091623 Q (YT) – work week BTS
[00:00:00] Well, yes, Mr. Divine 6760. I’d be happy to. If we haven’t met before, hey there, Chef Shelly here. I’m a personal chef. I’ve had a successful business for over 17 years now. And when I’m not cooking for my own clients, I help passionate cooks just like you start your own personal chef business. So you can get paid to do what you love, whether it’s doing personal chef services, aka weekly meal prep, or small caterings, or maybe even cooking classes.
If that’s something you’re interested in, subscribe and be sure to click that little bell so that you never miss one of my weekly videos.
When I first outlined this video, What my work week looks like, what I do all week. It was a hundred percent work cause that’s what you’re asking about. Right? And it was super short. So I went to the YouTubes and I looked [00:01:00] around at some other videos and there was this one video about this person’s work week that had over 365, 000 views and it showed every single minute of her week, down to filming her doing her laundry.
Dude, who has time to watch that? So I’m back to just me being super short and sweet with my videos. So if this isn’t enough for you and you have more questions about my work week, drop them in the comments and I’ll be sure to answer you. So in my personal chef, business and you know this if you’ve been around here for a hot minute and watched any of my videos.
I focus now just on doing personal chef services, also known as meal prep or weekly meal prep for clients. So that means I have the same clients every single week. So, [00:02:00] just as a quick review, when you have a personal chef business, when I say weekly meal prep, what that means is I cook, like, for the same client on Monday, and I just prepare their food that they want for the next few days, and then on Tuesday, I have a different client that I prepare food just for them.
So, if I was… Full time, I would probably be cooking four days a week and having Fridays as an admin day. But right now, I’m only choosing to work part time. So I cook two days a week and then I have a wait list for clients. So again, this is meal prep services for a personal chef business. Not like I choose Okay, this week I’m making meatloaf and spaghetti and chicken tenders and do you want three of these and one of those and four of those?
No, this is personal chef services for clients, just for each one. So anyway, [00:03:00] I say that because sometimes when I use the term meal prep, people get confused and I want to make sure we’re on the same page. So doing personal chef services. On Fridays, what I do is I contact my clients that I have for the upcoming week to remind them to get their menu to me because previously, when we first set up their services, I do a big intake.
We meet, we talk about what they like, what they don’t like. I have a huge food questionnaire. That they fill out because people invariably forget little details that they don’t like. And then, of course, you absolutely 100 percent as luck would have it, give them that thing they don’t like. Right. So after they tell me all about their likes and their dislikes and everything like that, I can go to my recipe collection and pull out.
20 or 30 things that I think they are really likely to love based on the information that they’ve given me, right? So then each week they choose how many and what they want, [00:04:00] and whenever they need a new list I give them a new list. So that’s a little in the… beginning of the relationship. So on Friday, I contact them for their choices for the upcoming wait.
Then in my schedule, what I do is, on Saturday mornings, over coffee, I plan my week and do all my paperwork. So, First I plan my week. I put in all my confirmed clients, all my appointments, all my calls and other commitments that are scheduled for a specific time. Then I block off time for work. And this is everything from if there are big projects I’m working on or regularly scheduled things like entering my business purchases and client payments and bookkeeping type stuff.
Or admin work like that. So after I get my week scheduled out again with my, this time I’ll be cooking for clients, any appointments and calls. So those are all [00:05:00] my set time things. And then I have my work time blocked out. Then I do my client paperwork and this is, I pull all their recipes, I make their grocery lists, I do their labels for their, Packaging, you know, however they get their food package.
Some clients want it family style. So the whole entree in one big container, some like it individually. So that’s more labels. So however they do that, I get their labels done and then I get their invoices started. So that way on the cook day when I’m done with the cooking and I have, of course, if you’ve watched any of my videos on pricing, you know, I always talk about how you should be fee plus groceries.
So after I get their groceries on their cook. day, then I can finish their invoice and send it off to them. So for instance, on Mondays, I get my groceries for my Monday client. I do all their cooking, their packaging, clean it up, send them the invoice because they’re [00:06:00] usually not home and that way they like to pay online, which.
There’s another handy little tip. I love the app wave for my bookkeeping. And if you want to take credit cards, not that you have to, you can do it right through that app too. So it’s super handy. So after I get done with the cook day and I usually finish absolutely no later than two o’clock, um, I might have work time.
Blocked out if I’m working on a big project, or I might have a family commitment. I pick my kids up from school. They’re a little bit older, so they get out a little bit later. I have one that gets out at 3. 45, one that gets out at 4. 25. So then Tuesdays… Same thing, wash, rinse, and repeat, right? So I have my client, groceries, cooking, cleaning, whatever, and then I have the time that I’ve blocked out afterward.
Now, to be honest, after a cook day, I have learned I am generally not really feeling doing a lot [00:07:00] of heavy desk work or other things like that. So I don’t usually schedule Big project work. I leave time after a cook day for easy admin stuff, maybe, like I said, entering in expenses or things like that, that are, need to be done, but more like just go through a checklist, not stuff that takes a lot of brain power.
So on Wednesdays, I work out, I have client calls, and then I, another thing is that is a perfect day for me to do big project work. Thursdays, same thing. I have calls scheduled and work blocks. And then Friday, I contact my clients, get their menus, and it starts all over again. So now, as far as the cooking for clients side of the business, because I’ve been doing this for years, I, um, only want to cook, like I said, two days a week right now.
So I’m booked. And if new inquiries come to me, I talk to them, tell them about my services [00:08:00] and pricing and everything. And if they’re still interested, I let them know that I am happy to put them on a wait list and contact them when I have an opening. Like if a client goes out of town for something, but let’s talk about what my schedule would look like.
If I wasn’t fully booked, let’s say I only had one client. So my Mondays were filled, but I didn’t have one Tuesdays. So I wanted to pick up another client. So on average, beginning to end, a cook day for me right now takes about six hours. So if I’m not cooking on Tuesday, and I want to have a client and be cooking on Tuesday, what that means is I have six hours available that I should be marketing to get a client.
Now to some of you out there, this might sound extreme, but if you have zero clients. And you want to be fully booked with clients, like cooking, you know, every day, that’d be like six hours a day for five [00:09:00] days. So 30 hours a week, not even to mention admin time and stuff like that. But if you want to be fully booked with clients, how much time are you actually spending on?
Working actively to get clients. And the reason why I say actively is that doesn’t mean passing out a couple business cards and then hoping and waiting for people to call you. That’s not active. Active is meeting people, telling them about your services and making offers. It doesn’t matter. That can happen online, too, and in person.
That part doesn’t matter, but as long as you’re actively talking to people about your business, that is the fastest, easiest way to get clients. I’m not going to say just passing out business cards or flyers or whatever that you’re never going to get a client, but I guarantee it’s going to be a lot.
longer of a process than actually having conversations with people. So that’s how I [00:10:00] schedule my work week now and how I would schedule my work week if I was just starting out. So if you’re interested in having a personal chef business where you do weekly meal prep for clients, there’s a link right down in the video description where you can get my free guide and it’ll walk you through step by step how to do a weekly meal prep service for a client.
Because I’m telling you, the clients are out there and they are hungry for what you’re cooking.
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