Managing Time & Priorities: Stepping up as CEO of your Business with Ashley Kang

Meg Brunson

Hey. Hey.FamilyPreneurs. Thank you so much for joining us on another episode. Today, we're going to be talking about managing time and priorities, how to step up as CEO of your business. And we are joined by Ashley Kang. Ashley is the the hype woman for the service provider, looking to regain clarity, sanity, and time back so they can grow as the CEO of their business and make an impact. AHK Business Management was born out of her desire to bring strategy systems and action planning together in a holistic way. Ashley is passionate about creating and prioritizing tangible action steps to get business owners unstuck and out of their own heads all so, they can stop feeling like a disgruntled employee in their own business and step into their CEO shoes. Ashley, I am so excited to have you here today. I feel like this is a topic we all need to be talking about, so thank you so much for being here.

Ashley Kang

Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Meg. And I love talking about these things, so I'm really pumped for our conversation.

Meg Brunson

Yeah. I think most people, when they start their entrepreneurship, I'm speaking for myself, but a lot of people I've encountered, they've been in like, a nine to five. They decide they don't want to work 40 hours a week and do all those things, so they leave the 9-5, but that they end up stuck working 60 to 80 hours a week. And it's like we get stuck right in that. Like you said, call it the disgruntled employee phase. And we really need to figure out how to move from that employee mindset into that CEO mindset. So what is the first thing that we need to do once we realize that this is us you're talking about? This is me.

Ashley Kang

Yeah. I think there are kind of three things that you should be doing in tandem, if that makes sense.

Meg Brunson

Sure.

Ashley Kang

Being really clear about where you're going. So your mission, vision and values. That's what I call the business foundations. People call them your brand messaging guidelines, whatever you want to call it, but mission, vision and values because you need to know what direction you're pointing the ship, so to speak. You need to know how you're going to be serving your clients, your customers. And so if you're not clear on that, then you're a marketer, Meg, it's hard to talk about what you're trying to sell if you don't know. So that's one thing. Second thing is then having the action plan. So if you have the vision and mission, you have to break things down into goals and then into like, shorter term priorities and projects so you actually can start moving in the direction you want to go. And then finally a weekly CEO day so that you're actually putting a pause on doing all the things for everybody else and all your clients and actually getting time to check progress on your own goals, self correct where you're going, adjust, do some self care, which is super important, and plan ahead and prepare. So those are the three things that I think a lot of people try to just jump right into everything and just go, but you have to have those three things in place before you can actually make some sustainable moves.

Meg Brunson

So let's focus on one at a time and kind of see if you dive a little deeper into those. Let's start with the business mission, vision and values. How do you go about setting those things, like defining those things, figuring out what they are and then we can talk about how we can use them to guide us.

Ashley Kang

Right?

Meg Brunson

But first, how do we define them?

Ashley Kang

So really your mission or what you're about, what you are trying to get at? People sometimes put mission and niche in the same bucket. They're not exactly the same thing, but for all intents and purposes similar. It's what you are doing. Starbucks's mission, for example, is to inspire people with coffee, I think- close enough to inspire the human spirit, one cup of coffee at a time. I think that's what it is, something like that. And so their mission is about inspiring people and their vision is to create community and caffeinate people. Right? But mission is really what you're doing. If you can articulate I do XYZ for [whoever your ideal client is] so that [whatever the transformation is], you're golden. It could be really simple and it changes, right? Business changes, we pivot, we grow, our priorities change. Vision is like the pie in the sky as one of my friends would call it. The long term goals, like the really far out things that you are striving for, whether that be a personal vision or business vision of being able to have a team, for example, that might be one of your visions, part of your vision, personal vision might be being able to own a home.

Ashley Kang

And so then those things in your vision are the things that you reverse engineer and trickle down into those projects that you actually act upon. And the values, that's how you go about doing your business and things that are important to you as the CEO, the business owner, things that are important to your clients, whether it's like an internal value of we really value clear communication within our team, with our clients and so we respond to all inquiries within 24-48 hours. Right. Values could also mean we as a business really value equity and accessibility. That's something I know, Meg, you value and so then all the decisions and the way you go about your business is filtered through that value. So mission, vision, values, the business foundation stuff, coming to those things, it takes a little bit of self reflection and a little bit of wordsmithing and really there's no right or wrong way to arrive on them because they are yours and your business. And your business is a reflection of you. So there's no right or wrong way to do it.

Meg Brunson

I love the way that you broke all of those things down, first of all. And I just think I want to add on to it, and you were getting that- you touched on it too. But I want to add on and emphasis.

Meg Brunson

Just to do it and not dwell on the the perfection of it, like you mentioned wordsmithing. And I feel like that can come later. That can come later, but this is a step it took me a while to do. It like, I didn't know to do this when I first started my business. And I'm not just talking about this. I run businesses without doing this. And having gone through this process has been transformational. And like you said, it does change. I try to go through everything once a year just to make sure it's still in alignment. I happen to do all of that stuff over like the Christmas/New Year's holiday. That's always been where I find the time to do things. But also anytime your direction changes or what, I review these things. It was only recently that I actually added DEI and I call it Justice. Yeah. And part of it was like it had always been like inside of me, but I didn't realize that it's role was one of my values. And it does just shift the way that you operate in your business.

Ashley Kang

Yeah. And we'll probably circle back to the whole go back and review your mission, vision values later. But yeah, it ebbs, it flows, it grows, it expands, it changes. They're not just those shiny things that are on your website, on your about tab that feel really stale or static. They are living, breathing things. They change and you should be using them in your business, whether you're really explicit with talking about them or not. And they're floating around in the back of your head all the time, but they're an active living thing.

Meg Brunson

Yeah. The first time I did it, I think I Googled like, what are other businesses values? And I had things like transparency and agility and just words that weren't like, they didn't matter. But that's what I ran with at first and it's fine because it's building blocks. So do what you need to do and then keep returning to it, right, and you'll be golden. So then once you have that mapped out, can you talk a little bit about how you filter your decisions using those things?

Ashley Kang

Yeah, so I toss around that phrase, "decision making filter" all the time. And really, when you're setting your goals, when you're trying to prioritize things, or when a new opportunity comes along and you're just like, should I do it? The first thing that you should think about before you even get into the whole like, do I have the money, the time, the capacity to do this before you even get into the technical bits. It's really okay, is this something that helps me move myself closer to my vision, my business vision? Does this align with my mission? Do my values support this? And usually you can do that pretty quickly in your head, and if the answer is yes- a resounding yes, then that's when you get into the more technical, do I have the budget for this? Do I have the team to do this? Do I have the time, right? But why bother doing all of that thinking and analyzing and planning if no, it doesn't actually support your vision or your long term goals? For me, if somebody came up to me and was like, hey, do you want to buy a share in this?

Ashley Kang

I don't know. I'm just making something random. It's a gaming console. And I'll be like, Why would I ever do that? That does not fit with my mission and values for my business, at least not right now. So that's an easy no, hard pass.

Meg Brunson

Yeah. So I'm thinking about... I can see how this would fit when it comes to different offers, courses, or opportunities. I know I follow a ton of people, and when they offer something new, it's like you want to jump on it right away because you just love them and what they have to offer. And I fall into that trap where I buy courses, and then they sit there, and I never exactly do them. So I feel like by filtering them through this process, you'd be able to say, okay, this is a really cool course on list building, for example. But is list building actually something I'm focusing on right now, or am I focusing on this other thing?

Ashley Kang

And the flip side, too, is true of when you're getting ready to maybe put out a new offer. Some people will have an idea for an offer or a service or a course. And I've had these conversations with clients before where I'm like, okay, I know this is a great idea. This sounds really cool, but does this actually help you move closer to your vision? Help you move the needle on your current goals for the business? Because, probably not. It's the shiny object syndrome that we all fall prey to if we're being honest with ourselves. And so it's a good gut check, the decision making filter. It's the first step. You just stop, pause instead of just again rushing into things.

Meg Brunson

No, that's a great example. I can think of so many things people promote. Virtual summits, starting a podcast, running VIP days, challenges like all these different strategies to grow your business. But if you jump on everyone without filtering stuff through, it's going to be a hot mess.

Ashley Kang

Exactly.

Meg Brunson

Awesome. Now, what about that action plan? This is number two. You told us there were three things. Number one was mission, vision, values, foundations. And number two was action plan. So you're talking about an action plan for the next year based on your goals. What does that look like?

Ashley Kang

So we are all entrepreneurs, we're business owners. Things change. Planning. You can do all the planning and that could get chucked out the window at any point when things happen. But without a plan in place, all of our creativity, our energy is really unfocused and we walk around like a headless chicken, right? We don't know what we're doing, what we should be doing. And so having an action plan, which is really simply five big goals for your year, no more than five, because we're human. Usually the sweet spot is somewhere in the three to five big goals that you then break down into bigger projects and you spread them out across your year by quarter. And then you can then tackle those things in those quarters, those 90 day chunks, to really guide your monthly and weekly daily planning. So it's all about the reverse engineering, but as you go through your actual plan, as you go through the quarter, you might be like, I'm not seeing the return on investment on this, or I don't think this is worth it, or this might take longer, or wow, we finished that really quickly. Then you're able to not spend as much time worrying about what comes next.

Ashley Kang

Having an action plan for your year gives you something to work off of and adjust. It's harder to make a plan on the fly than it is to adjust an existing one, right? So setting out the plan, the big goals, and then knowing as you start, things might shift and that's okay, but you've been able to at least break it down into tangible doable pieces. So it's not as overwhelming, it's not as intimidating, and you can at least then set direction to start going.

Meg Brunson

Now, when you're talking about these five'ish or less goals, are these things like launches or are they income goals? Or can we talk a little bit about what the goals should look like?

Ashley Kang

Yeah, both of what you just described. It could be launching a program or launching a podcast because there's a lot of work that goes into those things and it takes more than a month or two or even a quarter to get any of those things off the ground. So, yeah, those would be things. You could have a really big income or revenue goal. And then when you reverse engineer. That breaks it down to more of, all right these are the activities that I'm going to do to try to bring in more revenue. Whether it's I'm going to really invest in my referral partner network this quarter. Or I'm going to really work on repurposing my video podcast content. Whatever it is. You have to make the goals and you have the time back to your mission, vision, values that's the first thing. Making sure that you can measure progress in some way. Whether it's a hard metric or a number. Or if you have enough projects that you can kind of assess the completion rate, and then making sure you have the resources to do it. Because some people might set goals and they don't actually have the financial means to follow through with those things.

Ashley Kang

They might not have the team and the manpower. They might not actually have the time or the systems to back them up to do it. So when you're goal setting, you have to stop and really think about all of those things. And that's why you have to plan. You have to sit down and put some time into it in the beginning and then as you go, you can adjust. But you shouldn't be setting goals that you can't possibly complete. They should be something that stretches you, but not something that's completely impossible out of the realm of it.

Meg Brunson

Reminds me of the acronym SMART Goals. I forget what SMART stands for. I have to Google it every single time and that's okay. Remember the term SMART goal and then Google it.

Ashley Kang

Exactly.

Meg Brunson

Just Google it and it'll tell you it's like, measurable is the M, and timely and relatable, but I forget what they all mean. Yeah, but it's easy enough to Google and help you with that. So it feels like that's exactly the conversation.

Ashley Kang

Yeah. SMART Goals is definitely something that I teach and work with my clients on, but I always am like, you can call them SMART goals, but I think sometimes those fancy acronyms freak people out. So I'm just like, here's your checklist. It shouldn't be intimidating. Goal setting should actually be kind of fun and it shouldn't be overwhelming. And also when you start setting goals, it's a really great idea to bounce your goals off of somebody else. Like your business bestie. Be like, okay, you know me, you know my business. You know what my angst and celebration points are. Here's what I'm thinking for the next year. What are your thoughts? Do you think I can do this? Is there something I'm missing completely? And honestly, whenever I do this, I am always so grateful to my business pals because they'll either say, actually this is a great idea, or remember when you said XYZ a couple of months ago? Like, you crazy, go back to the drawing board. So I think that's the other part of the goal setting process is make sure you invite somebody else's brain into it.

Meg Brunson

And it's going to be reciprocal. So I would share all my stuff with you and then you would share your stuff with me. We give each other feedback and it's a win-win. So I feel like you just have to find somebody who's on board with the same process and it is super helpful. Sometimes I make my husband fill that role, but he's not the best. No, he's wonderful, but he's not always the best person for that kind of task.

Ashley Kang

Right.

Meg Brunson

Because he doesn't have the same entrepreneurial mindset.

Meg Brunson

You know what I mean?

Ashley Kang

Oh, yeah.

Meg Brunson

So it's nice to have somebody else who's in the trenches. But separate enough to give you the outsider point of view.

Ashley Kang

Right.

Meg Brunson

Okay, well, I love all that. Now, once you have your goals set, what is the best way to make sure we don't totally forget? Because that's something I've done.

Ashley Kang

So one of my favorite things to talk about, this is what I'm starting to become known for, our CEO Days. And CEO Days, simply put, are a weekly chunk of time that you spend to work on your business. Not in it and not working on client work, but on your business. It's time for you, as the CEO, as the business owner, to reflect on what's been going on. Do some renewal activities, whether it's self care or professional development, and then reset. So plan and prepare for what comes ahead. And really, regardless of if you have a team or not, you're the CEO. You're growing, making visionary decisions. So before you start, people start objecting and being like, I don't consider myself the CEO. I'm just a solopreneur. You know, let's take it back and, you know, shake some shoulders here. You're the CEO.

Meg Brunson

This whole episode is about stepping into that role.

Ashley Kang

Exactly. And part of being a CEO is you need to know what the heck is going on in your business and to remind yourself of your goals, of your vision, of where are you going, what direction are you trying to take your business? And as entrepreneurs and as business owners, life is crazy. We're juggling our personal life as well as our business. And there are million things happening whether you have a team helping you or not. There is a lot going on. Somebody once said, CEO, that means chief of everything. And it's really true because at a high level, you're in charge of everything. And so the weekly CEO Day is time for you to realign. And part of your CEO Day should be to check back in on your goals. What progress are you making on the projects that will support your goals? That quarter is a good time to make a plan to continue breaking down those goals and those projects so that you can achieve your goals and your vision. It's that time where you can do that decision making and do those gut checks of, am I actually enjoying what I'm doing?

Ashley Kang

Is this actually nurturing and growing the business? Take care of all of those other things like finances and bookkeeping, the time for networking, go through all those millions of courses and programs that you bought or are a part of. And self care, self care can be something as easy as, I'm going to go work at a coffee shop or I'm going to order a nice lunch in. I'm going to book a massage once a month during my CEO day time. So, really, the CEO Day is a way to manage not just your time, but your energy and your business capacity.

Meg Brunson

It does make sense. And I feel like this is something I've kind of been doing, but didn't really know it was a thing. I didn't know it was a thing. But for the past, I want to say, like, two plus years, I don't make any appointments on Wednesdays. It's like mid week. I keep my calendar clear, and I just allow myself to be very intentionally in control of that time. And not every Wednesday looks the same. Some Wednesdays I take my kids and we go to a museum and we have family time. But it allows me to, like and I love my clients, right? But it allows me to have time where everybody knows I'm unavailable and so I'm not answering emails. I do in the morning and before. Right. But I'm not like, glued to my email or glued to slack or glued to all of those things. But I feel like I love the idea of calling it a CEO Day and being a little bit more intentional, maybe, about checking all the boxes you mentioned, like business development, self care, things like that. Because I'm sure there are areas I could expand on.

Ashley Kang

Right. I love that you said not every Wednesday looks the same. And even for my clients, when we do a design, my CEO Day, which is my signature service, and we're building out their CEO Day plan, we're always talking about this list. This plan is here to guide you. And some of the stuff will become second nature, and you can probably cruise right through it. But then there's like that exciting part of you can do what you want. You are the CEO, it's your business. And at the end of the day, really, the CEO Day is so that you can be refilling your CEO cup, so that you can show up 100% for your business, your clients, your team, if you have one, and for yourself, because you're the one running your business. Like, you chose to build this business. And so you need to be able to have that time and space to celebrate the work and enjoy it.

Meg Brunson

Yeah. I think right before we started recording, I told you I'm newly addicted to Reels. It's been like maybe a month, maybe it's been a month by now, but like last Wednesday or two Wednesdays ago, I recorded like 30 Reels. And for some people, that may sound like torture, right? But I had so much fun with it. And I went to my coworking space and I was working, but in a way that I felt I was having a lot of fun and nobody bothered me because it was my day off, on Wednesday. I just love this. Tell me, I want to know you've got becoming the CEO email series. Does that talk about the CEO days? Tell me what the email series looks like?

Ashley Kang

Yeah. So the email series is for the online service provider or coaches who want to create more time and space to manage and grow their business and step into their CEO shoes. So it's a weekly email series. Every Monday, I pop into your inbox with some little tidbit. Just even off the top of my head. There was some mindset coaching a couple of weeks ago about you are the CEO whether you have a team or not. There's one this last week was how do you do a pulse check? What kinds of things should you be looking at for your metrics or whatnot your data that you should be collecting? I've got some other really fun things coming up. So it's a little, how should I put it? It's a CEO goodie bag every Monday in your inbox. So that's a great resource and I'm really enjoying it. And I like to think of, I'm sure you know this too, from your marketing lines. Your email community is really like a special, intimate kind of group of people. They're like in the know of what's happening. So I've been really enjoying that.

Meg Brunson

Well, we'll put a link to that in the show notes and then can you tell me a little bit about you mentioned your signature service. Can you tell me a little bit about that too and how else you work with clients?

Ashley Kang

Yeah, so it is called Design My CEO Day. It is a VIP day experience. So it's a five hour experience where I work with clients to build out their custom CEO Day plan. Not to get people all intimidated. It's really just how do we build out that list of things in categories of what you need to do each week to really, one, to feel like the CEO and then act like the CEO of your business. As well as implementing some simple systems. Whether it's airtable based or click-up list to help you actually do those things on your CEO Day plan and manage some other aspects of your business. And then optimize it all by creating a CEO worthy weekly schedule. Because your CEO Day is only going to be as good as the rest of your week, and the rest of your week can leverage your CEO Day better if it actually has some time blocking and day theming. So all of those things combined, it's how do you manage your time and capacity as the CEO?

Meg Brunson

I love this. I feel like I still could probably use it now, but it's especially something that I know would have benefited me five years ago when I left the corporate world and launched this business and had no freaking idea what I was doing. Yeah, right. This would be huge. And I love that you help break all of those things down and get people comfortable stepping into that role, because that's really the first step, right, is being able to build those foundations.

Ashley Kang

There's also so much coaching that goes into it because I think a lot of times I get this way too, and I am a CEO Day, like, fiend. But there is some guilt associated, I think, when we think about not doing client work and like, stepping out of that for even a little bit, it freaks people out. So you have to give yourself permission, especially in the early days of your business, when you're like, I have to bring in the money. I have to say yes to everything, which is not true. And the CEO Day is like that forceful reminder to actually take that break away from the constant hustle of client work.

Meg Brunson

Yeah, I feel like the danger, right. The real danger is that if you spend so much time on your clients and you're not spending enough time on yourself, clients aren't forever.

Ashley Kang

Right.

Meg Brunson

So if and when contracts end or people cancel or move on or whatever the case may be, if you haven't been doing the work on your business, you're going to have a really hard time replacing that income, which is, again, something I'm speaking from past experience. I want to thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. Where can people find you online?

Ashley Kang

My website, AHKBusinessManagement.com, or my Instagram @AHKBusinessManagement. And on both of those things, you can easily sign up for the Becoming the CEO weekly email series. I love that when people slide into my DMs on Instagram too, so that's how people can find me.

Meg Brunson

Well, I'm going to definitely go search for you on Insta because I'm not sure if I'm following you, but I will be. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate you and and all this value you brought to us talking about mission, vision, values, action, plans, and CEO Days.

Ashley Kang

Thank you for having me.