Time management, and the struggles of making decisions for yourself

This week’s newsletter you can read as always (scroll down), but I also did a video version if you’d prefer to watch (or listen)

Okay, so this one is really about how you manage your time.

That’s something I’m really starting to think about as I go on this journey of consulting and marketing. Where is the best use of my time?

And that might sound simple up front. Well, you spend your time doing your client’s work, and you spend your time doing new business. But as you break it down you realize it’s not really that simple.

As you know, I’m always upfront and honest with you guys. And a lot of my newsletters are not solution based, and I worry about that sometimes. Do people really want to read newsletters that are just about other people’s problems and what they’re dealing with, as opposed to hey, here’s a problem I know you have and here’s how you should go about solving it?

But I think there’s strength in understanding from people who see other people’s problems and how they’re approaching them, and how that might apply to what you’re going through.

So that’s what I’m doing today.

To start, let’s just take my current clients off the table.

My clients right now are taking up about 3 days a week of my time. I’m billing on paper for about 3 and a half days a week. So let’s call that 30.

I think that’s really good. I’ve only been doing this for a month, month and a half. I’m excited about the clients and the work, and I think some of this work is going to lead to other work.

It fluctuates, honestly. Some weeks clients need more time, some weeks they need less.

But take 30 hours a week of my time and energy off the table for clients.

Okay. So let’s talk about the other 15.

The first bucket is networking.

That’s taking calls from potential clients. People who can connect me with clients. People in the industry who I just want to make sure know I have this new consulting business.

That’s about 3 to 4 hours a week. So that’s 5 or 6 meetings, plus scheduling the meetings, plus identifying who to talk to, plus messaging people on LinkedIn. Outreach ends up being anywhere from 3 to 5 hours a week.

The next bucket, and this is the one I’m struggling with the most, is content. How do I get my message out there?

One is LinkedIn. That’s not going away.

Then there’s this newsletter, which I write 3 times a week. Monday is for paid subscribers. Wednesday, which is this one, is free. Thursday is about half free and half paid, on open job listings.

That takes me another 4 to 5 hours a week. But it depends. Some weeks I have great ideas for newsletters and some weeks I don’t have good ideas for newsletters, and then it can take a while to write them and edit them.

So call it 4 to 5.

That’s about 8 hours of the 15 gone.

Now with the remaining time I have to think about what I can do proactively. And this is the biggest question mark bucket.

What do I do proactively to make people more aware that Justin, that Secret Menu, is an option for them?

This is the real difficult one for me.

I’ll take The Landing Pad off, because that’s kind of its own thing. It’s great that you guys might know about my consulting business, but that’s not what you’re here for, right?

So there’s a couple of things.

One is writing LinkedIn content. It takes more time than you might think. Coming up with good posts, figuring out what works for promoting me. Sometimes I write posts that are just about new marketing campaigns and I get hundreds of thousands of views. That’s nice awareness about me. If I write posts specifically about the consulting business, those are a little bit more hit or miss. People aren’t as interested, which I don’t blame them.

But this stuff takes time and energy. LinkedIn alone can take me another 2 to 4 hours a week.

The other bucket, and this is the one I’m exploring a decent amount right now, is social content on TikTok and Instagram (smash that follow). Does it make sense for me to start making a lot of video content on those platforms, get a little bit of a following, and drive people to Secret Menu?

This has been a lot of experimenting for me lately. I’ve taught myself how to edit, which I suck at. Video content takes a long time. And I hate staring at myself in the videos.

If I do it well, that’s another 8 hours of my time a week. If I do it well.

I’ve been posting pretty consistently for the last 2 to 3 weeks and so far I’ve found okay success. I’ve had one video get 18,000 views on Instagram. I’ve had other videos do 2,000 to 5,000 on average. And while that seems low, 2 to 5,000 people knowing about Justin Taylor as a consultant could be good.

But I’m not driving any followers. I’m not driving anything else besides the views.

So this is where I’m at.

Do I double down on content in a bigger way?

There’s a couple of avenues. Number 1 is I could hire an editor. I’ve talked to a company that just does editing. They would charge me $40 a video. I’d probably pay them to do 10 to 15 videos a month, so I’d shoot everything and just send it to them and they’d make really great edits for me. That’s $400 to $500 a month I’d have to spend on editing, and then I have to think about the return there.

The other one is an agency. Not to name names, but a lot of the really big LinkedIn creators use an agency. They don’t do it themselves. They have somebody writing most of their posts, making a lot of their video content with them, helping them get creator deals on the platform.

That can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 dollars a month.

From the people I’ve seen, it does really, really well. It’s really successful. It would take it off my plate.

But that’s a lot of money. And I don’t have a lot of money. Not without knowing whether it’s going to be valuable to me, you know? These agencies promise they’ll bring you creator deals, that it’ll lead to more speaking gigs, all of that. And because I have a big LinkedIn audience I can tap into, it seems like it makes sense.

But spending that kind of money is a lot. And it’s a decision I’d have to make pretty soon here.

So this is where I’m at with thinking about building this business. Do I just focus on doing things myself, drive word of mouth, serve my clients as well as I can, and use the hours I have left to make content myself and see how it goes? Or is this the time to make an investment? Do I invest in editors to edit a lot more of my content? Do I invest in an agency that can propel me into more broad awareness, as a business expense that drives the business?

I don’t know. And I’m struggling with it.

These are the types of decisions I’m learning as an independent consultant, or creator, or marketer, or business owner. And they’re important.

When you work at a company, of course the decisions you make have impact. But the impact isn’t dollars out of your wallet. The impact isn’t something you own.

If you work at Disney and you make a decision on a new product, sure, maybe the product image you decide on has a little bit less sales. It doesn’t affect the trajectory of the Disney business a lot.

Whereas where I decide to spend my time and energy now has a profound effect on the trajectory of the business, and maybe on me in the future.

So that’s what I’m dealing with.

If you have any thoughts, please email me. If you have comments, email me.

This also just plays into how you spend your time and where you make investments in yourself. It matters a lot.

And I think the other thing is identifying what you’re failing at and moving on from that quickly. Failing fast is really important. That’s something I think about a lot now.

Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for letting me be vulnerable

-justin