We are thrilled to welcome Natalie Ellis on Trust Issues: serial entrepreneur and angel investor, as well as the co-founder and CEO of media brand BossBabe. Under her leadership, BossBabe now reaches more than 10M+ ambitious women per month and has a community of 3.8M across their social media, blog, podcast, and newsletter
Natalie’s expertise lies in audience growth, content monetization, business strategy, and SYSTEMS, which is what we primarily speak with her about in this episode.
If you find yourself wanting to live more intentionally and maximize your days, keep reading (or click PLAY!) for Natalie’s best advice to create a life operating system.
Create Routines (in ALL Aspects
of Your Life)
According to Natalie, the first step to creating a life operating system is to create routines. Routines can help us create a sense of structure and stability, which can be especially important when life is chaotic. By having a routine in place in your business or personal life,, we can stay focused and on track with our goals without getting distracted by things that aren’t a priority.
For example, when you have a task that needs to be done, set aside a specific time to complete it to prevent yourself from procrastinating. Another routine can involve self care for yourself, such as meditating, reading, or exercising every day. Routines also work with our loved ones, too; set aside time each day or week to call or spend time with your friends and family to stay connected with them!
Routines can help us stay accountable for our actions and ensure we spend time on what matters most. It may take some fine-tuning, but after we solidify routines for every aspect of your life, it will create a sense of balance and peace in your everyday.
Use Systems to Work Smarter, Not Harder
Once you have routines set in stone, the next step is to do an audit of the things you can set up automations for, delegate to others, or remove altogether.
In this episode, Natalie describes how she creates a playbook for anything she can delegate in her business.
“I do things once. Part of having a system is having a playbook within the system. What that means is if I’m doing something that I know needs to be done on an ongoing basis–maybe it’s uploading call recordings after a mastermind call, maybe it’s sending out emails, whatever it is–I will not do the same repetitive task over and over and over again…
Whenever I’m about to do a new repetitive task, I use Loom to record myself doing it. Now, if there is someone on my team that I can hand this off to, I will go put it into my playbook, I’ll label it, I’ll describe it, I’ll tag the person saying, “Hey, can you add this into your rhythm that you do every Wednesday?” If there’s no one to delegate it to because you don’t have a team yet, just put it in your playbook. You don’t know when your team member’s going to come along, and when they do, it’s there, it’s recorded, it’s ready to go.”
By having systems in place, we can reduce the amount of time we spend on tasks and increase our productivity. Talk about efficiency, right?! No wonder Natalie runs a multi-million dollar business by only working a few hours each week!
Recreate Natalie’s Life Operating System
“I call it a filing cabinet for my entire life.” –Natalie Ellis
The more you add structure and organization into your days, the easier it will become. Some examples of Natalie’s systems include:
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- Creating a handbook for her house cleaning schedule,
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- Designing a sleep routine for her toddler to give to her nanny,
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- Making an intentional grocery and meal-prepping guide,
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- Having a filing system for important documents,
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- Pre-scheduling maintenance appointments around the house,
…and so much more.
For the things you can’t automate or delegate, consider how you can make the system as productive as possible. This may include creating a to-do list that is broken down into sections based on the type of task and the amount of time it will take, or having an organized place for ideas, screenshots, and books that you want to reference or come back to. This can help you keep track of your thoughts and ideas and make sure you don’t forget them.
Creating a life operating system with Natalie’s tips is such an amazing way to take control of your time and develop habits that are specifically focused on your life priorities! Listen now to hear even more of her insights, and we hope this conversation inspires you to create a system that works for you. We’ve been implementing Natalie’s tips for a few weeks, and we can’t believe how much time it has freed up in our lives!
If you enjoyed this episode, leave an iTunes review to let us know and we’ll see you next time.
Natalie Ellis
Natalie Ellis is the co-founder and CEO of BossBabe. Natalie has been featured in major publications like Forbes, Inc and Entrepreneur for her efforts, and has been invited to speak on stages all around the world.
She is a social media expert and has grown the bossbabe Instagram account to over 3 million followers (in just three years), and from that following has generated multiple 7 figures of revenue.
You can find the grounded Capricorn at home with her husband, Stephen, and pomeranian, Nala, making a matcha latte (with added collagen, of course!) and reading a book on her Kindle.
Connect with Natalie:
