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This Article Will Tell You:
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What your most valuable asset is, in my opinion.
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Why building your professional network is incredibly important.
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Why operating within systems will set you free.
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Six months ago, I left the job that I had held for the previous 7 years and moved from New York City to Austin, Texas with my wife and infant twin daughters. The move was made more for personal reasons than professional ones, as I very much enjoyed the career that I had built for myself during my time in New York, but I viewed the move as an opportunity to evolve my skill-set, expand my professional network, and challenge myself to achieve more than I ever had before.
For the first time since graduating college, I was unemployed. I had managed to negotiate an open-ended consulting agreement with my previous employer, but it was far less than we needed to keep our twins’ bellies full of baby food and Cheerios.
As my family drove halfway across the country with everything that we owned in tow, my wife and I discussed the excitement and the uncertainty that was ahead of us. I made the decision to setup an LLC that would allow me to work for multiple companies as a consultant, with the plan of building a solid business for myself. After discussing potential names across several states as we made our way to Texas, my wife and I decided on one. Creativelutions LLC was born.
The following is a summary of the 3 Most Important Things I Learned in the First 6 Months since starting my own company. There are, of course, countless lessons to be learned, many of which I hope to share in future blog posts, but these three stand out to me above all others as I think back to where I was six months ago and where I am today.
1. Time is Your Most Valuable Asset by Far
Time is a finite resource. Until the DeLorean time machine becomes a reality, we are restricted to 24 hours per day, 168 hours per week, 728 hours per month, and 8,760 hours per year. That’s it. Period. You will never be able to cram more hours into a day, so you better do everything in your power to make each hour as productive as possible.
For me, the 24 hours that I have available each day need to be allocated across all of my demanding responsibilities, including time spent working for clients, time spent developing my business, time spent with my wife, time spent with my daughters, time spent eating, and time spent sleeping. Time spent relaxing? Forget about it. Balancing all of these important aspects of my life is incredibly difficult, as it seems I could easily double the time I spend on each one and it still would not be enough to fully satisfy the needs of those that depend on me.
Once you realize and accept that time is finite, you then must begin to identify ways to work smarter, not longer. How can that task that takes you 30 minutes to complete each morning be done in 5 minutes? What responsibility can you assign to another team member that will free up time for you? These are they types of questions that you must not only ask yourself, but you must find answers to in order to maximize your time. When you do, be careful not to fall into the multi-tasking trap.
I have also realized the impact of saying yes to every request that is made of me, because every time I say yes, I am effectively saying no to something else. In Michael Hyatt’s great podcast episode and blog post How to Say No When You Feel Pressured to Say Yes, he discusses the impact of saying yes. He explains, for example, that by saying yes to something that goes beyond your normal work schedule, you are simultaneously saying no to time with your family. For me, this is huge. My current schedule only allows for about 3 hours each day with my daughters, and 2 hours at most with my wife one-on-one. Taking on additional tasks that will impact this precious time is not worth what I will miss out on with my family.
The bottom line is that you will only ever be given 24 hours in a day. What you do with those 24 hours is up to you. Make strategic decisions, identify ways to maximize your productivity, and be careful what you say yes to.
“You can always make more money, but you can never make more time.”
2. Your Network is More Important than You Think
I’ll admit that I’ve never been the most social butterfly in the room. I’ve had a close circle of friends my entire life, but I’ve never been one to approach someone new in a public arena and strike up a conversation. I realize now that this is an area of my skill-set that I actively need to develop. Your network is incredibly important, not only as an entrepreneur, but as a career-driven individual and well-rounded person.
My lack of a strong professional network is in part the result of holding a comfortable position for 7 years within the same company where I dedicated all of my professional efforts to defining and evolving my set of responsibilities within that role. I did a great job at it. What I didn’t do a great job of was networking throughout this time. That was partly a product of my position within a very niche and private company, but it was more due to my lack of motivation to build a professional network. Sure, I have a LinkedIn profile and I connect with people on that platform, but a true professional network is built on solid personal relationships with individuals, and I did a poor job at that.
Since founding Creativelutions, I have begun to elevate my network, both in quantity and in quality. I have actively engaged with other entrepreneurs, met with strangers for coffee, setup recurring monthly video calls with business owners, and started dialogues with all sorts of interesting folks on Twitter. It’s a small start, but it’s still a start.
In her book Your Network is Your Net Worth, Porter Gale explains why your network is so important and provides ideas and methods for improving your networking skills. She explains her belief that the quality of your relationships and ability to make authentic connections is more important than the size of your network. Collaboration with these individuals will allow you to reach a higher level of success than you would be able to accomplish on your own. I have to agree.
Another networking quote that I love is by Jim Rohn:
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
Following this philosophy, think about who are the five people that you spend the most time with. Are they similar to you in financial status, career achievement, morals, goals, and beliefs? Probably. If you want to achieve a higher level of success in any aspect of your life, start spending time with people who have already achieved what you want to achieve, and start doing what they do or have already done.
3. Developing Systems Will Set You Free
A structured, regimented system that you follow day-in and day-out will set you free. By this I mean you’ll be able to go to sleep at night knowing that all of your responsibilities have been met, and nothing has been overlooked.
When you are an employee working for someone else, you most likely have a manager overseeing your work and tasks. Maybe you even have several managers above you. That chain of command is often your safety-net, because if you forget to send an email or complete a task, your manager is there to remind you about it. When you work for yourself, the only person who is going to remind you to do certain things is yourself. Forget to enter an appointment into your calendar? It’s your fault. Accidentally allow a deadline to pass? It’s your fault. Everything is on your shoulders, and boy is it heavy!
The only way I’ve found to ensure that all of my responsibilities have been met each day is to follow very detailed and specific systems. One of the first things that I did was create an interactive PDF that functions as a monthly worksheet for my ongoing clients. I have a very specific set of tasks that I must complete each month for certain clients, and this interactive PDF allows me to get in a glance what I have and have not yet done, and check-off items as I complete them.
I also began using Google Calendar heavily. Not only do I schedule my meetings and appointments within Google Calendar, I also schedule my entire day by blocking off time to work on tasks. My ideal day in Google Calendar is filled with boxes and colors, with no white space whatsoever. This ensures that I have enough time to complete everything, and I don’t stray from my responsibilities. The “no white space” calendar policy can be further explored by listening to interviews with Nihal Mehta, who often speaks about how to fill your day to maximize productivity.
The above examples are just a few of the ways I have begun to define my entrepreneurial system. Over the past six months, I have experimented with a ton of tools and tactics to keep me on track and help me manage my life. A few of the ones that have been life savers for me are:
- Google Calendar – So much can be said about Google Calendar, but I’ve been setting recurring events to block off portions of my day for things I have to do on a set cycle. I’ve also used it to schedule my marketing efforts in terms of blog posts, tweets, etc. and see how far into the future these items have been scheduled to auto-post, and alert me via email if and when I come within a few days of those auto-posts expiring. When that happens, I know I need to re-fill the bucket of content.
- Evernote – I’m currently re-defining how I use Evernote. My goal is that it will replace all paper in my life. I want to be managing all of my lists, meeting notes, research, business development, blog posts, goals, ideas… everything out of Evernote.
- Boomerang for Gmail – I’m often working late at night, and often need to send emails to get through my task list. However, I don’t want a client to receive an email at 1am from me. That would be disruptive to their life, and would also give them unwanted insight into my work habits. So, I’ve been using Boomerang to schedule those emails to be sent the next morning, which allows me to respect the recipients personal life, and portrays myself as an early-riser!
Final Thoughts
The first six months following my move from New York City to Austin, Texas and starting Creativelutions LLC has been fantastic. It has been an incredible amount of work and amount of hours, but I sense that it has led to some incredible opportunities. I’m excited to see what the next 6 months brings, but the only way to predict the future is to create it. I think I’ll get started on that now…
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