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Hey everyone, it's Nick Reese and today I want to share with you a simple mindset shift
that is guaranteed to help grow your business. As you many know, I believe that freelancing
and consulting is one of the quickest ways start living life on your own terms. But if
you are new at it, I want to share with you a huge mistake that almost everyone makes.
This idea of important versus urgent and so I'll tell you a story. A few years ago when
I was first scaling out my first business, I was managing about a hundred twenty clients
and they were all real estate agents. And they were like, small clients, like, with
each one I might make a couple hundred dollars worth. That was fantastic but, the way I trained
them to treat me was not fantastic. So basically, one night, I was just getting
ready for bed. I was in bed, my phone starts ringing and I realize it's one of my oldest
clients and I look at it. And this was before I learned to filter out problem clients. She
called me and she was notorious for yelling at me. I answer my phone and she was like,
"Why didn't my email go out this morning!" And now, my first business was email marketing
for real estate. No one dies when your email does not go out. So, at this point I had not
really learned that yet. So I was like, "Oh no! Oh no! It should have
gone out, so let me look." So I scramble for my computer, get out of bed, get all worked
up and look at it and the email I sent her confirming when it would go out was for the
next day. So I very politely apologized like it was my fault and everything and told her
I'd talk to her soon. And I just realized that, man, all my clients
kinda treat me like this. And I look over at my whiteboard and I see all the things
I need to do for my clients. And almost all of them were like last minute calls and super
important to them. And I realized there was absolutely nothing on that whiteboard that
grew my business. So I walked up to it and there was a little bit of space on the left
hand side and drew a big line down the middle. I'm like, I tiled everything that my clients
needed as urgent. Then I wrote "important" on the left, then I wrote "one, two, three,
four, five." At that time I did not know what those five things were going to be. But I
went to bed and the next morning I woke up and I wrote in the five things. And I made
it a habit of every single week, having at least five important things that I would do
in my business that would grow my business so that I wasn't gonna spend all my time being
reactionary, putting out other people's fires and dealing with other people's emergencies.
I would actually be spend time growing my business.
So, if you are interested in using the same system I use, called the Impact Planner. Basically,
it's going to be, have all your urgent stuff and you can separate your important stuff.
I really believe this little distinction between urgent and important can transform your business.
To wrap-up this video, I'm going to give you three tips that you can use to make sure you
are working on the important stuff instead of just the urgent stuff.
The first tip is realize that you teach people how to treat you in life. This is important
because I taught my clients that they were able to call me at eleven thirty at night.
If you start answering emails at three in the morning, in five minutes people are going
to start expecting emails at three in the morning, within five minutes. Start setting
solid boundaries on when you answer emails and when you take calls from your clients,
especially if you have a lot of them. The second tip is to have dedicated time to
focus on building your business. Google was famous for the twenty percent time? I don't
know where this rumor came from but at one point they had actual twenty percent time
but I confirmed with some of my friends who are ex-Googlers that really, if you want twenty
percent time you have to work on your own time ...to get twenty percent time.
But I believe as a business owner or someone who works a small business, you really need
to spend time on growing your business. There is a difference between working in your business
and working on your business. And twenty percent of your time, if you can spend one day a week,
just one day, focusing on nailing the important things to grow your business, instead of just
answering client emails or being reactive, you are going to see a substantial difference
within your business within a year. Now, the third tip is use a planner. And I
told you about my Impact Planner. Basically, it's divide a sheet of paper, on the left,
about a third of the way down, say the five most important things you do that week. And
the other side, just use it for important things, like if you get a client phone call,
just scribble a note of what you need to do. And just the titles, the difference between
urgent and important will help you know what you should be focusing on. You got a few free
minutes to do the urgent stuff or do you do the important stuff, that's where businesses
are transformed. Spend more time doing the important stuff.
I think you'll find this guide incredibly powerful. And I'll make sure to send you all
my other guides like the Referral Engine and Credible Consulting Website. And all the future
ones I'll make, if you sign-up. I think you will find the distinction between
what is important and what is urgent incredibly powerful for your business.
I'll talk to you soon.