In this episode, ecommerce entrepreneur Josh Hadley shares his weekly operating system for structuring a productive business week. He argues that most business owners don’t have a time problem, they have a calendar problem. Josh breaks down his weekday by day: Monday for KPI reviews and one-on-ones, Tuesday for deep work on growth initiatives, Wednesday for consolidated meetings, Thursday for strategy and product development, and Friday for planning and documentation. His core principles include protecting deep work, grouping meetings, reviewing before reacting, and using the calendar strategically to drive real business growth.

Bullet Points:

Timestamps:

00:00:00 The Calendar Problem
Most business owners don’t have a time issue, but a calendar problem, getting hijacked by distractions instead of focusing.

00:01:54 Introduction to the Weekly Operating System
Josh introduces his weekly operating system for running an eight-figure brand, designed to protect attention and align leaders.

00:02:56 Monday: Grounding the Week in Reality
Monday’s focus is on reviewing KPIs, ensuring the team met goals, and identifying what is off track.

00:04:03 Monday: Cash Flow Forecasting
The second priority is reviewing the 12-month cash flow forecast to understand the business’s financial health and available resources.

00:05:47 Monday: Auditing Personal Time
The speaker audits his previous week’s time to identify distractions and improve productivity, sometimes using a time-tracking app.

00:06:46 Monday: One-on-One Meetings
The rest of Monday is for one-on-one meetings with direct reports to set strategy, solve bottlenecks, and provide direction.

00:08:37 Tuesday: Protected Deep Work
Tuesday is dedicated to deep, uninterrupted work on growth initiatives, with a brief leadership huddle to start the day.

00:11:33 Tuesday: Structuring Meetings
Any necessary meetings on Tuesdays, like vendor calls or interviews, are scheduled back-to-back at the end of the day.

00:12:21 Wednesday: The Meeting Day
Wednesday is a deliberately meeting-heavy day, consolidating recurring discussions, including a 90-minute leadership meeting to solve business issues.

00:13:18 Thursday: Strategy and Products
Thursdays are for zooming out from daily operations to focus on strategy, future hiring needs, and new product innovation.

00:16:19 Friday: Planning and Documenting
Friday is for solidifying the week’s takeaways, proactively planning the next week, and documenting knowledge to scale the business.

00:18:06 Key Principles of the Schedule
The speaker outlines six key principles behind his schedule, including giving each day a job and protecting deep work.

Links and Mentions:

E-commerce Platforms Mentioned: “00:00:30”
CEO Dashboard Podcast Episode: “00:04:03”
Weekly Cash Flow Planning Podcast Episode: “00:04:58”
Timing App: “00:06:43”
Conducting a Two Week Time Study Podcast Episode: “00:06:46”

Transcript:

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  Most business owners don’t actually have a time issue. They have a calendar problem. Today I’m going to be sharing with you how to structure your week properly so that you are focused on the right things so that you can scale not only an eight figure business, but a nine figure business and beyond. Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast. I’m Josh Hadley. I’ve scaled my own ecommerce brand from 0 to 8 figures, and I’m actively building towards nine figures in sales. This podcast is where I document that journey and share the systems, the strategies, and the lessons learned in real time so that you can learn what actually matters and scale your own business. My name is Josh Hadley. First and foremost, I’m a man of faith. I’m a husband to a beautiful wife and a father of four children. I have been selling in the e-commerce space for over a decade, doing over $20 million in annual revenue and doing multi-million on sales channels such as Amazon, TikTok, Shop and Shopify. I am also the host of the number one business strategy podcast for ecommerce entrepreneurs, and that is E-com breakthrough.

Josh Hadley 00:00:57  Today, I want to share with you exactly how you should be structuring your week in order to ensure that your focus is on the highest priorities, rather than getting caught up in just putting out fires and basically dealing with the thick of thin things. So I’m sharing this with you from my exact like schedule, in my exact structure that I have in my own business. For you to be able to use that as like a framework to structure your own week. So here’s the problem. Most founders don’t have a time issue. You actually have a calendar problem. And the reason why is because, like you’re just getting hijacked by slack email, reactive meetings, WhatsApp notifications, a bunch of different like mastermind groups that you’re in that are slacking you or texting you, etc. and ask me why. I know that because like, I was the guy who used to have that happening to me all the time, but now I literally turn my phone on silent mode and do not disturb mode, and I ignore the WhatsApp messages that are happening throughout the day.

Josh Hadley 00:01:54  And to be honest with you, I’m frankly amazed how much interaction is happening during the day when people theoretically should be working on their business. Instead, they’re reaching out and asking questions or predictions about this. You know, travel hacks about that. All those things are good, and they are decent conversations to have. However, I’m not going to sacrifice my time in my deep work that’s actually going to grow the business to go chit chat and have random side conversations. Because actually, the moment you like are distracted and turn your attention to something else, it’s ten times harder to bring it back to the focus that you originally had. So this is the exact weekly operating system that I use to run our eight figure brand, and how I protect my attention, align my leaders, and carve out enough time to actually move the business forward, rather than just kind of like staying stationary and keeping up with just the regular admin of maintaining the business as it is today. Let’s dive into Monday. Monday is one of the most important days in the entire business.

Josh Hadley 00:02:56  And it’s not only important for me, but this carries out through the rest of my leaders Their Mondays are structured very, very similar to mine, and Monday is about grounding the entire week in reality, not urgency. Right? It’s this is where the strategic planning and prioritization really comes into play here. Okay, before anything else gets my attention, I review what happened this previous week. So let’s talk about that. The very first thing that I do Monday mornings is I’m looking at my weekly KPI tracker. And if you’re wondering, well, what KPIs does Josh actually track and look at? If you go check out my previous podcast episode, it’s on YouTube, it’s on all the podcast platforms, it’s the CEO dashboard and I talk about, and I actually show you and give you a framework of the actual, like, metrics that you should be tracking the Excel sheet and the template that we use so that you can go make your own. But I am looking at that sheet to ensure, hey, did my leaders did my team, did everybody in the business meet their goals? And if they didn’t, which ones are off track? Why are they off track? What do we need to do to get them back on track? That’s first and foremost the number one priority.

Josh Hadley 00:04:03  The number two priority is I’m going to dive in to my my cash flow tracker. This is something that measures the cash in the business on a weekly basis. And it’s not a historical narrative of this is what happened to the cash in the business. Rather, this is exactly or the forecast of what will happen in the business if we keep trending in the same direction. So it’s a 12 month forecast where I can even look into the future and say, hey, a year from now, how much cash should be sitting in my bank account based off of all the Pos that we have coming in, all of the advertising invoices, everything that we’re budgeting, the sales that we’re forecasting, etc. it’s telling me everything how much money should be in my bank account that allows me to step into the week knowing, hey, this is the ammunition that we have to go to battle with or the lack thereof. And at the end of the day, as the CEO, one of the most important things for you to do is make sure you have the right butts in the right seats.

Josh Hadley 00:04:58  Number two, you got to make sure that the business has cash to survive. So that’s why it’s one of my core fundamental beginnings to every week is to look at and forecast, make a different assumptions of where cash is going to be in my cash flow template. Now, if you’re wondering, well, Josh, what does that cash flow template look like? How are you tracking that? Well, good news for you. I have another podcast episode for that as well. It’s already been recorded, so go take a look at my weekly cash flow planning podcast. It’s on YouTube. It’s on all the podcast platforms. Check it out. And I share the exact template in how we build and structure that cash flow planning template. But it is essential to the beginning of every single week and essential to the lifeline of the business. Making sure that we have blood to continue circulating throughout the body of our business. Then the last thing that I’m going to do personally is I’m going to audit my own time.

Josh Hadley 00:05:47  I’m going to take a look at the past week and say, did I get everything done that I wanted to, that I, you know, put down on my key list of things I needed to get done? If not, where was I? You know, where were my shortcomings? Where did I get distracted? How do I get better? Now, if you really want to turn this up a notch, this is what I would highly recommend. And I do this every quarter. But this is like do your own time study and I use the timing app. It’s an app that you can download and it tracks your computer, everything that you’re looking at, etc. and then I know exactly where I’m spending my time. So if you want more details on that, again, good news. I’ve got a podcast episode of conducting a two week time study, so I give you the exact step by step playbook of how I conduct the two week time study, why it’s important, how I use AI to analyze those results, and then help me, like set myself up for future success so that I’m even more productive in the time that I’m given, and specifically working on the right things on the business rather than working inside of the business.

Josh Hadley 00:06:46  Now that’s the very first two hours of every Monday. Like, those are the three things that I’m going through. The rest of the day is spent on one on one meetings with direct reports. Sometimes these are 60 minute to 90 minute meetings with my team because I am setting the strategy and I am coordinating. We’re solving bottlenecks, solving issues on the spot and giving the team the direction they need to operate in for the rest of the week. Because guess what? Reality is, the number of people that are proactive in planning and have some foresight is actually very small as a CEO. That’s one of your jobs, is to have foresight and strategic insights to say, see around corners and then be able to provide that vision and foresight to the rest of your team members. That’s why these meetings are so important. I hear this time and time again, oh, we meetings are a waste of time. Meetings are only a waste of time if you’re not making them productive and not sharing and solving problems on the spot, and sharing what that future vision is to guide and direct your team properly.

Josh Hadley 00:07:45  So in those structured one on one meetings, here’s what my direct reports do. They come prepared with exactly what happened last week, how it measured compared to what they originally set out to accomplish, and then what their plans are for the upcoming week. What are their challenges? What are their bottlenecks? What are the issues that they’re facing? We dive into all of that, and then from there, we set our plan for the rest of the week. I give them direction. Additional thoughts come to my mind. I help them reprioritize certain things or prioritize others so that I make sure that they’re spending their valuable time on the most important things in the business. That’s what Monday looks like. And guess what did you hear at any point? Did you hear me open up my email inbox? Not once. Guess when I open up emails for the first time on Mondays. I do that at 10:00 at night. So at 10:00 at night, I’m going to do an email triage for about an hour, 45 minutes to an hour.

Josh Hadley 00:08:37  That’s the first time I’m diving into my emails. And guess what? In between now and then or throughout the day on Monday, it’s my executive assistant’s job to manage, maintain the flow of those emails, put out any urgent fires, or if there is something I desperately have to take my attention away from the business to, to go resolve, she’ll let me know. So that is the power of setting up Mondays for success. Let’s dive into Tuesdays. Tuesdays are for protected deep work. These are again another one of my favorite days of the week, because Tuesday is dedicated to one mode only and it’s deep, uninterrupted work. This is where I’m able to move mountains in the business. Okay, so here’s the morning setup. The first 15 minutes of the morning we have our leadership huddle. This is a quick touch base with all of the senior leaders in my team. And then we they will all go through and share number one what was the win that you accomplished yesterday. What are your three priorities for today? Any bottlenecks or issues that you’re facing that we need to solve as a team? While we’re here on the call? It’s 15 minutes.

Josh Hadley 00:09:37  Oftentimes we’re done in ten minutes and everybody’s off to the races doing their own thing, working in in their own respective roles. Okay. Next, immediately following that, I have a touch base with my executive assistant. Again, 15 minutes to go over. Hey, questions about the email inbox, questions about upcoming events, priorities, issues that we’re dealing with in the team, how she can take things off of my plate and give me more dedicated, uninterrupted time so that I can move the business forward. So what does that mean? What is the rest of the day look like? Well, I am doing 4 or 5 hours of deep, uninterrupted work. So like what are the type of things that I’m working on? I’m doing new initiatives for any of my sales channels. So if it’s for TikTok shop, I am thinking through maybe a new contest or a new way to approach our affiliate marketing. Okay. And I’m just doing like a deep dive, and I’m just being creative and thinking through, like, how do we just make it better? Right? How do we improve it? Or maybe it’s a new channel that we’re not yet into, and I’m doing the initial homework or creating the right partnerships or whatever needs to be done to maybe it’s getting into retail or maybe it’s getting onto Shopify.

Josh Hadley 00:10:43  It doesn’t matter what what it is for yourself, but it’s deep focused work on growth initiatives within the business. Whatever you do on that day, you should be able to say, when this is implemented, will it lead to more cash in the business? Yes or no? If you can’t say yes to that, then arguably like you shouldn’t be wasting your time on it. It’s an operational kind of, opportunity. And that needs to be delegated to your team. Now, the last question you may be asking is like, well, Josh, do you have any meetings? So yes, on occasion I will have meetings. I might have a vendor, you know, meeting, or I might have an interview that needs to be scheduled with a potential applicant for an open position. If that’s the case, my executive assistant is going to book all of those calls at the very end of the day. So if I want to be done shutting my laptop at 5:30 p.m., they’re going to book that last call from like 5 to 5:30 p.m..

Josh Hadley 00:11:33  Okay. And then they’re going to backwards plan from there. If there’s another call that needs to be added, it would go from 430 to 530 and and another one yet again 4 to 430. Right. So you can see I’m just backwards filling the day so that it’s not like, well, you have a 30 minute call at 12, then you have another 30 minute call at two, then another 30 minute call at 4:00. And it’s like, what a disaster. Because like, I’m just my mind’s going to be bouncing from one thing to another instead of just like, if you can groove in deep work, turn off your cell phone, turn off the notifications and just like jam for 4 to 5 hours, that’s where you’re able to move mountains. Most people can’t do that. Most people don’t have the attention span to focus on one thing for a concerted amount of effort, but you will get two weeks, if not arguably four weeks worth of effort done in one day compared to the rest of the population.

Josh Hadley 00:12:21  If you’re above average and you actually buckle down and do that, okay. And then guess what? Did you hear me talk about emails whatsoever at all? No, you still haven’t heard me talk about emails, responding to emails, triaging emails, any of that. So guess what? 9 or 10 p.m. that’s exactly when my EA knows I’m going to be back in the email inbox and working through things. Let’s talk about Wednesdays. Wednesdays are the days for meetings inside the business, so it’s deliberately meeting heavy because it allows the rest of the week to stages like clean and focused. So all the reoccurring discussions are consolidated to maximize my efficiency here. So number one, this may be a so a monthly call with my sales team to talk about Hey, this is where we’re performing. What questions? What answers do I have? Okay. This is like vendor or partner calls, interviews. I try to fit here cross-functional sync ups between different partners. Or maybe it’s the project management team and we’re discussing all the new future product launches that we have.

Josh Hadley 00:13:18  Or it’s the supply chain team needing my sign off on different things. But the biggest meeting that we have on Wednesdays in the most important one is a 90 minute L10 leadership meeting. So this is where the senior leaders get together. And we’re discussing here are the issues, outstanding issues inside the business. We’re solving those issues together. Everybody is reporting on their specific KPIs in addition to what they already reported on in Monday. And then we’re talking about like, where are we moving in the future? What’s working, what’s not working in their respective departments? That is where the rubber truly meets the road. One of my favorite meetings of the entire week, because it is the best pulse of like where the business currently stands and where the business is actually going to be heading Thursdays. Thursdays are all about strategy and products, so they’re very similar to Tuesdays, but they’re more structured with like the exact kind of like deep work that I want to be doing. So Thursday is where I zoom out from like daily operations, not daily fires, but what the business needs to become next.

Josh Hadley 00:14:20  So operations and strategy decisions. So this is at the very beginning. Every Thursday morning we run that same thing. We have a leadership huddle for 15 minutes. I have a 15 minute huddle with my executive assistant. We hash all of that out okay. Then I actually have an hour long meeting with my director of operations. This is where we discuss, like the org chart, the future hiring needs for the business, but it’s more focused on the overall, like working with my operations manager to architect the future of the business. We’re talking about people, personnel problems, things like that that need to be solved. And then his job is to go execute that with the rest of the team. Okay. So what happens after those kind of initial meetings at the beginning of the morning? Now I go into my product Deep dives. So this is where I’ve blocked off specific time for new product innovation. So either I’m finding new product ideas or my team’s bringing new product ideas to me, I’m reviewing their kind of proposals, the quotes that we’ve received and just kind of like thinking and being creative with like, here’s the new product plan and ensuring that we have new product launches scheduled out for the next 18 months.

Josh Hadley 00:15:24  That is the number one priority for any any business. You should always be coming out with new products on a regular basis. So if you’re sleeping on that and you’re just ad hoc launching products like that’s why you’re behind and that’s why you don’t experience explosive growth in certain areas. Outside of that, I will do 90 minute focus blocks where it might be me reviewing the financial performance from the previous month. It could be me diving into process improvements or, you know, actually jumping on the phone for having like a creating a partnership or something, like with affiliates or things like that. It’s more like a 90 minute focused blocks. Again, not the 4 to 5 hour deep work blocks that I was previously in. Okay. But again, all of these are planned the week in advance. It’s not just like the day of oh, what am I going to work on today? Like that’s why we do the planning and that’s what we’ll talk about here on Friday. This is when I plan the next week, I think, and I document.

Josh Hadley 00:16:19  So Friday is dedicated to solidifying the week, strategic takeaways, proactive planning for the future and documenting the knowledge to scale the business. So number one, proactive weekly planning. Again, this is where I sit down. And I actually like with my executive assistant, we’ll go through all of the meetings for the next week. We’ll adjust any make sure they’re all back to back so that I’m not wasting time. And then in addition to that, it’s, hey, during this 90 minute block, here’s what I’m focused on. Hey, it’s time to review the quarterly financials or the monthly financials. So there’s a 90 minute block here put on Thursday. I’ve got another 90 minute block for you to interview a couple new creators or new applicants, etc. like all of that’s built out like literally at the end of the day on Friday. My next week is completely filled in 15 minute increments. I know exactly what I’m going to be working on, so there’s no surprise now. Are there ever fires that come up that I have to like? Well, there goes my week.

Josh Hadley 00:17:13  Yeah, of course like that happens. But that is like that’s a rarity, not the norm. That’s not happening every week. And so that’s the importance behind the planning. Planning is everything. But the plan means nothing because ultimately you need to prioritize what is what is urgent and important as the days progress. Next, this is where I’m actually going to sit down and do. For me personally, this is when I’m going to come out with my podcast episodes. But the reason why I’ll do these podcast episodes is because, like, this is strategic content and the frameworks that I’m sharing that, yes, you get to hear it as the listener, but I’m sharing this with my team and I’m letting them know this is how I operate as a leader. Like, as you know, my team will listen to this episode. It’s here’s how I structure my weeks in my day, in hopes that maybe it gives you a source of inspiration and idea and framework for how you might structure your own workweek. So that’s why I do that.

Josh Hadley 00:18:06  So it’s discussing why I make the decisions I make in the business. It’s discussing SOPs in frameworks, and I share that with my team. That’s when I do my best SOP work. And then last but not least, it’s optimizing and delegating what knowledge is currently in my head. What decisions am I still central to that needs to get out that I’m documenting. Hey, here are the next constraints in the business where I am the bottleneck. And I’m just kind of doing like more self-reflection on all of that. Now, ultimately here, like the key principles behind why I have the schedule and why I live and die by it. And I’m very, you know, I am very particular about my schedule, and there’s not a lot that I allow to kind of interrupt that flow that I just shared with you, unless like, there’s a very, very good reason. The reason why is, number one, give each day a job when every day is available for everything. Guess what? Everything ultimately interrupts anything.

Josh Hadley 00:19:01  And then you need to be able to assign specific work to specific days that eliminate context switching because like you will kill so much time if you’re like, oh, time to go. Focus on financials. Oh, now I got to go focus on affiliates. Oh, I got this email. I need to go pay this invoice for the purchase order or whatever it is. Every time you’re going to, it’s going to take you 15 to 20 minutes just to get back to where you were when you diverted your attention before you context switched. Number two review before you react. Monday is a day for review. It begins with data, cash. The time where I’m spending my time. How do I improve that? So I’m operating out of reality. This is actually what’s happening, not just emotion. This is how I feel. Or reactionary movements okay. Number three document how you think. Way too often entrepreneurs are just like, oh, nobody else can make these good of decisions as I can. So I have to make these calls.

Josh Hadley 00:19:54  And instead, if you want to scale your business, it’s being able to document your decision making process and framework, sharing it with others. That’s how you scale. You scale by building leaders, period. Flat out. And that’s also when business becomes exciting, when it’s not you doing everything inside the business. Number four group your meetings together. Scattered meetings are the problem. As I shared with you on Tuesdays. Like I don’t allow a 30 minute call at 11 and then a 30 minute call at one, and then a 30 minute call at 3 p.m. that’s going to screw up my day. Like, that’s my biggest pet peeve. One heavy meeting day will protect the rest of the week for deep work, so cram all of your meetings into one day. Make them back to back to back to back. Guess what? Yeah. Is that going to be maybe your favorite day for me? I don’t mind it, but it’s going to be the best way to free yourself up and again, allow you to not have to worry about context switching, allow you to do more deep work.

Josh Hadley 00:20:47  Number five, protect your deep work aggressively. You cannot build a major growth initiative in 20 minute gaps between slack messages or emails or meetings. The highest value work requires sustained, uninterrupted work time. Last but not least, Number six. Use your calendar as a strategy. If growth, product development and leadership matter to you, then they need to appear on your calendar. Otherwise, if they don’t, they’re actually priorities. They’re not actually priorities. They’re just kind of like nice to haves and wishful thinking. So that’s exactly how I operate and structure my week. Running an eight figure business, growing to become a nine figure business. So I hope that this inspires you to go make the necessary changes that you need in your own business, in your own time. That’s the most valuable thing you have is your time. So protect it, document it, plan it. And when you do that, you’ll begin to see the returns coming quickly. If you found value of this episode and you think that it can impact others, please share it with another entrepreneur who needs to hear the same message.

Josh Hadley 00:21:47  Drop it in your your slack messages or your WhatsApp groups with your mastermind. Go interrupt somebody else in the middle of their day. And last but not least, if you found value, please leave me a review on your platform of choice. Thumbs up, subscribe on YouTube or whatever platform you’re listening to, and good luck!