatever it is, or impact or whatever, maybe it's right in the book or whatever it is you get there and you go, but I can't keep going the way that I'm going.

And if that is you, and you're questioning that you're going, I can't, this isn't sustainable for me, then you've got to take a look at your relationship with time and how you value your own [00:18:00] time. And therefore that's going to translate into how you value money. Because if you're a business owner, entrepreneur, you need to be making money in your business.

Number one, obviously, right? You need to be earning an income. And if you're struggling and, and this is the thing, it doesn't need to be struggling, maybe you're making money. But your business is a cash eating monster. There's a reason for that. And that has everything to do with your relationship with time and resources.

Right? So what are you spending your money on in your business? And is it necessary? And I think a lot of business businesses go through this, right? I've gone through it at the various stages I've been at, right? There's been times where I'm like, wait a minute, I'm not spending more than I'm making, but I'm spending a lot of money.

And then I'm evaluating the expenses and the investments that I'm making. And I'm going, why am I, what is this bringing me closer to my vision? Right? And if I'm [00:19:00] spending More than not. I'm earning necessarily, but if I'm spending a lot of money and therefore I'm having to work harder than to make money, I have a distorted relationship with time and money, right?

Because that's the cycle. That's a sneaky cycle that you can get on. And I was on it, right? I was seeing great success. Business is making money. Super, super pumped. All these sorts of things, but then I'm investing in all these different things, coaches, ads, all that sort of stuff, which I'm not saying are bad things, but I was doing all of this.

And then I'm like, well, I'm no further ahead in that vision. I'm reaching the vision, but I'm having to work really hard to make that money because I have. All of these expenses going out every single month, and that's where I had to go, what is my relationship with my own time because I value my own time more than anything, right?

My time is invaluable in a lot of ways. My evenings, my weekends, my time away on vacation. That is why I [00:20:00] created the business I created in a lot of ways. Right. And of course to support other solopreneurs and solopreneurs achieve their vision and create the impact that they want. So it's impact focus, but it's also there's a lifestyle piece to this.

I, I want the space in my day and in my time to be able to work on the things that I really love to work on. And I'm sure if you're listening to this, you're similar, but. In the same breath, if we are wired on an operating level, we've got that operating system of making it happen, working hard, high achiever, go getter, really ambitious.

We have to rewrite our story with our relationship with time and the value that we put on it because this, for me, has been one of the biggest obstacles I've needed to overcome in a lot of ways or navigate or integrate or move through and it is. One of the biggest challenges I see in a [00:21:00] lot of the people that I work with is that there's no concept or relationship to time, and that we're on this fast track, and the world is only getting faster, and therefore people think we need to put output faster, and I've got to speed up that output, and I would love to challenge that rhetoric, I would love to challenge the rhetoric of needing to produce ten times quicker, I would love to challenge the rhetoric of I need to constantly be, you know, going out there and putting myself out there.

I would love to challenge that rhetoric because I think there is an essence of things that are being lost in that rhetoric. But I also think that, and in that way of operating, but I also think that there is an, uh, a really deep, deep, deep need for more presence, more pause. More like, let's just, [00:22:00] you know, surrender here for a moment, right?

That not everything needs to be rushed. Not everything has to happen overnight. Not everything has to happen so quickly and that we have to look at the time, right? It's, we often will look at investments or we'll look at money going out of our business or whatever. And it's like, I haven't gotten the results I've wanted, right?

This is a big one. And then when I actually look at. The timeframe that somebody is like put in, and I'm saying intentionally put in, I'm not talking about that you had this vision four years ago and you've tried a bunch of things and quote, unquote, things haven't worked. I'm talking about intentionally stuck with something for a period of time.

And I've shared this many times on other episodes. And I share often in what I write about that so often. People don't even give their business idea or the thing 90 days to actually quote unquote work and sustainability [00:23:00] to me is a lifestyle. It's, it's not something that you set and forget. It's not something that you just achieve and it's a milestone and we're moving on.

It's not that it's sustainability for a reason, because it's something that's like living, breathing ecosystem within your business, right? So it's something that you're continually growing and evolving with. That's sustainability. So if you're putting a timeline on it, you're not building for sustainability.

If you're saying, I need to have X by three months, or I need to have X in two days, or I need to have X next week, you're not creating for sustainability. You're in the micro. That's what I call the micro. Not that systems thinking, not that big picture thinking. I'm saying you're in the micro. You're just taking action in the moment, which again is.

Sort of the hustle culture mentality or corporate mindset, right? When you're in corporate, you go to work. It's like, do these things usually, right? Unless you're at a director level and you've got input in strategy, you've got input in [00:24:00] strategic direction. Then it's a totally different, I'm taught that's different.

But if you're an employee in a company. Even if you were at a manager level, right? The CEO, the VPs, people that are running the companies are the ones, quote unquote, setting the vision in a lot of ways there. You're, you're building this for that, right? But you're often told what you need to do in order to get there, right?

There's not a lot of creative freedom in most companies. There's, there's not, right? Or at least the ones that I've worked in and, and the experience that I've had coaching other people that have worked in companies, there's not a lot of creative freedom, let's just say. So you're often told what you need to do.

And so we are conditioned in that way. I'm going to take step here, here, and here, and I'm going to get a gold star for doing exactly what the person told me to do. There's no critical thinking outside of the box thinking again, creative freedom. There's no curiosity. It's like you're just doing what you're [00:25:00] told you need to do or doing what you think you need to do right in order to Be successful in that position which means in your business when you're an entrepreneur There's nobody guiding you on that sort of path per se, there's no, like, you're having to come up with that yourself and if you're conditioned to just follow the script or follow the rules or follow the template, then your mindset and your identity is going to be in that, right?

It's that operating system, that's how you've operated for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, whatever, and it's conditioned within you and we need to rewrite that because it's not about that. Right? It's again, that relationship with time, not really not being able to slingshot back and forth between the big picture vision and then the details that need to happen to implement that.

Not many people can live in that realm. That's where I live. That's literally, I'm wired for that. I'm wired to be that systems thinker where [00:26:00] I'm like up in the big picture, but then I'm also able to slingshot down and go, here's what needs to happen. These are the steps that need to happen. And again, not from like a predictability place, but like helping someone go, this is my vision.

How do I realize it? And then I come in and often we'll go, that's a great vision. Now, these are the things you need to consider in order to implement it. And here's a timeline that I would consider based on. Your business and based on the resources that you have and based on the budget that you have, and then simultaneously, if you're hiring out to people, right, it's like building all of that into, into your timeline, which all comes back to a changing our relationship with time.

Now, some of you might say, but Catherine, what about the whole notion that time's an illusion and that, you know, uh, we can quantum leap these things. The reason why I think people make really great strides, whether you want to call it a quantum leap or. Manifestation or whatever you want to call it. I actually think the reason why people move very quickly and realize what they [00:27:00] want in their life is to me.

It comes back down to that alignment piece in a lot of ways, right? It is, it is a timing thing, a divine timing thing in a lot of ways, but it's alignment within yourself. Are you moving in integrity to who you are and what you're wanting to achieve? So for example, if you say, I want this business where I'm not hustling, but then you're creating from hustle energy.

You're just going to continually crave for muscle energy. It's why it's going to take you a hell of a lot longer to get to realize your vision, because you're not operating from the place that you need to be operating from in order to realize the vision, right? If you say I want to build a million dollar business and I want to do it by myself with no help, then it's like, great.

If that's your vision, cool. But then You need to get in alignment with that identity piece in order to be able to realize that vision at that level, right? It's got to be congruent. And that's the hang up. That's the hang up that I see in a lot of the leadership coaching that I do, right? Is that I see that people say I want this, I want this [00:28:00] vision, and then I very instantly can see where they're operating incongruent to what they're actually saying they want.

And that's, I say that's an integrity thing, but I also think that for a lot of people they don't know it. It's, it's subconscious. They don't, they don't see it because they're in the micro. They're like, here's the vision, but now I don't actually know what I need to do to realize that. And so they're in the micro, like, what's the next step?

Tell me what the next step is. And I often will say, it's not about that. It's not about what your next step is. It's about making sure that the person operating Okay. And the people operating, even your team, right. Ensuring that the energy of the team is operating in that way too, because that's where a lot of people go sideways.

And if you're the leader and you're operating a hustle energy, your team will naturally pick that up, right? They'll naturally pick that up. And it's really not your team's responsibility to start to question you on that. Right. That's up to you to lead and be the leader within your [00:29:00] company. And that is a huge, huge responsibility for you to.

Take on. It's not up to your team to adopt what you say you want, even though you're not adopting that. It's again, leading by example in a lot of ways. I'm not saying your team can't point these things out. But what I am saying is, is that it's it's your role and responsibility to be the person you need to be in order to realize that vision.

And I truly believe it starts and ends with, in a lot of ways, our relationship with time and the value we put on that time, because if we don't value our time, there's below that is, you know, this lack of worth in a lot of ways, but also this belief that we have to turn ourselves inside out in order to move forward.

Thank you. Be valuable, right? Which is a whole other conversation in a lot of ways, but I just wanted to share with you that point. I would love for you to just do your own self reflection and just sort of [00:30:00] sit with that for a moment and go. Where am I not valuing my time? And this could be outside of your business, right?

It might not even be in your business, but maybe it's like, I don't know, with relationships that you have where, you know, you're, I don't wanna say a doormat, but you're like, maybe your friends come to you and they, Just share all of the shit that's going wrong in their life and they just want you to listen and you end up spending three hours just listening to people complain about their life.

I don't know. I'm just giving you an example, but, or, you know, maybe it's family. They're asking you left, right and center for favors and this, this and that. And you're saying yes to everything because you don't value your time. Right? It's it's going to be reflective in your in your reality. So with that, I really hope that this episode has shared a little bit about my journey and some of the things that I've needed to navigate from a time relationship perspective and how I had really not a great relationship with time.

And that's because I didn't necessarily value my own time. And how I really needed to shift that in order to realize the vision that I have [00:31:00] within my business, which is space and time in my business. Right. And having that freedom on evenings and weekends and being able to sort of, yeah, have slow mornings if I want to different things like that.

And that would not have been possible. I don't believe if I hadn't changed my relationship with time and really got curious about where I was. Leaking my time and my energy in that, in that regard. And therefore how that translated into, you know, not necessarily, um, having maybe the money that I wanted or the type of clients that I wanted and different things like that.

So with that, I hope this episode has been helpful and I cannot wait to hear from you. Cheers. 

INTRO: Thanks for listening. We'll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at creatively owned and online at creativelyowned. com until next time, keep showing up as your authentic [00:32:00] self.