Why How You Spend Your Time Is Either Your Superpower or Your Sabotage

Nine years. Two coaching companies. Countless lessons I had to learn the hard way.

And the one that sits at the top? How you spend your time is either your biggest superpower or your greatest sabotage. It took me years to figure this out, and I don’t want it to take you that long, too.

This episode kicks off a three-part series where I’m going deep on the real needle movers from nine years in business. No sugarcoating. No mindset fluff. Just the confessions that led me here. And today, we’re starting with time management for coaches, because this is the one shift you can make fastest and feel the biggest ROI from almost immediately.

I want to share a quote that’s been hanging in my workspace for years, from Lisa TerKeurst’s book The Best Yes:

“The decisions you make determine the schedule you keep. The schedule you keep determines the life you live. And how you live determines how you spend your soul.”

That quote changed the way I run my business. And it’s exactly where we’re starting today.

Mistake #1: Being Busy vs. Being Productive

There’s a real difference between an entrepreneur and what I call a wantrepreneur. Wantrepreneurs go through their whole day doing all the things: tweaking their Instagram bio, redesigning their website, taking courses, filming B-roll, designing motivational quote graphics. At the end of the day, they’re exhausted. But there are no clients.

Think of it as an iceberg. Everything I just described sits above the surface. Visible. Feels productive. Doesn’t move the needle. What’s beneath the surface are the actual revenue-generating activities: direct conversations with prospective clients, sales calls, nurturing leads, pitching podcasts, and showing up consistently in your visibility strategy. Those are the things that build a business.

If I audited your calendar right now, what would I actually see?

And I want to offer this: busyness is often just fear wearing a disguise. Staying busy feels safe. It keeps you from putting yourself out there, from getting rejected, from the discomfort of doing the hard stuff. I don’t want you stuck there.

The fix is to define your specific revenue-generating activities. They look different for everyone. Some coaches pitch corporations for workshops. Others network at the gym and convert referrals. A few host their own private events consistently. The common thread is that every single one of those activities puts you at risk for rejection and discomfort. That’s exactly how you know they’re the right ones.

Mistake #2: Not Front-Loading Revenue-Generating Activities

This one is sneaky. You might already know what your revenue-generating activities are. And yet you still find yourself mopping the floors, answering emails, scrolling social, or spending two hours on content before you’ve done a single thing that will actually bring in a client. That’s not a productivity problem. It’s a fear problem.

I remember how anxious I was about sales calls in my early years. I wanted to avoid them, push them to email, and handle things in the DMs. Anything to not get on the phone. But I’ve taken hundreds of sales calls over the years. Each one made me sharper, more confident, and clearer on who I was serving. Each one helped me develop the sales script I now hand to my coaching clients. Those calls had to be protected. I could never push them to the back of the week.

Think of it like protein. If I don’t front-load my protein at breakfast, there’s no way I’m hitting my goal by dinner. If I don’t get my workout in before noon, it’s not happening. Your business works the same way.

Front-loading means protecting Monday mornings for your highest-value revenue activities. It means building a Power Hour into every single day — one focused hour spent on what actually brings in clients. And it means knowing exactly what goes inside that hour, even when life gets chaotic.

Inside my Grounding Day framework, I teach coaches exactly how to design that Power Hour. Because if you only have one hour a day, whether you’re side-hustling, raising kids, or working full-time, you should know precisely how to use it.

Mistake #3: Not Measuring Anything

I failed miserably at this in the beginning. For years, every decision I made came from emotion. On good days, I was ready to conquer the world. On bad days, I wanted to quit. Neither of those states gave me accurate information about what was actually working.

When you don’t track your metrics, you chase shiny objects. You switch strategies before giving them time to work. You make decisions rooted in fear, anxiety, or excitement instead of data. And you waste years on approaches that weren’t converting without ever knowing why.

Here’s where every coach can start: conversations. How many times per week are you directly interacting with someone about your business? At a networking event, on a podcast, in a workshop, at the grocery store. Not in the DMs. Not in email. Real, direct conversations.

If you tracked that number and saw zeros week after week, the mystery of “why aren’t I getting clients?” would dissolve fast.

From conversations, a clear chain forms. Conversations lead to offers. Offers lead to sales calls. Sales calls lead to clients. Clients lead to revenue. When you track even those five things, you can see exactly where the gap is. Having great conversations but zero sales calls? We know where to focus. Booking calls but not converting? We know it’s the call itself. The data tells you what emotion never can.

Inside Best Damn Coach, every member gets a Friday tracker. Part of it is learning to operate like a true CEO, making decisions from data, not from how Tuesday felt. It took me four or five years to get here. I want it to take you a fraction of that.

The Grounding Day Process

One of my closest friends told me recently, “Amanda, you are the most consistent person I have ever met in my life.”

That didn’t happen by accident. It happened because I built a system.

I call it the Grounding Day framework, and I’ve actually trademarked it. For years, it’s been something I’ve shared exclusively inside Best Damn Coach. But I’ve packaged it as a completely standalone process for the first time, and it’s available now.

Here’s what Grounding Day solves:

• The busyness problem: It replaces passive busy work with intentional, revenue-focused action
• The front-loading problem: It helps you design your week so that revenue-generating activities are protected from the start
• The tracking problem: It builds a simple measurement practice so you’re always operating from data, not emotion

Inside the process, you’ll find:

• My Power Hour template with exact guidance on how to structure your daily focused hour
• My lead and KPI tracking spreadsheets (the ones I built for myself and still use)
• A weekly practice you can implement on the weekend

This is the structure I desperately needed when I started. Nobody could teach it to me back then. I had to figure it out over years of trial and error. Now it’s packaged, clear, and available for $97.

If you’re a podcast listener, you’re getting early access at the lowest price it will ever be. It will go up. Grab it now at amanda-walker.com/groundingday.

Conclusion

Nine years in business comes down to this. The decisions you make determine the schedule you keep. The schedule you keep determines the life you live. And how you live determines how you spend your soul.

The three confessions from this episode:

1. Being busy is not the same as being productive. If your calendar is full but your client roster is empty, busyness is disguising fear. Define your revenue-generating activities and protect them.
2. Not front-loading your RGAs means they won’t happen. The easy stuff cannot come first. Design your week so your most important work is protected before anything else gets a chance to crowd it out.
3. Making decisions from emotion instead of measurement keeps you stuck. Without data, you’re guessing. Track even one metric this week and watch how fast it clarifies what’s actually working.

Time is your scarcest resource. Not money. Not energy. Time. And every one of these mistakes steals it.

Next week, we’re going back into the confessional, and I’m sharing my relationship with money and how it’s shaped everything in my business over the last nine years. You don’t want to miss it.

Connect With Amanda:

• Grounding Day Framework: https://amanda-walker.com/groundingday
• 10 Powerful Questions Every Coach Should Know: amanda-walker.com/questions
• “How To Get Clients” Limited Series: amanda-walker.com/limitedseries
• Instagram: @awalkmyway