Are you deluding yourself about where you are spending your time?
I have just returned from another life changing week attending Matt Church's MDE program in Sydney. As always, I am completely inspired by this approach, and one observation I made about the community is there are people who are generating very healthy revenues from all sort of areas of expertise. These include relationship counselling, productivity, non violence in remote communities and even a kind of feng shui approach to making workspaces more motivating! So what was my biggest (of the many) a-ha moments?
I have been a bright shiny objects addict...
and it has been making a big impact not only on my workload/life balance, but also my revenue!
Man, have I been deluding myself! Here I have been, working like a little maniac, every day, but my focus has been too future based. For example, I spent 90 minutes on the Friday eve before I left (having cancelled my lovely drinkies with my neighbours) talking to a (really interesting!) JV guy in Atlanta about mobile magazines (did you know there are only 4000 magazines on ITunes??!). Ok, all very exciting, but is that going to make me revenue for next week? I listen to people's stories and where their frustration is, and get all inspired, seeing their global future/huge expansive vision... but do they engage me? What they are actually looking for is stuff that helps them today!
What has been the cost?
I think it became clear to me, when one of my dearest friends rang me and said 'Laurel, I know you are too busy to talk to me, but I am going to keep ringing you anyway, just in case you have a bit of time'. How crap is that? Thank you dear friend (you know who you are) for giving me the wake up call. And I haven't even mentioned the time I spend away from my kids. Or the fact that I have been earning less than I earnt 12 years ago in my last full time role....enough!
Things have shifted DRAMATICALLY in a week...
The good news, is that it is all behind me now (ok, recovering addict, I still need to have my fun exploring shiny new things). I made a decision to focus on one core offering of mine, Seize the Quarter , where I partner experts and SMEs to build their own tailored lead generator machine over 12 weeks, and experience a dramatic shift in their lead quality and conversion rate. That's it! And I know I am really good at that. And yes, there is time to talk about the bright shiny things for their future, but that is where we put it.. in the future.
I gave myself a new business quota goal to achieve in the next 7 weeks. By Tuesday, I had achieved more than 25% of it. I am confident I will be 50% complete by the end of the week. And I am walking my kids to school every day.
What are you focussing on? Are you deluding yourself with where you are placing it?