Leslie Hassler - Become the Chairman of the Board of Your Life (E0417)

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Text family to 442-22 for this free information today. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business. Succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on Exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Welcome everyone. Thanks for joining us today, and I want to welcome back my next guest. Leslie Hassler's been with us before from your business or your biz rules in Dallas, Texas, and you can find the previous interview at Exitcoachradio.com on the archives. We're going to talk about banishing your time demons. Do you want some more time back in your day? How would you like to get 2 hours back in your day every day? What would you do with that time? Could you do more business? Would you just use it to be more with your family, create additional relationships? Maybe you just go for a walk or take a yoga class or just get, you know, get healthier. Uh, 2 hours in your day would be huge. So, um, what if there was a way to, to not get lost in the vortex of your busy life? Is it possible to add more time to your day and get more done? We're going to join Leslie Hassler in just a second with your biz rules for this powerful tip-packed class. She's going to explain how women entrepreneurs can expand time and turn minutes to moments, creating tangible results and predictable successes, and I think you're, you're going to be very pleased at what you hear. So Leslie, thanks very much for joining us again today. Howdy, I'm so glad to be back. How are you? Very good. How are you doing today? Where I'm doing pretty well. I can't complain. Any day's a good day. What, what do you do with your two extra hours every day that you find yourself? You know, for me it is really something that I think for like 3 or 4 years I had, you know, I'll do my workout, I'll take care of myself. I'll take this opportunity to do those things that I don't get to do because I'm a mom and I'm a business owner and a wife and all of those nice nice fun things and um that's what I do honestly. I work out during the day. I work out at least 3 or 4 times a week during the day. I Take care of things that I want to take care of that are just me and sometimes, you know, I do a little bit of give myself the salesman of the Week award and I go get a massage. It's a lot of what I do, but I also use that same time to structure my business in such a way that when I'm working on my business I'm 100% present. I am impactful. I'm getting results. I'm moving the bottom line, so that. I can have that free time in my life. I think so many of us think it's a some day I will be able to do this when you start a business, and it's really something that you can actually implement into your business really early on from day one. Yeah, time management is something that everybody struggles with, but it seems like entrepreneurs, especially, you know, that the notion of, of the job ever being done as an entrepreneur is something everybody struggles with. So why do entrepreneurs struggle so much with time management, Leslie? Part of the reason that we struggle so much is that we have so much competition for our time. There's so many beeps and buzzes and rings and things that compete for our attention on a daily basis when we're just in the office, and then if you add on team and clients and everything. That it can be very difficult to be focused and to remain focused, and part of that reason is when most of us want to provide our clients and our team members with good service, right? We want to give them a good experience and we've defined that in our world as being Always accessible, always responsive, you know, at a minute's notice as being that kind of gold standard of what good customer service is, but it's really kind of created this environment full of distraction and full of noise so that we can't even focus on what it is that we sat down to work on 10 minutes ago because of all the noise that's happening in our lives. Yeah, and especially today with technology because the just, you know, the expectations are high for a quick return call or a quick return email or a quick resolution to a situation or an answer to a problem. So it's gotten even worse and you know this technology was supposed to give us so much of our time back but instead it's just created. Uh, more expectations for a lot of people and so is part of this uh what what you teach is it that you know not everything has to be handled the minute it comes up? Is it, is it blocking out time? Is it a combination of different things? What, what's the secrets to time management? First of all, it's about getting in control of, of a lot of aspects of time management. When you realize that you have complete control over your time and are willing to take responsibility for it, you can take so many more steps. The other, the kind of the next part is is that. We really need to put more rules and boundaries into our business about what happens when, and when we share that expectation with our clients, with our employees, they actually are a little bit happier and it's kind of like if you, if you've had children and you have to tell them what the rules are and even though they might butt up against the rules, they're generally happier playing within the rules. It's the same thing with our business. We have to give our businesses rules in which they need to operate on and expect them to adhere to them at a 95%, you know, kind of rate so that they behave well, so that they behave to an expectation and a normalcy, not in a state of constant reactivity. So you have to take the responsibility that it starts with you. You have to put some rules around it and then you have to start being smart and really looking at those, you know, the 5 time demons are distraction, indecision, delayed action, difficulty and division. Who's your biggest demon and how can you tackle that, you know, distraction. When, when I teach this class, I actually can I'm like I can give you 10 hours back to your life just in talking about distraction. It's one of the biggest areas that we waste time, but once you start tackling each of these things and putting some structure around. Then you start to be able to get your time back. So you mentioned time blocking. That's an excellent tool. It's we teach it in a way that's a bit more floating and it talks about all the elements of your business that you need to be touching on and are you generating revenue and how much revenue, um, those types of things, but that's an excellent way to start and really getting more structured to your time and not allowing for a blank hour in the middle of the day because that'll get eaten up by something really unproductive. Thank you very much. We, we know that uh men and women think very differently. How is this subject different for men and women? You know, I think for a lot of times women put a lot more Emotion into the tasks of things and emotion into how they think people will be will perceive these boundaries and their rules. We tend to have a lot more. Not that we have more feeling about it, it's that we're, we tend to project too much feeling into how somebody else is going to respond to something, and so we worry about the response and therefore we don't try, we don't do. I think the benefit that guys have is that it's a little bit more black and white. It just is I have this much time. It's not about you or me. It's about I have this time. I need to get this done. And this is what I'm going to focus on. So to some extent, you know, the emotions play into their, um, to some extent how we feel like other people are going to perceive us plays into that aspect as well. So I see men don't struggle with this as much, but you know, when it comes to things like distraction or procrastination, you know, we all can be suckers for that. It you would you say one of the most important words that someone can use for time management is the word no? In other words, OK, talk about that. Well, the reason, you know, I feel like no's one of the most underused words in our in the English language, you know, no is not a negative. I actually did a whole series on why no's not negative, but when you're saying no to to somebody else or to a request or to You know, would you be able to do it this way type of things? You're actually choosing to say yes to a lot of other things, and so we see it as a very no negative definitive kind of moment, but we don't understand that by saying yes to external sources we're actually saying a lot of no's to our internal priorities and that by Saying no to some external resources, we can actually be saying yes to our internal priorities. So I just caution everybody to understand that a no is a yes and a yes is a no, and you really need to understand the bargain that you're making when you give a yes or no answer to a request or a demand on your time, and you can say no very, very, very nicely too. Well, that's what I think a lot of people have trouble saying no. I know I find myself over the years I found myself saying yes to committee requests and, you know, speaking, you know, different types of tasks that really weren't getting me anywhere, but I just couldn't say no. And then I remember getting many, many times in my, my working career to a point where I'm like something has to come off of this plate. It is, it is so overpacked with things that I should have said no to. Do a lot of people get into that position? Everybody does, and it's, it's part of our, our spirit to want to serve others. It, it really when I take on a new task or I have a request coming to me, I already have a full plate, I think because I'm very conscious about where my time goes. I know. It's already full and so I really have to say in order for a yes to come on, what do I have to take off my plate? And if, and this is even in growing my business, like if people get distracted with all these great ideas and they start 10 great ideas but don't get anywhere on them, you can only do so many ideas in a day. You're a human, not a robot. You know, you have to understand that by saying yes to something, either something else needs to come off your schedule or off your to do list, and if you can't, then that is what I say is like, you know, that sounds a wonderful opportunity right now. I would love to be a part of it, but unfortunately it just doesn't work for me right now. Is that something that if that changes, can I come back to you and we can talk about it in the future. Yeah, you know, I'm not letting anyone down, but I'm respecting the fact that I still only have 24 hours in my day. And I'd love to help, I'm just not able to. Well, that's a that's a great place to start from is is to realize. No matter where you are right now, your plate is probably already, if not very full, pretty full, so the next request that comes in, you have to be cognizant of that and this so let me ask you a question is how important to all of what we're talking about are things like checklists to to be able to really quickly assess and visualize what what I what all I'm doing and what all I need to get done. You know, there's, I like having a really high level one that talks about, you know, your big goals and what you're working towards. So if you've got business and you've got family and you can talk about those items, you know, if it's businesses, is it, does it meet my revenue goals? Does it meet, you know, the goals that we're working on if we're trying to improve our product or whatever those things are, and if it's not at our immediate focus, if it's not yes to those, then it's a it's a not right now type of a Environment I have, I coach my clients to have good idea folders either on their computer or paper copies to where they can just put all those wonderful ideas that they can't work on right now so you can go back and revisit, but to have that kind of a litmus test that really you can go against and say yes this supports, you know, what I want to do for myself or for my family or for my business, yes this is something I have time for, yes this is something I can invest in, OK, I'm going to do it. And if it doesn't hit enough of those checkpoints, it's got to go to the good idea file or it just has to get declined. That's a great, great idea to basically have some kind of an assessment so that everything goes through that. I mean it's it's what you would do probably for a new idea in your business so part of this is becoming your own chairman of the board of your life basically and and and creating these filters. So how does a shift in time management change a business? So the most amazing things happen when um you start to shift your time management. I fully believe that most businesses can run in that 20 to 35 hour sweet spot of work, and when you're super conscious about the work that you have, the time, um, that you're going to dedicate to that, I ask my clients to set business hours. I don't really care what the hours are, but to set business hours and only work on the business during that time. You start to find that there's other reasons around uh the time that you can now give attention to. So if you know I have a client that always has a hard time stopping at 5 and they need to stop at 5, we put something bigger and more important at 5 o'clock to where you have to stop. Like there's a desire to stop, there's a payoff to stop, so you start training your brain to be able to put down one element, pick up another element, and move on. And so when you start controlling your time you can be so much more proactive in your business versus reactive. I had a period of time to where we were going through in my first business where it was just like fire central. I felt like I was coming into the ER room every day to solve some crisis and once we started putting time management into not just. My life because I definitely was directing that, but into the company as a whole, it was a pleasant experience. We didn't nearly have as many tragedies and emergencies that we needed our attention. We could actually start to plan out the next week in two weeks out versus just worrying about what went wrong yesterday and who's upset today, and that's kind of the A little bit of a long term payoff, but it really can shift your business from something that is chaotic and stressful into being pleasant and fun and profitable. Well, you bring up a good point and that is, you know, if, if, uh, if you had surgery scheduled at 5 o'clock, you would, you would sure as heck have your work done at 4:30 to get down to, you know, if you had something important scheduled that's meaningful for you, so part of this is is the big picture of your schedule and and being smart about you know how are you going to make sure that you police yourself because most entrepreneurs that I know. Uh, and myself included, I will, I'll keep working on a task until it's done. Uh, the clock doesn't stop for me. It's just, it's just when, you know, when is the work done and the work is never done. So that's the problem we all face. So Leslie, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. Well, I was just gonna say how, how do people find out about your business and how do you work with a typical entrepreneur or individual? Well, you know, I love being able to get in and dig into a person's personal situation and have the best impact, so we do a lot of 1 to 1 work, but I do have, you know, we've talked about some rules and some the boundaries to put into your business and even that checklist that we talked about. I actually have. A great kind of free gift for you. It's at yourbiz rules.com/incredible. It's how to bring incredible back to your business, and it's two parts. One is the seven tools that I use to increase my productivity, so it's a lot of autoization things that just take. You know, some of the little back and forth stuff off my plate so I can focus on other things, but then it's also about the 10 boundaries that you need to have in your business so that you can even have that litmus test of a little checklist you can go through. Does this meet these 10 things? Yes or no? Should I be focusing on it? And so if you go to yourbiz rules.com/incredible, you'll get those two free gifts, and that's a, that's the best gift that I can give, you know, to your listeners to be able to start to get time back into your day today. That's incredibly nice of you, and it's a great way to get for someone to get to know more about how you can help, but just by going there, I'm sure you'll you'll be able to see, you know, here's some ideas that I can reel in some of my time and again have a more fulfilling life. So Leslie Hessler, how do people get in touch with you, uh, besides, is it the best way to go to go to your biz rules, get those gifts at yourbiz rules.com/incredible, and then find your contact information there. Yeah, we'll, we'll be in your inbox. We deliver it to the inbox and there's even a way that if you want to speak with me you've got the opportunity to say, hey, I wanna talk, I'm gonna chat. I'm gonna change some things today and so that's been all set up to make it super easy for you to do that. Well, it's a lot of fun to talk to you. Unfortunately the time always goes by too quickly, but we learn a lot I guess that's the problem, right? Time so uh but but I I always learn a lot and um I would implore our listeners, you know, go to yourbiz rules.com/incredible, get the free gifts, uh, start being serious about this, be intentional this is. The year you're going to get your time back to to really do the things you've always wanted to do, get into that great ideas file that you've set up because of Leslie, and really work on some things that you want to do for fun and for to help others, to help yourself. So go there and check it out. Leslie, thanks so much for joining us again. It's a great pleasure to talk with you and I look forward to the next time. Thank you so much, Bill. Y'all have a wonderful day. All right, we're gonna take a short break. We're gonna be right back after this, so please stay tuned. You're listening to one of many shows on Exitcoachradio.com. We're interviewing advisors, authors, and thought leaders for their best tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. If you'd like to be a guest on any of our shows, go to guest.exitcoachradio.com. Exitcoachradio.com. Come listen for a minute. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. 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