Essential Productivity Hacks For Designers That You Can Do Today From Amber De La Garza

If you have ever felt behind schedule before you even opened up your laptop or found yourself chasing the clock to get something done by a deadline. Well, you're not alone.

We have ALL been there my friend, but guess what? There are solutions to your productivity problems and Amber De La Garza is the productivity expert and she's HERE on the podcast today!

She has created a very detailed list of ways that we (as creatives) can be more productive in our days. (Trust me, I know it's hard)!

Get your notepad out. This one is for sure you'll want to recall later and implement!

Here are some of the topics Amber and I cover in this episode:
*  What is YOUR definition of productivity?
* Time blocking: Breaking it down step by step
*  Amber's 4 "Buckets" of Productivity & how to fill them
*  Delegation made easy
*  How to merge Amber's 2 time blocking strategies to work for you

Amber also has a great quiz for you to take for free on her website that will give you your very own productivity playlist: CLICK HERE for that: https://amberdelagarza.com/QUIZ/

Now, get going and be productive and download this episode now. You will want to relisten to it for sure!!


For more information on Amber:
Website: https://amberdelagarza.com/
Podcast: https://amberdelagarza.com/podcast/
Social Media: Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/amber_delagarza/
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/theproductivityspecialist

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Transcript

Most of us have heard that buzzword. Time blocking and it seems to be finding its way into the vocabulary people who haven't heard.
About time blocking or maybe they have heard about it and don't know what the heck it is. Can you talk about time blocking? 
you are time blocking specific tasks and projects from your to do list onto your calendar. And so your calendar and how you're spending your time is not just appointments and calls that you're on, but specifically pulling tasks and activities from your task list and answering three questions. What am I specifically doing? For how long am I doing it? And when am I going to do it? 
Hey all, you're listening to the designer within podcast, episode number 45. 
I'm John McClain and welcome to the designer within podcast, the business minded podcast created for creative entrepreneurs by a creative entrepreneur. That's me. I know firsthand the challenges, but also the victories that can come with our careers. And I'm here to sip and spill the tea with you. It's time to dive deep within yourself and redesign your own business and your life from the inside out.
Together we will uncover secrets and share valuable insights. So prepare for a transformative experience, my friend, because it's time to unleash the designer within.
Hey, guys and gals.. 
Welcome back to another episode of the designer within podcasts. It is me, John McClain. I'm your host. So happy to have you here. Oh, my goodness. Y'all. You guys are in for such a good episode today. I can't even tell you how excited I am about this episode. It is truly productivity. 1 0 1. 
You're getting a free training class. From the expert, Amber De La Garza is truly, truly the productivity expert. She is a hero of mine. Actually. I have listened to her podcast for a long, long time. And then recently last year, she and I were both speakers at Lu Ann Nigara's Luanne live. And I met her in person and we clicked instantly. 
We are geeks about all things, productivity and processes. And on this day that she was on my podcast, I actually had just recorded an episode to be on her podcast. So you can keep an ear out for that on her podcast as well. But. Let me tell you she drops so many learning nuggets. 
In this episode, you're going to need to listen to it probably twice or three times. I have listened to it twice already, just because. There's so much inside of it, but 
amber is going to talk about all things productivity today. And let me tell you, she does not hold back. 
She does not give you just the highlight version. She goes deep. She's going to talk about what productivity means to her. We're going to deep dive into time blocking, which is something that I really love to talk about, but Amber has a very unique way of handling time-blocking and she's going to break that down for you. 
Step-by-step and she actually has two. Time blocking strategies that she recommends. And she's going to talk about how she merges those together. She also has her four buckets as she calls them of productivity. And she's going to talk about how to fill them in a way that works for you. And then last, but certainly not least, we're going to talk about delegation, which is really what has helped me. I grow my company to the level that it has an Amber talks about how to delegate properly and to do it in a way that also works for you. 
I'm telling you this episode is fantastic, but let me tell you a bit about Amber. If you have not heard of her Amber De La Garza that is the productivity specialist. Amber has more than a decade of experience helping small business owners, maximize profits, reduce stress and make time for what matters. 
Yes, she does. By most improving their time management.
And elevating their productivity. Amber is a sought after coach trainer, speaker writer, host of the small business straight talk podcast. Love that podcast. And creator of the leverage lab. Amber shares her message on her weekly podcast and as straight talks, both virtually and in person across the country for audiences that range from small business owners. And associations to multinational corporations. She works with a lot of creative people as well. So listen to this episode, I know you're going to enjoy it just as much as I enjoyed being a part of it and learn, learn, learn from the productivity expert. Amber de LA Garza. 
Amber, welcome to the designer within podcast.
I am so happy to be here. 
I'm so happy you're here because you and I, I, I think we're kind of total geeks on this
subject today. We literally, finished recording an episode of your podcast, which I love. I've, I've actually been a fan of your podcast forever and I've listened to it religiously and it's helped me out in so many situations.
And so. Thank you for that. But we just finished recording an episode of your podcast and totally geeked out on productivity and talking about processes and all of those things. So that's great. And we're going to even geeked out further now, but I did an intro for everyone about you and what you do, but tell everyone a bit more about yourself and all some, you know, maybe some fun stuff about you.
Yeah. Okay, fun stuff. well I'll start with other things about me and then we'll get
into fun. So I'm a mom of one. My son will be 14 in just a few weeks. I am married to my high school sweetheart. we have two dogs. We love German Shepherds, so we have two German Shepherds. And I am the mom of a desert tortoise. Now, for fun, while we love to go ride UTVs out in the desert, our house backs up right to the desert that could, we drive, we can drive all the way to California from my house through the desert. So we do that a lot. that's about it. Just lots of family time.
that's great. Wow. That's great. Yeah. And then obviously you love talking about being productive and you love taking care of your clients how is your business set up? We don't really talk about that a lot, but you do private coaching with clients and you also have some things that you do on a larger scale as well for clients that 
Yeah. So I have private one on one coaching as well as group coaching. So I have been in business for 12 years and I have been, my primary income is one on one coaching. And I work exclusively with small business owners. So I am passionate about productivity and time management, but I also have a true love affair for, entrepreneurship and business ownership.
And I feel like it is my goal and passion to just bring more joy back to being a business owner. so many business owners want to be a business owner so they can have time freedom. And it's the very thing that falls short right away, is the time freedom aspect of it. and many business owners also want to be a business owner for the lifestyle benefits.
And yet, once you start becoming a business owner, unless you're productive and have good time management and good boundaries and all the things, those are the very things that are sacrificed in the pursuit of a successful business. And I don't think it needs to be that way.
you know, you give up that 40 hour a work week for an 80 hour a work
week, right?
If you, if you, if you don't do it correctly, right? Yeah. If you're not productive with that, but I agree with all of that. And I think that, if it's done correctly, the reason that we become entrepreneurs and the reason that we become business owners is if we do it incorrectly, it's hidden that that flame is hidden, that passion is hidden with all of the negative aspects of it.
But if it's done correctly, that beauty is allowed to shine and that flame is allowed to grow. and that is all done because if, if we have these systems in place and these processes in place, and if we are productive in the way that we run our businesses, then we can shine and we can truly become better at what we do.
And we can have free time and we can have time with our families and we can, you know, not be chained to our desk, 24, seven, all the time working on our business. So I love all that you're saying for people who. Maybe have lost that and maybe don't even know what productivity means truly. And, and the real definition of that, how do you define productivity?
Because I look to you as this productivity expert, I truly do, because you give so many great tips and on your website, on your blog and on your podcast, but how do you. Define productivity for someone who's lost the meaning of that, or maybe never even knew what productivity meant.
Yeah, I mean, look, the word productivity is such a loaded word. Like everyone has a different experience. It could be a positive and negative. It could mean, you know, someone could say productivity. It means I have to be organized or I have to be an early morning person. I really simply define it as we're being our most productive selves when we're investing our best time into our best activities. Now, it's a framework that can lay over anything, and it needs to be because Your goals are not the same as my goals. Your personality is not the same as mine. And so when I say we can lay this over, it's to achieve any goal that matters. So I can lay over investing my best time into my best activities in my business, in our relationship, in my personal life, in my health. And so what do we want most of we want that undivided. I'm showing up my best time, right? Like where things could be happening all around me and I'm just in my zone. And so that's your best time. And are you using that best time to do the activities that move the needle forward? And this is a framework, but there's a lot to be said around that.
I don't believe we're meant to be productive all day, every day. I do not think that that should be our goal. I think that if you have that pursuit, you're always going to feel beaten down. I think that it is not realistic. And if you are in that pursuit, you start diluting the definition of productivity and then it becomes, okay, I was really busy all day and that felt good.
I checked things off my list. Being productive could be 30 minutes a day, an hour and a half a day, four hours a day. Whatever that is where you're literally moving the needle forward on achieving your goals. And that's where I feel like being most productive. Now are there other things like we took the party over here?
We were just talking on my podcast, but it could be efficiency and organization. All those things are true too, but true productivity, I think is something that we have to purposely create. Choose to show up for and do it on purpose.
Oh my gosh. There's so much to dig into there. And how much of the outside world plays a part of that? Like how much outside world influence comes into that saying, This is what you have to do to be productive. This is what I want you to do. This is what I'm telling you is productive. Or, you know, is it an influence from our family?
Is it an influence from what we see? You know, there's a meme on social media that says, Oh, you have to do this, hustle, hustle, hustle. all these things come into play, right. that influence us. I did more before, you know, 7 a. m. Then you've done all day, you know, all these things that just feel so heavy.
And, what I'm hearing from you is that. It's up to us to define 
know, I hear when I say that a business owner is like, okay, so how do I define that for myself? Right? And so in business, I have four buckets where areas where I think a business owner is going to find their highest value, most productive. Activities, and it's really important that we know as a business owner how we can serve the business and the business's goals because there's so many things that it takes to keep the business going and operating.
There's a lot. Much of that is more busy work than The work you're choosing to do to get yourself to that next level or the business to that next level or servicing your client or making a new offering. so here are some examples. as a business owner, I believe you'll find your highest value activities in Marketing and visibility is a bucket number one. consistently showing up and letting the world know what it is you do and how you can help them. Bucket number two is sales. So if you are consistently showing up in marketing and visibility, then you get the opportunity to have sales conversations. And bucket number three is servicing clients. Now bucket number three on servicing clients specifically for service based business owners, and if you're not a service based business owner, maybe it's delivering the product, creating the product, revising the product, but mostly I speak to service based business owners, is you're in that bucket and you're like, this is the most productive use of my time.
It's closest to the dollar. Of course, this is where I should be. The problem is that without balance, you're going to have your head down and you're going to look up and you're not going to have anything in your pipe. You're not, you're not going to have any, any leads coming in or sales conversations. And so this would directly result in cashflow up and down profitability. And so we can rationalize anything, right? you know, we did the, quote unquote, most productive thing, serving the client. Could it have been helpful to level up and ask, how can I create efficiency in servicing my client?
How can I use automation? How could I delegate so that I am. Only doing certain things in, servicing the client so that I can also show up in these other areas. This leads me to the last area that I think is high, high value, high return on investment of time is leadership, leading your team. And this is the one on one conversations, the delegating, the hiring, the onboarding. And I'll be honest, when I first started teaching this a long time ago, I only had three buckets and then I would have clients come to sessions and they'd be like, I had to have one more conversation with a team member, like, Oh my gosh, I have so many better things to do. Like they keep asking questions. And I realized that if we could flip that and say, actually, when you are purposely investing in team members and leading them, it is the biggest return on investment. Because now you get support and help to show up in all the other areas of your business, including probably marketing, visibility, sales and servicing your client. So depending on where you're in your business, if you're a solopreneur, you're in all the buckets, including janitor. Hands down, that's what it looks like. the pursuit is, is that you're not focused in one area alone at the expense of other areas that affect profitability and also the success and health of the business. And so to get the best leverage would be that as you are businesses maturing, you're consistently getting leads, you're selling and you're servicing your clients. Is that next level would be how can I find support in an area of my business that buys back time? So that was a long winded answer of how do you find your most valuable time and highest value time in your business? It's generally in those four areas
Well, I love that, but my, I guess devil's advocate would be, what if I'm not good at one of those areas? What if I'm not good at bucket number two? What if I'm really sucky at marketing, what if I'm not Good at, you know, talking to new clients. What if that's not my forte? What do you do then?
What do you bring in outside help? if you are a solopreneur and you are expected to have your hand in every bucket because you are only one person, what do you do if you're not good at that task?
I mean look the truth is you're not going to be able to grow your business if no one knows you're in business
And even if people know you're in business, if you don't sell and share with them, how you can support them, you're out of business. And look, I'll tell you, I went to college for business. I am a business coach.
I literally love business and I hate marketing. I really do not enjoy it. And if you asked me if I was great at styles, I would have told you absolutely not 12 years ago, but my business needed me to hone those skills well enough until I was able to either find support, whether that was. Finding coaching, a training program, some sort of resource or outsourcing it. Fundamentally, my business needed me to figure out how to do marketing and sales so that I could do the thing I was skilled at, which was servicing my client. Because that alone is not going to get you past solopreneurship. my answer is you got to suck it up until you can get support. And I'll give you a little story.
So we were talking about the shoulds and what people think, you know, something should look like when I first started blogging was the rage. Like everyone's like, you want a successful online business? You blog. Yeah, I tried that. I paced behind my assistant talking out the blogs and then I'd get in my car and go listen to a podcast. And I am so embarrassed to tell you how long it took for me to figure out. I like talking more than writing. And so the moral of this story is, is that I did, when I first started in business, I did the thing that I was told that would work because you know, anyone that's going to tell you something works, it's a, it's a one size fits all. Until I listened to my gut and I thought, you know, if I'm going to do this thing called marketing and I'm going to do it consistently, I'm going to find something that I enjoy and that. I can get better at, and that's key. I was not great. I have listened to early episodes. I fell off my chair the first time I went back and listened to early episodes of my podcast. It wasn't something that I enjoyed long enough to be consistent with it and decide that I wanted to get better at. I think that was key instead of saying, I just hate marketing. No, I just didn't like the ways in which I was choosing to market up to that point.
I like that. Yeah. And I think sometimes you can reframe things too, right? If you reframe something, so instead of selling, look at it as if you're serving someone and taking care of that person, right? If you just sort of reframe it in your mind, maybe you'll find a way to enjoy it in a different way. And see it from a different perspective.
But I also think and maybe you feel differently, but we shouldn't beat ourselves up if we're not good at everything from the beginning, right? We should like you said, give yourself time to get better. Give yourself time to hone those skills and maybe you'll come around and maybe you will start to like something a little bit different because we're not all going to be good at productivity from the get go.
I'm assuming.
No. And that's another thing to say. Well, I love that you said not at the beginning. And I would say you're not going to be good at everything at the end. Like there's a going to be a point where business, no matter what skillset you learn, your business is going to need more than you can provide it. And that's a healthy way to look at it.
Like I didn't want my business to stop growing at my level of capacity of either personal development or skillset in a certain area. I wanted my business to be able to outgrow that. So to have that, you have to bring in other talented people that can support your gaps, your weaknesses so that you can stay in your strength and your lane. And that is a real gift that when your business is in a certain place and you don't just. Start a business and get there. So let's be clear about that. Like if you're a solopreneur and it's feeling hard, like know that there's hope there'll be a place where you get to choose what you do on a daily basis.
You get to choose the lane in which is your unique, special asset to the business, and that will feel great. But it's going to take work and foundation building to get there to be able to do that.
And so just give yourself time, give yourself grace, go over the lumps and bumps. You didn't get good at your business. None of us did from the beginning. And just like, as you know, we're talking to mostly designers and creatives, and I'm sure everyone listening, you weren't the best designer from the beginning either, right?
You're, you got better at your skill as you, as you went along now, most of us have heard that buzzword. Time blocking and it seems to be finding its way into the vocabulary of a lot of, people over the productivity and time blocking, all the things right people who haven't heard.
About time blocking or maybe they have heard about it and don't know what the heck it is. Can you talk about time blocking? First of all, what it is, and then we're going to get into maybe how to do that and the benefits of it, because I actually personally do enjoy it and I do find the benefits of it.
But I think for a lot of people who do work by themselves, or maybe even if they do work with a team, maybe we can talk about the benefits of that and how they can implement that into their daily lives and talk about why they should do that, but first of all, what is it? What is time blocking?
for me, there's two different ways to implement time blocking. The first way I think is what most people are familiar with, in that you would create a consistent schedule. You'd block out specific time on certain days. For specific type of work or activities, which what that creates is every Monday morning or team meetings, Friday mornings are financials.
Tuesdays are design like Wednesdays are for discovery calls, et cetera. Which it works. It, it does work, but it doesn't work for everybody. And sometimes that kind of structure can scare people off to be like, that's ridiculous. my business is highly volatile. I never know what's going on. How could you possibly take me from here to, I know what I'm doing every Monday to every Friday, but it's something that you can work into.
And the second, version is that you are time blocking specific tasks and projects from your to do list onto your calendar. And so your calendar and how you're spending your time is not just appointments and calls that you're on, but specifically pulling tasks and activities from your task list and answering three questions. What am I specifically doing? For how long am I doing it? And when am I going to do it? And this one is powerful because it provides a lot of flexibility. But one thing that it does is take time that is very abstract. Like if you really think about time, you could be doing something you absolutely love and it feels like you snapped your fingers and you had just started. And then you could be reviewing financials for 10 minutes and think you've been there for a day cause that's not your, your jam, right? So time is about flexibility. Perspective experience, and often it's something that's very hard for people to actually quantify and manage something that is abstract. a strategy to be able to take it from abstract to concrete is to visually put it on your calendar. And many people are visual. And so when you look at time and you're visually blocking out, you go from a task list that has Item, item, item. And let's be realistic. We're mostly optimistic. We have 20 things.
We're like, today's the day I'm
getting 20 things done. Right. We get to the end of the day and we're like, how did we not get it done? You know, you kind of beat yourself up about it, but had you taken those 20 things and said, what's the most important thing, and then looked at your, calendar for tomorrow or this week. Blocked it out and said, I'm doing X, Y, and Z. I know it's going to take me 60 minutes and I'm going to do it on this day. You start doing that and you're like, clearly only seven of these things are getting done. so I'm going to be really clear about what seven things are done. Because when we don't do that, we lie to ourselves and say, all 20 are going to get done.
So. Who cares what order they get to, I'm going to get them all done. And I'm kind of joking about this, but that's what our brain does to us. And that's the benefit of time blocking in specific tasks is that you get to quantify the time you get to it allows you to have these little sprints. So most business owners are goal oriented. 
They're big picture, right? So how can you use that to work for you? If I put something on my list and I gave myself 60 minutes, I'm like, head down, don't interrupt me. I have 60 minutes to get this done. And then I look at it as this little game that I play of like, how do I get it done in 30? Or how do I get it done in 60? So now you're, you're most productive time. I'm not gonna let the dogs come in and my husband come in from work and be like, Hey babe, let's talk about the day. When I'm like, I know exactly what I should be doing for this block of time. Or when those interruptions do come in, I can say, I'm going to be out in 30 minutes, good boundaries, right?
Cause I've already allocated that time for something I'll be out in 30 minutes when I'm done and we can, you know, catch up then just an example of how you might see that time different if you've set a purpose, a goal and a milestone for that time,
wow. I can anticipate there being a lot of challenges that we might face when we're time blocking I can see. going into a time blocking situation and saying, Oh, well, I gave myself an hour, but I'm in the zone, quote unquote, and I'm gonna go ahead and cancel that next appointment and give myself another 30 minutes for this because I'm doing really well at this I'm sort of brush off that next thing, right?
Because that doesn't matter right now because I'm doing this, 
well, boundaries are a big challenge and I would just speak to that to say. Yes, that can happen. And sometimes it's needed. Sometimes the reason that you want to expand a time or change something around is a real reason. But at least you're clear about the decision you're making. You know what you're saying no to. If we don't block our time, we don't have a clear to do list. We are going to be in our zone and then pick our head up and not even know what fell through the cracks. What meeting did I miss? What team member did I not talk to? And so when you have the plan, you can change the plan. That is the flexibility. But at least, you know, Is this worth it? And sometimes the answer will be yes, and sometimes the answer will be no. So if that makes sense, like, for example, if I had a time block and I had, I'll give an example for design. If I was blocking out design time and I got into the office and there was, I don't know, a contractor on site and there's a leak at the house and my client's on the phone and it needs to be handled now. I'm going to know that I'm going to handle that. I don't really care what was on my time block because that is an emergency. But the gift is that when I'm done handling that call or that situation, I know right where to get back into. And if I've missed that time block completely, I know that I need to reschedule it. The opposite is we don't have a plan and we just jump from one fire and one phone call to one email to one thought, and we don't really know what we're saying no to, and those are when the high, value activities just slide off tomorrow, next week, I'll get to it. So I think it helps with decision making on the boundaries. The other challenge that we're going to have with time blocking, both with You know, like seeming your days and having a standard block or doing specific blocks of time is estimating the time.
Yes.
Look, we're just
guesstimating. Let's be honest about that. Now, you're guesstimating until you get better data. And if you've never tracked your time, your brain has told you how long something took, but you don't actually really know. Because how many times have you gone to do the thing and you're like, did it just take me an hour? I thought that was a 10 minute task, right? Well, once you start blocking your time on a regular basis, you're re giving yourself new data.
That's like, okay, no, I said that would take an hour and it's always taking me 90 minutes. Or I said this was 15 minutes. It's always 45. If that's true, then now next time, the day, the week after the day after you're going to schedule an accurate amount of time, 45 minutes, not 15.
You're going to start more accurately predicting the time that it takes to do things. And that's going to just be overall helpful for understanding your capacity, what you can say yes to, what you can say no to. That's going to help a lot with your productivity and your growth.
Because Many of us love to say yes to
everything and then when we can't do it in the time that we thought then what gets pushed out not just high value activities, but what gets pushed out is dinner with the family barbecue on the weekend because you're scurrying into the office and understanding your capacity within the boundaries of Your typical ideal work day is going to help you start making different decisions in the business.
also good. You know, you said something earlier about, jumping from one task to the other and how those interruptions can really affect you. And I can say. That when you jump from one thing that is totally different, and sometimes it doesn't even have to be totally different. It takes a minute.
I have actually calculated this, believe it or not. It takes me about 10 minutes to readjust my brain and readjust my mind and get back in the quote unquote groove of what I was doing prior. So if I'm working on, let's say design. And then a phone call happens and I decide to answer that phone call or an email comes up and it takes your mind away from that.
For me personally, it's about 10 minutes of, okay, get back into that. Get back into what you were doing, writing that article, doing this with that client, whatever. And and that's lost productivity. That's lost 10 minutes of time in that day. If you take that 10 minutes and collectively add that up throughout the day, that's a lot of wasted time, right?
Right. 
is.
it's tremendous. There's a little book called the myth of multitasking. It's an excellent book. I actually had the author on the podcast and there is so much research that we instinctually want to try and multitask. And really what the book says is it's switch tasking. We want to switch tasks and it's always in the pursuit of getting more done and being more productive.
but the truth is it's actually counterproductive. It is actually the most inefficient. We make more mistakes. We slow ourselves down and we may know that, but man, this book, I'm like, give me the stats and the numbers. I geeked out about it. Like it is clear now. I know that it's not good for you. I am a productivity coach and I can still find myself leaning into multitasking at times. The difference is I'm so aware of it that I, it's not that I'm immune to it. I catch myself and I'm like, okay, no, get back on track, like reset, because I know that that's better. But to your point, I wanted to actually talk to you about switch tasking and how that has to do with time blocking.
Mm 
So I think the way that I explained it was that there was two strategies.
And I think what I missed to say is that you can merge those strategies. So I use a block schedule where my weeks look very similar. And then I also, in all of the extra space put in specific tasks. So I use both. And the reason I use both is because I want to do like activities. Together on the day. because of that switch tasking of going from your financials and then expecting, you can go into the deep design and, then have a with a client and then meet with a team member, it's a real drag and it's very inefficient. For example in my business, I do coaching and I only do it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If I do podcasting I mean we're talking at three o'clock today. This is my fifth interview today. This is podcasting day, right? I'm batching out my podcasts and my interviews and for me look It's the end of the day. I'm in my groove. Like, I'm in my zone. I don't need to think about, oh, do I need to be preparing for a client meeting right after I get off of an interview? that kind of batching and theming your days can create so much more efficiency and productivity. And not to mention, less stress. it's a lot less stressful. And if we want to do it just so that we feel more joyful and less stressed, there's benefits to that as well.
Yeah. It's sort of like a mental preparedness, right? your mind gets itself into that area, preparing for that. I've, I saw this come into play. during COVID my team had to work from home, obviously, but we were still working on client projects and we were working remote, of course, at home on Slack and on video calls, but I said, Hey, everybody, let's work on this Smith project.
And we were all working. On the Smith project, Amber and, and we all knew that we were only working on the Smith project. So whatever questions we had or whatever design issues we had were only related to the Smith project. There was nothing else coming up right on that day. We knocked that project out in two days and it was a 5, 000 square foot house.
Top to bottom renovation, everything, because we were in, you know, that design zone and everything was just clicking, clicking, clicking. So from that point, I was like, okay, kids, this is what we're going to do going forward. We're going to like literally sit into this zone and we're going to time block, and of course we can't do that in two days going forward, but my point is we could time block those segments of the design process in a way.
That allowed us to focus on, certain parts of the design process to only answer those questions. Be it floor plans, be it selections of furniture, you know, be it working on the kitchen, be it working on the exterior, whatever. So that whatever questions we had. We're questions related to where our brains and our minds were already sitting and we didn't have to sort of jar ourselves out of that place.
I love that. I mean, that's so much synergy with the whole team as well. I mean, that's why you were able to get so much done in two days is you get in the zone, their synergy focus that I've never actually heard a team doing that all virtual one project altogether. I love that.
It was accidental, but it worked. It was it was well, it was actually on purpose. It was accidental because we had to, you know, do it. But it was like it was amazing. we all finished all five of us and we're like, what just happened? How did we do that? Let's do it again.
Yeah. So speaking of design time, I actually, I work with a lot of designers and you've got either solopreneurs or maybe it's a designer with maybe two to five people on their team. And I find that the principal designer has actually squeezed out design time. Which I mean, on the outside kind of blows your mind.
Like they're a designer, their business is design, but there's so many other things that it takes to run the business. And so one way to time block is to create blocks of time where you can get into deep design. And then depending on that week's priorities, you fill that block up with that client or that phase of a project. But what you've done is hold off where if somebody says, Oh, I'm going to You know, is Susie available? The answer is no, she's not available on Tuesday morning. She can meet with you on Wednesday because it's reserved. It's protected. And going back to the visual part is that if it's not on your calendar, Somebody says, can you be somewhere or do something and you have availability on your schedule?
Most people will say yes, but what they're not taking into consideration is the to do list that should be being done during those open spaces. And so if you don't put it on your calendar, you don't quite understand if you have the capacity to take another appointment that week or meet with another client, et cetera.
So there are little reserves of time to do focused work. And I'll just close this up to say, if you don't do that, then that's the work you're doing when the kids go to bed after dinner, legit. So if you find yourself working 40 hours a week during the weekday and you're go, go, go. And then you're like, Oh my gosh, like as soon as I have dinner, or as soon as like, you know, it's nine o'clock, then I get my real work done. That's time that you really need to be looking at the structure of how you're allocating your time during your work day. 
almost as if you want to do it on your own terms, right? You want to, you want to time block, but you need to still time block on your own terms. And it's not just as you're saying time block that week or time blocked that month, but it's time blocking the time. Within the time block, right?
It's time blocking, time blocking the time block. Essentially,
exactly. Which you love because on my podcast, you said you needed an SOP for the SOP. So, yeah.
I really do. I want, I want steps within my time block, right? I want to time block my time block. Please, can we do that? to me. The way that I moved to that level was through delegation.
I learned to delegate to my team members. I learned to delegate through, you know, you and I've talked about software and technology. How big of a role does delegation play in That freedom of allowing ourselves to do other things, allowing ourselves to have personal time with our family, and, allowing ourselves to be quote unquote productive and to grow our business and to scale our companies.
 How big of an advocate are you for delegation 
Usually, I mean, absolutely. It's essential to be able to delegate. And in this day and age, we are so blessed because we can delegate. to a contractor. Like that was not a couple, like, I don't even know. 15 years ago to a 20 years ago, it was like you hire a full time or you hire none at all. And then it has to be in person or you, maybe you can get part time, but then you're limited into the skill set.
You're not getting the highest skilled person part time. We have so many options and. You can be so creative and what it looks like to get support for your team and support can meet you wherever you're at on your journey of entrepreneurship. So I find that people wait far too long to get help. Or they get help for things that don't really have that big of an impact right away.
So you want to be really discerning. If you only have certain amount of dollars to pay a certain amount of hours. Be really discerning with where you're getting help and what kind of activities that is in my business again Now i'm so confused. We talked about it on my podcast So i'll just repeat it but in my business like I I started out you you start out as a solopreneur You gotta grind it.
You're building a business
Yeah. Mm-Hmm.
But at some point you get to a point where you can leverage through hiring other people And at this point in my business I only do like four things. So I write my podcast solo episodes. I record my solo podcast episodes. I coach my clients either one on one or in group coaching. I speak and I lead my team. Everything else is, is delegated out from my calendar to the emails for, you know, client interaction to all the other things that it takes to market the podcast, the blog, the, or you name it. All else is outsourced either by people that are on my team or by specific consultants where they can come in and do special projects and things like that. That's important for me just where I'm at in my season of life. And so I think this might be helpful too, for some of your listeners is when we're talking about, what is your vision say of your ideal schedule? Sometimes life happens and you have to adapt to a season in your personal life.
And this last year I had to adapt to unexpectedly taking over my elderly aunt's entire estate and managing her healthcare and renovating her home and selling it. I mean, there was just so much. And so I had to make business decisions. I had to delegate more and get really clear that I went down to a three day work week for a year. Because there are just so many doctor's appointments and attorneys and just things that had to happen during the week. And I wasn't willing to give up every weekend to sacrifice family time to handle these new responsibilities. And so then it became like ruthless with delegating, being super clear about my highest value activities, super clear about what I'm saying, no to for opportunities. And so I went down to three seven hour days and so now I'm up to four, like I'm never going to go back to five, but I'm, I'm up to four days a week. And I just say that to be like all the years of like Building and getting clear about my boundaries. Let me shift when life just changed in a moment and I was like, okay This is not good, but what can I do about it? And we are blessed as business owners to have the choice of what we get to do about those situations. If I worked in nine to five corporate, I would not have had that same flexibility. And for many business owners, they don't feel like they have that flexibility either. And I want them to be able to, to experience that and like, feel that they have that ability to adapt and to really focus on what matters most as seasons change in their personal lives.
That's great that you able to even do that. Most people would, probably panic and not understand how to even get to the point of being able to adapt to that. Back to where you were talking about, starting to delegate and limit what you were doing with your business and coaching only and doing the podcast and the solo episodes and et cetera.
How long did it take you? First of all, to realize that that is what. Do you call it your superpower? Do you call it because that's what you only like to do? How long did it take you to realize that that's the number one, what you wanted to do, and then how long also did it take you to realize that you could start to outsource all the other things?
Because I think people listening may think, okay, that's great. Amber's. Been doing this forever. That's wonderful that she can do that. I'll never be able to get to that point because, you know, Amber is a pro. She can do this. I can't do that. But
Yeah, no. 
what do you say to people to reassure them that they can do that as well?
Well, actually you had asked me this question earlier and I can't believe I didn't snap to it. So my first hire was getting help with marketing because I hated marketing. So about six months into business, I hired who is now my content manager as an assistant slash helping me with marketing activities. so I first outsource something that I knew the business needed that I wasn't loving and showing up consistently with. And then I just started building on that and how I chose my high value activities is my business model, right? So my business model is that I am. The product. So I have chosen a business model where I'm the one coaching my clients. Now there are other coaches where I can train a coach and there's a whole, you know, methodology. That's not what I've chosen. So that is my unique skillset that I, that I can serve the business with. So of course that's high value activity. The podcasting I was super clear about that because people work with people they know, like, and trust and my personality and who I am and what I stand for and what I believe in shows up on the podcast.
Nobody else can do that, but can someone make all the images and post it, do all the other hundred and 50 steps? It feels like it takes behind the scenes. Yes. And so we built up to that. And so I mean, the way my team looks like now has been a gradual growth for 11 and a half years of just you make one decision and you make another and you need support in another area to where right now I feel pretty solid with a lean team, but. I stay in my zone.
Great. Well, and I was just on your podcast talking about processes and I'm sure you have a zillion processes behind all of that team to support all of these steps to get everybody to do all of the things. 
So to your point, right? That's a special project. We worked on that for almost a year. So when I just tell you, this is all I'm doing now in my business. It wasn't then when we were building the SOPs, they had to get it out of my head, right? As I were with me. I love, I just want to keep it true is like, it's not as black and white and pretty as that.
I'm telling you a snapshot of what it looks like today. And it doesn't always look like that. I remember I used to love doing images. Because I'm like, Oh, that's my creative outlet. And then Crystal did them. What Crystal is my content manager. She did them. And I'm like, why was I ever touching those horrible? And I share that because it's happened over and over of things that I kept. That I thought I was good at, or I enjoyed, and then I give them up, or somebody helps me out, and I'm like, oh, clearly, I shouldn't be touching that. So you learn along the way. Totally.
very, very good point. There are so many things that we think we might quote, like to do or are good at. And I can name off a zillion things too, because there are things I'm like, Oh, this is fun. I'm going to do this. and then three hours later I've done and then someone else to do it. And it's like 10 minutes later, they're done.
And I'm like you idiot, John, what were you doing? So yes,
you have people that are in their zone, like, I
know what it feels like to be in my zone, right? when you're keeping it for yourself, I like to say you're robbing other people of joy. Because somebody else loves doing the thing, so let them do it. if you have the resources, don't be robbing people of joy by holding onto it.
give them their zone. Give them their zone.
Yeah, Yeah, 
exactly. And then I'll just like wrap up that one way of speaking about it could look different. I mean, this could be not just delegating, but asking for help from mentors, coaches. I call it your special advisory council. So who do you go to if there's legal issues, your CPA like who's on your team that when things need to be handled, you can bring in. To be most effective, efficient, and productive at solving challenges or problems in the business. That's another way of outsourcing than just like repetitive tasks in the business. So it
can look very different. 
Oh, I love that. That's great. Wow. Well, this has been so wonderful. I love all of the information. Do you have any other like last minute. tips or advice for people who are thinking about getting more productive in their companies, whether they be a solopreneur or whether they have a team just sort of, you know, basically starting this process or any, any advice at all for people who want to just jump into this and, and start this process of productivity that you've discussed so well today.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we touched on a lot of great topics. So like if I, we were talking delegation and you're like, Hey, I want to hear more about that. Go to my website, search delegation. I have several podcast episodes about it. We have it about time blocking to planning your days. So we touched on a lot, you're a great interviewer.
So we touched on like a lot of great things. I would say use my podcast page on my website as a resource to just put in your challenge and see what resources are there. We have a ton on the website. And then I'm sure we'll share out what that looks like at the end.
you totally do. Your, your podcast is fantastic. You should all go to her podcast, subscribe if you're not already. It is so, so, so good. And it is such a great place to go for so many resources and you're going to get sucked in.
time listener. I
Oh my God, I love it. I was, it's, it's such a great podcast and I just love just all the tips on there and, and everyone will get sucked into it like I do, and just just, I, 
we live in the same town, you were the listener, and we
just randomly ran into each other in the lobby at a conference, like, this was truly meant to be. I
know how many times you've been on my walks with me, did you?
no clue, I mean, at this point you should just ask me to go on a walk with you, we probably live down the street.
I should, let's just do our podcast together, like, as we do a walk, that's, that's, that's our next goal, like a live podcast, maybe.
Yeah, that's good.
 Oh my God. I've loved every minute of this Amber, tell everybody, first of all, how they can find your podcast, how they can find your website with all of the great resources on it. Where do you hang out all that fun stuff? First of all.
Yeah. So wherever you're listening to this podcast, just search small business straight talk, and you can subscribe, listen to some episodes. You can also visit me over at amberdelagarza. com. And we have a whole page there of resources and dropdown. We have a free quiz you can take to find out where your biggest challenges in your business. And if you take the three minute quiz, we'll give you a curated specific playlist from the podcast that addresses those specific challenges. So you can get that at amberdelagarza. com forward slash quiz. And then I hang out on Instagram at amber underscore Dela Garza. 
Perfect. Yes. The quiz is fun. You should take that, you guys. And I'll put links to everything in the show notes. Amber, I feel so relaxed, but yet so productive after this interview. Thank you so 
love it. love it. Well, that's what I hoped for. So thanks for having me. And it was a great conversation.
It was a blast. Thank you, Amber. 
Thanks for sticking with me to the end of the designer within podcast. It means the world to me. If you're ready to dive deeper into the topics that we've discussed here, be sure to check out my online coaching and courses program, design success academy. com here. I will teach you everything you need to know to run your interior design business.
From starting the project all the way to the end, including marketing and pricing your services for profit. And for more information on this podcast, including how to be a guest or my design services in general, go to johnmcclain. co. That's johnmcclain. co. See you soon, friend.