Our first “turn-it-off” challenge commenced this past Friday at 6pm. You were challenged with taking 24 hours to yourself and not check email, check your Blackberry, check voicemail, or anything else associated with your business.
To be honest with you, my results came out pretty poor. I got caught checking my iPhone 4 times (my wife was keeping me honest), I HAD to make an emergency website fix which took up about 30 minutes, and I took a phone call once. This was all between the hours of 6pm and 8pm on Friday.
Once I realized how far gone I was, I turned my iPhone off. I spent the whole day Saturday just relaxing and having a couple beers with my friends and my wife. Overall, I’d consider Saturday a success! Friday, on the other hand, well, let’s pretend it didn’t happen.
So, let’s hear it. How did YOU do?
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Kevin Uncategorized
Remember that your “turn-it-off” challenge starts TODAY at 6pm… Take 24 hours to yourself and report back Monday morning on how you did!!!
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Its Challenge time!!
A couple days ago I wrote a note at around 1am in the morning about learning how to “Turn it Off”. The gist is that we, as business owners, can get so caught up with running our “babies” that we have a hard time shutting the motivational engine down and just, simply, relaxing. At that time I told you that I would challenge you to learn HOW to turn this off.
Well, IT’S TIME!!!! My challenge to you will start out simply. After all, if we want this to be sucessful, we can’t just quit this cold turkey. Starting this Friday, April 10th at 6pm, when we leave our desks and our offices, we are not touching anything work related for a full 24 hours. This means no phone calls, no emails, no checking the business voicemail, NOTHING!!! Believe me, your customers and clients will understand if you want to take 24 hours off and spend it having a picnic with your wife or husband, throwing the ball around with your kids, finding a long lost hiking trail, or anything else you may enjoy doing.
I want to hear reports of how you did come Monday morning. Simply get back here and leave a comment on the blog. Your input of success or failure will help all the rest of us as well. So, go forth and enjoy a solid 24 hours of “turning it off”. Remember to report back Monday morning!
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Havin a hard time "turning it off"?
It seems that every year that passes, things get more and more busy. The advent of “modern technology” only proves to make your life more complicated. Between keeping up with Facebook, your email, Evite’s from friends, and replying to that text message that simply says, “whats up”, where do you start draw the line.
This is the challenge that I, and many of my peers, are faced with. Drilling down further, this is the challenge that I am faced with at 1am after presenting a MAJOR project but only a few hours ago. The project is all but complete so one would think I can start unwinding. However, I find myself scrambling to fill my unwinding time with inconsequencial things such as facebook, catching up with emails, and, yes, of course, blogging.
I was up until 4am last night wrapping up the largest web project of my career. I just told my wife, via instant messanger (she is currently 15 steps from me), that I’m having a hard time “turning off the engine”. It was at that instant that I realized that I seriously need to learn how to “turn if off”.
Motivation and ambition are great. But if it only serves to burn you out, what good is it in the long run? I am going to propose a challenge to those who read this blog and have a hard time “turning it off” like me. Stay tuned to the next post to see how we’ll all make the first step in controlling our work-a-holic habits.
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I wrote a a couple months back that a recession is like Darwinism for businesses: The weaker businesses will fail and die off which will free up a greater market share for the remaining businesses when the economy DOES improve. Well, guess what? The economy is already showing signs of improvement. You may not be swimming in business right now, but you’d be foolish to think that the recession will last any longer than 2009.
This begs the question: Are you ready for the end of the recession? I’m sure the answer that rolls off any business owner’s lips would be, “Are you kidding me??? Of COURSE I’M READY!!” Sure it’s nice to have business improve but you have got to realize that when the recession ends, those competitors of yours that didn’t make the cut, the ones that Darwin considered to be weaker than yours, have left their market share of your industry ready for the taking. So, NOW I ask you, are you ready to woo these new customers to YOUR business instead of letting them go to another competitor? Consider these next few pointers and apply them to your business over these next several months. If you do, you’ll be well positioned to not only recover from the recession, but come out of it much stronger than when you entered it. This is the first part of a several part series on tips to help your business succeed right out of the gates when the recession ends.
- Have you diversified your services like we’ve suggested? Or are you still simply making a blue widget? Do your competitors only make blue widgets? If so, then you’ll probably still get those customers looking for a new service provider. However, odds are, your competitors are making blue, green, purple, and gold widgets as well. Take a hard look at what your competitors are doing and what your customers are asking for and make sure you offer these services and widgets to whomever may be interested. This is not to say that you should go out and start offering plumbing services if you are an electrical service provider. This is to say that you should consider offering commercial data installation services in addition to simply offering commercial electrical services. The concepts are still the same but you open yourself up to a brand new market and brand new set of clients. One thing to consider is surveying your existing clientele. Find out if you’re providing them with everything they may need from your industry.
- Do you communicate with all of your clients and customers on a regular basis? If not, shame on you. A simple newsletter, or email to let your customers know whats going on with your company goes a long way to helping your customers remember your name the next time they need a new widget. You probably have their email addresses or mailing addresses already. Therefore, figure out if a snail-mail or emailed newsletter is best and keep in contact with your clients and customers.
- Are you at max capacity for handling customers and clients right now? If so, congratulations (all the rest of us business owners hate you…
). But don’t stop now. If you’re at capacity now (ie your employees are working non-stop just to keep up with demand), then imagine where you could go once those new customers coming knocking on your door looking for a new service or widget provider. There exists an enormous potential for this recession to make or break businesses. If you plan now, you’re setting yourself up to grow exponentially.
This series of pointers will continue next week.
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Kevin Uncategorized business pointers, economics, recession, recovery, tips