Time Management |

10 Time Management Tips

Posted by Colin Brown | Posted on 03-05-2011

I just read an article written by the guys that wrote the book, “Street Mart Franchising” and found the article to have some real gems on time management which I believe is the most important skill you’ll need to develop as a solopreneur.

I like the concept they present about clock time and relative time because I am often frustrated by how little time I seem to have available to do all the things I want to do in my life. They say, “There are only three ways to spend time: thoughts, conversations and actions. Regardless of the type of business you own, your work will be composed of those three items.”

They hit it right on the spot and I’ve purchased just about every time management system, training, etc. for the last 25 years and tried them all. You have to read this article and let me know if it does anything for you. I’ll be posting back my results in a month or so and I’ll let you know what I learned.

Read the whole article here:
Time Management Tips

A Typical Day in the Life of the Solopreneur

Posted by Colin Brown | Posted on 05-10-2010

Category : Go Solo, Time Management

I thought you might enjoy seeing my typical day so here it is! Balance is important in life and while I make an attempt you will see that I’m a little off kilter like most entrepreneurs.

In my younger days I would get up at 6am, but after you hit 40 you cherish any sleeping moment so today I get up at 6:30 am. I only have one daughter left at home but we get up and read from the scriptures for 10-15 minutes to start the day on a spiritual note. I then hit my work out room for the physical aspect and I personally enjoy lifting weights on my M1 Inspire which I absolutely love. I do need to spend a little more time on some type of cardiovascular exercise but I’ll take what I can get. At 7:30am I’m in the shower, dress, eat breakfast, and read from a business book until 9am when I start work. So in the first 2.5 hours of the day I have already given time to the spiritual, physical, and intellectual parts of my life to give me some type of balance and sanity.

9am I’m checking email and look for notifications of any problems over night from servers out on the Internet. I also look at all sales across all customers and review the dashboard I get from ebizsuite my CRM so I can see how many leads, sales, etc. came in the day before. I also give a quick reveiw of my google analytics to see if I have any issues on traffic drops. Check all my affiliate accounts for analytics and sales.

10am I will fix any problems I might have found after reviewing all my reports and dashboards. From 10am-12:15pm I have reserved for follow up sales calls, support calls, and training new customers.

12:15- 1:00 is lunch – downstairs in the kitchen! My wife is a wonderful cook!

1-6pm I do whatever needs to be done. Set up new customers, write code to enhance our online systems ( We release a new update to our eBizSuite platform every 6 months), Create new products, reveiw all marketing methods and customer touch points to ensure a great experience for our customers.

I eat dinner in a half an hour and typically get back to work until 9:45- 10pm. And yes I have done this for 23 years! OK, the life of a solopreneur doesn’t sound so sexy after all. But let me point out a few items.

First, I never miss a meal with my family- I’m always home. I never miss a child’s lacrosse game or concert. When I do travel for business I always take my family along and we turn it into a vacation! Speaking of vacations I go as often as I can. We have a summer home and a cabin in the mountains where we spend most weekends in the summer and I love to go to Hawaii, Miami, and every 3 years I go on a big excursion across the pond!

Second, my business is so much fun, it is more like a hobby to me so I feel like I’m playing all day long –so long hours from your perspective don’t seem so long to me. I’d probably do what I’m doing if I wasn’t getting paid.

So to sum it up, do something you love and you’ll never tire and you’ll feel like you’ve lived your life to the fullest!

Always Creating and Never Selling

Posted by Colin Brown | Posted on 10-07-2010

Category : Time Management

A challenging trap is set for every solo entrepreneur. It is the trap of always creating and developing new products but never actually moving in to the selling of those products. It’s a dangerous game because you feel like you are making progress, but making products doesn’t keep the lights on. It’s the selling of products that will keep you in business over the long haul, so make sure you allot time each day for marketing and sales first and then you can do what you love– creating new products!

Distractions

Posted by Colin Brown | Posted on 21-04-2010

Category : Time Management

One of the biggest problems of the solopreneur is distraction. With the advent of the phone, email and instant messaging. If you are not careful, you can spend your entire day with distractions and be totally unproductive.

If you have are struggling in this department then is time to make a change. Let all phone calls go to voicemail initially. This will allow you to filter calls and their importance. I personally use a 4-line Panasonic KX-TG4500 5.8Ghz Phone System. It will set you back $800, but it has all the features that make you look like a much bigger company: voice mail, auto-attendant, intercom, music on hold, etc. All the handsets are wireless so you can walk around without being tethered to your desk. I have a headset plugged in so I can type and talk at the same time. I set my voicemail with 3 voicemail boxes; one for sales, support, and accounting.

Ok now on to email. You should have set times when you check your email. I have 8am, 10am, 1pm, 3pm, 5pm as my times to check email. In between that time, I don’t leave it open to interrupt me every time jumps in there. This will stop the distraction that can take place every 5 minutes that your email alarm notification goes off.

Finally, Instant Messaging. It’s simple don’t login except to have a scheduled conversion with someone you need to communicate with for some project.