"...I don't have the time for content marketing"

One of the major excuses we get for why people don’t do content marketing is that they don’t have the time.

So how is it that some people find the time and others don’t?

We all have the same amount of time, it’s how we choose to use it that’s the most important factor.

This is what people say:

“I hear what you are saying, but I’ve already got a tonne of work to do, and you’re are saying I have more work to do. How willI fit it all in?”

Or

“I don’t have the time to write blog articles”

Or

“I’d really love to do more content marketing but I just don’t have the time”

So, what can we do about it? How can we make a few changes now, so that next year you are doing more of the right things, you feel like you’ve got control of your time, and you and your business grows as a result?

Let's get in to it.

Resources:

• Rescue time: www.rescuetime.com/rp/cmaltd (Affiliate)
• Moment: inthemoment.io/
• Email: [email protected]

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Full Transcription

So it's that time of year when we're doing our reviews of the year we've just had. We're doing our planning for the year ahead. We all want to be better next year than we were last year. That's how it works right? For some of us that's small tweaks. For some of us that's gonna be big changes, new careers, new businesses perhaps. But generally speaking, we all want to improve. So we learn what we've done in the past year so we can make better changes, better decisions and be better generally next year.

One of the major factors for success is how we manage and spend our time. In fact, one of the major excuses we get for why people don't do content marketing and as a result are unsuccessful with any efforts they place in that area in content marketing is that they don't have the time, right? You've heard people say this before. "I just don't have the time."

How is it that some people find the time and others don't? How are some people successful and other people's unsuccessful? Why are some people obsessed with, "Yeah but she doesn't have kids" or "He doesn't have the same business as me", et cetera? We all have the same amount of time. It's how we choose to use it that's the most important factor.

These are the kind of things that people say to me when we're teaching, when I'm speaking. They'll say things like, "I hear what you're saying, Chris. I understand it. But I've already got a ton of work to do, and now you're saying I have more work to do. How am I going to fit it all in?" Or they'll say, "I don't have time to write long articles" is the most common one. Or "I'd really love to do more content marketing, but I just don't have the time."

This is a big, big problem. It's a huge problem. And we need to deal with it. One of the most common, most frequent excuses we get for not doing the things that are going to be the most important thing for your business to help your business grow as a marketer, as an entrepreneur, as a businessperson. Right? This is what we need to talk about.

How are we gonna make a few changes now so that next year you can do more of the right things, you feel like you've got control of your time, and your business grows as a result, you get more customers, you increase revenue, you can increase profit? How do we deal with the "I don't have the time excuse"? How do we deal with that?

First of all we have to find out where your priorities are. For example, if content marketing isn't a priority for you, then you're simply not going to do it. It's just as simple as that, right? If anything in your life is a priority, you do it. From training your dog, going to the gym, going for a walk, eating the right foods, anything that's a priority to you gets done. That's the first thing we need to do. We have to figure out why it's not a priority. Why is content marketing not a priority?

I've got a couple reasons why that might be. The number one thing I think is the most important factor, and it's also the one important thing really that stops people from making progress, is that they simply don't value it. They just don't understand it enough yet. Therefore, you don't really see how it could add value to your business, to grow your business. Therefore, you don't give it any of your attention both from learning and development and actually implementation as well.

The answer to this thought is education. Right? Giving yourself permission to attain the course, get to a workshop, go see a presentation, get up to speed with what you know, start to understand how content marketing is helping businesses to grow, increase the revenues and profits and get them customers. As soon as you start to see that and understand it, you will start to value it more.

That's number one I think is people will dismiss it and say I don't have the time, because they don't value it yet. Right? There's a positive spin. Yet is the key word here. There's possibilities for everybody that are willing to learn.

For those that aren't willing to learn, they fall into this next category which we call complacency. They're simply not interested in learning anything new. This is the biggest killer in business today. You're burying your head in the sand, and you're hoping that things will just work out.

Complacency is like ... it could come from fear, fear of doing something different, taking a risk, being the first in your industry to do something. You don't know what you don't know, and this stops you from making progress, right? You're just stuck. As a result you just don't know what to do. You've maybe lost your passion for learning. You're tired. You're exhausted. Maybe you've lost your passion for your business. Maybe your ego is so big that you think you're untouchable, and you think you know everything.

This all builds into this complacency factor, this issue with ignorance perhaps as well, this big, big problem. And it's hard to convince someone to move and to change and to do something different when they're complacent.

It's like I said, it's the biggest killer in business. It's upsetting. It's sad. If you've got a boss that's like this, you might need to think about how you move on, or if this is you, I want to hopefully inspire you in this podcast to get you thinking a little bit differently.

Those are the two big ones, right? Those are the two big reasons why someone might not prioritize content marketing.

There's a few other reasons too which can stop people in their tracks and that's not having a plan or a strategy which kind of leads into not having targets and objectives and not really understanding what these should be, and also not knowing where to start.

So you might have been to a workshop, well, hopefully not a workshop 'cause hopefully you will leave the workshop knowing where to start. But maybe you've been to presentations or you're just confused and don't have that clarity of where you're actually going and not really knowing how to measure, right? So you don't know the targets, you don't know the plan, you don't know what you're strategy is, you don't know where to start. And you don't actually know how to measure success as well.

All of these things can really stop someone in their tracks and stop them from making progress with content marketing. It comes back to this reason, this excuse that we get which is, "I don't have the time," which is not really the truth. The truth is that you do have the time. It's just that you're not giving it the time. You're not making the time because of all of these reasons.

We have to work through these things first. We have to get everybody bought into this idea of content marketing, this concept of content marketing before we can get to the how to do it, because you aren't gonna do anything about it until it is of value to you, until we can actually make it a priority.

Perhaps you're feeling discouraged by the progress you're making. Maybe you're feeling disappointed with the way that your business is growing, or you're frustrated by the lack of results that you're getting with your current marketing efforts. If that's the case, it's time to get fired up. We need to see the opportunity. We need to start learning and trying new things.

How do we move on? How do we move from "I don't have the time" to "Let's do this, Chris. Let's make this happen"? I've got some practical things that we can do here to help you make this a priority and essentially find the time to do this, right? So if someone's saying to you, "I don't have the time," let's find the time.

Where are you spending your time? We're all busy, but we need to make the time for the most important activities. How do we give content marketing your attention?

Number 1 is track your tasks. This is a practical exercise that you can do on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis. What tasks are you working on every day? Track everything for a month, then evaluate what you're spending your time on. What do you hate doing? What shouldn't you be doing? What can't you do? Be honest. Write down everything. Start to separate out only the things that you can do, and everything else should go into another list for delegating, perhaps stopping all together. You have to be honest with yourself as a marketer, as a business owner. What are you spending your time doing? Is it the tasks that are helping you to grow your business, get more customers, increase revenue and profit? If it's not those, then someone else should be doing them or they should be stopped altogether.

This is a tricky task for people to do, because you probably think you can do everything, but I want you to really think hard about what can only be done by you. I think you'll find that that list is very, very small.

Brain dump everything. Start to organize your tasks, and then start separating out what the most important tasks are for you and think about how we can get everything else done by someone else or perhaps stop doing it altogether.

That's Number 1, track your tasks.

Number 2 is to track your time. This is really understanding where you're spending your time. Tasks is one thing, and then time is kind of separate from this, but obviously linked to it as well.

What I would advise you to do is get Rescue Time for your MacBook or your computers. Rescue Time basically tracks what apps you're using, how much time you're spending on your computer, where you're spending it.

Oh there's another app called Moment, which you can use on iPhones or your iPad, and again it tracks what apps your using, how many times you pick it up, switch it on, how much time you spend on there.

After a few weeks or a month or so, you can start to see where you're spending your time and then start to kind of really evaluate that and say, "Actually I'm spending way too much time on these sort of activities or these apps. I'm gonna reduce this down, right? And just track your time and be honest with yourself again. Are you spending your time in the most valuable places doing the most valuable activities? Then just get better at this. This isn't gonna be an overnight success. It's a case of getting better, making small and improvements over time so that you can start to be better at managing your time.

Number 3 is when are you at your best? This is a really, really important question for all of us is to say to ourselves, "Actually when do I do my best work? When am I at my best, my peak of performance during the day?" For some people that's in the evening. For some people that's in the morning. For me it's definitely in the morning. But you need to figure that out for yourself.

There was a, I think it was James Altucher that said something like "You're at your best in the two hour window two hours after you get up." So if you get up at 6 o'clock your two hour window's gonna be between 8 and 10, for example. That's not the same for everyone. That's kind of like an average I guess.

But you need to figure out for yourself. So when is that best time for you? How can you make sure that best time for you, the environment that you create for yourself then is actually the best conditions for you to do your best work as well? How can you make sure nothing gets in your way? How can you make sure that you have got the right tools and the right space to do your best work?

For example, for me that's in the morning like I said. I do my creative work there. I write the podcast out. I'll generate ideas. I'll do the work that grows my business. Everything else waits until the afternoon: calls, teaching, coaching. All of that gets done in the afternoon, right? 'Cause in the morning that's when I'm at my best. That's when my most creative time is.

When are you at your best? Have you created an environment for yourself that allows you to do your best work?

Think about these things. You don't want any interruptions, no calls, no emails, no notifications, no distractions. You really want to create that environment for yourself. And it is a bit of a discipline required here. You have to force yourself to do this so you can do your best work.

You are the only person that can control your time,. No one else will do it for you. No one else cares. They will interrupt you. They will phone you. They will email you. They will do everything to interrupt you. It's up to you.

If you truly want to have more growth professionally and personally next year and beyond, make it a priority to control your time. It could start small like I said, like an hour a day for example. You just pick an hour a day where you're gonna have your creative time. Then maybe you increase that to two hours a day, a half day. You change your work flow to suit. I guarantee you, if you go down this road and you start to make these tweaks and these changes, you will start to see a massive change in the way that you work and also in the quality and the volume of work that you're getting done. It will make a massive, massive difference.

A couple more here as well. Number 4 is have a long term development plan for yourself, professionally and personally. Never stop learning. Get the courses. Read the books. Listen to the podcast. Read the blogs. Do your homework. Follow up and learn from all of the right people. You've got to give yourself permission to learn. It's vital for your own personal and your professional growth and the progress that you make over the years. Give yourself permission to learn. It's not always about doing the work. It's about learning and development as well. I think it's so, so important.

Number 5, this is kind of the final one before we close up, is to make sure you're surrounding yourself with the right people, people that support you, understand you and want you to win. And also they inspire you, right? If you can see the work that they're doing, these smart, clever, progressive, forward-thinking people. If you can see the work that they're doing, they will inspire you to think differently and help you to see what works and what doesn't, and they will push you to want to do better as well.

Just in summary there, the key things here are to track your tasks, track your time, figure out when you're at your best, have a long term development plan, and surround yourself with the right people.

There's probably a few other things you could add to that list, and if you've got any thoughts or ideas, just email me [email protected]. Let me know what's on your mind. We'll add some stuff to that list.

But in conclusion, we're all busy people. But what are we busy doing? We have to make more time for the most important tasks. We need to identify what those tasks are and then carve out the time in an environment that allows us to do that best work.

The "I don't have the time" excuse is like the adult equivalent of "The dog ate my homework." We're better than this. We really are. As adults we have to be better than this. As business owners and as marketers, we absolutely have to be better than that.

We have the time. Of course we do. The question is what are we spending our time doing. If you want to grow your business going forward, and you want to be more successful, content marketing will absolutely have to be part of your growth plans, and it needs your time and attention. You need to learn. You need to implement. You need to delegate. We need to build our teams. We need to get the work done.

How are you gonna make time for it? What needs to be dropped or stopped? What needs to be delegated? What do you need to do to move forward?

I'm certain that there's been something in this podcast today that's triggered a thought or an idea to help you make more time and allow you to do better work. The best and most successful business people and markets that I know are committed and consistent with their content. And the only way they can do that is through planning their time and prioritizing the most important work.

Are you up for it? Awesome. Let's get to it.

Any questions, thoughts, or ideas, email me [email protected]. And if you're feeling a little disappointed, deflated, discouraged, frustrated by your progress with marketing and business growth, send me an email at [email protected] and let's see how we can work together and I can help you out.

I hope you've had an amazing day.

Don't forget to be awesome.

Chris.

Thanks again for joining me on the Content Marketing Academy podcast. If you would like to find out more about content marketing and change the way that your business communicates forever, please visit contentcrashcourse.co.uk for your free ten day content marketing email course.