Myo Life

Transcript

Hey, I'm Carmen and welcome to Myo Life. That's short for my Outrageous Life, which is exactly the kind of life I get to live since I found the courage to ditch dental hygiene and build a life I'm bonkers about as a myofunctional therapist and entrepreneur. Here you will find all the things myo business and how to build a life that you, too, are bonkers about. I'm very happy you're here. Shall we dive in? Well, hello, friend, and welcome back to the Myo Life podcast. I'm Carmen, the Director of Bravery at the Myofunctional Therapy Training Academy, and I'm so glad you're here. We have a great topic, but also just a heads up. We also have some landscaping going on, so nothing like hitting record on a podcast that you have to do right now and then find out that your lawn team is getting to work. So if you hear it, my apologies. So back to that topic today.

If you have got a dream of starting your myofunctional therapy business or maybe you've already gotten started and then you're just dreaming about when it's going to be profitable or you're going to be making some money, or maybe you're dreaming about a life that doesn't involve, you know, dental hygiene snore, snore, wink, wink but your calendar might be saying like ha ha, yeah, nice try. Then this one is for you, because today we're going to be blowing up that lie. You are not too busy, you just need a better system, and I've got one for you: a simple three-step time audit that's going to show you exactly where your hours are leaking from and how to fix it quickly.

Step one: track it. So the first thing that you need to know is some data, okay? I want you to track everything you do for three to five days. You can do this easily on your Google Calendar. Basically, you take a time diary, everything, you know. You can do 15-minute increments there and just track it all and you're going to keep track of everything.

Time spent at your job taking care of your dental hygiene patients, all the way to your doom scroll, your TikTok spirals, even driving to Target for just that one thing that you need. Use whatever tool works for you — notebook, iPhone notes, even a time tracking app. The goal here, my friend, is total honesty, no judgment. You're just trying to get clarity. It's not about guilt.

Most of us think we don't have time, but in reality, we're just not aware of how we're spending it. The spoiler alert here is that you're probably just bleeding hours you didn't even know that you had. This is very real for most of my students. When we do time audits, when they are complaining about how they don't have time to get stuff done, they're just spending it in silly ways. So step number one is to track it.

Once you have that data, then step two is going to be that you're going to score it. You're going to take your log or your Google calendar and you're going to score each activity red, yellow, or green. You can turn these colors in your Google Calendar, which is super easy. Or, if you're old school like me, you can just get out a pen and paper and write these activities down and get out the markers. Red: this is your straight-up time waster. Doom scrolling, TV, Netflix binges — anything that is just wasting time. Yellow is your necessary but neutral thing. This is obviously your job, your hygiene shifts, your chores, groceries, laundry, church activities, 4-H, all of those things that require your time. Tommy's t-ball, jujitsu, all of that kind of stuff. And then green is going to be your business building goals. If you're just dreaming about starting your business, then this is going to be like doing your Ditch Hygiene Academy™ trainings.

If you're already kind of in business and you're just trying to get some wind in your sails, maybe that's writing your Instagram content, booking consults, those free assessments, doing exams, delivering therapy — all of that is a big deal. So what you need to be asking yourself is: is this activity fueling my dream or draining my energy?

One of my students realized she was losing hours every week just by rerunning errands because she wasn't organized or because she didn't meal plan correctly. Once she fixed that, she gained back a bunch of hours and was booking clients and had more time to work. So it works.

Then step number three: you're going to shift it. Here comes the good part. Time doesn't magically appear. You make it. No time fairy is coming your way. There's not a magic lamp with a genie. We all have the same 24 hours and really what sets the successful people, the doers, apart from just the dreamers and the not-doers is really how you use your time.

Step three is really important, and this is where the action is, and that step is to shift it. Cut out or delegate the reds — those things that somebody else can do. Or just get rid of them. There are many, many red tasks that you're doing that you don't need. Simplify the yellows and ruthlessly protect the greens. That might mean turning off Netflix an hour earlier so you can work on your business or do your Ditch Hygiene Academy™ lesson. This might mean knowing what your enough is so that you can cut back one day of hygiene to have a sacred business day.

For those of you who don't know what your enough is, your enough is basically the bottom line — not your dream life, not the money that you need to live your dream life — but really the money that you need to keep beanie weenies on the table and keep the lights on. For example, if your enough requires you only to work 15 hours a month instead of 60 hours a month, then there's room to get some white space so that could be sacred business-building time. Other things that are absolute life changers: let Instacart handle your groceries so that you can handle your dreams, or hiring a housekeeper so that you can work on your business.

When I made these investments in my own life at first I felt like, who the hell am I to have a housekeeper? Or a personal shopper that brings stuff to me? But since somebody else can’t do my business, it makes sense. If you need to work on business stuff, let somebody else bring your groceries. Let somebody come in and clean a couple hours a week. Let somebody come in and watch your babies for a couple hours a week. Or let them babysit your babies and you go somewhere so you can work.

In my opinion, you only need at least a minimum of three focused hours a week to build momentum. If you can get five to ten, that is fantastic. But I have some students who are just starting out and all we can find is three to five hours and that’s okay. As long as you keep moving forward, that's going to be really important.

The other thing that's really important is to remember that you don't need more time. You need better priorities. If the things you're working on don't earn you money, then they are probably passive action, and you really need to be taking massive action. You might just be working on the wrong thing. That's one of the things I do in any of my courses: I teach you how to set your essential priorities and we don’t plan them for a year — we break our yearly goals down into quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily so that you know you’re doing the right thing.

Alright. Let’s get ready to land this plane. It's really important, my friend, that you learn how to track where your time really goes and then score it. Score what serves you versus what drains you, and then shift your schedule so that your business finally gets the attention that it deserves. If you're feeling motivated right now, here's what I want you to do: start your time audit. Do it for three to five days, three to seven days, whatever, and then send it to me. I want to hear about your biggest aha moments. Where are you wasting time? Most of you are wasting it on social media, which is a stupid waste of time. You're comparing, collecting recipes, looking at stretching videos — all of that stuff — and it's keeping you from building whatever that dream life is. I can’t wait to hear. So you can get in touch with me by sending me a message using the link at the top of the episode description. Make sure I have your name and your information so that I can reach back out to you, because I read all of these and I love being in touch with you. I will help keep you accountable to getting your three steps in. I'm going to hold you accountable to track it, score it and shift it.

One last thing. If this episode helped you out, hit subscribe, rate it, share it with a fellow myofunctional therapist — but really, this could be shared with any business owner that’s having trouble with their time. It’s one of the best ways that I can reach and support others who are just trying to figure this business thing out. If you subscribe and decide that I’m not your gal, you can just unsubscribe. I’ll cry, but you can still do it. Until next time, my friend, go build a life you are absolutely bonkers about. I’ll be back real soon with some more myofunctional business goodness.