Favourite Things

24th September 2020 By Sue Edwards

Favourite things

A few of my favourite things…….

Talking to a client last week we got around to a deep chat on how many favourite things are often cost free – no money required items and how the greatest of these wonderful gifts was the gift of time.

In a really busy life it is very easy to overlook the things that matter, sitting talking to a friend or loved one without distractions for an hour is one of my personal favourites.

Enjoying a shower without a head crammed full of where you are on your to do list or where you need to be next.

The first cup of coffee of the day in bed drunk quietly without rushing or scrambling to get out of bed and start the day.

A walk in the woods with the dogs without a watch on or a mobile ringing anywhere close.

“I really do believe that time is the most precious thing of all, far more than money”. Time taken out of the business day to ‘just’ think is often what is needed to simplify your business, make more income by doing less, starting a new service from the ashes of one you imagined was finished. By taking the time you give yourself the best chance to create and bring to fruition something that may allow you to save even more time to do the things that matter most, are remembered the most clearly and with love.

Over the last 18 years I have radically reduced my ‘to do’ list to 1-3 top items per day and this has been empowering, 2 things get done whereas 5 or 10 or more often meant stalling and things hanging over days.

What’s your top tip for saving time for your favourite things, do you bank time the way you bank money to use at the end of the day or do you get straight into the day doing what you enjoy right at the start? Use the comments box below to let me know your views!

Time For Money

10th June 2020 By The ActionKnowHow Team

Time For Money

I was thinking about time this week and how it’s almost always imagined as a straight line. It got me thinking about the time we all need for our businesses and how so many of us feel there is never enough. Of course we all have the same amount of time in a day but it’s how we choose to spend it that counts. This is true in all areas of life but crucial in business, particularly service businesses.

The time for money trap

Years ago when I was a fledgling lawyer every minute of my time between the start and end of the working day was accounted for. All in neat little lines, recorded on a hand written sheet, 6 minutes or one unit of time per line. It was so I could learn how to bill clients and account for the time I spent that could be billed. It was a crucial tool for all of us, as our worth to the firm – our employer – was only measured in billable units banked. That is the time we could charge was one total and the amount we recovered from the client was another total. This meant we all accurately recorded and invoiced time, as a dispute over billable hours affected our own bank balances and job security. So we got pressure both ends, time we could bill and firm and client scrutiny over the charges we made.

The big lie you tell yourself about time for money

Nothing changed in my own business! I carried forward the same principle of swapping time for cash when I started my own business as this was the service model I knew. It’s safe to say I did not understand there were different models and I had, when I started my own business back in 1994, never heard of value pricing. As a lawyer my time was charged out at an hourly rate and no matter how hard I drove myself my billable hours were always capped by the number of hours I could bill for and of course the time I could work. Holidays, ill-health, time off with family all were seen as encroaching on the billable time. Many of us worked long hours, late into the evening, weekends were eroded both ends, Saturday morning client appointments and Sunday afternoon and evening catch ups so we could all start the week with a clean slate. 60, 70 or 80 hours a week were usual and I was never alone in the firm, we were all at it. Not a single one of us could make more hours in a day, we just squeezed more work into the working day from our souls.

Switch off off to switch on

Working with clients now I see the same habits and trends. Switched onto their mobile devices and no plan each morning or start of the week on what time is to be used for the various activities we all have as business owners. Little wonder by the end of each day nothing much has been done and the ‘to do’ list remains undone day after day. Sucked up into the reactive mode of the day where emails, calls and random events take you over, it’s little wonder you lose the planned activity momentum and feel overwhelmed.

One of the first things we work with clients on in all of our programmes and one to one consulting is the planning of time and ensuring the standard duties of marketing, invoicing, and what we call heart or soul of the business ie the drive that meant you set up and started it all in the first place comes first. That’s right, in front of all the clients, emails, trivia and must do today stuff it’s about ring fencing the time you need to make your business function and that includes time to replenish your energy or it’s all for nothing.

Deadlines are often self-imposed. It’s true only a certain percentage of the work you will do for your clients and customers is so urgent it must be done same day. If that is the sort of client you are attracting and it doesn’t sit well, it’s time to make a change. Write a comment below or email me at Toni@www.actionknowhow.com for a free time planner.

Early Mornings

16th October 2018 By The Actionistas

Productivity

Toni and I meet up every Friday and plan, discuss and generally work on our business for about 4 hours solid. We break this up into separate hours across the time spent together with a walk, lunch and often some coffee and cake. On Friday last it got me thinking how, very often, an hour is more productive in business than a whole day. I often get up well before 6.00 AM and will spend my first waking hour enjoying the day break through my office window. To me it’s always a renewed chance to do something different. It’s a new clean day to make an impact, to try something to make things better or tackle something in a new way.

Equally I know we all feel that on most days we need to sit in front of our computers, at our desks and focus solidly on our business and what it does rather than dream up ideas or make improvements. Being there in body doesn’t mean you are productive and often deciding that today you will spend just one or two hours on your business to improve things and do nothing else in terms of the real business you offer to clients will have a massive impact on our thoughts.

Stuff you can do in that lovely alone time

I am a self-confessed planner and short action list maker (1-3 things to do today and that’s it)and over the years I have been able to use simple tools to great effect. Setting a timer or online app to ping at the end of an hour set aside for one task is liberating. It could be grunt work like invoicing or admin, if you do this yourself, or creative work like sales copy or blogging. The main thing is whatever you decide to do is done in one hour, so it could be a massive task broken down into a manageable hour’s worth like say 10 invoices to chase or send or 2 x 350 word blogs or scheduling Social Media for 5 days or more.

Virtual Assistants

It’s a successful habit which adds up. Just one hour devoted to your business improvements for example will spark off ideas to get you more business, save time or work less on some of the more routine aspects of your business processes. This morning, my ‘Golden Hour’ was spent reading through my VA’s notes on various projects and providing feedback and ideas so when he starts work across the world in a different time zone he is not waiting for me. This practice has made both of us a lot more efficient but we did not get there immediately when we started working together. It’s grown and developed and it’s time well spent as he is a very fast worker who requires minimal comments to give brilliant results, but he does need input and I have to make sure I am fully focused so he gets the best instructions and I get the best results.

This also got me thinking about how I use an hour. When I am consulting I know exactly what I can do in an hour for a client and equally understand how tiring an hour of solid focus is. It’s much harder when I calculate what someone else does with their hour. I might tell my VA that a complex form is about an hour’s work and it could actually take 3 and I might take a day to set up a WordPress Site and install all I need on it and he will take half that time. I have learned to ask them what time it might take them as the answer often surprises me!

How do you use your time?

I also sometimes struggle when things are very busy and I cannot see where the hour can be found. Normally this means getting help in other places, watching less TV or getting up earlier before the noise of the day. That first hour of the new day for me is the most energising start. Whatever else the day has to offer if I can keep that first hour to myself I know I have achieved what I need and it puts into perspective any time spent later where I have less control over how it is spent.

So, big question now is when and what for are you going to take your Golden Hour today? Let us know in the box below, or get in touch on Social Media using the buttons on this page. We would love to hear from you.

Pressure – V – Stress

1st March 2018 By The Actionistas

Pressure is good, stress is bad

When you have a bad week

It was a horrible week last week. There, I have said it. It was supposed to be one of the best of the year for us, planned that way and all set up to ensure it delivered. It didn’t deliver though, Monday brought an IT issue which meant both the launch of the new training site and behind the scenes delivery systems needs professional help to work fully and this won’t happen until over next weekend. That means the launch planned is now next week. Wednesday brought some more IT issues, our video plans stalled. It got me thinking about putting pressure on yourself and when pressure became stress.

Adjust your attitude

So, I sit here on Thursday morning and think about my attitude. My first reaction was to stop everything, recover and allow March – all of it, to see all being resolved. An April launch would mean more time, better feelings, less IT hassles wouldn’t it? Well, actually no – life is not like that and the only thing mission critical to the launch of the new training site is to launch it. The only thing that is going to make it feel better is us getting the site on the web for all to see and to start collecting the emails and letting everyone know we exist. The only thing is to set aside all the things I cannot control and work on the one thing I can – that means action even when today I would willingly give in and take the day off. We cannot let our inner wuss win on days like this.

Plan, measure do

So, it got me thinking. If I have been in business for over 30 years and still get days like this, how does someone just beginning feel? I have learned that taking business action opens up some doors. You may not always know where they lead to but action brings results. That meant I set myself a couple of tasks today and time to do them, what they would look like when done and the time I was going to allow them. It’s now 10.15 and with the first two done and looking exactly as they were in my head. I feel better, and my energy levels have increased.

So, by placing a little pressure and setting myself some tasks I could work on also sparked some ideas on things which are part of my bigger plans. The action taken in writing a little blog sparked me to jot down some notes on how our minds work when things go wrong and our natural reaction is to stall to bring about control. I have a little planner which reminds me that there are some jobs I can get on with to bring back order into the chaos. If you would like some help with bringing order into your life email us or phone using the details below.

Know Your Numbers

22nd February 2018 By The Actionistas

Get Good With Numbers

Numbers for the numerically challenged

Watching Dragons Den last Sunday I listened to ‘the story’ then laughed when all the questions on numbers started to come and saw the pitches fall apart. It’s TV, so quite funny, sat in the comfort of your own sofa to think how daft someone would be, after all the season’s shows, to turn up without knowing all your numbers. The thing is, in our own businesses it’s not really funny at all. Most of us learn the hard way about the numbers we need and from the heady days when we see ourselves in our own spreadsheets, millionaires on paper by day 3 of opening our doors, website and launch – it’s not like that at all.

Numbers are hard – Get good with numbers

I was brought up by my widowed Mum who was a mathematician, she could see patterns in numbers, would use algebra to work out almost everything and enjoyed numbers. She ‘got’ numbers and was completely at ease with them. I was not so gifted. I never did see anything in numbers, I could follow the basics but didn’t enjoy handling them, would happily defer to someone else to do a calculation and barely scraped through any maths exam. I ‘got’ physics and chemistry but that was because there I could make the connections with the numbers and their practical application.

Getting better with numbers

Over 30 years since starting my own first business I am finally at ease with the numbers. I still rely on a series of spreadsheets, tools and others to help me but have learned, the hard way, how lovely and important they are. Now, I am not saying business is ALL about cash and money, it’s not. Yes, really, if you are building a business just to make cash for consumption of things you will not have the stamina, love or staying power to last the course. Money is not enough on its own to drive your business but, and here is the rub; it’s a driver, a source, a core requirement and, most important of all, it has to stick in the business to support your plans. It cannot come in and go out in a whoosh, you have to have cash flow and cash sat in your account.

For me, and accountants tend to agree here, there are 3 main numbers you need to get crystal clear on in your business:

1. The number of customers buying from you

2. How much each customer spends with you in each transaction and is it priced properly?

3. How many transactions each customer will have with your business – here I work on monthly, quarterly and annual spend

The magic three

Any one of these magic three can cause serious challenges in your business, you may consider and I certainly have in the past, that a focus on number 1 will sort all things out. It may do, but only if you have number 2 right. Without number 2 being in order no matter how much goes on with number 1 you could just be churning cash through your business with none or it, or very little, sticking to the sides in terms of profit.

Number 3 when numbers 1 and 2 are right makes for sleep filled nights as this is where the magic happens, you see number 1 costs money to bring in, each new customer won and retained costs on their first sale with you the largest customer attraction spend. So if they only buy once and its a low-cost item, profit (remember our old friend 2?) is at its lowest. Turn that spend into life long spending and its a winning formula.

The magnificent Ten

Our trusty 3 are supported by a magnificent 10 which systemizes how to win, price and keep clients and achieve business growth, certainty of income. You see, its not a lack of passion, availability of clients or general market trends that causes problems, it’s the lack of a system that defeats many small business owners. I am talking here about systems which work on automatic, are hardwired into your business as a daily routine so things don’t get missed. More of this in other blogs. If you ever considered systems boring, you were right! Seriously few of us get excited about systems, but what they can yield for you is truly exciting and makes the early pain in getting a system in place all worthwhile. Want to know more about the Magnificent Ten? Talk to us – people here who know the numbers you need in your business.