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Retail Time Management: Stop Juggling Everything and Finally Get Ahead! · The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices

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Do you feel like you're juggling everything and always falling behind?
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Then you'll want to listen to this episode where I'm going to be
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talking you through time management tips for independent retailers.
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Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan.
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I'm Catherine Eardley, and this podcast is here to share retail industry
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trends, insights, and best practices for you, the retailer who's serious
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about building something that lasts.
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How do you juggle everything in your retail business?
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This was a question that I got asked.
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I was out and about on my road trip through Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset,
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and I'd stopped into the beautiful town of Shaftesbury in Dorset and visited
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the absolutely stunning Fold store and met Karen, who is a podcast listener.
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So hi, Karen.
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And I asked Karen if she had any suggestions for what she'd like to hear
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on the podcast, and she said, "What about how do you actually juggle everything?"
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And to be fair to Karen, this is not the first time I've been asked that
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question, and for a very good reason.
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Independent retailers have their plates absolutely full, and they're all spinning.
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The reality is if you run an independent retailer, then you
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have to buy stock, plan your range.
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You have to reorder stock, chase your suppliers.
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You're merchandising your store, doing your windows.
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You're working on your online store, maybe dispatching and posting orders.
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You've got all of your marketing to think about, from email marketing to social
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media, your launches, creating content, customer service, managing your staff
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and rotas, bookkeeping, figuring out VAT, looking at your cash flow, as well
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as events, pop-ups, or collaborations.
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And that's before anything's even gone wrong.
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Late deliveries, tech issues, team problems, or a slow week
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that just throws everything off.
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So the point is that you're not bad at managing your time.
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It's just that there is genuinely a lot to do.
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So the real question is not really how do I do everything, it's how do
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I decide what actually gets my time?
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And I'd also like to reassure you, if you're listening to this and
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thinking, "This sounds like me," that this is probably the number one issue
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that I work with clients one-to-one in my Retail by Design program.
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And I have worked with people who have had really, really
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tight restrictions on their time.
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I've worked with people who've got a couple of hours a day to work on their
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business after their kids go to bed, or they have got one day a week when they
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can actually not be on the shop floor.
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So it is very common for me to come across people who have a lot to do
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and not a lot of time to get it done.
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When I have someone who comes to me who has this issue, the first thing
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that I encourage them to do to really help us understand what is going
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on is to actually track their time.
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Because the first question in how do I juggle everything is, well,
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how long is it all taking you and what are you actually doing anyway?
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So I suggest using either a notebook and a pen just to write
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down what you're doing and, and what and how long it's taking you.
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Or you can use something like a free app called Toggl, T-O-G-G-L, a little
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plugin on your browser that you can click start and stop whenever you're
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doing tasks so that you can find out exactly how long things are taking you.
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And I suggest that you do it for about one or two weeks.
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And once you've done that, you should start to build up a bit of a picture.
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What are you actually spending time on?
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Not what you think you're spending time on.
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Where are the time leaks, and where are you switching tasks constantly?
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So you might be doing lots of different things, but you're
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doing it really inefficiently.
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So what you often find is, well, one thing that I find really funny,
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is that when people do this time tracking, often what they find is
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just the fact that they're tracking their time makes them more focused.
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Because when you sit down and you have to click a button that says, " what
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are you working on right now?"
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And you have to select something, makes you stop and think, "Well, actually,
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what am I doing right now?" And so people often find that there's a lot of
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procrastination going on, or a lot of procrastination disguised as busy work.
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Lots of, "I'll just do it quickly," but it takes far longer, and
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then there's often constant interruptions and context switching.
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So context switching is where you're sitting there
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writing an email, for example.
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You're thinking, "Right, I'm gonna work on my email marketing.
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I'm gonna send out this email." You start typing away, and then somebody messages
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you on Instagram, and you think, "Oh, I better respond to that." So you go
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over on Instagram, and then who knows?
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Before you know it, maybe you found yourself scrolling and looking at cat
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videos, and, uh, 20 minutes has gone past.
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And you suddenly realize, "Oh, hang on a minute, I'm supposed to be doing
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my email marketing." And then you go back into it, and you have to almost
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re-engage your brain to really think about what it was that you were doing.
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And that is context switching, and it can be a real time leak.
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But do this exercise, track your time, go through it all, because you can't fix
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your time if you don't understand it.
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So once you've tracked your time, then you can start asking some questions.
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What tasks are you doing regularly?
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Which ones have a clear beginning and end?
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Uh, these can be easier to delegate, so it could be something that you can highlight.
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What could I actually hand off?
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And then what are the natural time blocks in your day?
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And then you also have to factor in real life.
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You've got to perhaps walk the dog, do a school run, maybe you
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have other caring responsibilities.
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Maybe who knows, you want to exercise, or maybe you have to travel to your place
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of work, and you need to factor that in.
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And you also have all your life admin.
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Who knows?
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Emptying the dishwasher, prepping food, all of these things take time, and so it's
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really helpful and useful to understand how much actual time have you got.
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And often, what people find is it's actually less than they thought
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in terms of the number of hours.
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So when you're trying to fit all of these different things in, it could
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just be that you have got a jigsaw puzzle with too many different pieces.
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So it's not that you're failing, it's that you've just been working with an
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unrealistic expectation of your time.
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And if that sounds gloomy, then one thing I will say though, the trade-off
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is, is that you may have less blocks of time than you think, but often
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you may also be wasting a lot of time because of all this context
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switching, which we'll come onto later.
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So the third step that I suggest that you do to help you really get to
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grips with your time is to then start defining what needs to happen each week.
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This is your BAU, or business as usual tasks.
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So they could fit into themes as well.
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It may be marketing, which could be that you need to create certain
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amount of social media content, you need to draft an email newsletter.
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You might have to do things like come up with some ideas for
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future promotions, for example.
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You may also have a money and finance bucket, so things like
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checking your cashflow, doing your bookkeeping, or sending information
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that your bookkeeper needs.
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You may have to look at your taxes or any number of tasks that fit
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under that money and finance.
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You may have team tasks as well.
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That could be team meetings.
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It could be rotas.
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It could be training people or working on, for example, recruitment.
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You may have stock related tasks such as reordering, planning out
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your range for an upcoming occasion, or whatever else it might be.
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And then you may have operational tasks as well, which could be
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anything from cleaning the shop to organizing or whatever else it might
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be that falls under that bucket.
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So then what you want to do is work out all of these things have to happen.
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This is roughly how long they take.
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You should have s- a good idea because you've been tracking
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your time, and then you can start building a rough weekly structure.
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So for example, in my own business, I like a bit of alliteration, I have a
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marketing Monday because I've identified the amount of time I need to create social
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media content or podcast planning, and then I've worked out the time, the block
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of time in the week that works for that.
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Batching tasks together, as I mentioned, it can really significantly help reduce
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overwhelm, and some people are not a fan of this technique, so it may not work
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for you, but it does work for a lot of people because you start then grouping
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things together and putting them all together in one particular time zone.
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So make sure you give yourself those focused blocks of time.
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For example, let's use the marketing example.
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You've identified that roughly speaking, you're spending about three
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hours a week between lots of different things working on your marketing.
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So could you identify then 9:00 till 12:00 on a Monday morning is going to
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be when you do your marketing tasks?
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This can really help you reduce context switching, which as we touched on, can
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really, really slow you down massively because your brain has to do that
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reset every time you switch tasks.
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So if you've kind of gathered your similar tasks together, it... and put
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them into one place, it should really reduce the amount of context switching.
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It should also calm down your brain because your brain can see that
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there's a time in your week for you to do all of these things that you
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have to do Now here's the key thing.
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A lot of people will try this, but they end up getting distracted, and that is
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because we have developed this theory that we are completely 100% always available
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to everyone, whether that's our staff, whether that is our customers, whoever
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it might be, we've decided they have to be able to reach us at all times.
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And that fact can really significantly damage your ability
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to have focused and quiet time.
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So alongside the idea of having these time blocks, I would highly suggest
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that you do things like pause your inbox, if you've got the opportunity
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to do that, where you no longer get new emails in for a certain amount of time.
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Put your phone in another room.
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remove distractions as much as possible so you can actually get on and do the work.
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Some people I've talked to about this, they are absolutely 100% adamant
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that they cannot be unreachable.
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They have real fear that something's gonna happen, that
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No one's gonna be able to contact them, and they feel
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really uncomfortable about it.
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If that is you, then I would suggest that you get yourself a dumb phone.
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You get yourself a specific phone number which is only for emergencies,
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and you give that with your, to your team, or you add it to an autoresponder
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on your emails saying, "If it's an emergency, call this number."
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And that phone exists only for one purpose, to allow you to switch off
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all other distractions, but know that there's a way for people to reach you.
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Or maybe, who knows, maybe you have a landline and
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people can actually call that.
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But make sure that there is some way, if you feel really nervous about this and you
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just think, "There's no way I can possibly block out all people being able to reach
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me for two to three hours," then make...
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Set yourself something up that people can get ahold of you, but make sure
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they know it's for emergencies only.
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And while we're talking about autoresponders as well, I do highly
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recommend that, number one, you have a separate email address for your customer
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services from your own personal inbox, because that is one thing that really
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messes people up, is when they're trying to go through their inbox and
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they get customer service as well.
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Make sure they're two separate ones, also means it's easier to outsource as
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you grow, someone else can handle that.
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And secondly, make sure you have an autoresponder on your customer
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service that, number one, answers commonly asked questions such as,
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"Where is my package?" And as well as making it clear when they will...
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can expect a response.
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Many people find that they feel much more comfortable letting go of being
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always on and always available when they know that their customers have
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got information telling them when they can expect a response, and that
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it may be 24 hours, for example.
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So that can really help you reduce your anxiety about being
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able to switch things off.
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Because one thing I can tell you is that that is almost impossible to get
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focused work done when you have got this fear or this constant need to check your
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messages, because you just get distracted and all of that time gets frittered away.
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So you don't necessarily need more hours.
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This is where the, the good news, bad news comes in to...
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when you maybe identify that you've got less time than you think.
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You just need more focused ones, 'cause you will be absolutely amazed how much
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you can achieve in 20 minutes of focused time without any distractions So once
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you have done all of this piece of work, you've worked out what your business as
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usual tasks are, how long they're going to take, when you're going to get them
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done, then you can start identifying where you might have extra capacity.
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Now, for some people, that might not be very often.
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For some people, it may be that you have one or two days of extra capacity
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a month, and that's absolutely fine.
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But just being aware of how much time you've actually got to play
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with can be really, really powerful.
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You may also want to have blocks of time in the day which
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is for more distracted work.
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For example, if you know that you can really only concentrate for a couple
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of hours first thing in the morning, then do your deep work then, but then
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give yourself a couple of hours in the afternoon to answer messages or go
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through the kind of work that requires less of a deep focus and can be done
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when you're maybe not exactly distracted, but you don't have to be as focused.
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So you can break your day up like that, too.
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And then on top of that, think about when you might have extra
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capacity to work on your projects.
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So for example, I can take no credit for this method.
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This is something that I have learned working with Andrew
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and Pete, who run Atomic.
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But basically, I will sit down and I will look at my entire
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quarter, upcoming day by day.
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I work out what days I've got particular things happening, where I'm traveling,
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where I'm away, what my business as usual tasks are, what my weekly
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tasks are, what the days that they are that they're going to take up.
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And then I work out how many additional days I've got, and therefore, that
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can help me really understand how much time I've got to work on additional
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projects to move the business forward.
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So for example, let's say you've got some bigger projects that have been
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kicking around for a really long time.
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Maybe it's redoing your website, maybe it's launching a newsletter, maybe
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it's developing your own product.
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Who knows what it might be?
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But you've got something that you've been wanting to tackle that you know
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is going to be really beneficial to the business, but you've just got no idea
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how you're ever going to get it done.
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Do the exercise.
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Work out how much time you've got after you've done all
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your business as usual tasks.
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Don't be disheartened if some week you only have time to do
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your business as usual tasks.
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That's quite common.
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But hopefully, somewhere in the month you might have a couple of days where
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you can actually work on those tasks.
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So then what you want to do is make sure you've got a task list.
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So rather than just saying, "Start my newsletter," actually write down
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all of the various different steps.
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Because if you sit down with a day and you think, "Right, today I'm gonna start
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my newsletter," that's still a lot for your brain to overcome in terms of working
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out how to actually get it started.
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So instead, break it down into lots of different steps.
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Break it down into research different email software.
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Then you're going to take a look at how many people you've currently
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got subscribed, and then you're going to work out how to get those
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imported into the new software.
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Whatever it might be, go through all of that so that when you do actually have
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time to sit down and work on it, you're not spending that first block of time just
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trying to work out what you want to do.
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You know exactly, right, task number one.
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A task is basically something you can sit down and, and achieve in a certain
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amount of time with clear guidelines.
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So task number one, I'm gonna look at three different s- email
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marketing software, for example.
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Or maybe you're thinking about, right, I'd really like to have some
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leaflets that I can hand out to people in their bag as they leave the shop.
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Okay, so how long is it gonna take you?
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Right, I need to do the following four things.
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I need to design the leaflet in Canva.
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I need to research printers.
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I need to send it to print, actually s- place the order, and then I need to get
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the proof back from them and approve it.
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And then you work out how long each one of those tasks will take, so maybe
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it's gonna take you an hour and a half to design the leaflet, an hour to
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research printers, half an hour to place the order, half an hour to proof it.
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So you've worked out now it's gonna be roughly three and a half, four hours.
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It also really helps you be very realistic to do this kind of thing
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because that's often the answer why you don't get things done, is 'cause often
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these things, it sounds like a quick job, I'll just create some leaflets,
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but actually that, we're talking about three and a half to four hours.
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And if you're constantly being distracted, then that, also that
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three and a half to four hours could stretch out longer and longer.
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So work out how much time you've got, work out what you want to get done, and
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then work out when you can slot that in.
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It's also really useful, one thing that I find when I look forward and look at
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a quarter that's coming up, it really helps me protect my time because I realize
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how few days I actually have to work on projects, and you may well find the same.
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So that if you actually go through all of this and realize, right, I want to
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get this done, but I've only actually got this one day to get it done.
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It also really helps you focus your mind, or for me personally,
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it helps me focus my mind.
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When it is that day, I'm like, "Okay, if I don't get this done now, there
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isn't another slot for a while, so I've really got to get on with it."
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And if I've broken down my tasks so I'm just sitting there doing a
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list of things that I know how to do, each one individually, then
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that makes it a lot easier and makes it a lot smoother as well.
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So you can see what's actually possible.
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You can avoid over-committing.
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You can protect your time better.
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And you can also feel better about how much you're getting
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done because it's really clear to you where your time is going.
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Another point that I'd like to make is about decision fatigue.
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Because just like if yous going to sit down and do a big project,
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it can be a lot to try and work out how to get it all done.
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Even on your weekly tasks, that can feel like a lot as well.
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So don't forget to create checklists for everything that you can think of.
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If you've got a weekly task to do for your marketing, then you can
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use a checklist that literally goes through all of the different tasks
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that you need to do each week.
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So each week you're not starting from scratch thinking, "Right, what is it I
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need to do this week?" Create repeatable ways of doing things, so a set process
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for planning your content, a regular day on your regular day for marketing,
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getting that consistent weekly rhythm.
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Because the more that you can plan this out, the less that you have to think
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about the basics and the more energy you have for the important stuff.
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So there is no one perfect way of working.
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there are different approaches that work for different people.
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Some people like to get up early in the morning and do
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things before anyone else is up.
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Some people like to have one focused hour at the start of the
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day, and that is the extent to, to which they could concentrate.
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Some people like to work in short bursts throughout the day in 20 to
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25-minute blocks, and some people like to have longer work blocks.
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Some people like things like the Pomodoro method where you set a timer
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for 20, 25 minutes, and then you take a five-minute break and then repeat.
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Some people find that too bitty.
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The point is, is that there is no one-size-fits-all.
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All there is is tracking, reflecting, adjusting, and repeating so that you
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can get a sense of how you work, how you like to work, and also how much
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contingency you have to build in.
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Because that's the thing.
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You can have the most perfectly planned out plan in the world, but
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if somebody calls you and tells you that your basement's flooded, then
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all of a sudden everything shifts.
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So do think about how you can build in some contingency because
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there will always be emergencies.
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There will always be things that come up that are unexpected.
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And if it's all still too much, if you've done all of this and there's still more to
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do than there's time available, then the answer is you have to either delegate, if
18:34
that's a possibility, you have to simplify or simply stop doing certain things.
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So one of the other really big benefits of doing a big time investigation like
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this is it helps you identify like, "Well, what can I actually drop and
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what is just happening for the sake of it, and what can I just simply no
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longer fit in?" You cannot optimize your way out of doing too much forever.
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There is a point at which you just have to say, "Well, you
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know, time is a finite resource."
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So if you've got too much to do and not enough time, you have to figure
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out either to stop doing it or have someone else do it for you instead.
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So this work, it can feel a bit heavy up front.
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And as I said, when we work in retail by design, this is something that we
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do together over a number of weeks because we have to learn about how
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people are spending their time.
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We have to help them shape their time more effectively, and there is a lot
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of backwards and forwards that goes on.
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So don't feel overwhelmed if you listen to this and think this just feels like a lot.
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It can be something that you can do over a period of time.
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And it is a time investment up front, but it's also incredibly clarifying
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because instead of feeling constantly behind, you can start making really
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intentional decisions about your time, and that's where things start
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to feel calmer, more structured, and ultimately more profitable.
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Thank you so much for listening.
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Don't forget to like, follow, or subscribe, depending on wherever
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it is you get your podcasts from.
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20:02
See you next week