When you arrive at work every day, do you have a plan for what you are going to accomplish that day? When the day is over, do you feel like you got a lot done or do you think to yourself, what did I even do today?
For the first decade after starting our company I worked 60-80 hours a week, often 7 days a week. I’m sure a lot of you can relate.
I spent time talking to clients, handling employee issues, messing around on Facebook, and just reacting to the day’s fires.
If we are spending most of our time focusing on the revenue side of our business as the entrepreneur, then we will grow. If we get stuck putting fires out and doing non-revenue generating activities most of the day, we will stay stagnant.
I looked at different time management systems, and decided to try the Tony Robbin’s program, called “Time of Your Life. You can get more info at the link at the bottom of the notes. This program is a seminar type audio program that is quite a few hours long, but I found it to be well worth it.
You don’t have to use it, but you need to do something and most importantly do something that you will actually do on a consistent basis. It does no good to start some kind of method and give up on it in a few days and go back to bouncing from fire to fire.
Most of us can set aside time for important blocks of time for things like prospecting. Shut off your phone for inbound calls, close your email out, silence your cell, etc. The key to blocks of time is scheduling them and being ruthless at sticking to them. Don’t let yourself get thrown off unless you have flex time built in and only for very important reactive events.
One other trick I found out early on in my cold calling career was to do my cold calling first thing in the morning. When you get to the office in the morning, the first thing you want to do after you get settled is turn off your email, put your phone on do not disturb, don’t talk to your assistant about any client problems or issues, and do your block of time cold calling before your mind starts getting polluted with the inevitable negative input from an email, voicemail or some other problem.
The take away I hope you get from this, is that how you use your time directly affects the growth of your business and can either stagnate it, or grow it. Use this asset wisely. We all have the same 24 hrs, so those who are successful in mastering the use of their time will always be more effective than those who just jump from fire to fire.
In the next episode, we are going to talk about one of the hardest things business owners have to do: Terminations and layoffs. We’ll talk about the strategy I use that works while at the same time minimizing the stress it causes you.
Key Talking Points of the Episode:
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Resources Mentioned:
Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.
Tony Robbins “Time Your Life” Program:
https://store.tonyrobbins.com/collections/breakthrough-app/products/the-time-of-your-life
Website: https://www.salesdouble.com
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