I'm a Digital CEO, Help Me!

A series focused on navigating the creator economy, claiming the Digital CEO title, and answering your biggest business questions.

Your Question: WTAF is a Weekly CEO Hour (and Why Do I Need One?)

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Time Is Money, My Bébés

🗝️ Make Space to Lead, Not Just Do
🗝️ Structure That Honors Your Energy
🗝️ Build the Habit, Not Just the Hustle
🗝️ You Can’t Scale What You Can’t See

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It’s time to talk about the part of business ownership that’s easy to overlook when you're juggling All The Things™ every single day:

Being the actual CEO.

You know, the person who’s supposed to steer the ship, not just swab the deck.

When you’re in client mode, content mode, or chaos mode, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. I certainly have.

That’s why I started setting aside one sacred hour a week—what I now call my CEO Hour—to check in with my business from the top down.

And spoiler alert? It’s changed everything.

This post is part of the "I’m a Digital CEO, Help Me!" series—a lovingly sarcastic but totally sincere exploration of the real tools, rhythms, and mindset shifts that help digital business owners trade burnout for balance.

‍So let’s do it ⤵️

WTAF IS A CEO HOUR AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Here’s the truth: most solopreneurs and small business owners are so deep in the weeds of execution that they rarely come up for air.

The CEO Hour is your weekly ritual to step back, zoom out, and lead.

Not react.
Not scramble.
Not over-function.

For just 60 minutes a week, you’ll embrace the title of CEO and use that time to settle yourself into the inner workings of your business as a leader instead of a doer.

👉🏻 Review and understand your numbers
👉🏻 Track progress toward your goals
👉🏻 Make informed decisions about where to focus
👉🏻 Identify what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to shift

No more wondering where the time went, where the money went, or what the plan is.

This is how we stop drifting and start directing.

WHAT I DO DURING MY CEO HOUR

My CEO Hour takes place every Monday morning, about an hour into my normal workday. It's on my calendar, it’s recurring, and it’s non-negotiable.

During this hour, I run through the following:

‍Finances
‍I review my bank accounts, incoming payments, outgoing expenses, and projected cash flow for the week. I’m a big spreadsheet girlie so that’s what I use—but there are tons of great products out there that will do it for you if spreadsheets aren’t ~your thing~.

‍Accounting tools you might enjoy: FreshBooks, QuickBooks Self-Employed, Xero, or Wave

‍‍Metrics
‍I check my KPIs like a true ~ex-corporate girlie~ 💅🏻

My personal Key Performance Indicators include website analytics, email list growth, social media analytics, etc. If something looks off, I don’t dig into it right then and there. I schedule myself a task in Asana to give it the time and attention it deserves, which also preserves the integrity of the rest of my CEO hour.

‍Content Calendar
‍I review my Marketing section in Asana to make sure I *actually have tasks scheduled* for myself to make content. Things like creating my next blog posts timely, scheduling batch days for repurposing content, reviewing my posting plan, etc. I make sure my timelines are realistic and attainable for the week, knowing that “realistic” does not mean working at 110% every day with no space for breaks.

‍Project Health
‍If I have an upcoming project or launch planned, then I review my timelines, note any bottlenecks, and decide if I need to reallocate resources (specifically my time). Right now I’m a one-mom operation, but if I weren’t then this would also be my time to check in with any employees or contractors to see how their pieces are coming along.

‍Opportunities & Follow-Ups
‍Separate from my Inbox Zero task, this piece of my CEO Hour is to check the status of my brand opportunities. This can include brainstorming new collabs, setting myself tasks to follow-up on existing leads, reviewing metrics of previous projects or collabs that have finished, etc.

‍Process Improvement
‍If I’ve made any notes to myself recently about processes that could be streamlined, automated, or just plan obsoleted then now is when I review those. I make the decision (the true point of CEO Hour) and then schedule myself a task in Asana to execute it later.

‍Personal Capacity Check
‍The last thing I do during my CEO Hour is to review my own weekly workload and do my best to block time for CEO-level work vs. deep creative work. I make sure that this gets put into both my calendar (which tells other people how much time I do or don’t have) and my Asana (which tells me how much time I do or don’t have).

I’ve started incorporating the following reflection questions into my capacity check as a way to get my own uniform feedback on how things are going.

What felt good last week?
What drained me?
What’s the most important thing to move forward this week?

HOW TO SET UP YOUR OWN CEO HOUR

You don’t need anything fancy to start this habit—just a calendar, a quiet block of time, and a willingness to be honest with yourself.

Here’s how I recommend getting started:

1️⃣ Pick Your Day + Time
Choose a day that naturally bookends your work cycle. I like Mondays for a fresh start, but Fridays work well for some as a wind-down + prep.

2️⃣ Use a Template or Checklist
Create a recurring note in your task manager (or journal) that walks you through the categories: Finances, Tasks, Metrics, Reflection.

3️⃣ Set the Vibe
This is still you time. Light a candle, pick a playlist, pour your drink of choice. Treat it like a ritual, not a chore.

4️⃣ Make It Sustainable
If you can’t do 60 minutes, start with 20. The consistency matters more than the length.

5️⃣ Avoid the Desire to Multitask
This piece of advice has two layers to it, so heed both. Firstly, keep CEO Hour to information-processing and decision-making. Schedule yourself tasks for action so that you stay in that CEO Mindset for the whole hour (or however long you end up blocking out).

Secondly, resist the urge to “monetize” your CEO Hour. Don’t set up your phone and film B-roll. Don’t take selfies in the middle for your stories or posts. Let this be a sacred hour that stays separate from social media.

‍No pressure, just presence.

WHY THIS ONE HABIT REVOLUTIONIZED MY BUSINESS

Before I started doing weekly CEO Hours, I always felt like I was forgetting something (because I was).

Something urgent.
Something important.
Something I couldn’t quite name.

The way I had set up my business was structured for normies and didn’t do anything to accommodate how my unmedicated ADHD brain actually functions.

Now I give myself the opportunity to fully know where my business stands every single week, which is how I position myself for growth.

No more missed invoices, unclear deliverables, overbooked timelines, forgotten content plans, or scattered to-do lists.

This one hour allows me to be a true CEO and spot bottlenecks early, say no to things that don’t fit, stay focused on the big picture, and overall be proactive instead of reactive in my business.

It’s not just a productivity trick—it’s an energetic boundary. This is the hour where I stop being my business and step into leading it.

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EMBRACING CEO ENERGY IS A CHOICE AND A PRACTICE

You don’t wake up one day and feel like a confident CEO. If you’ve checked out my free MBA Foundations Checklist, you’ve seen that I have an entire support email dedicated to “claiming” the title of Digital CEO.

That’s because this is something you practice. Something you carve out space for. Something you fake-it-til-you-make-it. Only in this case, it’s faking it until the structure of your business supports you to fully claim it.

The weekly CEO Hour isn’t about perfection. It’s about showing up regularly to check in on the living, breathing organism that is your business—and yourself.

When I first started my CEO Hour, it took more than an hour! It was a new habit, a new skill, that I was acclimating to. I was fine-tuning what I wanted it to be and what I didn’t want it to be.

And I promise: the more consistently you show up, the more empowered, grounded, and prepared you’ll feel. One hour a week to ensure that you’re not just busy, but are building something beautifully intentional.

Start where you are.
Use what you have.
Keep it simple.

And most of all: keep showing up.

Your future self will thank you for putting your CEO hat on, even if you’re wearing pajama pants with it.

TL;DR: THE CEO HOUR, IN A NUTSHELL

• Curate a repeating, 60-minute weekly business check-in to working on your business instead of in it
• Honoring this time as sacred helps you lead with clarity instead of reacting in chaos
• Allow yourself to build momentum, accountability, and strategic direction that you can take action on separately
• You can’t scale what you don’t have eyes on

NEXT STEPS: READY TO BECOME A SYSTEMIZED CEO?

If you love the idea of the CEO Hour, but need help organizing your business so that this practice actually works, you’ll love my MBA Foundations Checklist.

It’s a free, practical tool to help you map out the essential systems, strategies, and storytelling elements you need to run your business like a real CEO (even if you feel like a gremlin right now).

✨ Grab the MBA Foundations Checklist here ✨

Let’s build a business you’re proud to run—and one that doesn’t run you.
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