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Sam Vander Wielen: [0:01:29] Hey, there. It’s Sam Vander Wielen, your host of the On Your Terms Podcast. I am so excited to be chatting with you today about how I structure my weeks, my days so that I don’t drive myself crazy and I still get a lot of stuff done.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:01:42] I have been very fortunate to be able to build a multi-seven figure business without working like a maniac. I definitely work a lot. I will give you that. But that is because I really, really like what I do, to be honest, but I think I get a freakish amount of stuff done in my days and weeks.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:01:58] At least that’s what most people tell me. And I’m hoping that a couple of the simple tips that I share in this episode are helpful for you today.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:02:08] I think I take a really like a chill approach to this. I’m not trying to like stress you out or make you like a hyper plan or I also tried to keep it really flexible to make sure that this works for you, your kind of business, your lifestyle.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:02:21] So, I broke everything down for you today about exactly how I plan my days, maybe weeks and how that’s evolved over time. I mean, also even like what hasn’t worked for me in terms of planning days and weeks.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:02:32] So I’m really excited to share this episode with you today. I hope you also know that the ultimate bundle sale ends this Thursday, the 29th. So, I hope to see you inside because if you get inside the bundle soon, then I will also see you at the two-day live retreat.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:02:48] So with that, let’s get into this week’s episode. I am so excited to chat with you about how I plan my week.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:02:58] So how do I structure my week? I don’t know. How do I? Could you tell me? Maybe. I don’t know. No, I’m just kidding.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:03:05] I’ve come up with, like over the years, I feel like I’ve come up with a system that’s worked for me. But I also think it’s really important whenever talking about stuff like this is that these things are fluid, right.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:03:15] So, as your business changes, as your offers change, as your life changes, frankly, I mean do you think that my week to week has looked the same since my dad died versus like when I was taking care of him versus before he ever got sick, right.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:03:29] Like things have changed over time. My business products have remained relatively – well, no, exactly the same over the last five years. So, that’s helped me to come up with some consistency, but that might not be the same thing for you. And it doesn’t make my business like any better or worse than yours, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:03:45] So with that, I think it would be really fun to talk about like the evolution of some tips and things that I’ve put into place that have helped me to better plan my days and my weeks. Not just to be a planner, but so that I don’t run around like a chicken with my head cut off, and so that I actually get more things done in the long run. Because I used to wake up every day in my business and basically have no plan, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:04:12] So, I would sit down at my computer. I think probably when I sat down, I would make like a really long to do list. And then I would like boom, boom, boom, check things off. And checking things off made me feel really good and made me feel really accomplished.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:04:25] But when I would actually get to the end of the day, I remember I would feel like I’m not really sure how I moved the ball forward in my business, you know. Like maybe you felt that before. And so, I would just try to like work on as many things as possible and that made me feel really good, but I don’t think it was really changing much.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:04:43] The first thing that happened that kind of shifted this for me, because this admittedly, it was not like my own incredible, you know, idea, was that Margo, my marketing manager at the time she started working for me and she saw the way that I was working. And she was like, no, no, no, you cannot do this.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:05:01] Margo was very, very organized and she’s like, you need theme days. So, the way that we started out was with Monday through Friday becoming kind of themed days, which I’ll explain to you in a second. And that was like the most basic form.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:05:14] Just doing it that way it didn’t necessarily worked for me until I really understood first of all why it was beneficial, but also had to break up my days and then even planning more generally my weeks.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:05:25] So, you’re going to hear me talk about today what you know, how I actually recommend do theming days and then theming weeks and how they kind of work in conjunction with one another.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:05:35] Once I started building a team, it became even more important that I got organized as the CEO, especially before I hired any sort of managerial positions and an employee, so that I had other people who are managing, you know, people who were working for me because everyone was looking to me.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:05:53] So if I wasn’t organized, then you sure as heck nobody else was going to be, right. And in the beginning, it was a lot of me just being like, oh, can you go do this? Oh, how about this? What about that? It was like very reactive, right.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:06:07] Now – even when it was just still me kind of being the manager, I got to a place where I got way more organized. I had my theme days. I had to communicate that to the people who were working for me.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:06:17] And then, once I brought Lindsey on, my incredible operations manager, who hear me talk about here a lot and who was the inspiration behind a lot of what you’re going to hear today in this episode because so much of this is like what she does for me now. And really I’m just passing on her brilliance to you. You’re welcome.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:06:33] But as you know, when Lindsey came in, then it was a little bit of like, okay, here’s kind of how things work around here, but feel free to make it better, right, which she has. She has done that big time.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:06:45] So, that can be really important. And now I want to stop you, because if you’re already thinking that’s not me, I don’t have anybody who works for me. I can’t imagine having an employee, back the train up because remember, we’ve been talking about this a lot lately, we are future proofing your business. We are laying the foundation right now for what you’re building.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:07:05] So, there were many, many years where I didn’t have anyone working for me. I barely even had a contractor. I don’t think I ever had a contractor for like three or four years.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:07:13] And then, all of a sudden, it’s like you get one, two, three, and it builds. And if I hadn’t had this stuff in place, and if I hadn’t had some of my own stuff together, it would have been a disaster when people came into my business.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:07:25] I also, you know, and I imagine you might feel the same. I didn’t want other people telling me how to do it. Like, you know, when you adopt somebody else’s system? Like sometimes people do this with like a sauna or some like way of organizing Google Drive.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:07:38] And I actually think that you kind of have to set it up the way that your brain works and then you need to train people as to like what you’ve been thinking and the way that you’re approaching it. Because if you let everybody set things up from their own perspective, at least it just made me feel like I wouldn’t understand what was going on. And when I tend to get overwhelmed, I kind of just like shut down.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:07:58] So, I really think you have to create your own system first in order to be able to do that. And then that way you’re building for the future when people come in, right.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:08:08] So we’re going to talk today about how I also recently started theming my weeks when it comes to larger projects in my business. So, the way that I like to think about planning your weeks or days or months is that you need different energy in different situations depending on what you’re working on.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:08:26] So, like for example when I am writing to my email list, my energy is really different. I kind of – I feel a little bit more like I have to be like a little more hyped and I love writing. Sometimes it’s a bit more emotional, depending on what I’m writing about, but it’s more of a like, quiet cozy, I put on noise cancelling headphones. Honestly, usually I listen to hip hop and I put on a candle, and I’m like, all cozied up.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:08:53] When I’m doing the podcast, it’s a different energy because I have to be, like, in a relatively good mood, right, which, you know, after having just lost my dad isn’t, like, always the case to be honest. And, you know, I can’t get on here and be like, hey everybody, what’s going on? It’s Sam. Do you want to learn how to legally protect your business?

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:09:14] No, I can’t do that. Nobody wants to listen to that, right? It’s not that I have to fake it either, but I do have to like catch myself in some of these windows where I’m like, oh okay, things are like relatively stable as much as they can be for what’s going on in my life right now.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:09:28] And so, like, that’s a podcast, you know, mood, right. And then like I always say to Lindsey like the mindset that I have to get into to like outline all of these episodes or outline blog posts or work on a new product, develop a new product is totally different than the like vibe of like writing Instagram captions.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:09:48] So I like to think about it overall like that, right. So, let’s talk then about how I plan my weeks and days.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:09:57] The first thing I want you to do is think about what the main categories are of what you do in your business. So, it’s whatever you do right now in your business. And then this can change over time like a number of the things I’m going to mention here I have since now passed on to other people I’ve delegated, but that was not the case for many years.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:10:17] So, just a couple of examples, right, that I can give you are writing content, creating content, right. So, maybe it’s writing emails, writing social posts, actually filming reels, filming TikTok, stuff like that, client meetings, client work, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:10:34] If you’re a copywriter or something, outside trainings or PR. So, like you being interviewed on other people’s podcast, you giving a training and somebody else is saying, you doing a JV webinar.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:10:45] Team management would be another thing or team building, team oversight, kind of like doing a lot of quality control. I was doing so much quality control before I had people working for me where that, you know, they could do that for me. But I was reading everything that went out before it went out. All that kind of stuff. That takes up a lot of time.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:11:03] Admin stuff like paying invoices and bills, sending out invoices to your clients, all that kind of stuff.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:11:09] And then CEO tasks, so things like ideations and big picture vision, right. So, there are lots and lots of different categories of what we can do in our businesses. You might have some that I don’t have listed here, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:11:22] What I then like to do is kind of go and clump them together as to like what kind of makes sense, right? So, maybe on a day where you’re going to like work on your team, like you’re going to do a team training or you’re going to like work side by side or have some meetings with your contractor or your operations person, then you could also pair that with doing some like admin work that day, right.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:11:44] So those are like again kind of thinking of it as like this energy management thing. Like that’s kind of a similar energy, right? Whereas like outside, doing outside trainings, doing PR or doing like recording all your reels for Instagram, that’s a very like high energy, outward energy thing.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:12:03] And so not only would I not want them to be on the same day, but I might even want to spread them out a little bit and give myself those buffer days of having like, oh okay, I know like the day before I do a lot of outside trainings, I might like to have a cozy writing day because that’s just very like quiet and I don’t have to talk to anyone and I’ll have to be on. So that kind of stuff.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:12:22] So, that’s kind of what I start off with is like thinking of these main categories and then starting to kind of clump them together based on what’s related, which ones make sense to go together.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:12:33] Then I think about how much time do I need for each of those, right? So, do I need an entire day for meetings like outside meetings for example. Do I need two days to be able to record content every single week? Do I need an entire day dedicated to writing? Do I need two days dedicated to client meetings, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:12:53] So there’s like all different kinds of ways that you can think of this based on what you do. For me, writing and creating content takes up a lot of time. That’s what I do probably the most. Like my main categories I would say are like product development, writing, recording actually the content itself.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:13:14] And then I would say like CEOing, like there are some higher-level decisions that I have to make, some things I have to review before they go out the door, lots of meetings, right, with like my operation staff, with marketing staff.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:13:27] So that’s really how I spend my time these days. And, of course, taking care of the customers, right. That’s all part of, to me, like product development, product management.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:13:36] So I don’t do client work, right? So, I don’t have to sit down and do like one-to-one sessions with clients several times a week. So, you might have a lot of time dedicated to that.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:13:46] So, I would almost, like if I were you and I was coaching and I had a lot of one-to-one coaching or group programs that had sessions, I would probably sit down and like fill those in on a blank calendar first as blocks, time blocks.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:13:58] And then I would kind of reverse engineer from there of like, well, what makes sense if like all day on Thursday or the majority of Thursday you’re sitting there talking to other people?

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:14:09] Maybe it’s nice to pair half of that day with something that’s a little bit more introverted, like writing, right. Something that you wouldn’t schedule your outside meetings or you wouldn’t schedule outside trainings on that same day that you’re seeing clients because it’s like all outward stuff, a lot of energy. So that’s kind of how I like to think of it and I go through and I would break it up.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:14:28] So for me, I used to have like a business development day that was kind of like more CEO stuff. I had content creation. And marketing was like two and a half days in the business. Outside meetings was a day and then internal meanings admin was like another day.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:14:46] So that’s kind of how I broke up my days in terms of themes when I first started. But then the lovely Lindsey started working for me.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:14:54] And Lindsey had such a great suggestion that we’ve implemented into the business that I’m hoping will help you too, which was that it’s not just, you know, helpful to theme your days like that, but it’s also helpful to theme your weeks.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:15:09] Because when you have one major like channel in your business, like let’s say it’s a podcast, a YouTube channel, a blog, even your e-mail lists, right, something that you spend it – if for you right now, it’s Instagram then okay, let’s go with Instagram. Like whatever it is for you, whatever that is like you can’t necessarily just have a day blocked off, for example, on your calendar that says like content, like well, what about the content right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:15:38] Content has many different phases, even within creating it. There’s ideations and conceptualizing it. There might be like outlining it or scriptwriting if you’re doing like a video or you’re doing like a reel or something. You might even have to buy props or like get things set up.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:15:53] Then there’s the actual recording of it. And then there’s the everything that goes like all the assets that go along with it, right? So, if you record a YouTube video, you might need to ideate, you outline, you actually record, then you have to edit and you have to write all the stuff that goes along with that YouTube video. Like the e-mail that goes to your e-mail list letting them know about the YouTube video or the social post that goes on Instagram to let people know about the video, the description of the video, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:16:22] So there’s like many different elements and so that’s why the just doing my theme days wasn’t exactly working when it came to the larger products, projects because I was essentially context switching throughout those days where I was like in one day being like, okay, I need to think of a podcast idea, I need to outline it, I need to like plan for it. I’m going to set all my stuff up and record it Then I’m going to record it. Then I’m going to sit here and write the e-mail that goes along with it, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:16:22] And it was like, wow, that’s a lot of different energies, right? Even though that technically all would have fallen under the content creation day, right? That makes sense, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:16:59] But once Lindsey mentioned this to me, I was like, oh, this actually makes a lot of sense to now break it up in terms of weeks as well. So just to give you an example, going with the kind of like podcast, YouTube blog example, let’s take four weeks of a month and theme them out.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:17:17] Week one might be the week where you think about planning, research, and outlining, right. Because that’s kind of all like the same headspace. You’re kind of alone. You could do your own thing. Reheat your coffee seven times like I do, you know, all that kind of stuff.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:17:32] So I own my jammies, I have my head like my big headphones on, I’m always listening to music way too loud, all that kind of stuff. And I just kind of like to be in my little like my copywriter, Caitlin used to call it a copy cave.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:17:46] Like, I just like to be in a copy cave, right? And it’s not really copy, but it’s more like planning and research. So that would be week one. That’s really what you would be focusing on.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:17:56] Maybe you could even do it for the entire month. So, let’s say week one, you’re planning out for one month worth of podcast episodes, so maybe four podcast episodes. So, you’re planning, researching, and outlining four podcast episodes in that first week of the month.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:18:12] In week two, you would dedicate your time to now recording what you’ve just outlined and researched. So, you might have gone through and done all this research about exactly what topics you’re goint to talk about, how you’re going to break up the episodes or what you’re going to write.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:18:26] And then week two would be either the recording or if we’re talking about more, something like Aa blog, it would be more of the actual writing. So, it’s like the implementation of what you’ve just researched.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:18:36] Week three, I then block off as more of the content creation around that piece of content. So, there’s content, four content, right? So, week three, I focus on doing all of my writing, like writing the emails that go along with those podcast episodes, writing captions, writing on screen captions if it’s for reels or something. All of that kind of stuff. So, it’s all the writing behind whatever you’re creating.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:19:02] In Week 4, you could edit, schedule and post the content. So that could be a week where your dedicated again to being in a little bit of a cave where you’re like editing the videos or editing audio, or editing your blog posts or whatever, scheduling them to be posted.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:19:16] So that’s essentially how you would then theme your weeks in your entire month while still maintaining those daily themed categories. Does that make sense. I hope so.

Sam Vander Wielen: Okay. The other thing I wanted to mention before we wrap up today is that I want you to be careful not to carve out things that don’t feel super satisfying, like CEOing, right? So, it can sometimes feel like, you know, it feels really good to be like I posted on Instagram once per day, every day this week. Or I created a reel for every day and you know, that kind of stuff can feel like it’s very concrete.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:19:53] What I then see though, is that we don’t leave ourselves enough space, or any space at all to CEO. And really, what I mean by that is not hardly doing anything at all. Actually, it’s just like daydreaming essentially.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:19:53] Essentially, I want you to be even maybe carve out some time to be still, to be quiet. Sometimes this is like journaling for me. Sometimes this is like laying with my eyes closed and just letting my mind wander.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:19:53] I visualize like, what do I see for this business? Where do I want this to go? Like, how do I want it to feel for me, for them, of the whole thing, right? So, it’s a lot of that.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:20:30] Or if I’m thinking of a product in particular, I start to kind of dream, dream that out like, what would this look like? What would some of the branding look like? What would the class look like that goes along with it? I kind of just start to let myself dream up.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:20:43] Sometimes, depending on the mood, depending on the, you know, week or whatever, it could also be doing something that’s not related to business at all. That’s just a little creative outlet, a form of expression, I find it helps.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:20:55] So whatever that means for you, whether it’s something like art related, sports related, like go to one of those places where you can like smash things with a baseball bat or whatever. I just find like some form of expression like moving things through your body in general can really help you to get any more creative space.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:21:12] I know for me, when I watch things on TV I tend to come up with a lot of ideas. It gives me a lot of like fodder for stories that I then use to translate in content.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:21:23] If you’ve noticed in my writing, a lot of times I’m just like, oh, I saw this thing on this show and then here’s what happened. And that’s just like what happens with you when you’re legally doing something in your business, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:21:33] So, for me, that’s how my brain works. Like I just, I kind of like, convert things very easily in my mind. And so, when I get out of just doing things related to business, I come up with a lot of ideas from movies, TV, music, all kinds of stuff doing activities. So that even to me is included in like CEOing.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:21:54] But I also think CEO ING should be like you know, time to just have whitespace, spaciousness, dream up a new product. Like make a really rough outline, brain dump document of some product that you’re thinking of.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:22:08] Like, what would it look like? Who did it before? Don’t think about it. Just let it be. Like, let it be messy, right? Just make it.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:22:14] That’s what we have to do as CEOs. You have to carve out time in your business, to ideate, and to dream, and to think big, and to be the visionary and see where this thing is going. But you can’t see where it’s going if you’ve always got your eyes down, like on what’s happening right this second, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:22:29] The last thing I want to say to you about planning out your week is about our expectations. I think that lowering your expectations a little bit on how much you can get done on any given day is really, really helpful.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:22:41] I also can share that it was pivotal in my business when I started slowing down with how many things I took on at once, like per day, per week, per month.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:22:53] So, whatever it is for you and your business that might be causing you a little bit of stress or being like a big time suck it, you know, it’s helpful to put a little bit of a cap on that. And I remember, like, I did this with live trainings because a lot of people asked me to come in and do like live trainings for their group programs and their masterminds, their courses, I record videos for people’s courses like all kinds of things.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:23:14] And it’s such a privilege to be able to do it and I love it. But they take up a lot of time. And so, if I don’t pace myself, then it started to be that I had like multiple of them per week and they were taking up whole days, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:23:27] So now we space them out much better to give me a little bit more breathing room and also to manage my energy and knowing that, like that’s a lot of outward energy. So, for you that might be like even client meetings, right? I have friends who are coaches, who every other week they have client, in-person client sessions or like virtual client sessions, but then on the alternate weeks, those are more of their like inward weeks, right? So, that’s how they balance it.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:23:51] Other people do it on like themed days, right? So, I think just allowing yourself to slow down and having the trust in yourself that you are going to make this business successful that it doesn’t need to all be right now, I’ve had like scarcity mindset stuff like pop up when people ask us to do live trainings or for me to like do a training for their course. And I’m like, oh, if I don’t do it right away, they’re going to pass over me and they’re going to go to somebody else. But that has not been the case and I’ve had to trust in that.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:24:19] Like if they do that, then I’m not the right fit. But everyone has been very respectful and we get it done and we do a really, really good job. And so then they’re happy anyway. And that’s just what has worked for me.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:24:30] So I’m so curious if any of these tips were helpful for you. I hope that you’ll send me an e-mail like reply to the e-mail if you get my e-mails or you’ll shoot me a DM on Instagram @SamVanderWielen and let me know if this episode was helpful for you.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:24:44] If you’re not in the ultimate bundle already, I hope that I see you inside, because the sale ends this Thursday, the 29th. And I hope that I will see you inside of the bundle very, very soon.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:24:55] And if you’re in the bundle, then I hope I get to see you at my two-day live virtual retreat. That’s for bundle members only in October.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:25:01] With that, I will see you next week. Thank you so, so much for listening. If this episode was helpful to you, go ahead and shoot a text to a friend with a link to the episode. It would mean the world to me. Thank you so much.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:25:15] Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms Podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps to Legally Protect and Grow your Online Business at sanvanderwielen.com.

Sam Vander Wielen: [0:25:39] And to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram @SanVanderWielen and send me a DM to say hi.