Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] In this episode, you'll learn the five warning signs your calendar is running you as a business owner and how it's silently stalling your business growth.
[00:00:08] Plus the 10 minute calendar audit that can win you back six hours in the next seven days. Welcome to why your business isn't growing and how to fix it, a podcast for business owners who want practical people powered ways to grow your business without burning out.
[00:00:23] Hey, I'm Brendan Rogers. Listen, let me ask you this. Do you ever look at tomorrow's calendar and feel overwhelmed before you even get to bed? You've got back to back meetings, no free space. You're juggling operations, sales, admin, hr, finance, and you know, the brain fog starts setting in by lunchtime.
[00:00:44] And all this without any room for the inevitable firefighting that happens on a daily basis.
[00:00:49] Calendar chaos isn't just an annoyance, it's a hidden tax on growing your business.
[00:00:55] Why does this even matter? Well, when your calendar controls you, you're stuck reacting instead of leading. And when this happens, it leads to three of the most important pillars of your business falling down fast. The first is long term thinking. Your strategy time. I'm the son of a butcher, so picture this. Live on salad alone and you'll feel light today, but wheat tomorrow. Add a regular juicy steak and you've got fuel for real strength. It's the same in business. When reactive tasks crowd out your revenue creation hours, the company is starved of protein, growth slows to a crawl or even goes backwards. The second pillar that will fall fast if you let your calendar control you is your people. I say it a lot. Culture is a reflection of leadership.
[00:01:46] Your best people notice you're always busy, busy and they'll mimic the chaos and when they get fed up, they quietly leave. And the third pillar that falls fast is profit. Obviously, to grow your business and stay in business long term, you need to be profitable.
[00:02:02] When your calendar controls you, this leads to rushed meetings. Creates rushed decisions and rushed decisions will cost you cash.
[00:02:11] When long term, thinking people and profit all start wobbling at once, it's a dead giveaway. Your calendar has jumped into the driver's seat. So let's take a look at the five signs that prove your calendar is running new. The first is you're booked out with doing hours and you've got zero thinking hours.
[00:02:31] You're grinding 60 to 80 hours a week and still can't find time to work on the business.
[00:02:36] Your calendar is wall to wall with sales calls, supplier check ins and quick staff huddles. There's not a sing square for deep work. By 4pm you've ticked 90 micro tasks but made zero strategic moves. The to do list shrinks while the business stays stuck. You're basically pedaling a bike in the wrong gear. Lots of burn, little distance.
[00:02:59] The second sign? You wake up already behind and spend the day firefighting before the kettle even boils. An urgent client email hijacks your plans.
[00:03:10] Slack's glowing red, the phone lights up and your first hour is triage. Lunch happens at your desk, if at all, and you finish wondering where the time went. Your calendar feels like a smoke alarm that never stops beeping. The third sign Family health and holidays are always bumped until things quieten down. Dinners are missed, vacations cancelled, workouts skipped because your calendar says so. You pop the rsvp, maybe to every family dinner. You tell the kids you'll be at the game, then text your apologies to your partner from the office. Your gym shoes are gathering dust. That week off you promised your partner keeps shifting down the year.
[00:03:50] Personal life survives on the crumbs your calendar leaves behind. The fourth sign. Every decision waits for you. Nothing moves unless you greenlight it. So bottlenecks pile up.
[00:04:02] You step out of a meeting and five people form a line outside your door. You open the laptop after hours and 37 quick question emails flood your inbox. Your calendar has become company traffic control and the Runway is jammed. And the fifth sign? Strategic projects keep sliding down the week again. Big picture initiatives get rescheduled because urgent tasks dominate the product revamp, the new marketing funnel, the hiring plan all bump to next week. Friday's deep work block morphs into catch up chaos. Trello cards gather dust, months pass, goals drift, and the competition sprints ahead while you're still arranging deadlines.
[00:04:45] Now if you said, yep, that's me to any of these five, then it's likely your calendar is running you. If you said yes to most of them, then there's no doubt about it.
[00:04:56] So what's it costing you? Well, according to a Gallup study of 143 leaders, those that protected their time, meaning their calendar wasn't running them, generated 33% more revenue. What would 33% more revenue look like for your business? Year on year calendar clutter is effectively a revenue choke chain. Now here's the thing. Your calendar chaos isn't caused by the sheer number of meetings. It's caused by the wrong meetings and tasks crowding out the right ones. When you aren't crystal clear on what matters most. Every urgent ish ping feels important, so it barges in and shoves genuine growth work off the agenda. Fixing the problem means fixing your priorities upstream before they hit your calendar. Let me share a quick story. I work with the business owner of a 30 person service company.
[00:05:48] She was living every single one of the five signs.
[00:05:51] Her days were booked solid. Fridays were full of rescue mission after rescue mission and she regularly opened the laptop for several hours. On Sundays, we did a strategic time audit on her calendar. We red flagged low value meetings, installed 15 minute buffers in the morning and afternoon, and moved all decision sessions before lunch when her energy was at its peak.
[00:06:14] The result? The number of meetings she had dropped just over 30% and this gave her back six hours every week. So what did she decide to do with some of the time saved? She focused on this strategic question, how can I increase revenue? She spent time with the sales team, made some adjustments to the sales Funnel and within 90 days it added $180k in annualized revenue without adding any extra headcount time. Block sections of your calendar time with no meetings, notifications or people interruptions. Guard it with your life. Don't let it fill with reactive tasks.
[00:06:52] This time is where you sit back, think strategically, spot new opportunities, and design the next move that will shape your business's future. If every minute is booked, you're stuck executing today's TO dos. When you block thinking time, you create the space to invent tomorrow's growth.
[00:07:11] Now, even if just one of these signs made you wince, take this action. Now. You can Download the free 1 page Calendar Control Checklist in the show notes. You don't need to enter your email, you can just download it directly. In under 10 minutes you'll map exactly where to claw back time so you can truly grow your business and not just run it.
[00:07:33] Remember, small improvements and every day, that's how serious growth happens.
[00:07:39] I'm Brendan Rogers and this is why your business isn't growing and how to fix it. If today's thought hit home, follow the podcast and share it with another leader who's hungry to grow their business without burning out. Until next time, grow yourself. Grow your business.
