Maybe a better question is, “What is Independence?”

I found this after doing a little digging…

In the USA, we celebrate ‘Independence Day’ on July 4, celebrating our freedom as a nation.

In May & June, graduating high school and college students celebrate their independence from education (and maybe even their freedom from ‘childhood.’)

In 1991 – my husband proposed to me under the fireworks and I celebrated my Independence into a new phase of my life.

We have independence from braces, from kids at home, from car payments and maybe…a dream of financial independence from a job, a boss or debt.

This is all possible. But just like in our nation’s founding, freedom doesn’t come without a price.

Any freedom you seek takes work, consistent effort and even sacrifice. It’s not a popular thought. We want easy income. Instant debt reduction. Simple solutions and while we’re at it – could you please ‘beam me back into my high school skinny jeans?’

Daily choices. Daily decisions. Wise guidance and, like our forefathers…a willingness to sacrifice time, blood, sweat and tears, to make our independence a reality. I believe you can.

Happy Independence Day…it’s up to YOU to determine… ‘Independence from what?’

Share with me some thoughts below.

Here are my thoughts… 2 minutes of my opinion

If you’re ready to Simplify Social Media – I can help with that too!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve been talking about obstacles to business growth and yesterday we covered Time Stealers. Now let’s recover some of that time!

How Do You Stretch Time?

• If you’re almost out of milk…you add a little water in it to stretch it.
• You scoop a little less coffee into the filter to make the coffee go a bit further until you get to the store.
• And we’re all familiar with making cash go a little further by shopping with coupons, sharing an entrée, cutting back on our cable plans, etc.

Now we’re going to figure out how to add time to your day.

It’s not complicated…but as a business owner, it’s VITAL that you master certain time stretchers or you will be frazzled, stressed and always moaning about ‘needing more time!’

Here are 5 of my fave 10 Time Stretchers…

1)  Timer ~ The most important piece of technology ever is a Timer. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It can be a kitchen timer. You will use it extensively during Power Hour (to be covered in a future post) but I also like to just use it for social media time, blog writing, phone calls (oops, gotta go!) and break time.

2)  Blocking & Chunking ~ sounds painful but is super effective! When I shoot videos I don’t shoot one video. I sit down and make out a list of topics I want to shoot video about and I shoot lots of it. I do my hair, make-up and clothes once. I edit and choose graphics or music once. I get in a flow and focus on nothing else but video. (My record is 25 videos in one hour.)

Maybe you’re going to write 5 blog posts. Maybe you have 2 hours of email time or 2 hours of blog reading & commenting time.

Save your social media commenting and posting for a certain time. Create content during a focused block. Chunk your time. I do all my coaching and consulting on Tuesdays and Thursday via phone. I do all of my email coaching before noon each day. I write during certain chunks and I do videos in chunks. This is smart and makes YOU in charge of your time. Get in a flow. Multi-tasking can be a myth.

3)  An Automated Phone Service ~ I’ve used eVoice for 9 years.  It’s affordable and it’s practical. The message goes to an email which means wherever on the planet I check my email, there it is. OR to my assistant. It works for me. There are a lot of options like Ring Central and Google Voice. If you really prefer your phone answered by a ‘live’ person you can use something like Call Ruby which is a service that is more costly than virtual numbers, but cheaper than an employee.

(Before you get snippy about your phone and how connected you need to be, breathe — I will cover ‘filters & qualifications’ on who gets ‘you’ time in the next post)

4)  Turn Notifications Off ~ This is especially important during your Power Hour. I’ll explain that in a future blog post, stay tuned. For instance during my workday I turn off email notifications, incoming text, phone noise, etc.. As a matter of fact, I typically log out of email altogether (except during my email time chunk.) I never have Skype, gchat or IM open unless I have a preset appointment. I am not available to just ‘be there’ for if you have a whim to chat. (again, we’ll cover filters & qualifications tomorrow). Like another reader said ‘I’m not selling hearts or lungs, no one will die if I don’t answer right away.’

5)  An Alarm ~ on your desktop, phone or watch. I set the alarm clock on my cell to notify me to take a break and walk around or hydrate. I set alarms to remind me about calls. Alarms let me focus without me having to continually check the clock or my google calendar! My alarm reminds me during the school year ‘GET THE KIDS’ and reminds me ‘You have a deadline’ and all sorts of handy things. The more you can let something or someone else remind you, the less stress you have in worrying that you will forget. (Thanks Snowden McFall for reminding me of that!) Aren’t you breathing better already?

Well – that’s 5 for today! What are your thoughts on those? I’ll post another 5 tomorrow and then the next day we’ll talk about the ‘silver bullet’ I call – “POWER HOUR”

Already do some of these? GREAT – encourage other readers below on how that helps!

An email reader of mine suggested this (and I LOVE It!!)

** Carrie, I use VLC Player to speed up videos  – you can watch almost any format, and speed up/slow down as much as you need.  http://www.videolan.org/vlc - Thanks for that tip! Love it! **

Need to do some of these? Tell us below which one you are going to focus on this next week. Give it 7 days and see if you don’t feel like you have more time!

(gotta go – my timer just went off…)

 

 

The 3rd Obstacle Business Owners listed in their responses was ‘I’m Out of Time!’

To get caught up, read Obstacle #1 – Info Overload and #2  – Distractions

You’re primarily out of time (in my opinion) because your time is being stolen from you! You always suspected it…someone else is taking my time!! So I call this obstacle:

Time Stealers

All those little demands on your time are as pleasant as being pecked to death by a chicken! (Feel that? Great visual, huh?)

They’re little nips that irritate you at first and then they really start to hurt and you start to lose BIG chunks of you. Eventually it’s a miserable death (of your dreams, your goals and your health.)

Is that just me or can you relate to that too?

This is the similar to “money stealers.” (Don’t even get me started. I have a whole list of those, too.)

Some of these are going to hit a nerve with you and some might not apply. I’ll be as comprehensive as possible

• Incoming phone calls
• Text messages
• Emails
• Social Media
• Skype & Instant Messaging
• People on your team (Kind of counter-intuitive but it’s true.)
• Blogs
• Technology
• Errands
• Kids/Spouses/Parents
• Jobs (or Clients)
• Love Life
• Television
• Meal time
• Drive Time
• Meetings without a clear purpose
• Networking without a clear purpose

These are the top ones I’m aware of…but truthfully, anything incoming, unscheduled and without a clear purpose qualifies.

It seems harmless enough at first…I’ll pop into my emails, I’ll grab that call really quick and before you know it – your day (week, month, quarter) has dissolved into thin air! Stolen by the time stealers!

• But, Carrie – we have to eat!
• But, Carrie – the phone is part of my business!
• But, Carrie – you use social media extensively!

RIGHT!! Lots of the above are necessary. Absolutely! But we are going to learn in the next post about Time Stretchers. Making the things above work for you instead of against you and how not to live the life of a self-sacrificial workaholic.

Some of you think you have to give up everything in order to grow your business. That’s not true. I have a very fun and fulfilling life.  You can have your cake and eat it too. It’s just a matter of knowing how to plan it out and manage it. How to be PROactive and not REactive.

Be mindful of the 3 or 4 that are the biggest culprits for you. None of this is brain surgery, it’s just being self-aware.

“Yep, the phone just rang. I picked it and it just stole 30 minutes out of my day.” Now you are aware and can schedule differently.

Time Stretcher Example: I stopped taking incoming phone calls personally. They go to an office phone. I do all my coaching, interviews, networking calls and the like by prescheduled appointments on the days that I set.

Let me make one BIG conclusion for you. If it’s stealing your time and you’re working for yourself then it’s taking money out of your wallet.

Tomorrow’s post we’ll talk about solutions and what I call Time Stretchers! But today, leave a comment below about some of the ‘stealers’ that are common for you and how you are going to be more aware and schedule around those!

 

Yesterday we covered the #1 listed obstacle to business growth, which was overwhelm. Go back and read that first if you haven’t yet.

Today, we’re covering Obstacle 2 – The Law of Distraction, also known as Bright Shiny Object Syndrome

“You cannot chase more than one rabbit at a time and catch either one of them.”

Mary Kay Ash, cosmetics mogul

 

A big mistake I see in business-builders is that you try this idea, that idea, that website, this website, and we’re going to try all of these at the same time and see what works.  (Rarely will any ONE of them really take off.)

But Carrie, you have multiple businesses. Yes, I do, but I built them one business at a time.

Let me use this illustration in case the rabbit illustration does not help. If you’re working 3 jobs, how likely are you to get promoted at any of those 3 into an executive position? It’s very hard to give your ALL to one business, one career, one focus if you are spread too thin.

You only have so much energy and so much brain space.

In my experience, it is best if you focus on one model at a time. When I started my publishing company, UnitNews (which has since been sold),  I developed templated newsletters for one segment of the direct sales industry. More specifically, Mary Kay Independent Sales Directors and National Sales Directors.

There were only 8,000 Directors at that point in the USA and Canada with about 5,000 of that total being English speakers in the USA. I chose to focus on USA only and considering that about 2,000 of them are brand new at any given time, etc., I had a very small market to deal with.

It was a service based business and I could only serve so many people and here is what started immediately happening.

• Would you do this in Spanish?
• Would you also do my website?
• Could you print, copy, and mail these?
• Would you do these for BeautiControl?
• Hey, can you help us do this for Home Interiors?
• We’d love to have you do these for Premier Jewelry, etc.

Now you might be thinking “Holy Smokes. You were sitting on a gold mine.” Look at all the ways she could’ve developed that business. But here’s what I said to every one of those questions: No. No. No. Here’s why. I do a Mary Kay management newsletter in English for a USA clientele. I do the Master electronic copy. It’s up to you whether you want to print them, put them on your website, or email them. Period. That’s what I specialize in.

As a result I was able to serve up to 1,400 clients at a time because what I did was scalable. Now please tell me how many clients I would’ve been able to serve if I also did Spanish, websites, printing, copying, mailings. Tell me how I would’ve figured my profit margin or how I could’ve predicted my resources or my staffing or any of those things if I’d been chasing all those rabbits? How would I have been seen as the newsletter service for Mary Kay independent contractors if I was also doing BeautiControl? (I promise you once the Mary Kay people found out I was doing that for BeautiControl then they would’ve started using somebody else.)

You don’t want your baby delivered by the Dentist. You want a specialist. I could not have chased all those rabbits and done as well as I did.

As a result we did 5 million dollars in newsletters for that one specific model within the one specific market. Please listen and trust me. Focus on one model.

Be careful of chasing rabbits even within your one business model.  For instance let’s say you are a VA, virtual assistant, and you’re chasing rabbits by trying to specialize in the legal field,  the financial field, the information marketing field as well as the direct sales field. That’s chasing too many rabbits.

You need to be the baby doctor or the dentist! It’s really difficult to be both.

Here’s what I know. When I buckle down and focus, not only do I allow myself some time to be successful and have a better sense of accomplishment and profitability, but then sometimes I go back and look at those other ideas and say  “Ummmm. No, I want to keep refining this one. I want to keep making this one more profitable. What was I thinking?”

But Carrie, what do I work on first? I’m excited about all of these ideas! Prioritize them in order of profitability. Let’s get them to ridiculous cash before we move onto another ‘hunt.’

What are some ways you feel like you’re distracted? What other ‘rabbits’ are you chasing? How does this help you see that you can refine your ‘chase’ down a little further? Post below