The Magic of Bending Time: Time Management Tips in Your Business with Britt Bolnick

Dr. Barbara Hales: Welcome to another episode of Marketing Tips for Doctors. I’m your host, Dr. Barbara Hales. Today, let’s welcome Britt Bolnick. She is a successful business owner, a best-selling author, and a magician living a life she loves in Maine.

She is the owner and founder of In Arms Coaching, and the co-founder of Pittie Posse Rescue, a pitbull-focused dog rescue, and the creator of Sacred Structure and the Bending Time tools. As a magician, Britt will show us how we could get more than 24 hours in that day. She built a business from food stamps and single motherhood to a six-figure business that she works part-time while also founding a dog rescue.

She mentors women business owners to grow their impact and income while running their business 30 hours a week or less. This is something we doctors definitely need to know in striving to keep our work-life balance. She published the best-selling book “The Magick of Bending Time in Your Sacred Business: Time Management for Freedom-Seeking Entrepreneurial Women and Organizational Skeptics.” It’s a how-to manual managing time teaching multi-passionate, entrepreneurial, soulful women how to make time for everything they love while building success with their work.

Welcome to the show, Britt.

Britt Bolnick: Thank you so much for having me.

Managing Time in Running a Business as a Single Mother

Dr. Barbara Hales: It’s exciting today because one of the things that I definitely would like to talk about is teaching a foolproof and predictable way to reach six figures while you run your business 30 hours a week or less. This is fun. Tell us about that.

Britt Bolnick: As a caveat, doctors are generally not my clients. I worked with women in holistic health areas. But my heart loves seeing what happens for doctors around their self-care and work-life balance, especially since the pandemic made everything worse.

When I started building my business as a single mother, I didn’t have the option of running myself into the ground. I was the sole provider for my child, financially, physically, emotionally. I really had to make sure that as I grew my livelihood and took care of myself. I also have an immune disorder, which I’ve had my whole life. Hence, if I ran myself ragged, I would stop moving, sometimes for weeks. It became a study for me to understand how do I create financial stability? How do I create this business without running myself into the ground and prioritizing myself and my kid?

When I Google’d “Time Management” to figure out how to do more, I found tools written by men—who were not single moms, who were not starting a business, who were not working a night job, and on food stamps. I realized that all those tools were trying to teach me how to do more when I needed to understand how to have more and do less. That’s where Sacred Structure and the Bending Time content was taken from—just so I could do this without running myself into the ground.

Tools for Time Management

Dr. Barbara Hales: You mentioned that you have certain tools. Share some of those tools with us so that we get a better understanding of some sources that we could use.

Britt Bolnick: The magic of any time takes you through a linear path as I have. I generally don’t really work in linear ways. But some of the pieces are from understanding what your top priorities are. I don’t know that if your community is primarily women, but specifically for women who statistically have usually the equivalent of two full-time jobs because we have our work and then we go home, and we have the lion’s share of our social lives, our family, our household, running all of those things. So, get clear on your priorities, and focus on them. Ensure that those are in your calendar and in your structure.

First is getting clear what is important to you, and you might be doing more because it’s important to someone else. It’s something that someone else asked of you. You are people-pleasing, and you’re trying to make people happy. Figure out those two categories, and just take the things that are important to you.

The second piece is the harder piece. That’s about how you enforce the boundaries around prioritizing what’s important to you. Either let them go, reschedule, or delegate the rest. That is the process that I work with women on is how do you set up those boundaries? How do you say, “That sounds great! Let me think about it” instead of “Yes.” How do you protect your time? How do you get clear on how to prioritize things for other people that you love?

So that’s kind of the basic structural format of what’s in that book. I actually developed a 30-day course for two that I lead women through. But one of the biggest pieces is really learning to prioritize yourself and saying “No.” No is the complete sentence. Remember that we are our most valuable asset. The other stuff falls apart without us, especially if you’re a woman running your own household.

Validating Statements

Dr. Barbara Hales: Another statement that I would like to add is when someone makes a statement that needs validity for themselves, especially if it’s contrary to your beliefs. Instead of saying, “No, I’m right. You’re wrong,” which no one likes to hear. You could say, “You could be right. Let me do further research and check into it.” Because people want to be heard, be validated, and there is a small possibility you could be wrong. Now this way, it’s a learning experience, and everybody saves space at the same time.

Britt Bolnick: That’s a great point. I’ve found that “Let me get back to you” an incredibly valuable phrase. Because it takes you out of having to answer at the moment and gives you some time to take something back, feel it for yourself, do research, or check your calendar than responding “No” to someone’s face. Which gives us opportunities to do what feels best than right versus having a knee-jerk reflexive answer at the moment.

The “Magick” in Business Growth

Dr. Barbara Hales: Tell me about the “Magick” in your Business Growth.

Britt Bolnick: One of the ancient definitions of “Magick” is the art and science of changing energy. Magick is about changing energy. Right now, we’ve come to a time in humanity where magic and science are overlapping. People have said everything for hundreds of years is now being proven by science, which is an exciting prospect.

The word “Magic” in my book is spelled with a “K,” which has been used to differentiate it from parlor trick magic. Magic with a K refers to the magic about self-development and making changes with who you are to get the results you want. There is an aspect of ownership, self-responsibility, and self-evolution that I lean heavily on. I’ve used it for myself and my programs with all my clients. That’s why I refer to Magic with a K.

To change how you experience your life, you have to change from the inside out. You have to start with where you’re standing. You can’t expect to feel better about your time unless you look at some of the pieces of who you are and what you believe, and how you do things. That, to me, is magic because it does actually change energy.

Scaling Impact while Increasing Free Time

Dr. Barbara Hales: When you show people how to scale impact and income while increasing free time, are we talking about delegation of responsibilities?

Britt Bolnick: We’re talking about a bunch of different things. We’re talking about leveraging your time. We’re talking about delegation by growing a team and bringing in folks to do things for your clients, like an agency model. For instance, in my program, I’ve been able to drastically expand the number of women in the program by adding other team coaches who work under and with me. It’s about leveraging, delegating, and getting clear about what you do so that it’s easy to call in your ideal client at the value that you want to set for your work. Those are the pieces of leveraging your time to create more income, have more impact, and have more time freedom.

Marketing Yourself to the World

Dr. Barbara Hales: How do you market yourself that will allow people to know you exist?

Britt Bolnick: I often use Facebook, even though my daughter felt it was uncool, used by old people. But that’s fine. I’m on it for personal things, for my rescue, and for my business. I have a group of women from business owners, entrepreneurs, creatives, leaders in a group called Sacred Biz Rebels on Facebook. I use Instagram a little, but I don’t love it. I do webinars, do talks, publish books, and event promotions. I do everything 99% of the time, virtually right now. I have a large number of people come to me through clients. I have a huge client referral system.

Britt’s Referrals

Dr. Barbara Hales: Who is it that is referring to you? Is it prior clients, organizations, or associations? Who would you say your best referrals come from?

Britt Bolnick: My best referrals are from current and past clients. Whenever I do an event, they bring other people to it. I also have colleagues, who I love dearly and work with similar ideal clients, give me a shout-out when I do something, and reciprocate. I do almost no advertising. Sometimes, I do affiliate opportunities to give kickbacks for clients who sign up if people refer them to me. We’re setting up a systemized affiliate system for that because I love the concept of affiliate referrals. I’m active on social media, predominantly on Facebook.

How to Save Time While Maintaining Authority

Dr. Barbara Hales: What would you say are two tips that you could give us to save time with their tools and still maintain a presence of authority?

Britt Bolnick: One is to look honestly at how you are attached to or invested in the idea of the “Cult of Busy.” For doctors, I would imagine that the busier you are, then the more important and successful you are. I believe that has to change in our culture. Look at the attachments that made you so busy that you can’t think or sleep, and try to let go of that perverse “American Badge of Honor.”

The second thing is to get clear with your boundaries and put them in your calendar first. Whether that’s eight hours of sleep at night, three days a week at the gym, or family time, those things are absolutely essential. We cannot give others a drink from an empty cup. We have to be looking at how we fill our cups. That’s excruciating for people in the medical profession by design. I urge you to start small, just for yourself. Then see if that grows. Build it in incrementally, but start with 5 to 15 minutes a day. It is essential.

Reach out to Britt Bolnick

Dr. Barbara Hales: If people would like to hear more from you, how would they reach you?

Britt Bolnick: They can find me on my website https://inarmscoaching.com/. They can Google “Britt Bolnick,” and they can reach out to me on Facebook, which is the easiest way to get to me. They can also email me at britt@inarmscoaching.com. They can buy the book on Amazon, and there are many ways to get in touch with me and get extra goodies in the book “The Magick of Bending Time in Your Sacred Business.” You can find me on Instagram, but it’s slower.

Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, thank you so much for being with us today. This has been another episode of marketing tips for doctors with your host, Dr. Barbara Hales. Till’ next time!

The Magic of Bending Time: Time Management Tips in Your Business with Britt Bolnick

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