How to be twice as productive, without going to a seminar!

If I were asked to do the world's shortest time management seminar, I would simply talk about words and language.

Around 20 years ago, when I 1st started listening to people like Anthony Robbins, I remember him saying that "nothing has any meaning other than the meaning we give it". What he was suggesting was that the words that we use, give what we are observing the meaning.

Over the many years that we have been running workshops and training, it is being common for me to tell people “change your words and you will change your life". This is never more true than any area of time management. You would have probably heard yourself say, as well as many others around you say “I didn't get time to do that" or 'I don't have time for this". Other derivations of these types of sayings could be “I ran out of time, or I didn't get a chance".

Unfortunately, believe it or not, everyone gets the same amount of time each day, it all comes down to the choices you make. So, here's my guarantee... If you will eliminate the types of words and phrases that I spoke about earlier, and replace them with phrases that put you back in control such as “I choose to do this, and I chose not to do that", you will start to take back control and feel significantly better, and best of all become unbelievably more productive.

Take this idea on a lightly at your peril. This could quite conceivably be some of the best personal and professional information that you could ever implement.

The Best Investment You Can Make!

In a recent book called “conquer the chaos" the authors suggest that if you are in small business they will be chaos. The secret is to reduce the huge amount of self-created chaos.

A simple discipline of a written plan every day can have a profound effect on how much self-created crisis can be eliminated. A secret for creating an effective daily action plan, to make sure the list doesn't contain more activities in the time available that day to complete them. Your daily action list should not be a storage facility, it simply create overwhelm which is not the most effective emotion.

It is important to have the right mindset about planning. Unfortunately many people see planning as “time spent". The truth if you are doing high-quality written daily plan is, that it is time invested. In fact every moment invested in high quality planning, or make every other moment in your day significantly more valuable.

How To Reduce Advertising Costs & Attract More "A" Class Customers

A couple of posts ago I put forward the suggestion that “it is more profitable to find new products for your existing customers, than it is to find new customers for your existing products". The reason for the suggestion is that the huge majority of small businesses tend to focus all of their effort into finding new customers. In the last 19 years, the cost of adding a new customer to a business has tripled. And the value that new customer brings to a business, over the lifetime of that customer, has halved.

So it should be obvious, that the Lions share of activity needs to be focused on strategies and actions to create additional and improved products and services for your existing customers.

By ensuring that your customer experience is consistently a WoW experience, and in addition, having a consistently promoted referral program, so you're very excited and appreciative customers are bringing new business in for you, you can significantly reduce ineffective marketing and advertising costs.

How To Get More Productivity Step-By-Step

Balance is the cornerstone to effectiveness. When most people think of balance they think of the balance between work and personal life. What I am focusing on in this particular blog post is achieving balance just in the work part of your life to gain maximum productivity.

Just as when you are looking at all of the areas of life, for example, physical, financial, family, social, work and personal development, to gain a work life balance, we can use the same approach to gain balance within just the work area of your life, to gain maximum productivity.

The 1st step you need to take with this process is to list the areas of your business you are responsible for. For example, sales management, managing the finances, marketing and promoting the business, training the team and so on. If you are a small business owner reading this you would probably be thinking “it would be nice if that's all I had to do". So there may be more areas that you need to take note of, but to get started simply look at the highest leveraged areas of the business that you are responsible for.

The 2nd step, is to write yourself an objective for each of these high leveraged areas of your business. Keep it simple here, create objectives or targets that can be accomplished within the next week or so, this way you learn "how to win". This is a better approach than setting massive big one year goals that end up causing overwhelm, and you will eventually throw this whole idea out the window.

The 3rd step, is to break down those objectives into action steps that can be taken within a 20 min or less time frame. Basically what you are doing here is breaking the big objective down into bite sized chunks.

The 4th step, is to commit to looking at the list of activities on a daily basis, and ensuring that at least one activity from your list of actions gets written onto your daily action list.

By following these for simple easy to implement steps, you will start to make massive productivity gains by having a more balanced approach to your day, rather than getting sucked into spending large chunks of time in just one area, causing other areas of your business to go unattended to and causing unnecessary crisis, that will take time out of your day that you could be investing in other business building activities.

Double Your Productivity

Seems like a big claim but, most people are far from effective as they don't have a high quality daily process to follow.

I have for almost 20 years used a paper based diary system for daily planning, and have from time to time tried electronic tools because I love gadgets, but I still find that the paper system is still far more effective and faster.

The biggest discover in recent times has been the idea of a "Personal Success Ritual"This is simply getting up early enough to get yourself into an environment that you cannot be disturbed in and getting yourself into the best place for high productivity and focus.

Begin by taking care of yourself physically with water with perhaps lemon to alkalise your system, ten start to either watch or read on a subject that gets you inspired. Obviously the ideal subjects are around business improvement.

After around 40-50 minutes of positive input into your mind then begin to plan the day. Because of what you have been exposed to earlier those actions will be a priority in your plan but the biggest benefit is having created a powerfully positive association to your plan you will be more motivated and focused and something would have to be incredibly important now distract you from your plan. As opposed to most people who can and do get distracted by the smallest of things.

How to ensure your customers are treated like VIP's, all of the time

It is simply amazing, the number of businesses I come in contact with, that really pay very little, if any, attention to the needs of the team members. There is an, all too common philosophy that says, "I pay them, that should be enough" Well is' not enough!

If you are serious about creating the best business you can, you need to know how to prioritise the 3 integral parts of a business, the owner, the team and the customer.

When asked "which of the 3 is the most important to the business?" the answer is almost always the customer. I beg to differ. I think the number one priority is the health, mental and emotional needs of the owner. If they are bringing their "a game" daily they make good decisions and become a great role model.

Next is the team. They need to have their emotional needs met. They need to feel that they are cared for, respected, appreciated and make a meaningful contribution to the team and business.

Third is the customer. Get the first 2 right and the customer will be treated like a VIP whether the boss is there to observe or not.

For additional ideas and resources check out the FREE articles here

How to dump bad customers and attract great ones.

Watch episode 2 of UHPTV on how to dump bad customers and attract great ones!... Plus have a laugh!