Edmonton Business Consultant | Conducting A Group Interview

At 85% of successful entrepreneurs wake up at 6:00 AM or earlier.

Yeah, I can see why I can be, because it’s not,

hi, thanks for joining us for another episode of ask Spurl CPA did a, we’re talking about organizing your calendar for success. I have Matt in East is financial, so math work. Can you tell us about the calendar? And most entrepreneurs,

it’s generally chaotic. It’s, there’s no set time slots. The, the not important, not urgent tasks or, or a not urgent but important tasks. Just get shuffled on and on and on. And still they wait. They’re up at three 45 the night before doing all their bookkeeping and taxes.

Who was that? [inaudible],

Athens all, that’s where the quote that we have here today is zig Ziglar quote. And he says, lack of direction, not lack of time as a problem. We all have 24 hour days. So, Edmonton Business Consultant, the statistic is, you know, researchers estimate that it takes 23 minutes to reach our peak intellectual capacity. Once we were interrupted from something as simple as a text message or a social media update. And you know, the story that we have here is exactly, this is what I run two exactly what Matt just said, is business owners, they’re tackling problems in the order that they receive in or based on which problems scream the loudest rather than working on the things that are actually the most important to drive the business forward. So, you know, Matt, one of the questions that these entrepreneurs, what should they be asking?

What time do most entrepreneurs wake up?

So it’s, it’s not just a anecdotally for me, there’s a lot of research on this. I, there’s been one really good statistical, a study on this and found that 85% of successful entrepreneurs wake up at 6:00 AM or earlier. So it’s not that you can’t wake up earlier, it’s just that, you know, we’re already facing really tough odds as entrepreneur. Why don’t we just plan the, why don’t we just play? The odds are we’re far more likely to say, why do they do that? Uh, you’re less likely to get interrupted in the morning. So there’s, you know, a far less chance that you know, your phone is not going to ring at six Oh five in the morning, but you know, Matt 10, 23, your phone is now ringing. You now getting interrupted. You don’t have, your staff are now walking through the door. So there are so many more things that you can actually do in the morning without the chance of being interrupted. Edmonton Business Consultant, that’s a lot more difficult to isolate yourself from those things that are going to, you know, uh, uh, interrupt you and make you stupid basically. Uh, so they’re going to distract you. It’s, it’s, it’s the point you don’t have it for 23 minutes after becoming distracted are not in our peak intellectual capacity. So why are we doing, are most of them

work at that time? Yeah. Yeah. And I’m a fan. I’m a family guy. You’re a family guy. Lot of entrepreneurs are family people that, you know, they want to spend more time with their kids. How does waking up early actually help that?

So let’s say you do have that crazy entrepreneurs schedule. You know, you are working the 80 hours a week that I’m working, you know, I’m sure you’re working to that, that sort of schedule. And you know, if you start at 9:00 AM that 80 hours a week goes, if you just map it on a calendar, your kids are now in bed by the time you get home. But if you want to do 80 hours a week and you’re up at six or five or earlier, now all of a sudden you’re actually getting a home and the kids are still awake. There actually is a family time. Edmonton Business Consultant, so I, I would suggest that it’s, it’s more important for business owners who actually have or want a family. Um, you know, getting up early is the way because your kids won’t hang out with you two o’clock in the morning. It just doesn’t work,

is that way. So I don’t think so. What’s called your bed. But yeah. You, you mentioned in your peak intellectual capacity early in the morning, so why is it the most important to tackle your most difficult tasks during that time?

Yeah. Yeah. So it’s not just the route you’re getting interrupted, but even we’re just smarter earlier and you know, our intellectual capacity, actually Wayne’s statistically throughout the day. Edmonton Business Consultant, so you have those difficult tassels ones that you naturally want to procrastinate on, knock them out in the morning because you’re actually more likely to actually get them done. So rather than lead them towards the end of the day where we have less of an intellectual capacity, these are the ones you want to work on in the morning. So you’re working on those really difficult projects. Uh, you know, whether you’re on the tools as an electrician or me as an accountant, I’m working on difficult problems or I’m setting the strategy for the business. I’m actually working on those templates that every staff member is going to use a, those checklists that every staff and those are not the, the, the ones where you want to make the mistake on. Edmonton Business Consultant, you know, you can leave that towards the end of the day. A lot of times, uh, you know, client meetings are a little less draining, although the client perceives them as, uh, easier. Um, you know, we’ve already done the heavy lifting at this point. We’re just communicating what’s already been done. And it’s like if you’re the same thing, if you’re working in a trades position, you know, you’ve already done the work or just explain to the customer what you already did. Okay.

It’s funny you mentioned your team and staff. Edmonton Business Consultant, how does always having a set calendar help you leverage that team?

Yeah. So that set calendar is going to have more importance once you have a team because they’re going to know when they can coordinate with you, you know, so they know it’s, it’s not a great idea. Everyone talks about the open door policy with that open door policy isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be because everyone’s just getting distracted all the time. You know, you can have the best of both worlds where you can have that focus solitary time where you’re unavailable, but you can also have that time where you are, you know, I am going to be available at this time and you can count on me that I’m available at this time. Uh, and that’s not something that you can do unless you, you set that aside. Also, you can even leverage your team. If your team understands your calendar. They know when you can do client appointments, they knew when you can onboard new clients, then you can completely step away from that appointment scheduling and you know, a lot of the onboarding process and, and you can simply attend the, the appointment.

Um, you know, whether you’re a contractor, you can just attend the estimate. Edmonton Business Consultant, but if you don’t have that set calendar with everything blocked out, now you’ve got to be the one that’s on the phone and penciling into your calendar that no one else understands. You know, if you want to leverage a team, you’ve got to have that set calendar. Yeah. So when you’re setting your calendar, what’s inappropriate time blocking? What happens if it’s too short? So the time block will vary from industry to industry. You know, uh, I’ve, I’ve found here that, you know, my optimal time block is about two hours. Uh, sometimes it’s I multiplied by two and that becomes four hours, but I find it, it has to be at least two hours in my business because it will get, if it’s too short, you’re continually just learning about problems or you’re learning about issues, but you’re not actually solving them.

Right. And it could be different. Some businesses, it could be theoretically be as short as 50 minutes. But what the key is, is that you want to make sure that you’re actually resolving things in those time blocks. You’re actually accomplishing things in those times blocks, not just learning about them. Um, so you want to have time to learn, understand, and execute all within that time block. And it’ll change from industry to industry. But it’s the key is it’s got to be long enough that you actually get to execution. Yeah. Yeah. So why should you take time to develop your product or service? Why should that be an ongoing regular thing you’re scheduling? Yeah, so a lot of business owners, we’ll look at all once I get this a template role. Now, once I finally implement this new CRM, everything else, we’ll go, we’ll go smoother.

You should stop looking at all of these development and perfecting your projects. You know, your product or service as a onetime event and start looking at them as something that you have to do all the time continually in your business. If you’re not continually getting your product or service better than your competition is going to pass you right and you’re going to drive yourself nuts and not blocking that into your calendar because you know then you’re, you know, you’re up to three o’clock in the morning, you’re, you’re doing things that don’t make sense anymore on your calendar. You’re letting other things that are really important slide because you, you’re starting to think that these projects will never recur again, but you know, actually implementing a improvement of your products or processes. That’s a continual event. Then it should be scheduled into your calendar and if you get really busy, do you start, do you start shuffling things off because we have clients want to meet you or prospects want to meet you.

Do you start to push some of those things off? Edmonton Business Consultant, that can be one of the number one things in a lot of times it’ll be marketing. People will shuffle off marketing. I’m like, okay, I got leads coming through the door. I’m busy on projects. I’m going to shuffle marketing. Uh, but that’s probably the number one thing that you don’t want to shuffle because all of your marketing initiatives likely don’t work if you stop and start them. Uh, most of your marketing initiatives, you know, probably if you start them today, they’re going to start working six months from now. Um, so, you know, it was that project you’re working on going to take you longer than six months. Is there no chance that you’re ever going to get fired from that project or that project isn’t going to turn down? You know, it has one of your clients ever paid your mortgage payment if you didn’t have a project next month.

Uh, so I, I, I don’t think that’s the case, so that that can be, you can start shifting off those important ones like marketing or like getting your product and service better. Um, you know, a lot of times you’re not getting your product and service better, but you’re continually putting out fires. So these are ones that you really can’t put off, you know, even if there is a little bit of pressure to put them off, they’re really critical for your business. Yeah, yeah. How does your calendar dictate company culture? Yeah, this was one that, you know, you start talking, hearing what people say, culture, I’m going to have a strong culture. I’m going to build a strong culture. Uh, and they struggle doing it. And then you look at their calendar and their calendar doesn’t actually say that they’re going to build this up as a strong culture.

Cultures like in relationship, his relationship with your employees, but you don’t have any time on your calendar to meet with your employees. And somehow you’re going to have this culture even though you, you’ve cooked up this literary masterpiece in your brain, uh, you know what that culture looks like and you can talk a good game. Have you actually talked that game in front of your employees? So you know, things like, do you have a daily huddle with your team? You know, do you have a weekly training session? Cause I got a newsflash for everybody out there with their monthly staff meetings is monthly is probably the minimal threshold to just to maintain once you already have, maybe he might maintain what you already have if you do it monthly, but if you actually want to improve their culture, if you want to get better, I would think weekly is it better threshold for that?

And those daily Huddles can even accelerate that even quicker. Did you block time for emails and calls or you take those as they come? You should block the time. So you should actually block the time is, this was one, I’m going to take emails, you know, this is what I’m going to take calls and this is one I can address. Burning fires. You can’t let that burning fire run into the whole day. You can’t let that one, uh, that one project that became difficult ruin the other three that are, that are going smoothly because there’ll become a burning fire tomorrow. Edmonton Business Consultant, you know, you can’t use that burning fires, an excuse not to do your marketing or else you’ll put out the burning fire just to sit around, twiddling your thumbs next week cause you don’t have any projects to work on. Um, so you really do need to block times for emails, calls, burning fires, and you know, and once you get to a certain level and if you’ve got the calendar really set, you can probably block someone else’s time to do the emails and calls. Edmonton Business Consultant, and that’s really how you stick to, to leverage a calendar, organize your calendar for business success. Great. So that’s what we have here today. Thanks so much for joining us. As always, please hit the like and subscribe buttons so we can give you, deliver your tips on how to beat the odds and business and we look forward to reading your comments below so we can respond back and use your input to develop future content. Thanks very much.