160: Delegate to Elevate: Prioritize Your Zone of Genius

See the show notes for this Episode here.

This transcript has been automatically generated.

Bonnie Christine:
Hi. Welcome back to the Professional Creative Podcast. So excited to be here with you today. No matter what you're doing, I think about you sometimes. If you're on a walk or on the treadmill or driving to work or school, I just feel really honored to, I don't know, be with you. Today, I wanna talk about something that was prompted by a question. Recently, someone was like, how do you do it all? Do you sleep? And I this is one of my least favorite questions. Because to me, it says, I'm not doing that great of a job of making sure people know that I am not Superwoman.

Bonnie Christine:
And you're not Superwoman either, and we shouldn't expect ourselves to be superwomen. Seriously, I have so much help. And so this episode is a little bit of a call to normalizing help. Like, let's not pretend that we can do it all. Let's normalize getting help in our lives. And so I wanna talk you through some of the things that I do personally. They're in my zone of genius. They're things that I keep.

Bonnie Christine:
And then I wanna talk to you about some of the things that I give away, I let other people help me with. I'm Bonnie Christine, and this is where all things creativity, design, business, and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains running a multi 7 figure business doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today, I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

Bonnie Christine:
So many of us, especially women who are working and also being moms, many of you have small children like I do. It is truly impossible to do all the things that we often hold ourselves accountable to doing. So this is a lesson that took me way too long to learn. I was, you know, a one woman show for 10 years. And when I look back, it's the biggest mistake I made. I wish that I would have gotten help in my life and my business earlier than I did. So before I move on, I wanna tell you about a freebie that I have for you today. It's called the task tending guide.

Bonnie Christine:
You might have it. I've talked about it a little bit before. But if you haven't ever done this exercise, it's one of the best things that you can possibly do. So it's really where you spend at minimum 1 week, ideally 2 weeks, tracking what you're doing. Tracking where your time is going. You're auditing your time. Now many people have time audits. I know that Mike Michalowicz has a time auditing system, and Clockwork.

Bonnie Christine:
Dan Martell has a time auditing system, and buy back your time. The one that I've created is called task tending, and it's after my love for gardening. And so when you look at this task tending worksheet, you'll see that we have 4 options for our tasks. We're gonna water some, that means keep them. We're gonna prune some, which means that we're gonna systematize or make more efficient. We're gonna pull some, which means we're gonna trash them. We're gonna transplant some, which means that we're gonna give them away. So when you look at the task tending, sheet, what it does is call you to write down every task that you do on a 15 minute increment.

Bonnie Christine:
Now that's insane, I know. But it is one of the most impactful things that you can do in your business. So every 15 minutes, you're gonna set an alarm. You're gonna just write down what it is you're doing with absolutely no judgment. You're gonna catch yourself doing incredible deep work. You're also gonna catch yourself doing like really waste like wasting time, very low tasks. So if you're scrolling Instagram, no judgment, just write it down. If you are filling your Amazon cart, no judgment, just write it down.

Bonnie Christine:
If you are driving to the studio, or working out, or making coffee, or attending a meeting, or editing a podcast, or a video, or photos, Whatever it is, you write it down with no judgment. It's really just observation. You really need to just get eyes on where your time is going. And then at the end of every day, so again you're either doing this for 7 days at minimum, 14 days to get a really good glimpse. At the end of every day, you're going to rate each of these tasks across 4 different columns on a scale of 1 to 5. So the first one is talent. Does it require much talent? So one is it requires very little talent. 5 is something that's, highly skilled amount of talent.

Bonnie Christine:
The next one is passion. How much do you love this? One is, I don't really like it at all. I might even hate it. 5 is, this completely lights me up. The next column is value. 1 is, this adds very little value to my life or my business. 5 is, my business or my life could not exist without this. The final column is energy.

Bonnie Christine:
So the energy column is how much energy does this give or take away. Okay? So one is this task is incredibly draining. Okay? It drains me completely. 5 is that it actually gives me energy. It energizes me completely. Okay? So then, that's 4 columns, 5 points each. So the maximum score for each task is 20. Now you've got to make some decisions.

Bonnie Christine:
Low tasks, you're gonna either pull, or transplant, or prune. High value tasks, you're gonna likely water. Keep them for yourself. Okay? So this is all gonna make maybe a bit more sense when you've got the worksheet in your hand, so go over to today's show notes atprofessionalcreative.com, and download the task tending worksheet. It's a freebie that we have for you for today's episode. So from there, what I wanna do is talk to you about some things that I keep. I'm gonna start with some things that I personally water. These are things that only I can do.

Bonnie Christine:
I love doing them. They give me great joy, and I'm really good at them. The first one is thinking about my business. This is something that we need to give ourselves more and more permission to do. This is us stepping into the visionary role of being in our business. It is working on the business instead of in the business. And let me tell you, I spent way too long feeling guilty over the time I would take to think about my business. So could you go lay in a hammock for an hour right now with nothing in your hands? No devices, no books, nothing.

Bonnie Christine:
Just you and your mind. And think. Think through strategy. Think through vision. Think through long term vision. Where do you wanna go? What do you wanna do next? This is so incredibly important, and it doesn't happen by accident. It has to be scheduled, just a tip. The next thing is creating artwork.

Bonnie Christine:
And this is something very unique to me and my business. For you, it could be whatever, creating the thing. But as a creator, I know that you're creating something. And so likely, you have a very special value that you add to creating the thing that you do. The next one is the original content that I create. So any videos that I create, this very podcast, any lessons that I create, it's content that really has to come from me, and I love it, and it has to come from me. The next one is leading my team. I I don't want anybody else to lead my team.

Bonnie Christine:
I wanna lead my team. I love leading my team. I love developing my team. I love ideating with my team. Super important that I'm there for them. The next one is to do anything I can to develop other creative entrepreneurs. That is the purpose of, really, everything that I do, why I show up is to help develop and lead other creatives to success in their entrepreneurship journey. So the last one is being a wife and a mom.

Bonnie Christine:
This is something that is so important that we if we are a wife and we are a mom, that we water, that we really, really pay attention to because no one else can do that but us. And so those are the things that I think are on my number one priority list. They're in my zone of genius. They're things that I love doing and also I'm really good at doing. I want you to just imagine. What would it feel like to hold your very own custom fabric for the first time? Or maybe it's wallpaper or stationery or gift wrap. Perhaps you use it to wrap gifts with or sew projects with, like blankets or pajamas. If that sounds exciting, I'm so excited to tell you about my new free mini class.

Bonnie Christine:
It's called Start Simple in Pattern Design. It's called Start Simple because, well, we're going to do just that. In just 5 lessons that are under 20 minutes each, you'll learn how to take a simple sketch or painting or picture and turn it into vectors using Adobe Illustrator. Now don't worry, even if you've never used this program, I'll teach you everything you need to know to get up and running simply. I'll even show you how to take pictures of found objects like leaves and petals so you don't even have to draw if you don't want to. I'll show you how to create a custom color palette, design your very own repeating pattern, and order as little as 1 yard of fabric or some wallpaper or maybe some gift wrap today. Once you learn how to design fabric, that's the magic. You'll be able to design just about anything you want.

Bonnie Christine:
So do you have an hour to learn an entirely new skill for free? If so, let's get started. Head on over to bonnie christine.com/startsimple. Once you register, you'll gain immediate access to all of the lessons and begin learning right away. Again, that's bonnie christine.com/startsimple. Come on. I'll meet you there. Now let's talk about some of the things that I transplant. So again, transplanting is giving them to someone else.

Bonnie Christine:
Now this list is so incredibly long. But I'm gonna give you kind of like the bullet points to some of the bigger categories. Right? So one of them is marketing. Things like Facebook ads, I used to do all by myself. Things like tags and emails and segmenting and all of that kind of marketing stuff. And I now have a marketing team. I've transplanted nearly all marketing, even though I I'm still involved because I love it so much. But I've transplanted it to someone else.

Bonnie Christine:
The next one is customer service, responding to emails, answering questions. I'm in the inbox a little bit, especially when I have to be. But for the most part, it's not within my zone of genius. Administrative stuff. Some of these are some of my favorite hires of all time. Bookkeeping, payroll, data sorting, data pulling, spreadsheet organization, that administrative stuff that we often find ourselves doing that is really outside of our zone of genius. Some content related stuff like editing videos, planning kind of our long term strategy for social media, our calendar planning, all of that can be taken off of our plate as well. Things like design.

Bonnie Christine:
So this one is interesting because I'm a designer. So I spent a long, long time doing all of the design work, and it's quite a lot when you think about a business of my size. We do PDFs and worksheets and graphics of all kinds and ebooks and many, many, many different design related moving parts. So I have a lead designer on my team. Her name's Rebecca. I love her. And she does she often takes my artwork, but then she's formatting it for things like PDFs and templates that we need. The next one is commerce.

Bonnie Christine:
So we're working on something really special. I am I ready to share about it? I'm not sure. But we have we're talking about ecommerce. I'll leave it there. We've got some really exciting things in the work. But things like inventory management, shipping, packaging, and working with vendors, wholesale accounts, things like that are all things that are really outside of my zone of genius and things that I transplant. Now the last one is what I really wanna talk about, and that is help in our personal life and in our home. Housework, meal prep, yard work, laundry, grocery shopping, the list of things that we typically do and take care of goes on and on and on and on.

Bonnie Christine:
So my all time favorite hire has been a house manager. I love our house manager. Her name's Tannie. She might be listening. If so, hi, Tannie. So we, have a bit of a long journey with this. In, I don't know, 2018, I had started with some help with my house. I had someone come once a month to just help kind of I had 2 small kids and a husband in a 9 to 5, and I just couldn't keep up with all of it.

Bonnie Christine:
So I had someone come help with my house. That very slowly went to twice a month, so every other week. That we stayed there for a couple of years. That finally went to once a week. That was a huge leap. So when we had weekly help in our home, that was incredible. That really meant that a lot of it was alleviated from our plate. Today, my house manager is in our home every single day, helping with all of the things that go into managing a home.

Bonnie Christine:
From cleaning to housework to house repair to grocery shopping and meal prep to yard work to laundry to all of the many, many, many, many, many things. Now I remember the first time that I heard someone had a house manager, and my head exploded. I had never heard of such a thing, and I had walked into a room where I would say half of the people, let's say, 12 of the 30 people in the room had house managers, and I'd never even heard of 1. And so my mind just got completely expanded as to what was possible. And what would be possible if I just had less on my plate when it came to managing the home? And so it has been, hands down, my favorite hire of all time. It is the most impactful hire of all time. It is the one that's most meaningful to our family. Now for me, house manager means more time with my kids.

Bonnie Christine:
And so it's not less time with my kids, meaning she doesn't necessarily help with the kids, like babysitting or or errands with the kids or anything like that. It's primarily so that the time that I do have can be spent with my children and not necessarily taking care of the yard and home. So if you can start with that on any level, know that the people that you have in your life who you might not know well enough to know their situation, but they seem like they're doing more than you are, that they're capable of doing more than you're doing. Please know that you and them are the same. That sometimes people just have help behind the scenes that maybe you don't even know about, and that that same help is available to you even if it's on a small scale. Like, I started on an extremely small scale. It wasn't until just recently that we moved into a house manager role. You can start just a little bit.

Bonnie Christine:
But what a gift it is to you to be able to use that time for something that's inside your zone of genius. My friends, that's what I have for you today. Head on over to professionalcreative.com to download the task tending worksheet so that you can really get eyes on where your time is going and what you might transplant or prune first or maybe even pull. Create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world, and remember, there's room for you. I'll see you next time.