18. Life, Business and the Time Crunch

In this episode, Claire shares what's been going on behind the scenes: a trip to Düsseldorf with her daughter Chloe to immerse in German language ahead of her A-levels, a bout of vertigo that knocked her sideways, and weeks spent fighting to secure exam access arrangements for Chloe - a battle she knows many parents will relate to.

But this episode isn't just a life update. Claire turns her experience into a practical lesson for every woman building a business around real life: the power of a real-time audit. When life throws curveballs, we often discover we have far less time than we think — and that's actually the first step to working smarter.

Claire shares how to:

• Audit how you actually spend your time (vs. how you think you do)
• Give yourself permission to do less without guilt
• Protect your most valuable work hours
• Prioritise tasks that will bring in money or meaningfully move your business forward

A warm, honest, and reassuring listen for any woman in business who's ever felt behind, overwhelmed, or like life keeps getting in the way.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to the Girls Mean Business Podcast, where we share business and marketing tips, advice and trade secrets to help you raise your game and build your brilliant business. Get more clarity, more customers, and more sales. Here to show you how. Your host, Claire Mitchell.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Hello, it's Claire from the Girls Meme Business at last. Oh my goodness, it's been ages. So the last time I talked to you, I was just off to Germany with Chloe and we had a great time. There was a guy called Johannes who we booked. He was our greeter. That's something you can do in Germany. You can book volunteer greeters who will meet you for a few hours and talk to you about whatever you want. So in our case, we wanted to go and see all the Japanese elements of Düsseldorf because that's what Chloe Speaking Exam is going to focus on. So we went to Immermanstrasse, which is where the Japanese quarter is. We went to the Japanese temple, we went to the Japanese garden, loads of things. And we spoke German for a whole day. Then we stayed there for another few days and spoke German a lot more, and it really helped. Then I came home and I was fine for a couple of days, and then I got vertigo. I think it's because we'd done four flights. So, you know, Teesside to Skipol and then Skip Hall to Düsseldorf, then reversed in the space of a week, and my ears are never very good anyway. And so I got vertigo and that knocked me for six for a couple of weeks actually. I couldn't really do anything. It's gone now, by the way, at last. Thank goodness. But also I've been fighting for access arrangements for my daughter for her A-levels because she got them in the two subjects that she's doing at college. But then we had to, for her German A-level, which is the whole reason we went to Düsseldorf, we had to use an external language college because the college that Chloe goes to dropped it just after she got her GCSE results. And so she still wanted to do German. So she's now been doing German online and with tutors for two years. And when she got her exam timetable a few weeks ago, there was no access arrangement in place for German because she'd done it externally. So I've literally spent weeks backwards and forwards with the college who were demanding all of this evidence, and because the exam regulator needed evidence per subject, oh my goodness. Anyway, this morning she got it. So now I feel like I've got a bit of my life back. But for all of you out there who spend your life advocating for your child and trying to get access arrangements and all the things that they're entitled to, oh my goodness, I salute you. I've had like six weeks of it. It is exhausting. And I know lots of you have this on an ongoing basis, so my goodness, you deserve medals. Anyway, today's podcast is just to give you an update as to why I've not been on the podcast on my daily podcast that disappeared for three weeks. But in between all of that, I've still been working because that's what we do, isn't it? And I haven't been able to do what I planned to do, which was lots. I've had to just do what I could, which was to keep the business ticking over, to focus on a few little things, to um just really make sure that my clients, my members were looked after and be able to make those calls. But I haven't been able to do any of the other exciting stuff that I'd been meaning to do for ages. So this is me saying, you know, you just have to do what you can do, because life does throw us curveballs. No sooner do we get over one than something else presents itself. And I think we just as women have to get on with it and cope because nobody's coming to rescue us. We just need to get on and do it. But something has to give, and unfortunately, it's often our business. So if that's you, one of the exercises that I did with my ladies in my big Gorn Knigars Business Boot Camp is a real-time audit. What I told them to do was look, write down how you actually spend your time. And this might sound a bit boring or weird. Who's got time for that? Well, you probably don't have time for that because what we found in every single case was that people thought they had, say, 10 hours a week, but by the time they'd taken off, all of the unpaid labour that we do, all of the looking after kids, all of the unexpected things, people popping around, admin that we have to do all of this stuff. Some of them had less than half of the time that they thought that they had. And I thought this was so interesting because when you are working or building a business under the misconception that you have five or six or ten hours, and then when you audit it properly and actually you have way fewer hours, that is time for you to give yourself permission to do the work that fits the time that you have. Because we have all of these expectations that we have ten hours, however many hours, and we should be able to do all of this stuff in that time. But when you realize you have fewer hours, you have to lower your expectations. And that can sometimes mean you have to push things down the list for a while. Or I always recommend doing a a kind of brain dump and getting everything out of your head and just getting rid of anything that doesn't need to be in there. So freeing up some mental bandwidth, getting rid of anything that doesn't need doing now, doesn't need doing in the next two weeks, park anything that still needs doing later on a sheet of paper somewhere or in a notebook, but also just giving yourself permission to say no, to um to say to people, I need this two at these two hours because these are my only two hours that I get in the week. I need to protect them. So saying no to people, being really diplomatic, and making sure that you don't fall out with people who are supporting you, but just making it clear that you have this limited time. You have real time versus what you thought you had, and you have to make that time count. So no particular lesson today, just a message from me to say, I get it. I'm still there. You know, my daughter's 18, starting her A levels. I'm still working around the fact that I don't have the time that I think I have. You know, case in point, fighting for blooming access arrangements for six weeks. So yeah, just go easy on yourself, give yourself permission, and I'm giving you permission, if you need me to give you permission, to do less, but try and protect the work time that you do have and work to your priorities accordingly. So if something isn't going to make you more money, this isn't your work time. If it's not going to make you more money or significantly move your business forward, then it's not a priority right now. Okay, so with everything on your to-do list, is it going to bring more money in this week? If not, is it going to significantly move your business forward? So is it going to build your email list? Is it going to do something else that means you can then make more money next week? So that might be, you know, doing new photographs or whatever. But start to get picky and choosy about how you spend your time and mental energy and how you use that mental bandwidth that we have a limited amount of. So I can't promise I'm going to be around every day. I did want to do a daily podcast, but I'm going to try and be around more days. So just stick with me. I know lots of you are downloading the podcast and I keep getting notifications it's been downloaded. But just to let you know that I'm now in this few weeks of Chloe's A-level, so I'll be there to support her as well. There'll probably be some tales about that. And yeah, I just know that I'm going through it with you, and I will see you again on here very soon. Lots of love. Bye for now. That's it from the Girls Mean Business Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

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