Have the Best Day Possible
A big shout out to Mitch Joel, social media guru and thought leader, who offered advice on How to Have the Best Day Possible. It struck a chord, because most business owners have days when they come to work and find that 10 to 12 hours after arriving, they did not accomplish anything that they wanted to get done that day. That’s why Joel’s advice strikes a resonate chord.
Joel asks how much of your business day is spent on things that really matter? Everyone has distinctive competencies and the best run businesses put together people whose skill sets and competencies complement one another. A key to having the best day possible is spending time working on tasks where you can use your unique abilities and minimize time on projects that are laborious. There is no doubt that stuff happens during a day that requires your attention, taking you directions that you may not want to go or are best suited to go. Nonetheless, it’s called work for a reason.
In order to spend time doing what you do best, determine what it is that you do the best. When are you at your best? Is it first thing in the morning, during the day, at night? Figure that out and schedule blocks of time during those periods to do whatever it is that you excel at whether that is business development, problem solving, team member motivating, financial analysis, etc. In order to carve out blocks of time for you to perform at your peak, you need to control your schedule. That’s not always easy given the demand of customers, bosses, employees, suppliers, etc. Don’t schedule meetings with manufacturers during your peak performance times. Use commute time for returning phone calls.
Set goals that you want to achieve in a day and make sure that you are in a position to accomplish what you set out to do. Be like the Blues Brothers and behave like you are on “a mission from God.” The ability to ship is a metaphor that another marketing guru, Seth Godin, uses to describe goal accomplishment. You need to ship every day. Be in charge of your schedule and your day and always have a goal to ship something.
Have aspirational goals and encourage your team members to set them as well. Is it unrealistic to say that you are going to increase your sales by 50% next year? If it is, then what figure is achievable and how are you going to get there? What are you going to do differently tomorrow to achieve the goal you set today? Most really, really successful people have a plan that they execute. That doesn’t mean they don’t encounter resistance, but at one point or another they throw caution to the wind and hit ship. Encountering resistance is critical to success, because it forces you to be resilient.
You also can’t live in a vacuum. There really are no secret formulas or proprietary strategies that differentiate you from the competition. That’s why networking with peers is so important. Whatever problem or challenge you face now, there’s a good bet that one of your fellow BKBG Shareholders has encountered the same or similar events. If you have a wide area peer network, your job becomes that much easier. When anyone asks BKBG staff what do Shareholders get from the BKBG involvement, the answer is plainly obvious. You get a resource of industry knowledge, expertise, and professionalism that is not available from any other source. That’s the true value of being a BKBG Shareholder. When you become active and involved, you never know who you are going to meet. And don’t confine your networking simply to BKBG. Become active in your local organizations, the ASID, AIA, and NAHB chapters, chambers of commerce, and other organizations where you can expand your horizons and learn from peers.
The best way to build your network is to be involved in your industry.