- [Jared] That'd be fun. - Yeah, man.
I want people to get to know the team.
There's a lot of people that support me in this stuff that
I do and I just think it's important shine the light
because I clearly need help.
(upbeat music)
How do you manage your time?
That, it's a crazy question because A,
you don't manage your time.
Time's gonna happen regardless if you know what you're doing
within the time or not but
all these entrepreneurs email me and
they're like I've got all these things going on.
I made a list of my priorities.
I made a list of the projects.
I made a list... and where do I start?
How do I know if I should be focused on sales or marketing or
operations or recruiting or doing the work,
delivering the value for our customers.
And I get those frustrations.
Those of the kind of questions that I love to drill down on
because to me if you have the right process and that's what
I'm gonna share with you guys in this video,
then it's clear the priorities, right?
Imagine going in to your work every day or sitting down and
having a clear path of execution and there's no fires going on in
your business because it's been thought through and planned and
strategic and there's no surprises.
Most entrepreneurs live a day of firefighting and surprises and
that to me is a crazy way to build a business.
Now, sure, challenges are gonna come up but those should be few
and far between.
For me, when I was building Flowtown I had to learn how to
juggle two different things.
I was Angel investing, you know I've made 30+ Angel investment
with my own money put into working company like Intercom
and Unbalance and Udemy and you know I'm an equiny holder in
HootSuite and some incredible entrepreneurs.
And here I was starting a new company with
my cofounder Ethan, right?
And this is 2009 and at the same time
still doing the Angel investing.
Here's what people never taught me is,
and just a little side tangent, Angel investing you end up
spending most your time with the companies
that aren't doing well. Isn't that crazy?
I wish somebody would've sat me down and said,
hey, by the way Dan, sounds fun.
You know, have all these businesses you're involved in
but the truth is the ones that are doing great like an
Intercom, you know Owen and his team there,
they're not going to need your help.
You know where I spend most my time?
The ones that are struggling.
The ones that need bridge financing.
The ones he can't figure product market fit.
The ones that need to figure out their marketing.
So I'm sitting there trying to deal with that and also be a
great cofounder and literally lead the distribution team for
Flowtown and it was through that process I had to get serious and
straight on how I thought about my time.
And not about managing it but what I got done within it.
I want to walk you through a really quick process that helped
me get the most out of life and I think this is both for
business and personal but
number one is understanding the destination.
Where do you want to go?
With my angel investing, I had an idea for the portfolio.
With the company Flowtown, I had an idea for the outcome.
Right, here were the milestones, here was the destination.
Understanding where you want to get to will give you clear
feedback on what things are priority today.
Because to me it always comes back
to right time, right action.
It's not about saying I need to do it all.
It's saying what needs to happen tomorrow versus next week versus
next month versus next quarter versus next year.
Many people think it's all an emergency, it's not.
Right, so having a clear destination is key.
Number two is what's the strategy?
Okay, once I understand well this is where I want to go what
are the things I'm going to decide are gonna support me in
getting to that outcome?
Not just allow the world to be reactive against me,
I'm gonna be proactive on it.
I am going to decide that for this category things or that,
I'm going to do these things
that are you getting those outcomes.
Then I have a strategy, 'kay, once I have the strategy,
number three is really what are the resources I need and this is
probably the area that people forget about.
Look, I call it management bandwidth.
If you don't have the bandwidth to take on three new projects in
the next three months then you just can't do it.
Because it doesn't make sense to try to start something that
you're under resourced on and
maybe the resource's financial, right?
If you decide well you know what we're gonna need to hire three
people next quarter.
It's like cool, where's that money gonna come from?
Well it's gonna come from cashflow.
Great, show me the cashflow projections.
Oh, by the way, you're in a negative right now and you think
you're going to be able to fund and hire those people.
So not knowing how to actually resource the strategy and give
the resources to execute is where a lot of waste happens.
To me managing time is about being efficient that when you
sit down to do something to take action,
to get work done that it's efficiencies
inside that time window.
Number four for me is about scheduling it.
You need to put it to paper and pen,
you need to put in your calendar,
you need to make sure that you understand and block time it
that when you start to work on a major project that you look over
the next three months use decide okay Monday,
Wednesday, Friday I'm gonna spend two hours every morning on
just this project and move it forward and push it uphill
'cause trust me the world doesn't want to change,
your team doesn't want to change,
your customer doesn't want a new thing.
Everything would love to just keep it business as usual.
What I'm asking is putting it in the calendar to even look to
say, do I have the time to get all these things done?
Even if you do all the other work if you actually don't
schedule it and block time it then you'll never know if you
have the bandwidth to get it all done and it sounds crazy 'cause
I had a friend the other day on Facebook he's like,
this other guy commented and said my calendar looks like this
it was like all scheduled and this other guy goes I can't
believe you live your life like that.
I would go nuts if my whole day was scheduled and I laughed I'm
like look my whole week is,
there's no empty spots, everything.
Now, do I have you know two hours to go get my workout in?
Do I have X amount of time to go read?
Do I have my massages scheduled in my two week cycle?
Absolutely, so you can have a busy schedule but
actually plan the recharges.
But here's the thing, that's what I want to share with you is
a number one opportunity for everybody watching this is if
you feel like you're not getting enough time to get things done
and you go through that process I just shared with you in your
calendar I want you to schedule the recharge.
Right, I want you to ask yourself,
what do I need? Maybe it's one day a quarter.
Every three months, one day where I don't do any work.
I don't do anything for my family.
I just take time for myself.
You know and that might be going for a hike,
it might be spending time in water.
I think water is an important one.
Reading, journaling, whatever it is for you,
I want you to schedule in the recharge.
So that you can be a better person for your family,
your team, your community. I mean it's funny how I talked
to entrepreneurs I'm like so tell me about the thing that you
love to do the most and they're like well I love to snowboard.
Me personally, I'm like hardcore snowboarder.
That's my thing.
And then I asked them okay well if that's your thing,
how are you after you come back from doing that?
And for me I'm on cloud nine. I am a happy person.
I am energetic. I'm excited.
All these things so it's like okay so wouldn't you want that
person to show up in your life with your team and your family
and all that? It's like yeah.
It's like okay, so where's that on your schedule?
Where's that as part of your strategy?
So I want to encourage you all to build in the recharge into
your planning 'cause that's where the real magic happens.
So with that I want to ask you below in the comments what are
you gonna do to recharge your life?
What's the activity, right?
It could be nothing.
If you want to meditate for four hours, cool.
Just write it below in the comments.
I can't wait to read them and reply to every one of them.
As per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger
life and have a bigger business, I'll see you next Monday.
If you liked this video, be sure to subscribe to my channel and
I'd also encourage you to join my newsletter where I share
exclusive invites to private events and other free training
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and I'll see you next Monday.