How to Regain Control of Your Business with Amy Traugh

TL;DR

As a business owner, I'm working non-stop and I feel like my business has been running me. How can I regain control of my business?

You can regain control of your business by conducting a time audit to identify what drains your energy, building a Power Hour focused on high-impact work, and using a daily review to stay aware of distractions and progress. When you consistently analyze how you spend time, prioritize visibility and engagement, and adjust your approach based on what works, you create a system that supports growth instead of keeping you stuck.

That structure helps you move from feeling overwhelmed to feeling intentional and in control.

Regain Control of Your Business by Mastering Productivity

Analyze How You Spend Your Time

Effective time management starts with self-awareness. When you understand how you spend your hours, you can identify tasks to eliminate, automate, or outsource. The best way to do this is through a time audit.

Ask yourself key questions:

• Why am I doing the tasks I'm doing?

• Do my actions align with my goals?

• Am I spending time on work that moves me toward my goals?

These questions create awareness about your daily activities. Many entrepreneurs end up busy being busy instead of focusing on what truly matters. The goal is to close the gap between what you plan to achieve and what you actually do.

Build a Power Hour

Once you've analyzed your time, structure your day around high-impact activities. The Power Hour is designed to ensure you focus on what moves your business forward.

The Power Hour includes three pillars:

Engagement

Nurture relationships by welcoming new followers, replying to comments, and networking. These actions build trust and keep your audience connected.

Visibility

Position yourself where your ideal clients are. Use both online and offline channels to stay top of mind. Visibility ensures people know you exist and what you offer.

Content Creation

Build authority by creating and repurposing valuable content. This includes blogs, podcasts, emails, and guest speaking—not just social media posts. Content establishes you as a leader in your field.

Do a Daily Review

A daily review fosters massive self-awareness and keeps you aligned with your goals.

Follow these steps:

• Emotional Check-In: How are you feeling? Stress and overwhelm affect productivity.

• Task Assessment: Did you complete your non-negotiables? How visible were you today?

• Identify Distractions: What pulled you away? Plan to minimize those distractions tomorrow.

• Celebrate Wins: Acknowledge small professional and personal achievements.

• Tomorrow's Focus: Pick one thing to improve for the next day.

This practice builds consistency and helps you stay sharp.

Use the Clarity Cycle

The Clarity Cycle is a continuous process for refining your focus. It includes five steps:

1. Acknowledge: Recognize your current state and activities.

2. Assess: Evaluate whether your actions align with your goals.

3. Act: Implement changes and strategies.

4. Analyze: Review the impact of those changes.

5. Adjust: Make further modifications for improvement.

This cycle ensures you keep improving and adapting to meet your business objectives.

Create Habits That Last

Analyzing, adjusting, and implementing a structured Power Hour give you the tools to regain control of your business. This is not about unplugging for a weekend. It is about building lasting habits that create momentum and produce results.

Incorporate these strategies into your daily routine. When you do, you move from feeling out of control to feeling intentional, focused, and productive.

🎧 The Motivated CEO: Business Strategy for Entrepreneurs is now The Metrics Maven Podcast. Available on all streaming on all platforms. Listen to the episode here. Also streaming on YouTube.

Episode Links

✨ Join the FREE challenge and grab your workbook here

💥 LEARN HOW TO USE YOUR METRICS as a custom solution to sustainable business growth inside a one-hour strategy session! No spreadsheets. No overwhelm. Just clarity. ⁠Schedule a strategy session here!⁠

📋 TIRED OF INCONSISTENT REVENUE? GET STARTED FOR FREE WITH THIS METRICS CHEAT SHEET In less than 10 minutes, you'll know exactly how many leads you need, where your sales process is leaking revenue, and what to focus on each week to reach your revenue goal.⁠ Click here to grab the worksheet!⁠

📕 GRAB A COPY OF AMY'S BESTSELLING BOOK - The CEO Method: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Success is available at all major online retailers. Click here to grab your copy!

Transcript for Episode 348. The Unplugged Challenge Day Three: Regain Control of Your Business

Congratulations. You made it to day three of the unplugged challenge. And if you haven't taken the time to do so yet, make sure you head on over to amytraw.com unplugged to join the completely free challenge to reset, refocus, and regain control of your business. It's also linked up below in the show notes. But what are we talking about today? Today is all about analyzing and adjusting, analyzing and adjusting that awareness of how we are spending your time, taking those results of our time audit and figuring out a way to intentionally refocus our time so that we can grow our business to achieve the goals that we so clearly have now set. So this awareness of how we're spending our time, what this does is it allows us to identify opportunities to eliminate, automate and outsource. So from this time audit, how do you go about doing this? Well, you need to start asking yourself questions. We're getting really curious.

Amy [00:01:16]:

The first one is, why am I doing the tasks that I'm doing? So take a look at that time audit and ask yourself why. Again, we're getting curious. We're seeking to understand by asking why we start to unpack that. And then we can ask ourselves, do my actions actually align with my goals? Because all too often there's a huge disconnect. We say we want this, but if we're spending our time doing that, how do we bridge that gap? Awareness. Awareness is key. Asking ourselves, am I spending time on the tasks that will move me forward towards my goals? And if not, what adjustments can I make in order to achieve my goals? When you start to get curious and ask yourself questions like this, that's when you gain even more clarity that will move you forward. And in our business, we tend to be busy being busy.

Amy [00:02:28]:

We've talked about this before, and I want you to take your workbook and flip to page nine. We're going to develop what's called a power hour. This has been a game changer in my business, and when I'm working with clients 90% of the time working on our business, there are three things as service providers that we can do every single day in order to move the needle forward. Other than the amazing service that we provide, other than the forward facing client work. And these three tasks can be accomplished in under an hour. So what are they? Number one, engagement. So as a business owner, how are you nurturing? How are you engaging with those people that are already opted into your world, those people that are already in your ecosystem? Are you taking the time to welcome new followers? Are you taking the time to reply to comments? Are you taking the time to get into different networking rooms? Are you taking the time to check in with your referral partners with current and past clients? How are you engaging on a daily basis? Next is visibility. How are you getting seen by your ideal client in order to stay top of mind and move people onto a list that you own so that you can continue to nurture them? Now remember, visibility isn't about being everywhere.

Amy [00:04:24]:

It's about strategically placing yourself in front of your ideal clients. Put yourself into your client's shoes, figure out where they are, and if you need help with places that your client may be, make sure you download my free resource I have on how to market your business without spending a dime. It's all about visibility and how to do exactly this. Visit my website, amytra.com resources and you can grab your free guide. And then lastly, with our power hour content creation, we need something created to create that authority, to create that credibility, to create that know, like and trust. And social media is only one piece of the puzzle. Yes, we can create endless content on social media, but why are we spending so much time on social media when such a small fraction of our followers actually see it? So what I encourage you to do is think bigger. So, for example, I use my podcast as my long form content.

Amy [00:05:33]:

If you don't have a podcast, go on other people's podcasts, ask them for the recording. Repurpose this, break this down. Your content includes your emails. It includes your freebies. It includes guest speaking, creating that content, repurposing the content you've already created that is essential to growing a business. This saves you time. Doing these three things helps you stay focused. These are income producing activities allowing you to focus on the systems and the structure.

Amy [00:06:13]:

That's what will give you the freedom. That's what helps decrease that decision fatigue. So when you're sitting there going, I don't know what I need to be doing, guess what? You're on power hour. This is exactly what I need to do. I spend 15 minutes engaging. I spend 15 minutes creating content. And you don't have to create the whole entire content piece at one time. Create bits and pieces of it, break part of it down, and then how can we get more visible? Spend your time doing those three things and you will see progress.

Amy [00:06:44]:

Once you've taken the time to establish your daily power hour, then I really encourage you to adopt a new practice called the Daily Review. This is on page ten. It basically comes down to self awareness as a business owner, you need massive self awareness as to how do I respond. What are those ingrained patterns, behaviors, beliefs, all of the things. So the way we start to uncover this is by checking in with ourselves. At the end of each day, I really encourage you to pause and ask yourself, okay, number one, how am I feeling? Am I doing okay? Am I feeling stressed? Am I feeling overwhelmed? And again, get curious. Go back to your time audit and look at how you spent your time. It is eye opening.

Amy [00:07:34]:

I'm telling you. It's simple, but it works. As a part of your daily review, I then encourage you to ask yourself, what did I do to move my business forward today? Did I complete my daily non negotiables as we talked about during our power hour? How was I visible? Did I create or did I consume? Did I connect or did I compare and scroll all day long? What distractions were present? Now this one's a big one because life, life. And once we know where those distractions are, then we can take steps to minimize those distractions. Some people work really well in short bursts of time. Other people work well with background noise going on. You have to have that self awareness as to how do I function best? How do I get distracted? I want you to ask yourself, what opportunities exist for improvement? Again, we're getting curious. Look back at how you spent your day and list out your wins for the day.

Amy [00:08:45]:

So often we focus on all the things that we have to do that we forget about everything that we have done. Do this not only professionally, but do this personally as well. Like, hey, I took time away and ate lunch today. I went on a walk at lunchtime. I took the time to really maintain those boundaries by only picking up my phone and using social media for work within this time. And this time, celebrate. Celebrate those wins. That is such an important reframe as a business owner.

Amy [00:09:23]:

And then I want you to ask yourself this final question. How can I make tomorrow even better? What is the one thing that I want to focus on in order to make tomorrow better? This is the game changer, having the clarity that you need of exactly what you want and why you want it. This allows you to shift from being busy being busy to intentional focus. Intentional focus amplifies your results. It gives you control. And that self awareness allows you to develop a rhythm that works for you. And what I encourage you to do is continue to repeat this clarity cycle on page four of your workbook over and over. Acknowledge, assess, act, analyze, adjust.

Amy [00:10:26]:

This will change your life. This will change the trajectory of your business so remember, if you haven't taken the time to unplug for the weekend, make sure to schedule that on your calendar. It will be a game changer. And in conclusion, I want to congratulate you. Congratulations on taking the time to unplugged. But friend, this is just the beginning. Action creates momentum and momentum creates results. And right now, you are creating some awesome momentum.

Amy [00:11:07]:

Tomorrow, I'm going to pop into your inbox one last time and I'll be sharing details about something really awesome that I have for you to create that momentum, to keep that momentum going. Because you are able to achieve whatever goals that you have. You can do it. And until next time, cheers to making the money you want so you can create the impact you desire.