How to teach effective time management skills? In this episode, this is actually the sixth principle
the sixth episode teaching 12 critical things we must teach our children to prepare them for
the future. So, we are addressing the question how to prepare your children for the future.
Get ready, you wouldn't believe how many college graduates
do not know how to manage their time even after they graduate.
So, my name's Doug Andrew and I've helped many many families optimize not only their financial assets
now for more than 48 years. But also helping them to get balance in their life in what I call the
three dimensions of authentic wealth. We talk about not only the money, the material possessions, but
also family, relationships, health, faith, values, virtues and so forth. As well as the wisdom
that you gain throughout our life and experiences, your formal education, your reputation and so
forth. These are the three dimensions of authentic wealth, financial, foundational, and intellectual. So,
if you're watching this as the first episode this is actually the sixth principle out of 12
that we discovered that so many of our clients who sent their children to colleges and universities
to get educated and when they graduated many times they had to move back home because they
couldn't find a job. We would test them on these 12 critical skills and they would fail miserably and
we're like, what are they teaching our children at these universities? We would teach these 12 skills
or principles to them in about six months and they would have job offers lined up thereafter. So, the
purpose of this series is to have you get insights into these 12 principles. This is actually number
six here on the screen this shows the first six and we're going to be focused on this one
and then I encourage you to watch the other episodes also to prepare your children for the
future. There's a handout that you can download when you go to the website I'll give you at the
end and you can see all of these 12 principles and this is on the front and the back. This is the
front this is the back of this form. So, get ready, this is number six and it's understanding
yourself and how to teach it to your loved ones effective time management. Here we go.
Now, I've been very blessed in my life to have many mentors and I belong to several mastermind groups.
One of them is strategic coach it's headed by Dan Sullivan and he has coached over 6,000 of
the world's top entrepreneurs and I'm honored to be one of them. In fact, after a few years he
handpicked me to be in this honored group of about 70 of the top entrepreneurs in America. So, I was so
honored and blessed to rub shoulders with the likes of Steve Forbes and Richard Branson and
so forth and instead of trying to be the smartest person in the room we are all just interested in
being in a room where everybody's trying to get smarter and Dan Sullivan taught us this concept
years ago and I want you to understand where I'm coming from. So I'm going to explain it like he did
and then show you how I adapted this concept with our own children and grandchildren. Dan Sullivan
said that most people in the world go through their entire lifetimes with what he called big C
little o. They have way more capability than they have opportunities. How sad is that? So, his purpose
with us as students as a fellow strategic coach members was to flip that. So that the rest of our
life we would have more opportunities than we had capability. That's a nice problem and it's easy to
solve with what he calls an opportunity filter. Now, I change the terminology to availability and
engagement. But see, the graduates out of a lot of the courses that I teach this is my goal to create
way more opportunities in life than you possibly have the capability to seize. Because that's a
nice problem and it's easy to solve by using a filter. Which opportunities are you going to seize?
Which ones are you going to delegate? Which ones you're going to walk away from?
So, I wrote an article about this for harvard business review with my take on Dan Sullivan's concept. Now,
Do you know how hard it is to get published in HBR? Yeah. Well, this article went to the front
page in 24 hours. I was shocked it was like, "Wait a minute, at Harvard?". They are getting these
insights on how to prioritize, how to determine which opportunities to seize. Which ones to
delegate, which ones to walk away from. I thought my heavens it hit the front page and I'll show
you what I was teaching in this article that sent it to the front page of HBR in less than 24 hours.
Now, what I use is an engagement filter because when I teach my children and grandchildren in
life you want a lot of opportunities. You want engagement with other people if you're going to be
you know a doctor or a dentist you want to have engagement with your patients. A realtor with
your clients, a financial planner, whatever you do you want engagement with other people.
A is availability and so just like big C little o, a lot of people go through life and
they have way more availability than they have engagement opportunities. We like to flip it to
where you have big E little a. You have way more engagement opportunities than you can possibly
have availability to cease. That's a nice problem and so I designed what is called
the engagement filter. How to filter which engagements or opportunities you're going
to see which ones you're going to delegate which ones you're going to walk away from. Now,
you could do this on a blank sheet of paper. At the end of this episode, I want to gift you a free copy
of my most recent best-selling book and there's a master class in there where you could actually
download these. It's also in one of my books for entrepreneurs on 10 keys to achieve a meaningful
transformation to exponentially grow your business by 10x in less than 60 months. It's called the 10
keys transformation. But just follow with me the logic behind this engagement filter. So, whenever
we have an engagement opportunity with a client or with an alliance a strategic alliance or something
like that. We'll put down our name and date and the engagement opportunity across the top of the form.
You can do this on a blank sheet of paper. Then we go through and score on a scale of a negative one
to a positive five would be the best score in five different areas on this opportunity
to be able to engage with this client or this alliance or whatever. The first criteria is impact.
So, what are we asking ourselves? How impactful is this for everyone involved is this a win-win-win
and we will score it over here in this box a negative one if it's not good all the way to
a positive five for the impact, that's number one. Number two, would be magnify. What does that mean?
Well, it says here, how much will this magnify my experience cause it to grow, it caused me
to stretch, enhance my unique abilities? If it's going to magnify everybody's unique abilities
and cause us to stretch and and grow and learn that would be a five. If it's not it would be clear
down here to one or two or a negative one if it's not going to do it at all. In fact, it worked in
reverse maybe. The next criteria would be recommend and so is this going to create opportunities
to have recommendations or referrals. Am I going to refer people to this client or customer
or alliance? Are they going to refer back to me? Is it a two-way street? If it's not going to be
that then it would score down here to negative one or a one or a two. If there's a super chance
for referability or recommending that's a five. The next would be leverage. Now, what's leverage?
That's the ability to take your resources and create actually maybe a hole that's
greater than the sum of the parts and so does this leverage my core experience for example.
My core experiences and what I'm good at. Am I able to use it to enhance and create value
for them and for us because I'm leveraging what I'm good at my unique abilities and I'm leveraging
what they are good at so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
So that is leverage. We get down to multiply and we score ourselves on negative one to a positive five.
Will this multiply value and elevate all parties. Is this going to uplift everybody. Is this going
to be like all boats arise with the tide and it's going to magnify and enlarge and enhance all of
the situation with the magnification but also multiplying and so if that is true then we'll
put down here a four or a five down here. When you get through with these five questions or filters
from a score of negative one to positive five you add them all up down here so you have your total
score. Now you have quantified the opportunity to engage with this party or this client or customer
and so you should have a minimum score. When I first started doing this my minimum score for
these opportunities might have been a 16. Well, then as I had way more opportunities than I had
availability then I would raise the minimum bar to 20, 21, 22. I got to a point where the minimum
bar was 24, if it didn't score 24 out of 25 my staff would not even bring the opportunity to
me because they knew how to fill this out. I only had presented to me the ones that scored 24 or 25
if they happened to occur on the same date. So, I could pick and choose. That's the only time
I made the decision. This made it easier for my staff, my personal, assistant, and for me, to decide which
opportunities? Which engagements do I want to seize? Which ones do I want to delegate to somebody else?
Which ones I want to totally walk away from? Is this making sense? So, walk away delegate or seize.
This is very powerful and I'm going to share with you how you analyze from this what you do next
with this opportunity to engage. Are you ready? Now, before I share this with you if this is resonating
with you and you're going, oh my heavens, I can think of somebody who ought to be watching this.
Be sure and share, post a comment, click like. But most importantly subscribe, subscribe because it's
free and when you do click that little bell to be notified every time I post a new educational
video which I do almost on a daily basis. And I want you to stay with me to the end of this
episode, because I'm going to gift you a copy of my most recent best-selling book that addresses
these topics. Here we go. With the engagement filter the bottom part of this you go through this
breakthrough. This concept is shared on a lot of my tools. Break is an acronym that stands for barriers,
resource,s experiences, action, and knowledge. So, once you see the opportunity and if it's a go
you want to seize the opportunity. What barriers need to be overcome and you write them over here.
Next, would be what skills people. What resources do you need to harness in order to
move ahead with this? What experiences can I draw from? What specific steps do
I need to take that's the action step and then what knowledge do I need to obtain?
When I get super clear here, now the chance that this opportunity this engagement is just gonna
go through the roof. It's going to be extremely successful. So far so good? Whenever you have time
and you want to teach it to your children and grandchildren to manage. It reminds me of one of
my first coaches Leo Widener and he was the author of a book called achieving the balance and he had
me do an exercise one day where I went down and I wrote my ideal mean. I did it here for example
for a mother or a woman a businesswoman and this was the order of how she wanted to live her life
over here is the ideal. She wanted number one to be spiritual and the wife and mentally
emotional and then mother all the way down to financial and social was the bottom part of
her priorities. You put away the sheet of paper and you live life normally for a week or two. Then you
pull it out and you arrange this in the order of actually, how you're living your life. This is very
revealing. So, many times when I did the actual me it was not in order. I was focused on money and
my professional and so forth and physical and so forth my physical body I was abusing it. When you
answer honestly, why are there discrepancies between the ideal you and the actual you. You
begin to make adjustments and I did that by color coding my time and I would keep track of how I
invested my time and how I intended to and how I actually did. They didn't even look alike. I would
color code on a Sunday night how I wanted the week to go every single hour in a different
color of highlighter. I had six different areas in my life I was trying to improve and at the end of
each day I would actually color code how I really spent those hours. It didn't even mirror each other.
It took me six months before they began to look alike. My life simplified and my income doubled.
This is powerful. So, what I recommend is that as an entrepreneur you have a time system
where you have a life balance. So in my book the 10 keys transformation, I have five different days
that I manage my time. I have earning days, learning days, organizing days, strategizing days and
recreating days. Recreation, which means you're re-creating. This is where I get most of my juices
and ideas to write books and to create educational videos like this is when I'm out fly fishing. Now, I
devote about 120 to 140 days a year where I'm earning in front of clients or in front
of a camera or writing books or whatever. What the three things that I do best. I have 24 to 48 days a
year where I'm learning, I'm sharpening my saw. I'm developing new capabilities. I have another 24 to
48 days I color code where I'm organizing. I go in in sweats. I'm just cleaning up stuff and messes.
I have another 24 to 48 days where I am strategizing. I'm just having strategy sessions maybe at the
cabin or whatever with my critical team and then I have 120 to 140 days where I recreate. I get away.
I don't check my voicemail, my email, or anything. I'm recreating but this allows me to come up
with all kinds of ideas when I come back from a vacation or fly fishing or a trip. My staff goes oh
no Doug's coming back he's going to have all kinds of ideas. That's because you're re-creating. With
this life balance system it's unbelievable how you will begin to be productive because you can earn
most of your income in just 120 of these days a year. You can be enjoying life whereas most
entrepreneurs they're doing some of this every single day or every single week. They have this.
I am dedicating days to learning, earning, organizing, strategizing, recreating. It is my entrepreneurial
time system. Now, how do you create a daily focus? This is one of the tools that I share.
I developed something very simple where I write down my to-do list and then I prioritize A, B
or C and I take the a priorities A1, A2, A3, and put it up here. What are the three most important
things I need to accomplish today that if at the end of the day those are the only
three things I accomplished I'll feel like I'm winning. I'm on a win streak. I put them up there
and I make sure I check those off. This is my to-do list. These are notes and follow-up
actions and then I write down three positive accomplishments for the day
very simple. But you need to be able to teach those you care about how to focus on what matters
most and so that's why in my various books and materials I love empowering people like you.
So, here's how you can claim your free copy. If you go to entitlementabolitionbook.com
click on the link below. You contribute a nominal amount towards the shipping and handling
I'll cover the rest of that cost. I'll fire out a copy of this 200-page book to you.
There's also options there to listen and learn or watch and learn. If you want to do
a deep dive there's an 18-hour master class that I recorded on video and it also contains libraries
about a lot of these tools that I've been talking about in this episode. Click on the other episodes
to learn the other principles how you can help your children prepare for a brighter future.