Episode 225 : The Secret to Staying Focused: Parking Lot System
===
Brandi: [00:00:00] Do you ever get these amazing ideas and you're like, heck freaking yes, let's do the dang thing. We're doing this. We're doing that. And we're going to get it done only to then find yourself either not completing it, not finding it important, not actually wanting to move forward with it after you've already invested time, money, resources into getting it started, or you find yourself overwhelmed and freaking burned out.
This is the struggle of being an entrepreneur. We have so many ideas, and not enough time, honestly, to implement them, nor should we be implementing them all right now. And I've been there, I've done that, and found myself so freaking tired. And then, reasoning my business for it. When really, there was just one thing I needed to implement.
And after Bodhi was born, I figured out this one thing, and I'm [00:01:00] sharing this system with you today that you can implement in your business and in your life to cut down on the overwhelm, to get more time back and focus on the projects that actually matter to you. So if you're ready to find out what this one system is, let's do the dang thing and jump on in.
Welcome back to another episode of the Serve Scale Soar podcast. My name is Brandi Mowles. I'm your host. I'm so freaking excited you are here and you are back with us. And also this is the place you want to be if you are ready to start, grow and scale your ad management business. No matter if you're just getting started in the freelance world or you're already an ad manager, ad strategist, a consultant, this is the place to be.
Even if you're like, I'm just a little ad curious is [00:02:00] this right service? We got the goods for you. And today, honestly, this episode's for any service provider or course creator who is running a business. I feel like this is something that we could all implement. Not only in our business, but probably in our life.
I feel like I should probably implement this in my life, but with my life, I am a little bit better at saying no to things than I am with my business. So today's episode is all about creating a parking lot system for your business. This has been one of the absolute game changers that I've implemented.
And truly, I think this has kept me from heading towards burnout or experiencing overwhelm. Now, does that mean I never experience overwhelm? Absolutely not. We will link up the episode in the show notes for what to do if you are experiencing overwhelm. And how to turn that overwhelm into action. We have a whole episode on that.
So we'll make sure to link that. But I don't experience burnout and I did [00:03:00] in my business at one point and I truly believe it was because I didn't have Something like the parking lot system And honestly, I have no idea where I heard this. I don't know if I made it up I don't know if I heard this from someone else But I just started implementing it probably now a year and since Bodhi was born, I think, yeah, so we're looking at over a year now.
He's 15 months as I'm recording this. And first off, where has 15 months went? And secondly, that's when I started implementing this because when you have a you may not know, but if anyone has had a newborn, You are up in the middle of the night a lot and especially if you're breastfeeding or even bottle feeding You they take a long time to eat And so you're just like sitting there in the dark with your thoughts And you're super tired and what I found is I was getting all these ideas But in that stage of life and business, there was no [00:04:00] way that I could implement All of these ideas, like I was trying to survive, let alone implement all these ideas.
So I started just writing them down. And by the time I got back to work and I was at a place where I could start implementing, 90 percent of them, probably actually 99 percent of them were no longer relevant to me. There was this waiting period. And so that's exactly what the parking lot system is.
It is a holding ground and a waiting. Take that out before we go. Get in there and start working on it. And, and then, and then when you get to this point, you start really feeling that response to it. Because, So when you get an idea, It's so exciting. Yes, I just got this idea. I'm so exciting.
Let's do the dang thing. Let's implement it now and everything else gets pushed to the wayside. Or you start implementing it only to find out halfway in that you actually didn't want to do this. It was just some [00:05:00] idea that you were thinking about, but it's actually not something you want to implement.
And so you wasted a lot of time. And energy and maybe resources like financial resources. Because maybe you ran off, you bought a course, you did this, you did that. And so what a waiting period does, it gives you this opportunity to make sure this is the right move for you. Now, my waiting period is 30 days.
Cause I can still be excited about something in 15 days. So 30 days is my waiting period. So how does this break down? Let me give you the step by step actions on how I deal with my parking lot system. And I'll tell you, this is not only worked for me, but I've also given this to my one on one consulting clients.
I've given this to. to my strategist society members. They have voxer access and I'll tell them like, this is a great idea. How about we put it in our parking lot and come back to it in 30 days because things change in 30 days. Our [00:06:00] excitement changes, our commitments change. And so as we're thinking about this, Here's how it goes.
And I'll give my example. I'm on an airplane. All my best ideas come when I'm on the airplane. Usually because I always have this great intention that I'm going to get this work done because I'm usually flying to the west coast. So it's usually like five, six hour flight. And I have all this time and I'm like, okay, I'm going to get so much work done.
Rarely do I ever actually pull out my laptop. Sometimes I will, but most of the time I don't. It's like this time for me to just decompress. And so usually I load up my iPod, my iPod. I do not have an iPod. I load up my iPhone, make sure I have stuff downloaded in case I don't have internet. And I actually don't like to purchase internet.
And some airlines give it free, some don't. So I always like to not even connect to it a lot of times. Cause then I feel like we're distracted by all the social media and all [00:07:00] emails and all that thing. So I'll download a whole bunch of episodes of different podcasts. I want to listen to some business.
I'm not, I'll make sure I have audio books. I'll make sure I have my Kindle and it's just a time to disconnect. And usually in that disconnection of the world, I get so many ideas and I just start writing them down. And so before the parking lot, what that would look like is I'd come back and tell Janessa all these things we were going to implement.
Then we'd start implementing them. The whole team would be overwhelmed. I'd be overwhelmed cause I'm like a race horse trying to get everything done. Plus on top of everything else. And then Half of them would go unfinished and then the other half we didn't even like or maybe like they didn't align with our goals.
Maybe we finished them, but they didn't even align with our goals. So why the heck were we doing them? And so that excitement really gets you started. Excitement builds your starting and starting is the hardest part of anything. And so it's really easy when [00:08:00] you're excited. But then what happens once that excitement starts to fade?
We stopped getting up every day and doing the thing that we started because now if it doesn't align with like why we're working It doesn't make sense anymore. Why would we finish it? So old me would have a bunch of unfinished projects or change my mind the team's exhausted like I'm exhausted I'm overwhelmed.
I'm getting close to burnout. And now what it looks like is I come back with all these amazing ideas you And I put them in my parking lot system, and you can put this in ClickUp, you can put it in Asana, you can have a notebook. You can put it wherever you want. I have mine in a notebook. Oh, not a notebook.
In the Notes app of Apple. Cause that's usually like where I'm taking notes if I'm on the go. And then, I'll set a reminder. In Asana to check my parking lot once a month. Once a month I check my parking lot. And I'll even sometimes put a date. Let's say it's the 15th that I came up [00:09:00] with an idea. In my notes app I'll put like the date that the app, the idea was created.
That way I know which ones have been a month. And I truly give myself 30 days. But I'm revisiting. And then, during the month of January, I'm already doing these ideas once a month and seeing is this still something I wanna implement? Is this not? Some of them I will take to Janessa and be like, hey, let's put this for 30 days from now to revisit.
One of those was revamping an old program. And it got put on the parking lot, I was like yes, we're gonna do this. And then it didn't happen. Like she said, Hey, you said in 30 days, you wanted to revisit this. And I was like, let's push it out. 60 days. She pushed it out six days. She came back to me and I was like, yeah, let's take this off.
It's not even going to happen this year. We can revisit it next year. So that's how the parking lot system works. It's this waiting period for you to decide. Does this make sense? The cooling down period and that cooling down period can [00:10:00] really help us. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what's important to us, what makes sense, and what's not part of our business.
And one thing that this has done is kept our business so simple. It has reminded me what's important. It has given me a time to let that excitement fade and not take on so many projects. for listening. And it's been the most freeing thing. And I truly believe this is something that all of us can implement in our business because let's be honest, as entrepreneurs, we're all freaking excited all the time about new ideas.
It's just how it is. We get so excited and we have so many ideas, which is a beautiful thing. And I truly believe all ideas are good ideas, but just because they're a good idea doesn't mean they're a bad idea. idea for right now. They may be an idea for later. There's one idea that I have that's been on my list since 2020.
And I know one day I'll get around to it, but today [00:11:00] is not the day. And another one example is starting a YouTube channel. I had a YouTube channel back when I first started running Facebook ads. And every year I'm like, I'm going to do a YouTube channel. I'm going to do a YouTube channel. And then it never happens.
It doesn't come off the list. It's just not a right now thing. And that's okay. Not everything has to be done right now. And I will tell you that even in my life. I'm very much like a right now type of person. Like I want things right now. And one of the things that we are doing, implementing this in my business has also helped me implement this in my life.
Not necessarily in the same way of coming back and looking in 30 days, but right now we have this tool. walkout basement, it's beautiful, it's one of the reasons we bought the house. And, we got a quote, and the quote is like stupid amount of money. We're gonna get some more, but when I heard the quote I was like, oh my gosh, like you just crushed all my dreams.
[00:12:00] Now, that's not true. We got it down to within our budget, but it meant the whole thing wasn't going to be done. And I truly believe, and then we'd have to save the rest for later. And I truly believe previous to the parking lot system, I would be like, okay, let's do what we can. And then we'll come back and do the rest.
And I, we were talking and I was like, Austin, I don't want to just like partially do this. If we're going to go under renovations, we know what that looks like. We know what it's like to have construction workers in your house every single day. We have children. It's going to be loud. They have naps.
At least one of them does then we have to be home. We have to be like available. And I was like, I don't want to go through that process twice. So how about we get a few more quotes, but we table this until we have all the funds to be able to pay cash for it. And in order to do it all at once. So we're not tabling it forever, but maybe we're tabling it for right now instead of doing [00:13:00] it halfway.
And I don't think that before implementing the parking lot system in my business, I would have had the same thoughts for my life. So a lot of times when we implement this stuff in our business, it transfers to our life or vice versa. And so I know a lot. A lot of women in conversions for clients and strategist society come to me and they're like, I have this on my plate.
I have this on my plate. I have this on my plate. And they're saying yes to a lot of home life stuff, whether it's extracurriculars, church things or community things. And all of those are important, but we have to also make things priority. Does that align with your goals? Transcripts provided by Transcription Outsourcing, LLC.
Let's join do you want to join my book club? Instead of saying yes, say, you know what, right now my month is super [00:14:00] full, but let me revisit this next month and I can see where my schedule is. And then you can revisit it in a month. Maybe you still want to join in a month, and maybe you're like, gosh, no, I do not want to join that, my schedule is so full.
But we don't have to answer things that way. And in that moment and maybe for you, your parking lot's not 30 days, maybe it's 15 days, maybe it's 60 days, you get to decide, but having a parking lot system in your life and in your business can really help with overwhelm. And it sure as heck is going to help with burnout.
So I cannot wait to hear, do you already implement a parking lot system? Do you plan on implementing it? Do you think this would be helpful in your life or business? Send me a DM on Instagram. Let me know. I definitely want to hear about if this is something you're implementing and if you want more podcast episodes like this.
So my friends go out, serve your clients, scale your business and soar into the success you deserve. And [00:15:00] I'll see you next week.