It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day hustle of running your business. As female entrepreneurs, we often find ourselves wearing multiple hats, from serving clients to managing the finances, to creating the marketing. However, it’s crucial to set aside dedicated time to work ON the business, not just IN it. And that is where the concept of a “CEO Day” comes into play. In this blog post, I’m going to walk you through what a CEO Day is, why you need one as a female entrepreneur, how often you should have one, and how to structure the perfect CEO Day schedule to make the most impact.

What is a CEO Day?

A CEO Day is a day set aside to focus on the strategy and execution that get you closer to the goals you’ve set for your business. It’s a specific and regular block of time set aside to focus on working ON the business, not just IN it, and ensure that your day to day actions are in alignment with the vision.

Do you need a CEO Day?

In short…yes!  A CEO Day serves as a crucial element in your entrepreneurial journey. Here’s why:

To help you maintain focus. By setting aside specific time for administrative tasks and business strategy, you keep them from infiltrating your day-to-day work. Allowing you to be fully present for your client work without the constant worry that something important might be slipping through the cracks.

CEO Days will help you to prioritize. When everything feels like a priority, nothing truly is. It’s so easy as solopreneurs to push all of our own tasks onto the backburner in order to serve our clients, and while that sentiment comes from a good place of wanting to serve your clients, it’s hindering your growth. By having a single block of time dedicated to focusing on your goals, you’ll be forced to determine what is most important for the growth and future of the business and focus on completing that during your CEO Day.

How often should I have a CEO Day

Ideally, you should have a CEO Day every week, but if the concept of a CEO Day is brand new to you and that feels unattainable, start with every other week. As far as what day of the week works best, that will be different for all of us. I like to have my CEO Days on Fridays. Initially, I scheduled them for Mondays, but quickly realized that my clients desire more communication on Mondays so I switched it up. Find whatever day is typically the least busy for you (personally and in the business) and start there. You can always pivot and adjust the day. The most important thing is that it’s consistent, a significant block of time (no shorter than 4 hours) and non-negotiable. 

And don’t forget to block out larger chunks of time for end-of-month and quarterly planning sessions. 

The Perfect CEO Day Schedule

So now that you know what a CEO Day is and why you need one, let’s talk about what to do during a CEO Day.

Prepare for it

First things first, the perfect CEO Day begins with preparation. To ensure uninterrupted focus, block out your calendar so that no one can book calls that day, and be sure to communicate with your clients that you’ll be unavailable to respond during this block of time. 

To stay organized and efficient, use your project management tool (I use and looove Clickup for this) to create a recurring task with a checklist of CEO Day responsibilities. If you’re like me, checking something off of a to-do list is one of the best dopamine hits, so having each individual task on a to-do list will help you feel accomplished as the day goes along. 

To minimize distractions, set your phone to focus mode and curate a work environment that jumpstarts your productivity, whether that means cozying up in a coffee shop with a special drink or lighting a candle on your desk and turning on some classical music.

Weekly CEO Tasks

There are four things that I recommend every female founder includes in their CEO Day, but feel free to add to this list if there are behind the scenes tasks that tend to get neglected.

#1 Financial/Legal Check in: Send, review, and pay any invoices & contracts. If you’re signing a new client, use your CEO Day to send any contracts and invoices (if you don’t have automations or a team member for this), just be sure to communicate that you send all invoices on one day each week so they know when to expect it.

#2 Work on building any “behind the scenes” projects: Plan for any upcoming launches, update workflows, create new freebies, etc. 

#3 Outline and Create Marketing Materials: Review your Brain Dump Board (a place where you store all of your content ideas – I use Clickup, but a note on your phone is better than nothing, just do your best to keep all ideas in one place) and organize your ideas into a content planner. Then, draft the copy, create the graphics, and film any videos needed.

When it comes to marketing, I always recommend editing and reviewing your content at a different time than when you created it. Which is why for my CEO Days I have “A weeks” and “B weeks.” On “A weeks” I do my financial and legal check in, work on any behind the scenes tasks and then outline and create content. On “B weeks”  I do my financial and legal check in, work on any behind the scenes tasks and then edit, review, and schedule any content that I created the week prior. 

One thing that’s important to note with this method is you’ll need to batch create two weeks of content during “A weeks” to stay ahead of the curve.

Additional Month End CEO Tasks

On your last CEO Day of the month, be sure to make additional time for the following tasks:  review your monthly analytics and reflect on your marketing performance, remove digital clutter (clear your email inbox to zero, sort screenshots, clear your spam email folder, reorganize/file google drive docs, etc.) and log your expenses and revenue for the month (trust me, keeping up with this on a monthly basis is a LIFE SAVER at tax time).

Additional Quarterly CEO Tasks

At the start of a new quarter, carve out some extra time during your CEO day for some in depth strategic planning. Here are a few of the tasks I recommend doing during the first CEO Day of a new quarter: map out quarterly sales objectives, brainstorm fresh content concepts, review your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to optimize operational efficiency, perform an energy audit (answer these questions: what went well, what needs to improve, where was I out of alignment, how can I optimize, what can be automated/delegated?), and don’t forget to pay your quarterly taxes.

Make the most of your CEO Day

Making time to regularly focus on the future of your business is so important, but I get it – finding the time can feel hard as a busy entrepreneur. The best piece of advice I can give you for implementing your new CEO Day is to view this block of time with the same importance as you would a client appointment. Your business needs your attention just as much as your clients do, and when you view this CEO time as a non-negotiable you begin showing up as the woman who prioritizes her business growth and achieves her goals.

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In case we haven’t met yet, I’m Michaela – content writer, behind the scenes expert, and chaos coordinator (aka the virgo energy to your creative spirit). And I’m completely obsessed with helping you turn your journal full of ideas into profit driving offers with research backed strategy, magnetic content, and streamlined systems.

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