Building your business while having a full-time J-O-B

Are you ready for a transformational journey from full-time employment to owning a successful business? Buckle up, because I’m about to share the roadmap I navigated, transitioning from an employee to a business owner and further, from a one-on-one client business to an online platform. Join me in this enlightening discussion where we dissect how to start and grow your business alongside your full-time job or other business ventures, tackling the hurdles and challenges along the way.

Ever wondered how to create a scalable business model that allows you to quit your day job? Together, we’ll explore the secret of maximizing limited hours without compromising quality time with family, creating a signature program, and developing a robust marketing and sales system. We also touch on crafting an email list, a freebie associated with your offer, and a potential approach based on the signature program bundle to get your business off the ground. Let’s embark on this journey of entrepreneurial success together. Tune in, and let’s start building!

“If you don’t use a calendar for your life, I don’t know how you’re getting anywhere, but if you don’t, start now.” – Shawn Mynar

“The way that your business work and most businesses works is that the time and the energy that you spend now gets that return in the future, so it’s really an investment.” – Shawn Mynar

“The number one most important thing that you should be spending most your time on is figuring out your paid offer and getting it out into the world.” – Shawn Mynar

Burnout-Proof Your Business Masterclass – https://shawnmynar.com/burnoutproof

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Ready for a business with less hustle, more flow? Create your own signature program >>> WATCH THE FREE MASTERCLASS!

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Get the latest scoop >>>SHAWNMYNAR.COM

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Hey, hey there, friends, Welcome back to the Flow Business Podcast. I’m Shawn, your host, and this is your place to build a business based on flow, not force, no hustle, no grinding, no long hours. Actually build a business that you love. Today we are talking about a topic that is long, long, long overdue here on the show, because I know that this is the situation that most of you are in right now, at least those of you that I talked to. I know this is the case for a lot of you, which is that you are starting your business or you are growing your business while also having a full-time job somewhere else, maybe also having another business, or maybe also taking on a full load of client work, something like that, where your business isn’t the only thing that you’re working on, which I mean just life in general would keep that from being the case for any of us, but still, you have something else going on in addition to starting your business growing your business, building your business, all of that stuff. I know that that can feel like a lot. I think sometimes it can feel like it’s almost impossible to do both. You ever get to a point where you can only work on your business, which I know is a really big goal for a lot of you. The reason you’re starting your business, the reason you’re working on your business, is because you want that to be your thing. You want to potentially get to the point someday where you can quit your other job or hand off your other business or transition away from taking one-on-one clients and in this other role, in this other type of business. I know that that is a big dream and a big goal for a lot of you. But when you’re in the thick of it which is the case for so many of you right now it can feel like it’s going to take forever. It can feel like maybe it’s almost impossible and to still have the time and energy and mental capacity to work on your business. After coming home from a full day of work, or on the weekends, when you’re trying to recharge, to go back to your job on Monday, it’s like how is this going to happen. That may be something that you’re feeling right now, but today I just want to share an idea for you of how this could look. Talk about some of the minimum things that you need to be doing to get your business going right now when you have such a limited time and capacity to do so and really getting it going in the time that you have available and then really also breaking down how you could be spending your time to get your business going right now when it’s not your only thing. So that’s what you can expect today. That’s what we’re going to go over. I’ll start by sharing my own personal experience with this. I will say, when I first started my business, I went from like having a job one day to being unemployed and having a business the next. There was no overlap. I don’t know if it was like just ignorance I guess you could say of like just kind of thinking it would work out and everything would be okay and I would not need to have that job any longer and I could just do my business. And I would say that I was lucky in that at the time I was starting a personal training business, lots of people need personal training, had lots of friends and past clients and things like that that immediately started working with me. So while I didn’t like immediately have the same income coming in, I did have it. I had the same income coming in right away and it was enough for me to survive. So I can tell you that I don’t have experience in having a full time job and working on starting my business, because I didn’t do that overlap thing from the get go. But when I went from a one on one client business, which was like the only thing I did was just taking one on one clients, to having this online business with a signature program, that was more of this kind of transition because I had really three things going at one time. I had a really busy one on one client practice that took most of my time. I was working on creating my signature program and I was also really sick, which I’ve mentioned quite a bit before. That was really the catalyst that got me into wanting a business that allowed for more free time and flexibility and income, which is why I transitioned to the signature program model. So that in and of itself, being sick was such a big deal and a really big time and energy suck. One of my biggest symptoms was just chronic fatigue always being super, super tired, sometimes not being able to get out of bed, a lot of times having to cancel on my clients because I was feeling sick that day. So I had to kind of manage that. But then also the protocol was super intense, which sounds really weird, but part of the recovery process was just having this super intense protocol lots of medications, lots of supplements, lots of these other things I kind of had to do to manage myself and some of those things made me not feel very good or like there were some kind of transitional phases I had to go through. It’s kind of hard to explain until you’re in it, but you get the idea it was a lot, and so I was kind of dealing with that and also having to work around those days, sometimes weeks, where I wasn’t feeling good and I didn’t have the energy or mental capacity to do anything, along with this really pretty busy one-on-one client practice and also really wanting to transition out of that, really needing to for my health, and kind of having to do that on top of it all. So I feel like that moment of my life which at this point it really feels like a moment, like I still remember it, but it feels like such a small, tiny little blip on my radar of life where things were really busy and my time was spent very differently than it was before or it has been after, and that’s one really important point that we’re going to get into no-transcript. I in that time spent my mornings while I was eating breakfast. I always got up several hours before I would need to be with a client or anything like that, so I would make my breakfast, eat and work on creating my program. Then I would have my day full of clients and then after dinner I would work on my program some more, and then on weekends I would also. I probably spent three to four hours per week on creating my program and it took me three months to put together. So I worked on it from basically mid-September until mid-December and then launched it in January after the holidays were over. So that’s my personal experience with working on multiple things at one time and making time for that so that you can make the transition in your life that you want to make. So let’s get into some of the takeaways that I learned from this, but also just from what I see in the clients that I work with and the members of the Signature Program Bundle how they are making it happen for themselves as well. So first things first. The only way this works is if you make time for it. Basically that seems like a no-brainer, but it needs to be said you have to make time for this other thing that you are working on. In this case it is your business. It doesn’t need to be like tons of time. You don’t need to spend eight hours of your Saturday and Sunday working on your business. Two to three hours. If that’s all you can do right now, that is great. Two to three hours per week so this could be chunked up into like an hour on Wednesday evening and then two hours on Sunday afternoon. You know it can be chunked up into places of your day and your weeks that work for you and your life and everything else you have going on. Now. This does mean that you may have to give up some things. For now, maybe you don’t watch TV on Wednesday nights and instead you work on your business. Maybe you do a grocery store pickup for now instead of going to the grocery store. Maybe you work on your business during your lunch break at your job. There are things that, once you’ve decided on how much time you are willing to commit to your business each week, when you really sit down and look on the calendar, you can find these little spots of time that would work to integrate your business building activities into your day. I think it’s also important that if you have a family or a partner or even a roommate that you typically spend a lot of time with, you need to have a conversation with them, let them know your schedule and when you’re going to be working on your business and get that buy-in from them as well. Let them know that that’s part of their schedule now too, because, yeah, it’s it’s likely that the time you’re going to be working on your business right now would normally be time that you’d be spending with them. And again, I am not saying to get rid of all the quality time that you spend with your family and your loved ones and your partner. That is not what I’m saying. That is not what you need to do to build your business, but again, we’re talking a few pockets of time per week and then it actually really makes the time you do spend with them more special. So really see, if there’s times where, yeah, you and your partner are just watching a TV show or you and your family are just kind of like all hanging out in the same room but doing separate things, that makes a great time to work on your business. And one of my favorite favorite things is what we hear in my house called coexisting, where you’re still in the same room, so you still have their presence, you’re still all kind of together and have that feeling, but you are all working on different things. So you are working on your business, your partner, your family, your roommate is doing something else, but you’re coexisting, so maybe you both have your earbuds in just kind of in your own worlds, but in the same room. It’s actually quite delightful. I highly recommend. If that’s not something you’ve done before, it’s great. And when it comes time to work on your business, you don’t have to feel like you’re sacrificing time necessarily with your loved ones. It’s just coexisting time, which we all need to. And another thing to remember that I kind of alluded to earlier is that this is just one teeny, tiny little season of your life. It is not going to be like this forever. Especially, the more you can commit to this process and this schedule and these hours, these pockets of time that are dedicated to your business, the more you can stay committed to those, the quicker this season of your life will be, because the quicker your business will grow, obviously. And so it’s just this one season. This is not how your life now is. So if it feels more busy, well that’s because it is. If it feels like you have less time to watch your favorite TV show, well that’s because you do, but it’s just for now. It’s just for now, and especially if you are working towards a business that will give you more free time and flexibility. You are doing this now with the knowledge that so much more is going to open up for you so soon because of the dedication and commitment you are making now. So your entire calendar and free time is going to change so drastically so soon as you stay committed to this season of your life now. So remember it’s just a season, and if your partner or your roommate or your family is having a hard time understanding why you’re working on your business during a coexisting time instead of watching the TV show with them, then remind them that this is a season of your life as well and not a forever thing. So that’s the first step is, yeah, you have to make time for it. That’s the only way that it will work. And as soon as you have decided on the times that you will spend on your business each week, the amount of time, the pockets of time where you can put in that time, and that’s okay. If it’s different every week, that works too. But you have to schedule it. This is a very important step and if you don’t use a calendar for your life, I don’t know how you’re getting anywhere. But if you don’t start now, and even if it’s just for your business, even if it’s just, you have a business calendar and you even set alerts, you set reminders so that it reminds you, hey, in 30 minutes it’s work on biz time, whatever you have to do. But you have to schedule it in your calendar. And when you do, as soon as it goes in your calendar, it becomes as important, if not more, than a client meeting. You would never know show a client. You would never just not show up. You would never cancel a paying client to go to the grocery store. You would never cancel a paying client because your dog needs a walk. No, you would go to the grocery store before or after your client meeting. You would take your dog for a walk before or after your client meeting. The same thing goes for this time that you are putting into your calendar. I like to call it work on biz time. You can call whatever you want or even put in more specifically what you are doing during that time, which we’re going to go over in a few minutes, what you’re doing during that work on biz time, even better, even more specific, to really show you exactly what you’re doing. So once it’s in the calendar, it’s as important as a paying client. And if you wouldn’t change or cancel your client because of something which would pretty much only be like an emergency or illness or something like that, then you cannot change or cancel your work on biz time. That is how serious this needs to be. And when you start thinking of it that way, you will be amazed at how quickly you can start growing your business because you are really coming to it with that same level of commitment. And one thing we talked about in the accountability group of signature program last week that I wanted to bring up here is that time that you’re spending on your business now it will be worth thousands of dollars in the very near future, potentially. So no, you’re not getting paid that hour like punch in a clock, like hey, I worked on my business for an hour, now I have $50. That’s not how this works, of course, but you are going to reap such massive, massive benefits in the near future, for that hour that you committed to, every single hour is going to be worth thousands of dollars and so much time back in your life. So remember that every time you sit down, it’s not just you putting in work with no return, it’s just that the way that your business works and most businesses work, is the time you spend and the energy you spend now gets that return in the future. So it’s really an investment, it’s a time investment and it’s an energy investment now for what you will reap in such big, huge ways in the future. So remember that as you sit down to work on your business. Okay, so now that you have your time commitment figured out and scheduled and it is in the calendar and it is definitely happening let’s talk about the most important things that you should be working on in that time. So another big hurdle that I see is that you have such a limited amount of time to work on your business because you have all these other things going on in your life and then that time that you are spending on your business, you’re not spending on the right things. You’re not spending it on the things that are actually going to move the needle, and you have to be really super picky about this if you are someone who has this limited amount of time to work on growing your business each week and really focus on the things that matter. So, first of all, right away, the number one, most important thing that you should be spending most of your time on is figuring out your pay offer and getting it out into the world. We’ve talked about a lot of the different types of paid offers you can have here. We’ve talked about having a one-on-one clients, a signature program, paid workshops, courses, ebooks, all these things. There’s lots of different opportunities for you, but you need to figure out what that is and get it out into the world ASAP, or else, again, you’re going to be working on these things that aren’t actively bringing in income. And if your goal is to have a business that brings in income which should be the case otherwise, you have a hobby but if you want to bring in money from your business, then that’s the number one thing you need to do. Obviously, right Now, if you want or need to have a steady income coming in from your business before you quit your job, then you need a paid offer that is scalable. You will not have time for one-on-one clients. You can have a few, but it’s not going to be enough to bring in the income you need before you can quit your job. Because think about it you have two hours, three hours, maybe four hours per week that you can work on your business and still be at your job and still be there for your family and all these things you have going on in your life. So in those hours you can take two, three, four clients. That’s it. That’s all you can do. You are going to be limited to that until you have more time freed up and, no matter how you slice it, those two, three, four clients a week are not going to be enough income to quit your job and still be at that income level that you want or even close to it. So you really need to work on a scalable business model for you if you are someone that needs to or wants to have that steady income coming in to feel safe enough to quit your job. So this is where having something like your own signature program comes in handy, because you can either spend those couple of hours per week with clients making a little bit of money, or you can spend those couple of hours a week working on this scalable business model that is going to allow you to work with an unlimited amount of people and bring in the amount of money you need to quit your job, and you can do this while having something else going on and working on your business on the side. This is the kind of business model for that person who has a full-time job or full client load or another business or something else. That’s taking up a lot of your time and this is something you’re working on the side, especially if you want your business to grow and you want it to potentially be at a place where you could quit your job or you could stop taking one-on-one clients and make that transition. This is what you need to be spending your time on Now. If you only want to take one-on-one clients in your business, that is totally fine, but then you are going to most likely either have to be in a position where you can potentially have less income coming in for a while while you kind of make that transition of quitting your job but then working on building up your client roster and during that time of working on building up your client roster, you’re okay with making less money and your family is okay with you making less money and that kind of thing, that’s an option. Or, if you have a job that will allow you to slowly start working fewer hours, maybe go to a more part-time position as you are working on getting your client work up. So that’s another option if you have that kind of job. But if you aren’t necessarily sold on only working with one-on-one clients, then my recommendation is to spend the time that you do have right now working on that scalable business model and get that out into the world, get that bringing in income. Then, once you have enough income coming in from that, then you can quit your job and spend your time a lot more free time, while you sell this income coming in from your program, and then you can work with one-on-one clients also. So that’s what I would do if you are not in a place where you can lower your income. So that’s the very first, most important thing that you are doing with this time that you do have to work on your business. Each week you are working on getting that pay to offer out into the world. Then, kind of on top of that, you are also going to start building an audience and engaging with them while you are working on this pay to offer. So this kind of happens simultaneously. So what I would recommend doing is spending 30, 45 minutes, maybe an hour, each week of your allotted work-on-biz time, getting all of your social media posts done for the week, as I mentioned in a couple episodes ago. I think that’s how I approach social media and it works really well to just sit down and get as many as you can done in a certain amount of time that you have and then call it good, but really make sure it’s dedicated time working just on your social media posts. I feel like when you have that in your head and you’re really just in that zone, you’ll be amazed at how much you can get done in a short period of time. So that’s going to be kind of your way to also start building and engaging an audience during this time, and then the rest of the time can be spent working on your paid offer and then working on kind of your whole marketing and sales system to get that paid offer out into the world. Now, if you only have a couple hours a week, this is going to be like 90 to 150 minutes per week working on your paid offer and the associated kind of like ecosystem of that paid offer. So if you don’t have an email list yet or a freebie associated with your paid offer, then that will be kind of part of this process too. That is what you’ll start working on as well once you have that paid offer solidified. Let me give you an idea how all of this could look and, just to be totally transparent, this is completely following exactly the steps outlined in the signature program bundle. It is a process I know like the back of my hand because, first of all, I’ve done it a bazillion times in my own business and now I teach it. So it’s something I’m very, very familiar with. So I feel confident in sharing how this could look for you based on this process. So let’s say you have three hours per week to work on your business and you’re spending 30 to 45 minutes of those three hours on social media and then the rest of the time so let’s say, two, two and a half hours per week just working on your program. Okay, this is how it could look. Week one you will use those couple hours to solidify your program topic and create your program outline. Week two you would decide on the content of each module. Week three you’re going to design the logo, branding and name the program. Weeks four and five you’re going to create your freebie landing page and welcome email. Week six and seven you’re going to write notes for each lesson. Weeks seven and eight you’re going to record your video and audio lessons. Weeks nine and 10, you will edit the video and audio. Week 11, you’ll create and design PDFs and other tools for the program. Week 12, organize and upload it all into a hosting platform. Week 13, decide on offer components. And then weeks 15 through 17, get ready to launch. So that is the entire process I just shared it with you in like 30 seconds of building a signature program. That’s the whole process and, yes, it really can be done in this timeframe If you are really organized, if you follow the process to a T, if you use every single tool I have available to help you, and that time that you are really spending on your business is dedicated time, like you’re not checking social media or checking your email or kind of partly talking to your son or daughter over here. You know this is dedicated, really, really purposeful time. This is what it will take, and I know like 17 weeks sounds like a really long time, but also, in 17 weeks you could have a totally different situation and when you look at it that way, that is kind of amazing to think about that it only takes 17 weeks. So if you’re listening to this remotely close to when it airs, just to put this into perspective, 17 weeks from this air date, which is the very last week of August, is Christmas. So by Christmas you could have this awesome paid offer launching out into the world, and you’ve been collecting emails since week five. So that means for another 12 weeks you have been collecting email, so you have an audience of people who are interested in your work as well, and you’re probably not going to launch your program during the holidays, but you would be ready to launch it out into the world in January so you could turn over the new year with a new offer, a new engaged audience, this great business model ready to go in a matter of 17 weeks. How cool is that? Like? It’s really not that far away, and your entire next year could be totally different because you followed this plan and it only took you three hours of dedicated time for 17 weeks and then, once the 17 weeks are over, then you can spend those three hours per week continuing to build your audience, to create deeper connections with the people that you do make contact with, creating other types of content, like starting a podcast or starting to write on your blog or whatever, writing emails to your list these kinds of things that we talk about. But now you have this paid offer out into the world. You’ve been working on building your email list now for 12 weeks. You have that going strong. You’ve been posting on social media regularly for the past 17 weeks. All of this has really started to build momentum in your business. And then you have now, this time that you are no longer spending working on your paid offer to continue that whole process, to start working on the whole ecosystem of the rest of your business and creating that demand for your paid offer. And so the next time you launch, you have even more interest in demand and a bigger audience and deeper connections. And it keeps going until you get to a place where you’re making the same, if not more, during your launches, as you are at your job, and you can quit and just focus on your business. How cool is that. But it all starts from this one place of really working on that solid, paid offer and doing so in this small amount of time that you have each week which is totally fine as long as it is dedicated, committed time that you have put on your calendar and you are sticking to, no matter what and then following a process, a simplified process, to make it happen so that you don’t have to worry about what you’re doing next. You just do what’s next, you just look at the next step in the process and do that. That’s all it takes and it really can happen. I actually think that’s one of the biggest blocks that I see that keeps people spinning in this wheel of working on your business, but then it not really happening and having to stay in this full time job or other situation for a really long time, and it’s really just because you’re spending the very limited amount of time that you do have working on your business trying to figure out what to do. Like you’re like okay, I have this hour, I’m going to work on my business, and you sit down and work on it and you have no idea what you’re doing, what you should be doing, what’s next, how to make this happen, and so you just kind of like go through this 45 minutes worth of trying to figure out what to do and then, once you figure it out, well then it’s like time for bed or time to take your kids somewhere and you’ve lost that entire opportunity. So don’t use this limited amount of time that you have spinning your wheels trying to figure out what to do. Follow a specific plan, follow a plan, follow a process and get it done. And it really starts with having that structured schedule, knowing that end goal and then breaking each week down step by step, with a very few specific things that you need to do that week. That way, you know that time that you’re spending is super productive because you’ve done the work ahead of time of knowing what each week entails, like I did earlier. Okay, week one is this week two and three is this week. Four is this? Following that type of of protocol, to know what each week involves will make it so much easier for you. And, of course, if you want help with this, if you want to know my process for creating your own program, you can always head to shawnmynar.com/burnoutproof and watch my free masterclass. Get in on the bundle if you want to be a part of this process and you want to do it alongside a group of others who are going through this process as well, most of which have full time jobs or full time client loads, so they will be in the same boat as you. That is your place. To make sure that you know what you’re working on during this dedicated time that you spend each week working on your business, and pretty soon it will be the only thing that you’re working on, and it may still take even, let’s say, three hours a day, but then the rest of your time you’re spending doing what you want instead of going to a job you don’t love. So that’s pretty cool too. Again, free masterclass will break down my entire process for making this happen. shawnmynar.com/burnoutproof, and that’s also where you get exclusive access to the signature program bundle. Hope to see you there and until next time, take care. Hey, wait up before you go. Do you want to know the biggest reason why your business may not flow? Because it’s not in alignment with your personality type. Building the right business for you means knowing your strengths, weaknesses, energetic expression and what’s most important to you, so you can build your business accordingly, before you spend one more minute working on your business, let’s make sure it’s the right business for you. I’ve created a fun two minute quiz to discover your flow business personality type. With the results of this quiz, you’ll know exactly what to prioritize in your business so you can feel confident knowing you’re building a business you love. Head over to shawnmynar.com/quiz right now to find out your flow business personality type and once you find that out, hop over to Instagram and let me know what you discover. Again, that’s shawnmynar.com/quiz. As always, the link is in the show notes.