by Jason Linett
Take better care of yourself. Give yourself permission to be respectfully greedy with your time. Make time to be with family and friends. Make time to exercise and eat right. Have a life outside of work.
Life isn’t just about money. Time is one of those things that if you don’t spend it wisely, you don’t get to enjoy the benefits of it in the future. Leverage your schedule to have full control of your time. You’ll be better able to enjoy your finances, your family, and even your own health.
When I made my theatrical exit and entrepreneurial entrance, I was hungry. I stood in an empty office having signed a big lease with the conviction that there wasn’t an option to fail. I was going to make it work. I positioned myself without an exit strategy. I took on every opportunity I could find. If a client needed an 8:30 a.m. appointment, I scheduled it at that time. If they needed 9:00 p.m. in the evening, I arranged my schedule to accommodate their needs .
I was spending all my time at the office working with a ton of clients. Business was rapidly growing. In spite of the financial success, I lost track of relationships with friends, and I gained about twenty pounds. I was running my business life like a horse with blinders.
That was before I had children. My wife was commuting long hours for a job at the time, so even though our schedules matched up, something had to change. I had to take control of my time. I had to balance it out.
I shifted my schedule to lock in specific office hours. Rather than “whenever you want,” I decided that I would only see four people a day. The schedule became a rigid 10 a.m., 12 p.m., 2 p.m., or 4 p.m. option. If someone told me that 3:30 worked best for them, I’d offer my 4 p.m. timeslot. If they asked about weekends or evening appointments, I reiterated my weekday business hours. My initial fear was that doing this would push my clients away. I saw a completely opposite reaction. Many more people were now booking with me. If at first glance my hours were not ideal, they would call me back to update that they had shifted their schedules to accommodate me! Remember, there’s no such thing as finding the time. There’s making the time. They shifted their thinking to realize the importance of achieving their goal and made the time to work specifically with me. Perhaps balance is viral? As I created balance in my life, they created it in theirs .
Pay yourself first with your time. Pay yourself first with your health. Health is one of those things that if we don’t care for it now, we don’t get to enjoy it as much in the future. I can draw a direct correlation between the quality of my family life and my business and the quality of my health. Everything in life improved when I changed my eating habits, eliminated alcohol from my life, and made going to the gym a ritual. I easily tripled my income while I made these changes in my life.
There’s no such thing as finding the time. Finding the time is a game we invented to convince ourselves that there are things we’re too busy to do. If you’re stuck in the “finding the time” game, perhaps it’s time to turn up that burning desire to make something happen. Or maybe it’s not really your burning desire. Let your own family life, personal life, and health also be a burning desire.
Create an incredible business so you can step away from it. Go out with friends. Be there at your kids’ school when they have special events. Take a vacation. Let the business brain have a break. Pay yourself first. Enjoy this gift of being alive.
I stopped working on holidays. If my kids are off from school on a Monday because it’s a federal holiday, I also take the day off. When we’re on vacation, the business calls go either to voicemail or an assistant. Let home be home and let work be work .
In my business, I often ask myself the question of “What is this going to earn me?” rather than “What is this going to cost me?” When my primary video camera died, it was annoying. I had purchased that camera for about $1500 many years ago. It was a reliable machine for at least five years. I had generated hundreds of thousands of dollars with that camera. It didn’t take much to justify spending $3,000 on the next camera; I knew the value it would provide me.
Think this way with your personal life. In spite of the extended “pay yourself first” metaphor from earlier in this chapter, sometimes spending a little money goes a long way. It would take me an entire day to clean my house. Badly. We often pay someone else to come and do it right and in less time. This allows us more meaningful time with our kids or perhaps a night out.
Put down your phone. Engage in conversation. Really experience the world around you. Don’t become a slave to your business by working on holidays, scheduling meetings at odd hours, and exiting the dinner table with your family to take a business call. I’ve developed a greater rapport with my clients by politely telling them I’m not available until a certain time because I’m with my family.
Just like the young actor, this allows you to make a grand entrance. Move back into the business mode with sharper focus and a greater appreciation of the passion that fuels your efforts. You’ll be more refreshed. Your production at work will be greater.
Will business still be on your mind? There will always be passing thoughts. The simple strategy of having an ongoing to-do list simply in the Notes app of my phone allows me to briefly jot down these ideas. Just like financial savings, making a brief note is like making a small investment that will pay a massive dividend later.
The little things in life add up. Make your bed. Clean out your car. Do something good for your health. Donate your time to a good cause. Spend your time enjoying the life you’ve built rather than just working through life. Let your external balance become your internal balance. Sounds like a good trance state, doesn’t it?
Pay yourself first with your time.
WORK SMART ACTION STEPS:
☞ The next section of this book contains tested strategies to take the ten WORK SMART principles you’ve learned and turn them into realities. Before you start implementing the strategies, open your calendar and make time for yourself. Reach out to a friend, go to a concert, or perhaps take your kids outside to play with them.
☞ Go for a walk, let your mind rest, and come back ready to make your next entrepreneurial entrance.
.
WORK SMART STRATEGIES
.
THE WORK SMART BUSINESS SYSTEM
You’ve learned about the concept of building systems to run your business. I’m going to share my favorite system for scaling up my business with you.
Consider these two options for generating new business:
Option #1: You invest a lot of time, energy, and money into a new venture. Several weeks or months are spent crafting the perfect product and marketing materials to inspire people to join you. Time passes, and now your product is ready to launch. You finally put it out to the world, and you receive a surprising reaction.
Nothing. Nobody wants it. Assuming your promotional efforts were effective, perhaps you failed to properly market test to see if people actually wanted what you had to offer.
Option #2: You schedule a class you’d like to teach about six months from now. You could host the event in your own office space, though you’ve called around to local conference centers to screen availability should the attendance grow larger than expected. People start to respond to your offer as they’re now signing up for your event. Your agenda for the course begins to change as the registrants explain their motivation in signing up for your course. The event is a success in your own space, and the profit is high considering the low expense.
Here’s another option #2. Let’s stick with the theme of an event. You schedule a specific “start-up” course as a tripwire for people to experience your service. Somehow your promotion draws a different quality of student than you expected. Rather than inexperienced newbies, you attract people with significant experience. Your starter class morphs into a mastermind group. Perhaps some of these people hire you for your services or buy your products.
And yet another option #2. Your event is getting an incredible response. You book the conference center at the point
of threshold as you’re going to have three times the amount of people in the audience than you had expected.
The best problems in life are the ones we invent ourselves.
It would be a shame to spend hundreds of hours crafting a massive online educational course to then discover it’s something no one needs. This WORK SMART BUSINESS SYSTEM allows you to launch incredible projects in a flexible way to minimize risk. Rather than pour all your efforts into the big product, start with something small. Produce a one-hour training video teaching one key concept. Test the market by selling just this video. Based on the response, you will discover if people really have a need for it.
When in doubt, ask! You will have created a community of people who have bought your single-hour video product. Make contact with them by sending emails, calling them, or create an online survey to discover their greatest needs. Listen to their concerns, and create your big product based on their feedback. You will have already harnessed the power of community. These people will likely be first in line when the bigger system launches.
The WORK SMART BUSINESS SYSTEM is a principle that maximizes productivity and minimizes effort. Start small, listen for feedback, and meet a specific need. It’s just like a relationship. Go out on a few metaphorical “dates” with your audience to make sure things are a match. This strategy drives you to be flexible.
Listen to your audience and build the product that they want. I’m suggesting this system from the assumption that you really do have a product or service that people need. However, take note that I’m suggesting you build the product your audience wants. Their wants and needs are different. Making the offer based on their want will grab their attention and likely result in closed business. Once inside the product, you should absolutely deliver what they’re looking for. This provides the opportunity to leverage the interaction into delivering what they need. This system positions you for the ultimate under-promise over-deliver outcome.
The WORK SMART BUSINESS SYSTEM saves you time and money. In the previous example of a successful event, you’re only scaling up your expenses as the event scales up. For the successful product example, you’re only investing the time and money to build it based on the feedback of people who have already identified themselves as your ideal buyers.
Start with what’s appropriate for your given time and budget. My first hypnosis office was a professional space, but I did not break my budget before the money was rolling in. I put my time, energy, and money toward marketing and promotion, and that’s how I built the business I have today.
WORK SMART ACTION STEPS:
☞ Start with the end in mind. What big goal would you like to achieve? Break it down into smaller, reasonable chunks. Choose a much easier entry point for your market and explore this smaller project to test for your audience’s wants and needs.
☞ Keep in mind the difference between their wants and their needs. Model the language you hear from your potential clients. You will discover the perfect entry point in this market. Think small to earn big.
.
REFRAMING
As a hypnotist, I help people change their minds. This often starts by helping people change their words. It’s a small conscious exercise that may deliver a big unconscious change. Put a different name or alternate set of words on something, and the perspective changes. Shifting perspective words can often make the biggest difference. What happens when “my fear” becomes “that issue” you used to deal with?
I’m going to share with you some examples of what’s called “Reframing” in this chapter. Even though some of the concepts are business related, while others are personal, you may exercise creativity to apply them to any part of your life.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Put a beautiful painting on the wall in an ornate frame in a posh museum. We might call it a masterpiece. Stick the picture in an ugly, broken, dirty frame, and we might just give it another word? Garbage.
The formula for reframing is based on a simple concept. The structure of language is something that people had to invent over time. Through advances in science, the structure of the brain is something we’re learning more about each year. As there’s a disconnect from language to neural activity, it stands that if you change the words you use, you change the perceptions in the mind.
If I told you there was an “aroma” coming from another room, you might imagine delicious smells emanating through the air. If I used the same sentence and, instead, used the word “odor,” different perceptions would come to mind. The strategy of reframing is to create a different way of observing something. Words have power. That’s where we’ll start this journey.
My average day is ruled by the calendar as I schedule appointments with clients for hypnotic success coaching. Sometimes life gets in the way. A client’s child gets sick and needs to be picked up from school. The cold weather and light rain suddenly became a foot of snow. Charles Tebbetts was a legend in the hypnosis world. He’s known for the advice: “Deal with what emerges.” Life happens, so we connect by phone or email to reschedule.
There are clearly exceptions to the above. In spite of automated email appointment reminders, someone just forgets to show up. It’s around 2 p.m., and someone calls to tell me they’re too busy at work to make their 4 p.m. session. Their business is important to them, but, then again, so is mine. Given the typical waiting period for a new client to see me, the time is lost when someone else could have made use of the time. While things are going well in the financial state of my business, the loss of time equates to some loss of income.
Many businesses protect their time with a cancelation fee. Realize that the words, “cancelation fee” convey a very negative message. These words may suggest that “You wasted my time, and now you have to pay for it as a punishment.” This is not the tone I choose to use when communicating with my clients. Maintain the integrity and respect of your business, but mix in some of the golden rules. You might be surprised to learn I dropped the “cancelation fee” from my business. The relationship with my clients dramatically improved as a result of this. However, if they cancel without notice, they still pay for the time.
“But wait a minute, you said you got rid of your cancelation fee!” I hear some of you cry.
I did. It just evolved into something else. It became a “rescheduling policy.” This is, admittedly, a rare issue in the way I run my business, but for the times it becomes an issue, people readily pay the fee and reschedule.
Analyze the words for a moment. “Cancelation” is a harsh word that suggests something is coming to an end. “Fee” conveys the feeling of a penalty. If you call it that, and enforce it as such, you’ll likely damage the relationship you’ve worked so hard to build.
Alternatively, “rescheduling” suggests we’re continuing the process we’ve built. “Policy” suggests it’s something we’ve already agreed to. This policy is clearly explained in advance, so there isn’t a surprise should we need to make use of it in either my hypnosis or business mindset programs.
People call my business asking for “sessions.” We end up arranging a “program.”
My programs don’t have a “cost.” Instead, as I introduce the program, they learn the rates as an “investment.”
We made use of HypnoBirthing for my wife to give birth to our son without pain relief medication. In that program, the author Marie Mongan reframes terms such as “pain” into “pressure” or the experience of a “contraction” into a “surge.” The shift of words changes the perception of the experience.
Use common sense and care when doing this. Reframing a scenario with choice language can be a benefit. It can also become ridiculous. I once had a maintenance issue at an office I rented that the engineers branded as “structural interruption,” “water intrusion,” and “organic growth.” Call it what it is. The foundation was cracked, my walls and carpet were drenched, there was black mold growing behind the walls, and I quickly moved my business out of that space .
&nb
sp; Reframing goes beyond words. Think about a goal you haven’t yet achieved. Have you been holding onto a story as to why it’s not the right time? What if you decided every current conflict was the best reason to make the goal happen even faster?
Apply this concept to your own emotions. Two people are about to walk onto a stage and deliver a presentation. One of them reports that they feel “terrified” to step in front of the audience. The other feels “excited.” They both might be feeling the same physiological sensations. One labels them as fear, while the other puts these feelings to use.
It only took a few moments for an executive I coached to rapidly change her thinking about her health. She used to emotionally eat in response to stress. She soon decided that “Everything is energy. If I’m feeling stress, there’s heightened energy in my body. Food is measured in calories. Calories are just a measurement of energy. If there’s increased energy in my body, I don’t need to add more energy. If I’m feeling more energy, I need to burn away the excess energy.” The mental change occurred in seconds. The emotional eating was gone. She lost the desired weight in a few, short weeks. As an unexpected benefit, she also found her best problem-solving happened as she went for regular walks.
Reframing can be expanded to large organizations. I delivered my corporate keynote to an insurance group that was losing productivity. Their staff had been operating in fear of layoffs, as this was becoming a standard in the industry. The pattern at other organizations was that they were firing full-time employees only to then attempt to rehire the same people as independent contractors based on commission. They feared they’d lose the promise of a steady income and benefit package. These horror stories were playing out across the industry, though not yet within this specific group.