77: How to Actually Create Time in Your Busy Workweek for Strategic Email Marketing featuring Anna Dearmon Kornick

Do you ever feel like there’s just never enough time to focus on email marketing in your business? Not to mention, figuring it all out seems like it would take hours! If that sounds familiar, then tune in and turn up this episode featuring Anna Dearmon Kornick, a Time Management Coach and host of It’s About Time podcast. Anna’s sharing her best tips for making time for email marketing in your online business.

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Dolly DeLong
Hello, and welcome back to episode 77 of the Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast. I am your systems and workflow BFF, Dolly DeLong. And if you are here today, again, I just wanna say thank you for entrusting me with your time. Now, if you have been an avid listener, you know that for the past several weeks, I have been sharing an email marketing series with you because I want you to know that you too can take baby steps to start incorporating email marketing into your own business, regardless of what industry you are in your small business. And because in my mind, there is a system and workflow for everything, and with email marketing, people tend to overcomplicate this topic, including me, and I don’t want you to be intimidated by this topic. I want you to start incorporating email marketing within your business today or yesterday. All right, so I have invited back, Anna D. Kornick to the podcast to chat about email marketing and actually, like, talk about how to create time for it in your business. And so. Again, let me introduce her. Anna Dearmon Kornick is a time management coach, wife, and mom, who helps busy professionals and business owners, master time management so they can stop feeling overwhelmed and start spending time on what matters most. She’s a host of, It’s About Time, a podcast, about work-life imbalance, and Anna shares time management tips, productivity strategies, and real-life advice to help her listeners make the most of their time. In addition to teaching actionable takeaways, Anna interviews other go-getters to find out how they navigate family, friends, fulfilling careers, and full schedules. So this was her formal introduction. Anna, do you mind introducing yourself again to the systems and workflow magic audience?

Anna D. Kornick
Hey, Dolly. Thank you so much! I don’t even know what I could add to that, but my name is Anna. Yes, I’m a time management coach and podcast host. I’ve got two little girls. I’ve got a four-year-old named Camilla and a two-year-old named Elizabeth, and they are the cutest wild animals you’ve ever seen. We live in Madisonville, Louisiana, which is about an hour above New Orleans, so we get this great small-town life with access to all the culture of the city of New Orleans and that Louisiana has to offer and we just love it. My husband Scott and I work together. Scott and I actually also own Studio Pizza Productions, which is our podcast, YouTube, and short-form video editing agency for coaching and creatives. So we have a lot of fun with that together and I love working one-on-one and in group settings with ambitious, busy professionals and business owners through my membership, the It’s About Time Academy and Next Level Life, which by the time this episode goes live, we will be accepting new members into the June cohort of Next Level Life. So I will be super excited about that, but one really big thing that’s been happening in my life in the last year is all things book writing and publishing. My very first book and I’m saying the first book because I am putting it out there that there will be more than one. My first book, Time Management Essentials, actually hits shelves on June 20th, and so this past year has been filled with lots of time in front of my laptop edits putting pen to paper, and trying to take everything that I have learned and put together about time management and living a values-based life filled with purpose and intention into the book that I wish I would’ve had years ago. So uh, Let’s see, what else? Oh, my favorite food is boiled crawfish, my favorite color is blue, I have a dog named Muffin, and I love reading Southern Living Magazine.

Dolly DeLong
I love all of that. Anna, welcome back. I am so excited to have you back, and as a returning guest. I also just like want to hint to everybody, she’s gonna be a speaker at the Systems and Workflow Magic Summit, the Email Marketing edition Summit, and since she is a wizard, when it comes to time management, she is gonna be sharing more about time management and how to incorporate that in order to build a foundation of email marketing. So if you have the excuse of, well, I don’t have time to do email marketing, I don’t even know how to create space. She’s gonna be covering that, and I am really excited about that. Also, this is a side note about Anna that I found out this past week, me and her, we graduated the same year, a class of 2003, everyone, class of 2003. So I just knew I loved Anna even more because like we graduated the same year because every, all these young whipper snappers on Instagram, I’m like class of 2020? Oh my goodness.

Anna D. Kornick
Whippersnappers. We’re the best they’ll ever be, we are the seniors of 2003.

Dolly DeLong
Yes. I love that, so much. So that’s another fun fact about Anna. So, Anna, today is again, she is a returning guest, and so we are just going to like, if you remember from your past interview, Anna, you should know that I love making these episodes like mastermind-like classes filled with actionable steps because I want my listeners, to make strategic steps and growth and knowing exactly what to do after listening into the podcast. And so also if you’re a listener, I want this to be worth your time, because I know there are a lot of things vying for your attention right now. So thank you for being here. I’m just so excited to have you on the podcast today, and you are gonna bring some systems and workflow magic today. I just know it. So let’s get to the heart of this topic, which is just essentially talking about making time for email marketing.

Anna D. Kornick
Yeah, definitely. You know, you think about email marketing and there are a lot of different perspectives out there when it comes to business owners and email marketing. You know, I’ll never forget the very first time I set up an automation with a form to collect an email address to automatically send a guide to routines. I was preparing for a speaking engagement and I knew that I wanted to be able to share a bonus and collect email addresses, and it was my first time to ever do this. And after putting together that automation and getting everything set up, I was using MailChimp at the time. I remember feeling like I had climbed a mountain. Figuring out all of that for the first time made me feel not only that I had climbed a mountain, but like I had just unlocked this new powerful piece of my business. I was like, oh, wow. Now that I’ve figured this out, everything has changed, but before getting in and spending hours trying to figure out that very first automation, I looked at email marketing as something that was intimidating and that was something that the fancy business owners did. But I knew that it was something that I had to figure out, that I had to overcome if I was going to take this seriously. If I was going to take this business seriously in the online world, and so I know that I’m not alone in having experienced that intimidation of the tech and creating the lead magnet and putting it all together because there are so many different pieces and when something feels so big and it feels so intimidating, it can be very easy to procrastinate, and to tell yourself stories and some of the most common stories or lies that we tell ourselves when it comes to our intimidation or the fear factor with email marketing includes, I don’t have time to figure this out. You know, we’re trying to serve our clients, we’re trying to take care of our family. We’re trying to post on social media. We have so many other things to do. I don’t have time to figure out this email marketing thing. Another lie we tell ourselves is that we don’t have time to create new lead magnets or new freebies or new things. Like how am I supposed to have something new to give away all the time? I mean, if you’re listening, I’m wondering if any of these are kind of touching a nerve for you. I. Another lie that we tell ourselves is, I don’t have time to figure out all of this tech. I’m not a tech person. I’m not a, I’m not a techie. I’m not computer savvy. And so we delay growing our business through email marketing because we believe we don’t have time to figure out this tech. And then one of the last lies that we tell ourselves is we don’t have time to write a new email every single week. I mean, I have so many other things in my business that I need to be doing. And so even if I had an email list, even if I had people to write to, what am I gonna send to these people? So what I would love to do during our time together today is to just blast through each of these lies that we’re telling ourselves about the time that we have available and how to attack each one of these pieces by piece and blast through those roadblocks and those obstacles because when it comes down to it, you have enough time, you are capable, and you can do this.

Dolly DeLong
I love that. Let’s do that because this is something that I get either if I send out a survey to my own email subscribers or if I post a survey online. These are literally the questions that I get as I survey my audience, they are fearful of… These are the lies that keep on telling themselves, so I’m just so excited to dive into these. I’m calling ’em these roadblocks.

Anna D. Kornick
Yeah, these are roadblocks. I mean, yeah. You know, when it comes to procrastination, because that’s really what it is, we are procrastinating making moves on our email list, on email marketing and procrastination comes down to two different things, two different elements. We might have talked about this in our last episode, I can’t remember. But if you think about a scale with two buckets on either side, you know, like the scales of justice, not a scale that you step on. One bucket is for negative factors, and the other bucket is for motivation. Anytime your negative factors, things like fear, intimidation, overwhelm, and exhaustion, anytime those negative factors outweigh your motivation to do the thing you’re gonna procrastinate, you’re gonna put it off. So in order to stop putting something off, in order to actually take action, you’ve gotta look into that bucket and see what those negative factors are. Why is it that you are procrastinating or putting off or avoiding spending time on email marketing? So a lot of those negative factors are exactly what we just talked through. The limiting belief, the obstacle, the roadblock, the belief that you don’t have time to figure it out, but the truth is that we have time for the things that we prioritize. And one way that you can increase that motivation, that boosts that motivation to actually get started is to think about all of the positive benefits of pursuing email marketing and having an email list, and you don’t have to look very far to see the positive benefits of having an email list. I know Dolly can speak to that. I know that there are so many examples in any industry, any niche that are the proof and power of having an email list and having an email marketing strategy. So, looking to those examples, looking to that proof of what’s possible is amazing for boosting that motivation. But let’s take a look at those negative factors. That first belief, like, I don’t have time to figure this out. So here’s the thing, what do you have time for? How are you spending your time right now? So often we believe that we don’t have time because we feel like we’re constantly busy, and then we reach the end of the week and we wonder, wait, where did my time go? What did I actually accomplish this week? So one of the best ways to actually determine how you’re spending your time and where your time is actually going is to do a time study and to track your time for a whole week to see where your time is going. You’ll actually be able to see it on paper. Okay, so I spent three hours working on Canva graphics for social media posts. I spent five hours serving clients. I spent six hours scrolling or commenting on Facebook groups, and you actually get to see this real look at where your time is going. So once, once you’ve got that look and you’re real with yourself about where your time is going, you’re able to say, okay, what can I cut? What can I adjust in order to carve out the time, to work on email marketing, you know? Just finding the time and deciding when that email marketing time will be is the first step. Not, it’s not even, Hey, what’s my first step for email marketing? Is it to get an email service provider? Is it to, you know, design an email template? No. It’s to decide when. When am I going to work on this? And you treat it just as if you would a doctor’s appointment. You put it on your calendar and you say, okay, I’m gonna spend an hour on Tuesday getting one step closer to creating the email marketing strategy that I want. Carving out that time comes first.

Dolly DeLong
I was gonna say this right before we hit record Anna and I were talking about the author Laura, I’m probably gonna pronounce her last name wrong, Laura Vanderkam. Am I pronouncing it right? Okay. So she is the author of 168 Hours and 168 Hours is a book that influenced me to look at my week, how you, Anna are describing this. I tracked my time based literally hour by hour one week and saw where every hour was going because I was making that excuse of, well, I don’t have time to insert whatever to better impact my business. I don’t have time for that because I’m a newborn and I have to do this. So I decided to look at Laura Vanderkam’s 168 Hours and I literally recorded every single hour of that week, including the time it took me to. Get ready or make breakfast make lunch, and how many hours a night I was sleeping. I was very meticulous and I discovered I had five to six extra hours per week based on that. Because I was like either watching TV or I was just scrolling or doing nothing, then I was able to take that five extra hours and do something for my business. And yeah, I completely agree with you. You have to take the time to like see where all your hours are going.

Anna D. Kornick
Yeah. I mean that that initial awareness is huge and it can be very eye-opening and so, you know. When you see what you are putting your time toward, it gives you the opportunity to then make adjustments. And once you make the decision that, okay, I am prioritizing email marketing in my business because I know that it will be a powerful tool, really treating that time that you carve out as though it is as serious as a doctor’s appointment and sticking with it. Then, you know, once you have that time, how exactly do you fill it? You know, this is where learning and understanding the strategies behind email marketing comes in and this is where the summit comes in, learning what are those pieces and parts of email marketing that I can do little by little, step by step in order to grow my email marketing presence. Right? And thinking, not in terms of, okay, I’m going to start. I’m going to really kick off email marketing. How am I gonna have a thousand subscribers by tomorrow? You know, we’re not trying to climb the mountain in a day. We’re trying to just take one step and what is that one step? And that is how you find time for email marketing, is not trying to do every single thing in one day. What is the first step? Let me take that first step. What is the next step?

Dolly DeLong
Okay, so let’s conquer. Okay, so we have carved out time. Okay, we conquered that roadblock. Okay, next thing. Okay, well now I have to build out my email list, Anna, I don’t even know what lead magnet to create. I don’t even know where to begin with that.

Anna D. Kornick
So there’s, gosh, there are so many different directions that you can take the lead magnet conversation, but anytime that time is an issue and time is of the essence, we wanna ask ourselves, how can I make this as simple but as effective as possible? How can I create an easy button here? You know, I’m somebody who really likes to overcomplicate things. I’m gonna do email marketing, so I need to have a different lead magnet every day, and then I need to have graphics, and I need to have a photo shoot, and I need to have a designer do it, and I wanna find all the ways to overcomplicate it. So I have to ask myself on a regular basis, and for a while I had a post-it note on my computer that said, how can I make this easier? To remind myself that everything doesn’t have to be so complicated. So first things first. If you start to feel like, okay, how am I ever gonna do all of this lead magnet content stuff? Ask yourself, how can I make this easy? What is the easiest thing that you can create that will serve your audience? That will meet a need for your audience. You know, I’m not an expert when it comes to how to choose the content of your lead magnets, but I tend to think, about what is it that my ideal client needs to know in order to feel comfortable or feel ready to work with me, or what is their most immediate problem that they need help with that will then show them that working with me could be the next step. But the most important thing to consider here is that. You don’t have to have 37 different lead magnets.

Dolly DeLong
Yes. I do wanna throw myself under the bus in this, like our mutual friend Kat Schmoyer. I was in a mastermind with her as the mastermind leader several years ago, and she called me out on all the lead magnets I had created and in front of everyone not to like to humiliate me, like in her sweet Kat way. She was like, Dolly, you just need, essentially what you said, pick one and stick with it. Just stick with one or two max Dolly and you have too many because at the time I had like 15 to 20 lead magnets because I had a new lead magnet idea every day and I just was like, I have to serve my audience with all this free stuff and then they’ll trust me. She was trying to tell me, no Dolly, just stick with one. Stick with one and make that grow. And over time, this is a slow process, so it was tough love with Kat.

Anna D. Kornick
Yeah. It’s having one or two really great lead magnets. That gives you the opportunity to learn from the people who download it. Find out how you can make that better. How you can make your landing page more effective, you know? Yeah. When you have 15, you’re trying to spread your energy across 15 different landing pages, and 15 different pieces of content. You know, there was a time with, It’s About Time, my podcast, where every single solo episode had an accompanying content upgrade, a lead magnet associated with it, which, was a lot of fun in the beginning, it really did help me grow my email list and so I no regrets. But that wasn’t a sustainable strategy for me and now I’ve really leaned into just like that advice from Kat, one to two core lead magnets and it’s less stuff taking up my brain space. Less potential bugs in systems to deal with. Less confusion.

Dolly DeLong

Yeah, and that’s another thing is like when you say less bugs and less systems like to deal with this, which is a really good thing because, the more lead magnets you have, if you think about this to the listener, the more lead magnets you have, you have to put in a lot of time for the nurture sequences, for the double check, the links. Every, hopefully, every quarter, every other quarter you’re updating, refreshing, and making sure the content is, fresh, relevant, and working. So just save yourself some time and stick to one to two lead magnets.

Anna D. Kornick
Yes. Save yourself time. So, I hope that relieves some of the pressure that you might be feeling, I don’t have time for this because I don’t have time to create a ton of new lead magnets. Yeah, don’t. Just don’t, just pick one or two. Create a really great checklist. Create a really awesome, private podcast episode, whatever it is, do what is fun for you, and stick with it.

Dolly DeLong
That’s great. I love that. Okay. What about this third line that we always tell ourselves?

Anna D. Kornick
I don’t have time to figure out all of this tech. I am not a techy person. Gosh, you know this one to me is the same as the little by little. Expecting yourself to go from never having used an email service provider, like FloDesk or Convert Kit or whatever you’re using, going from logging in for the first time to having all of these like crazy, a full-on multi-directional campaign. No one, like, no one is expecting you to go from first grade to 12th grade in one day, okay?

Dolly DeLong
Unless you’re Billy Madison.

Anna D. Kornick
Take it little by little.

Dolly DeLong
 I’m sorry. Nobody is gonna get that reference unless they grew up in the nineties like we did.

Anna D. Kornick

Stop looking at me, Swan? Yeah. That’s it. I wanted to make sure that was it. Anyway, nobody is expecting you to become an email marketing expert in a day with all the tech and the automations little by little. Just like I told you, the very first time I set up a form, an email capture form that delivered a lead magnet to an email and captured it, it took me hours. It did. But it took me hours that very first time. And so, I think that you know, if you are someone who wants to understand the tech side because you want to feel empowered to make decisions and grow in your competence and how you get in and tweak and create systems, give yourself that time in the beginning. When you have the expectation that the first few times will be more time-consuming, you’re going to go into it giving yourself more grace, being less hard on yourself when you don’t just automatically get the hang of it. The thing is that after you put in the first few reps, it gets easier. It gets easier, and now, after, you know, that very first time years ago, that probably took me three hours. It now takes me maybe five minutes or less to set up the same exact automation because it’s a rinse-and-repeat. And that’s what happens, that’s how you find the time is you get better and you get better, and you figure out better ways of doing things and you don’t have to figure it out all on your own either. You’ve got YouTube University, you’ve got the blogs, and the help communities, and the Facebook, whatever communities for all of this different software to go in and ask questions and figure things out. And then at the end of the day, you can hire some really amazing people to help you get these workflows and automations and all of that good stuff set up. I am someone, I believe in the philosophy of understanding the mechanics before you outsource. The book, The E-Myth by Michael Gerber, I believe. Old book. Traction is kind of the new version of The E-Myth, but in The E-Myth, he talks about delegation by abdication and how it’s one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners make is that, instead of seeking to understand and then delegate. We just say, here, you do this, and then you don’t understand what is being done by the person that you’re delegating to. If they leave and no longer work for you, you’ve got a mess because you have no idea what’s going on. You don’t know how to measure success. You don’t understand what the processes are, and so I’m someone who really believes in the philosophy of trying to understand yourself before you begin, just delegating it. And so avoid delegation about abdication by trying to understand it yourself first. But know, you always have an opportunity to ask for help.

Dolly DeLong
I love that so much. Let’s talk about the fourth lie.

Anna D. Kornick

Yeah. So, I don’t have time to write a new email every single week. Okay. And we tend to believe this lie for a couple of different reasons. Some of us believe this because we feel like we’re not good at writing, and that writing takes us a long time. Some of us feel that we can’t, that any email that we’re writing to our list has to be this big long production with gifs and tons of links and what I’m reading right now and all of these things. But here’s the thing. Sending an email to your list, nurturing them, there are so many different ways that you can approach this. It doesn’t have to be a production. You’re not writing a novel. You’re not writing a 200-page book. You’re writing a message that delivers some kind of value and enables you to stay top of mind in their lives and in their inbox by sending a note, sending value, and checking in on them. You also don’t have to write a new email every week. You can write four emails in one day and schedule them out each week. You can use batching. You don’t have to write a super long email every week. You can batch. You can write something short and sweet. Stay top of mind and it just doesn’t have to be that tough.

Dolly DeLong
Yeah. I am gonna be having Liz Wilcox on the podcast very soon for this series, and she answers this exact question of, well, I don’t know how to write a new email every week, and she has a solution for that. So if you stay tuned, you will hear that episode and it will like, It will be an easy button for you.

Anna D. Kornick
Love an easy button.

Dolly DeLong
Yeah, it’s really good. She even called me out on the episode and she was like, “Even you, Dolly are overcomplicating this.” And so we walked through like, it felt like an email marketing therapy session. It was nice. It felt really good to walk through something and see this was my own block that I had for myself. So yeah, it was great. You’re gonna love it. Well, Anna, thank you so much for talking about these four main lies that we tell ourselves as creative business owners. And if you are listening in, I would say like, take notes again, re-listen, go to the show notes, and really dive in and see what lies you have been telling yourself because email marketing is, I believe it’s really essential for every type of business owner and we should be incorporating it within our own businesses because again, we don’t own social media, we don’t own a lot of different platforms that we present ourselves on, and we need to start nurturing our audiences so that we can grow our business because we’re in this business for a purpose, for a reason. Okay. Anna, before we wrap up entirely, can you give a hint to our listeners, like what you are gonna be talking about at the Systems and Workflow Magic Summit, the Email Marketing Edition? I know that we hinted at it in the beginning, but let’s just dig a little further into it, like why it’s important to take time for not only this summit but take time for email marketing.

Anna D. Kornick
Yeah. So I’m so excited. I will be talking about how to get a game plan, which involves the three steps to design your winning week and as a creative business owner with an online presence, part of that winning week includes carving out time for email marketing, whatever that looks like for you. So we’ll be walking through the three steps to decide what matters most, Design your winning week, and then define your weekly game plan so that you’re able to step into every week feeling calm, prepared, ready for anything and knowing that you have the intentional time carved out for all of the things that make your business run to its fullest.

Dolly DeLong
I love it. I’m so excited about your talk, Anna, and I’m so excited you’re gonna be in the lineup. And before you go, can you share more about your book that you have to that?

Anna D. Kornick
Yeah, sure. So, thank you for the opportunity. Well, my book Time Management Essentials is hitting shelves on June 20th, which is the first day of the summit, and wild coincidence, it is World Productivity Day, so you can celebrate World Productivity Day by diving into Time Management Essentials. You know, Time Management Essentials is written for business owners. It is a part of a broader series by McGraw Hill called Business Essentials with other books in the series, Coaching Essentials and Presentation Essentials. So, definitely check those out if they apply to your business, but one thing that applies to everyone is time management. So in this book, we dive into really the essentials of time management, but not just time management for the sake of getting more things done and crossing more things off of your to-do list. If you know anything about me, I believe in values-based time management. Spending your time on what matters most to you means that you have to figure out what matters most to you by crafting your vision for the future and defining your personal core values and then using those to shape the way that you spend your time. So that’s exactly what I walk you through step by step in this book. Everything from casting your vision, defining your values, understanding how to prioritize, and how to design that ideal week that enables you to tackle the most important things in your life, to spend time with your family, to have time for personal and professional development, time for a recharge, but also time for those needle-moving projects and even the little bitty pebble size tasks that take up our time. One of my favorite parts of the book is at the very last part three, called Beyond the Essentials, which really dives into, how you stay focused. How to get mentally organized and tackle all of the mental clutter in our lives, how to get rest, and just all of those areas that just enhance the foundations of managing your time well. So, I’m really excited. This is the book I wish I would’ve had years ago whenever I was experiencing burnout when I was building my business and I really hope that this serves as a guide, almost like a mini textbook in a way of everything you need to know about time management in order to feel confident about how you’re spending your time, clarity in your vision for how you want to, you know, live your life, and then the steps for living that life with intention. So I’m really excited. So again, it’s called Time Management Essentials, and it hit shelves on June 20th, but it’s already available for pre-order.

Dolly DeLong
 Just to let the audience know, I have all the links that Anna is mentioning in the show notes, so if you are wanting to pre-order that book when this episode comes out just go to the show notes and click on the link and you will be taken there, and I just to let you know, Anna, I’m pre-ordering it this week, so I like, this is a good reminder for me to pre-order your book. Yeah, I’m so excited and I cannot wait. Just like to see how this is gonna transform a lot of business owner’s lives. Because you know your stuff, you know your stuff about time management. So, as a reminder again to everyone, if you’re interested in the Systems and Workflow Magic Summit, the email marketing edition, it’s a free summit, so snag your free ticket in the show notes as well. Then everything else that we talked about will be in the show notes. So thank you again, Anna, for coming on again to the Systems and Workflow Magic podcast. I am so excited that you had the time, no pun intended, to come on, and I know a lot of my listeners will just like learn so much from you. As always, I hope you stay streamlined and magical with your workflows and your time this week, you amazing muggle you. I hope to see you again next week and I will talk to you later. Bye.