Have you ever thought about what your time is worth? You must know your worth. As an entrepreneur/business owner/sales professional time is money.

Let me be clear, you are not only defined by your financial worth. There are other pieces to the pie of life. Your family, friends, health, spiritual growth, philanthropies, or other important values. All the things you value that define who you are.  Nonetheless, this discussion today is your time and how you value it.

I am a very curious person by trait, I ask a lot of questions. One of the topics in business that intrigues me the most is time management. Time management always tops the list as one of the biggest barriers to success. What I find is that people spend a lot of time doing tasks that are way below their pay rate instead of seeking solutions so they can best use their talents to grow the business. When I ask business owners about their business challenges, the answer is always I want to focus on growing my business, but I have so much that needs to get done everyday that I don’t have time to prospect/sell. Tasks fall into 2 buckets. Overhead or Income Producing Activities. Overhead tasks don’t generate revenue.  Income producing activities are prospecting, selling, connecting with new people at events, follow-up, networking…Someone has to be out selling your product everyday.

There are many tips and tricks on how to manage your time better, but nothing has influenced me more on the subject than a book I’m reading right now called Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount.

When it comes to growing your business, you must be committed to prospecting new business and growing your pipeline. Make time EVERYDAY to reach out to people. It has to be on your calendar. You cannot, I repeat, you cannot be successful in sales or growing your business if you are not prospecting everyday. It’s the only guaranteed income producing activity.

What keeps people from doing focusing on income producing activities?

1. It’s not easy.
2. Most people don’t have a clear vision of their income goal and how to get there.

1. Start with the end in mind

What’s your income goal? Where do you want to finish your year financially? You have to put a dollar value to it. Live, eat, and breathe it.  With my coaching clients, the first session we go through is an exercise called The History of your Future. The exercise helps you create a clear vision of the life you want, including finances. Remember as I discussed earlier, you must have a clear vision of what your life looks like at the end of this year, in 3 years, in 5 years, and 10 years. I work with clients that are in a current job and want to get out of it. They need to make a certain income before they can leave fully and/or take a leap of faith to do what they are passionate about. Figure out what that number is and at some point you will have to take a leap of faith. Maybe your financial plan is to double your income from last year.  Whatever the case may be, you need to have an exact dollar amount in your head that you are striving for then plaster it everywhere. In your office, your car, your closet, it must become a part of you.

2. Determine your hourly worth

If your goal is to make $100,000 this year. Let’s break that number down, generically, based on a 40-hour work week and 52-week schedule. 100,000 divided by 52 weeks is $1923 a week. Then divide that by 40 and you get your hourly wage. $48. Want to make $200,000 then your hourly wage is closer to $100 and so on and so on.

Ok that is your magic number. Every hour of your day must be calculated on that number, are you in the negatives or positives with the activities you are doing? That is why knowing your worth is so important.

I had to think about that when I made the decisions to start a coaching business. As I took on coaching clients and started putting plans in place to teach, I had to determine how much to charge my clients. I had to determine my personal worth. Don’t undervalue yourself or your time.

Beside knowing your hourly rate, you must know how much product you must sell to achieve the income. Continuing with the same example, to make $1923 a week, how much product/services must you be selling a week. This is why pipelining is so important.  This should be fairly easy to figure out when you put a dollar value to your product/services.

3. Determine what stays and what goes

There are four buckets of tasks that I want to talk about.

-Income producing activities

-Delegated tasks

-Time wasters

-Sharpen the Saw

My life changed when I did an exercise pulled from the one of the best selling books, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The 15 Minute Miracle. I examined my time for a week based on 15 minute increments. It didn’t take me but two days to start seeing a trend, I was doing it all wrong. I was all over the place and had no clear vision for the day. Everything was task oriented.

What happens when we don’t manage our time well? We live stressed, burned out, always drinking from a fire hose or in crisis management.

Income producing activities

A majority of your time should be spent on income producing activities. Activities that get you closer to your income goal. For me in my businesses it is prospecting new clients I can serve, serving current clients, teaching classes, creating curriculum. My focus everyday is to provide value or serve for my current clients and potential clients. etc.

Delegated tasks

Which tasks do you delegate? This goes back to knowing your value. Could you be delegating or simplifying tasks? You must determine what you should be delegating out so you can focus on income producing activities. For the example above, if you can pay some one less than your hourly wage to do some some tasks you are generating more income for yourself if you use your skills to make more money. Say you pay someone $10 an hour to do some administrative tasks because your worth is $48. You just made $38 additional dollars based on using your time more wisely. You can do everything on line now.

Time Wasters

Where do you waste time? Have you taken time to plan your week so you can minimize time wasters? Use services, pre-plan errands, waiting in lines, minimizing driving times etc. Spending too much time going out with friends, shopping, spending money, binging on TV when we should be spending time making money.

Sharpen the Saw

Take time between difficult tasks to recharge. Physical, mental, social, and spiritual.  Take time for yourself. If you are going full speed all the time with no plan, you will burn out. Take time to workout, read, write, have lunch with a friend, meditate, take a nap. Work it into your schedule especially after you complete a hard task like prospecting. Make it a reward!

I hope this has been helpful for you. Please comment any great takeaways or questions you may have. If you would like to go through some of theses exercises together, let’s schedule a complimentary coaching session. It would be my pleasure to serve you. Send me an email at Valerie@thebloomrevolution.com or sign up for a free consultation on my website at the www.thebloomrevolution.com

Keep Blooming!

Are you ready to sell more, achieve financial freedom, and live your dream life?

My name is Valerie Garrison and I’m a Sales Performance Coach and Trainer. I help clients improve their mindset in sales through one on one coaching and training, so that they can sell more, achieve financial freedom, and receive their dream life.

Let’s get connected!