The Client Letter
July 26, 2011
Sedona Arizona
I started a pretty powerful practice recently that I want to share with you. It’s basically the idea of blocking out your time with all of the things you want to accomplish.
You take everything you want to do and block out the time to do it. EVERYTHING. Client work. Business development work. Phone calls. EVERYTHING.
A lot of days, I suck at this. But I’m working on making it a habit because I KNOW how powerful it is.
An idea like this sounds simple doesn’t it? Almost too obvious to mention right?
Well… do you DO it? 🙂
Success IS fairly simple. It just comes down to whether or not you’re willing to do the work.
If you don’t think scheduling your time sounds smart, I’d guess the reason is that you think it might take some of the spontaneity out of your life.
You’re in business for yourself, that means you’re supposed to be able to do whatever you want with your time right?
Exactly. But spending all your time being “spontaneous” is not the way to build a profitable business.
If you don’t have a plan for the day, someone else will give you one. Moving forward without a plan makes it very difficult to make smart decisions as everyone else’s “emergencies” come into your life.
If your day is scripted and planned, it makes your decisions easy. “Hey, do you have 15 minutes to chat?” asks your client…
“SURE… you say… I can speak tomorrow at 10AM or 2PM. Which works better for you?”
But shouldn’t you be available for your clients?
Yes, but you need to make sure that your clients’ priorities do not get put in front of your priorities.
Can you serve clients better when you have a profitable business or when your business is sucking wind?
So your priority is your business FIRST. You have to take care of yourself first, then you are able to help others.
A wise man once said that most businesses should spend about 80% of their time and effort getting new customers and 20% of their time doing everything else.
Think about that in terms of your own business…
Do you have enough clients? Do you have enough profitable clients?
How much time over the past 90 days have you invested generating a steady stream of qualified prospects?
Do you see a correlation there?
If you followed this guys advice (you might consider it since he’s one of the savviest entrepreneurs I’ve ever heard of… sold his first company for like 130 million bucks or something), then that would be 72 days of the last 90 days spent getting new clients!
Try blocking out your time for a week and see what happens.
You’ll probably realize, like I did, just how busy you are.
This is a GOOD thing because once you understand just how busy you are, it becomes clear just how valuable your time is.
And when you 100% believe that each minute of your time is super valuable, then you’ll act like it… and your clients will respond.
I’d say “get busy,” but you already are. You just might not have realized it.
Now you know. And now you’re responsible for what you do with that knowledge.