Ep 153: The 5 Systems I Use That Make a 3-Day Workweek Possible—Without Dropping the Ball

Episode Summary

Ever look at another entrepreneur’s business and wonder, How is she making it look so effortless?

If your business still depends on you to hold every piece together, it’s not just draining—it’s keeping you from scaling. In this episode, I’m sharing the five essential systems that turn a scattered business into a smooth, self-sustaining machine—so you can finally lead, not chase.

In this episode, you will: 

• Hear the overlooked mindset shift that helps you stop reacting to your to-do list—and start operating like a clear, strategic CEO.

• Learn the weekly ritual I swear by to save hours, reduce stress, and turn chaotic weeks into needle-moving ones.

• Discover the one system that most high-achievers ignore—until they’re forced to change … or get a great coach!

Press play to start designing the intentional workweek that lets you earn, live and enjoy summer on your terms.

Resources Mentioned:

Days of Deals: Be the first to hear about our upcoming Days of Deals Week and get a special gift with purchase only for waitlist subscribers: a personal audit from Jenna of your website and social media to dial in your messaging, make sales easier, and move you closer to a 3-day workweek. Get on the waitlist

“How Many Hours You Could Gain Back?” Quiz: Find out how many hours you could shave off your workweek and the biggest opportunity in your business for gaining hours right now. Take the quiz

Clarity Accelerator: Schedule a call with Jenna about joining the Clarity Accelerator--the same mastermind that we talk about in this episode--to unlock your inner genius, streamline your strategies and offers, and dial in the mindset that lets you work smarter, not harder.     

https://www.theuncommonway.com/schedule  

Power & Potency: Sign up here to get on the waitlist for Power & Potency, the new mastermind for highly accomplished women entrepreneurs, and hear all new information as it's released: 

 https://www.theuncommonway.com/waitlist  

Find Jenna on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/theuncommonway/  

This podcast dives into the potential of balancing a business and life without sacrificing revenue or impact. It helps women business owners and mompreneurs overcome overwhelm, decision fatigue, and the guilt of working less and stepping away from hustle culture while increasing leadership, strategic decision making, alignment and delegation / team building. Learn to build powerful habits and mindset, embrace smarter and higher vibration work methods, and master time management by streamlining tasks, implementing business systems, and even prioritizing self-care. We explore efficiency and energetics, productivity and filling your cup, automation and where to personalize your efforts … all to reduce overworking, and finally take time off—without the fear or shame—whether that is with high-ticket offers, scalable offers, or passive income. Say goodbye to imposter syndrome and people pleasing while running a small business: It's time to shift your mindset, reclaim your work-life balance, and thrive!

Full Episode Transcript:

Jenna Harrison: In this episode, you'll discover the five systems I use to run a smooth, scalable business in just three days a week without dropping the ball. Welcome to the three-day work week. Helping women entrepreneurs run profitable, meaningful businesses in just three days a week, if they like. Without stress, guilt, or sacrificing growth. I'm your host, Jenna Harrison, sharing practical strategies, mindset hacks, and even some will to help you work smarter, leapfully, and find true balance. Let's dive in. Welcome, welcome back to the three-day work week. Summer is here, and for many of you, the kids are about to get out of school soon, or you've got a vacation coming up, or people coming to visit you, all the more reason to set yourself up for success with systems that you can count on. And this applies to you whether your revenue is $50 or $5 million.

Systems aren't just tech, they're habits that protect your performance. Because really, do you long for freedom, build infrastructure, do you long for flow, create systems that hold the business so you don't have to. You can't be the strategic intuitive CEO you're meant to be if you are stuck in decision fatigue and task management all day.

Your energy is dispersed in all the wrong ways. No, no, no, we need you focused and clear and 10 steps ahead. We want other business owners being like, whoa, how'd she do that? How'd she think of that? So in this episode, I'll share the five systems that make my three-day work week possible without dropping a ball, and I'll share what some of my clients are doing too.

You will hear the overlooked mindset shift that helps you stop reacting to your to-do list, and start operating like a clear strategic CEO. You'll learn the weekly ritual I swear by to save hours, reduce stress, and turn chaotic weeks into needle moving ones. And you'll discover the one system that most hire achievers ignore until they're forced to change, or they get a great coach.

But first, you know how you're never supposed to have two calls to action at the same time? You might just can't choose. I can't. I have two, and they're both so good.

So the first you've heard about already, we've got our five days of deals coming up soon, with new offers, brand spanking new, designed to help you work hard or not smarter. And if you sign up for the wait list beforehand, you'll receive a special gift with purchase. I will personally audit your website and social media to show you how you could be creating more sales.

Just go to the uncommon way forward slash d-o-d-bonus, that's days of deals bonus, or click the link in the show notes, but I've also got something new to tell you about. It is a short but powerful quiz we've created that shows you exactly how much time you could shave off your work week using my methods, and of course gain back for other things in your life. Whether that is having more time to do proactive needle moving activities in your business, or just diving into a really fun beach read with an umbrella plunked next to you in the sand.

And the results will also show you exactly which area of your business will give you the biggest opportunity to gain back hours right now, so you know your next steps. Seriously, I have taken years of knowledge gained from my own experience and from working closely with over 100 women on this, and distilled it down into this quiz. The kinds of questions I would ask to really get to the bottom of things, the way that I would prioritize efforts, and exactly what's possible in terms of time savings based on specific actions.

It really is something. So go check it out, click the link in the description, and share it with your friends too, so you have someone to join you in these fun summer activities that you will finally be able to take advantage of. Okay, let's get down to business.

The first system I want to talk about is your weekly planning system. Of course, I'm going to start here because it's all about managing your time and time is your most valuable resource. A streamlined weekly planning system helps you start the week with clarity and end with real progress.

Every time that you spin or double back or drop a ball, it wastes precious energy. But when you manage your calendar well, you're really managing your energy and your decisions and your priorities. You're treating your energy like the liquid gold it is, and that gets reflected in your business results.

I used to love planning on Friday afternoon, so I could start the week fresh and not have to think about what I was going to do first. But now that I don't work on Fridays, I've shifted to first thing in my work week. I start with a brain dump, I get everything out of my head that I could be doing, I check just a few key indicators tied to my current priorities, but not everything or not obsessing over stats.

And then I map out my top pass and just plug them into my Google calendar. I time block for things like client calls and deep work, but not for podcasts because I prefer them to be more of the moment with what's going on in my life with my clients and make sure that they stay really fresh. Now what I've just described requires mental toughness.

You have to get good at saying no to everything that isn't needle moving and sue the part of you that wants to do it all. Because most entrepreneurs don't need more hours, they need fewer decisions. So again, the goal isn't to cram in more, it's to focus on the levers that make the biggest improvements and drive the biggest results in your business.

If something keeps throwing off your plans, then you need to add two hours of floating time into your week. You feel lower energy around your cycle, plan for it. If you know about yourself that for whatever reason, every few months you start feeling less motivated, then build in something restorative.

One of the biggest things I work on with clients and team members too is becoming the woman who consistently follows through on the right things and accomplishes what you set out to do. You need to get real with yourself and ask, do I need better boundaries? Do I need better focus on the strategies? What is it about me that needs to shift? And don't keep it in your head. Put it somewhere.

Like I said, it could be Google Calendar, it doesn't have to be a sauna, but break things down and give them deadlines. And if you're someone who craves flexibility, build that in too. Allow yourself to shift tasks within the week, but hold firm once the weekly plan is set because you've got to trust that higher part of your brain that made the plan in the first place.

Because of course your brain will object when the moment comes, of course it will. It wants easy dopamine, it doesn't want long term strategic work, but trust that the version of you who made the plan was thinking at a higher level, really honor that. I have a client that would find it really challenging to actually stick to the schedule that she had created, and we started looking at some of the things that motivate her.

And she realized about herself that she couldn't motivate herself with like a dangling carrot, you know, something that she would get to do for herself after she accomplished the task. And that's good to know because then we could just shift and find out what did work for her. The same client also had trouble keeping track of everything that she had to do.

And so she brought in tech, she found this amazing program that helps her prioritize and manage tasks. It reads her email, it does everything she can plug and play. I'm going to link to it in case anyone is interested because she is just a tech genius and finds the coolest tools.

But seriously, developing a weekly planning system is one of the simplest ways to instantly reduce stress, gain traction, and shave hours off your work week. And it's totally in your control. System number two, a client system.

You need a way to bring in clients consistently without making it a full-time job. This is one of the highest leverage systems you can build because when it's working, you're not spending all week chasing leads. You're simply showing up and letting the system do the heavy lifting.

That means less hustle, more flow, and yeah, fewer hours worked. Your business is not a hobby. It needs a consistent flow of clients.

But that doesn't mean doing every strategy under the sun. You want a method that works for you, your zones of genius, your lifestyle, your energy. Not just whatever strategy everyone else seems to be doing at the moment.

Life is too short to hate your own marketing, whether that is evergreen funnels for you or networking, SEO, social, referrals, speaking, great. The strategy itself matters far less than this. Is it reproducible? Does it bring results for you? And then you want to be asking, can you automate or delegate parts of it? Do you have a system for content creation or lead follow-up? Are you using tools like AI to repurpose or optimize? Are you leveraging your offer's uniqueness to pre-sell before a sales call? Or even a sales page ever happens? If your content attracts the wrong people or you're spending years nurturing people before they buy, something is off.

Your system isn't doing its job. Think of it like a tasty menu or a trail of breadcrumbs. You want one thing to lead to the next, to lead to the next, so that it's easy for them to work with you.

I'll tell you what this looked like for me in the beginning and then how it's evolved now that I've simplified even further. So it used to look like a few hours of deep work a month where I would decide my key social media pieces that I would then plug and play on different platforms throughout the month and grab some past content to repurpose. That kept me looking like I was everywhere, even though I wasn't.

And it also kept me thinking and developing my ideas. One of the forms of content was a live video that was usually about 10 minutes or so. And then I would be able to repurpose those for posts later on.

And I would check the social media just a few times a day. I had a VA help me post and then I would go in and look for anyone that engaged with my content and later separately I'd go in and I'd engage with other people's content. That was it.

A few hours at the beginning of the month. A live once a week. And a bit of engagement.

I was sitting my 10k months just with that. Since then I of course find myself on the first page of Google when you Google business coach for women entrepreneurs or for female entrepreneurs anything like that. And so my client acquisition system is much different.

But guess what? Everything on that website came from what I'd been creating in social media and really listening to the people that I was engaging with and talking to. The only difference is that instead of putting it out on social. I now had it there on a page that people could visit.

It became an asset that worked for me. So now I don't have to do anything with that. And I choose to do my thinking work in prep for these podcast episodes.

Again I have a weekly long form content piece that then gets repurposed into social media and newsletters. And I'm also guesting on other people's podcasts. But you can see that my focus and energy is in the podcast realm.

Because I knew that for a sustainable business I would want multiple avenues of lead generation. Not just relying on Google who could change its algorithm at any time. And that turned out to be really great thinking on my part because now AI will definitely change the landscape of SEO.

But it plays on my strengths. I get to think deeply. I get to keep ideas flowing which is very much a part of what lights me up.

And I get to do it all in three days. Now I have a client who completely reworked her lead generation. And now what she does is speaking engagements.

It really plays to her strengths. She also naturally loves to network and talk to people. And so she's utilized that too.

And has been able to start booking more aligned clients in much less time. She no longer believes that she has to be on social media daily nurturing for years to finally bring that person in. Alright let's talk about the third system offer delivery and client onboarding.

Once someone says yes your system should kick in automatically. Making them feel supported and impressed really even before you show up live. That's what turns client experience into something designed to naturally inspire retention.

And just like the rest of your business when you systematize it you buy back your time. So think about automated emails or chats. Think about team members who have learned your process and can deliver it even when you're not there.

And most importantly a clear flow that helps bring results in ways that have been verified. That leads to delivery that feels intimate but doesn't depend on your constant presence. High touch can be scalable.

You just need the right pieces in place. And by the same token low touch can be highly valuable. Again you just need the right pieces in place.

Here's what it looks like inside the clarity accelerator. Yes we meet weekly and coaching real time on what is most pressing. But there are also foundational resources that I can point clients to again and again so they don't need to rely on me for every step and then we can free up coaching time for going even deeper.

And there are automated emails directing them to these resources as they move through their time with me. And because I don't love worksheets or long modules myself. I'm more the type to just listen deeply to my coach and then test the advice in real time or listen to a podcast three or four times until it sinks in and then test it in real time.

I build in that kind of flexibility to my program. Coaching calls get uploaded to a private podcast feed for re-listening and when clients meet with our program copywriter or ops coach those calls are recorded too so they can revisit and fast track their integration. So what does that mean for me? It means that every Thursday at 4pm I show up to coach.

That's it. Because I've built the system, I've trained the coaches and created a structure that supports real transformation without it all resting on my shoulders. And that's what lets my life feel so in flow.

And Kat, she's another great example. She was a high performer who was doing everything at a very high standard for her clients. So high in fact that it was very daunting and difficult for them to learn to start doing it for themselves and for anyone else to really support her in that delivery.

But I worked with her to build out a team that could take on more of this heavy lifting. And she started to see that as she created more boundaries and trained her people took the time to actually train them to do what she does. As she stepped back, it turns out her clients loved it.

And she of course loved her three day work week. Too often we stay too involved out of ego rather than exploring the possibilities of what would ultimately be better for our clients, our business and ourselves. System number four, back end management and team operations.

This matters because a chaotic back end reflects a chaotic mind. And it leaks your most valuable resource, which is of course time. Let's be honest.

Every quick question in Slack, every last minute do over, every file you can't find, it adds up. Not just in minutes, but in energy. If your back end is messy, chances are your brain feels a little messy too.

And vice versa. The more structure and clarity you create here, the more space you free up for high level strategy, creativity and ease. This system is how work gets done, actually done without constant oversight from you.

That means that you have documented how recurring tasks flow. You've automated incoming inquiries and standardized your internal communication rhythms. And you know who is doing what, when and what, done well, even looks like.

Even if you are still a team of one, you have systems. Just like I talked about my earlier content repurposing system. Maybe it is Canva templates.

Maybe it's AI content for repurposing or a standard process for podcast editing or client onboarding. These small efficiencies compound over time. Every time you institute a new one, think about what that is saving you for the rest of your life.

It's so worth it. And I'm saying this because I have been the person who said I just don't have time to create a system. I don't have time to train anyone.

I'm too busy doing this. But thinking about what it does for you long term will really help motivate you to do it now rather than later. And if you're still doing everything manually or reinventing the wheel every time, it's time to get honest about the cost.

The opportunity cost of what your business could be doing if you were freed up to lead it there. Also, let's talk hiring. Most entrepreneurs wait too long with hiring or they have limiting beliefs around the kinds of workers who are out there.

And that gets reflected in their business. Maybe they're thinking they can't afford to hire that kind of person full time and they don't explore using them in a fractional capacity. Or they think they have to hire someone overpriced when the work could be done by someone else if that person is trained accordingly and actually given an SOP, a standard operating procedure.

Regardless, the shift happens the moment that you stop being the only one holding it all, but also start taking responsibility as the CEO for whatever you are seeing in your organization. In my own business, a backend chaos used to eat up entire days, a redoing task, following up on accounting, cleaning up the mess from some ball that had been dropped. But once I systematized key areas and brought in a line support, the difference was night and day.

So now I can walk away for a few days without worry. I can coach on Thursdays at 4pm and then shut the laptop knowing the podcast episode notes will be in my inbox Monday morning. That's the power of a backend that runs as it should.

Now, you could have the sleekest client pipeline, the most scalable offer delivery, and a backend that runs like a dream. But none of that will get you where you want to go if you, the CEO, are constantly running on fumes. That's why this final system might be the most overlooked and the most important of all.

It is your CEO management system. It matters because your brain and your energy are your most valuable business assets. Now, of course, this is the system that most high achieving women skip until they can't anymore.

Because when you're juggling all the things, pushing through exhaustion, doing everything backwards in heels, your brilliance gets buried under the stress. You start making mistakes, decision making gets harder. And the intuitive hits that could spark your next breakthrough, you're too tired to even notice them.

But this isn't about slowing down for the sake of it. It's about learning how to re-access your highest self daily. Because of that version of you, she makes better decisions.

She sees creative shortcuts. She writes magnetic content in half the time, and she doesn't spiral out every time something goes sideways. Your energy is your biggest time saver of all.

Think about it. That one inspired idea during yoga that writes itself in your head and brings in your highest lifetime value client of all time, that's not luck. That is the ROI of rest and regulation.

My client Lisa is a great example. She had started experimenting with a CEO management system, and because we had been working on her core pillars and positioning, that new mental spaciousness had her coming onto a call one day talking about an amazing new concept about how to pull everything together with this one very polarizing acronym that also held deep meaning for her people. It has ended up becoming what she's known for.

She's now launching a group program based around it, and she's invited to speak at organizations that you have definitely heard of just because people are so captivated by this idea. So that was a leap that felt expansive, not draining. She described it as feeling like gold glitter all around her.

We could all use more of that, right? So let's make this practical. Do you audit your energy weekly? Do you have a wind down routine that lets you truly disconnect? Do you use go-to tools to regulate after a stressful moment? Do you have boundaries to protect yourself from energy drainers, whether that's clients or team members or certain situations? If not, it is time to implement a CEO management system that gives you daily access to your creative genius and strategic edge. Because that next level of success, it doesn't come from doing more.

It comes from becoming more. More of the clear, calm, grounded elator that you are meant to be. Working less isn't about doing less.

It's about designing smarter systems that multiply your time and protect your genius and give you the resiliency to make the big moves, the big scary moves. So there you have it, five core systems that don't just make your business run more smoothly, they give you your life back in the process. Number one, your weekly planning system.

Two, your client acquisition system. Three, your offer delivery system. Four, your back end system.

And five, your CEO management system. These are not just operational upgrades. They are shifts in how you think, how you lead, and how you value your time and energy.

Because a three day work week isn't a luxury. It's what happens when you lead like a CEO, not operate like an employee. And when you build a business around your genius and design it to support your wellbeing, everything grows faster, with more flow, and a lot less friction.

All right, I've got another powerful episode coming your way next week. So let's talk again on Tuesday. Thanks for joining us here at the uncommon way.

If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the clarity first strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit the uncommon way.com. See you next time.