The Perils of Distraction
Hey there entrepreneurs,
Welcome to the Better Business Brief, where I share takeaways from:
- running a business I’m building to sell for millions
- my consulting with business owners building to sell for millions
- tips and tricks you can use to do the same
I like to write about what’s on my mind, and today there’s something on it that we all face and deal with. One of the major dangers of entrepreneurship is the potential for distractions to take you off course from what you SHOULD be working on.
So today, in less than 5 minutes, I’ll give you:
📈 The Stages of Changing Availability
😀 HOW to Politely Protect Your Time
💸 WHY It’s Essential to Your Success
|
As an entrepreneur, life is fun because I see opportunity around every corner. As an entrepreneur, it’s hard to stay focused because I see opportunity around every corner.
Because of this, every potential new opportunity is a chance to be thrown off course from the main mission. Here’s been my experience though - in the very early stages of my entrepreneurial journey, I didn’t really know what I wanted at all. I knew I wanted to be a business owner. I knew I wanted to be successful, and knew I had a lot of ambition, but didn’t know WHAT I wanted to do. Because of this, I made myself available.
While working my main job, I did little odd jobs to get my foot in the door, like website design, or email marketing, or even helping someone not very tech-savvy create digital invoices. I wan’t paid well to do this stuff compared to my main gig, but I was learning. Not just developing skills, but also learning more about what kind of work I did and didn’t want to do.
Eventually, this lead itself to my first startup opportunity. I realized at a point that I needed to keep my focus on this one thing to push it forward. This was tough, because the thing that had gotten me to “Point A” of this project was being incredibly available and generous with my time. However, I had to realize that I wasn’t going to get to the next point with that same approach. We kept building this company over a couple of years, and what I realized is that with some of the success I was having came requests from people who wanted to learn for my time.
My natural inclination is to want to meet and talk to anyone who has the entrepreneurial spirit, but I realized pretty quickly that every minute I “gave away” was time away from my business, my friends, and my family. This is a slippery slope for those like me who just love the game and love to work.
Flash forward a bit, I am again dealing with another level of this slippery slope. Everything I am building right now hinges on finding and capitalizing on new opportunities. But if I chase every one without any focus, I will get nowhere. On top of this, my social media traffic has taken off, so I get dozens of messages or comments every day requesting my time or asking questions.
Here’s the thing though - I didn’t and still don’t want to block out those a few steps behind looking for guidance or help. I don’t think you HAVE to when you get busy. But you do have to have new rules.
Here are 3 polite ways I’ve found to protect your time when you have a lot of requests for it.
1. Create content that answers common questions you get: |
For those willing to be on camera, this can be videos. For those who don’t like being on camera, it can even just be articles like this. The benefit of this is that when you get asked the same questions over and over again that require complicated answers to be answered well, you can direct the asker of the question to a particular piece of content you’ve made. I’ve done this many times, and people actually appreciate it. Here’s why: if you make the content well, and make it short and to the point, it is actually a better use of the other person’s time too, and they will feel that.
2. Focus on the executers; not the tire-kickers: |
I’ve found that there are many people who go around looking for advice, but never take any. For anyone who values GIVING advice, this is our worst nightmare. Because if we not only took a big chunk of our time to answer some questions, but it also made zero impact, we know we’ve just wasted our time (our most valuable resource). I can now recognize these people immediately by one quality - they ask completely general questions or just ask to “pick your brain.” What I do to sort them out is I give a little micro-task or ask a clarifying question before giving the advice, because it saves everyone time. A micro-task might be after someone asks a general question, asking them to go research a little more and come back with a more specific ask. OR if someone just asks to “get coffee” or “pick your brain” or “connect”, now I ask “what did you have in mind”? It’s a really simple question but it helps me gauge whether they are serious or are just going to waste my time.
A friend of mine pushed me to do this recently. I had always been a little at odds with charging for my time, because like I said before, I was willing to give it away for free before. But the thing that he told me is that he knows people would pay a certain amount for some intentional consulting time. He knew this because his mother is an experienced business owner who people pay $750/hour for consulting packages with. And often times they just want to talk through their issues and get a little guidance. This opened my eyes a lot, because I don’t like the idea of not being able to help people, but this is a way to help protect my time as I do it. I see many business owners struggle with their time, and I think for those that genuinely have a lot to offer, this is a really viable solution.
All of this might seem a little extreme. It would have to me before I ever dealt with these challenges, but I see so many aspiring young entrepreneurs hop from thing to thing because of this. They can’t stay locked in on the one thing. Or they can’t say no to requests for their time that aren’t driving the needle. This isn’t a challenge that goes away either.
As I have gotten further in my entrepreneurial journey, it hasn’t just gotten a little harder. It has gotten dramatically harder. This is because the opportunities get more attractive and the people that want my time get more interesting. Protecting your time is a skill that you must continue to hone and develop, getting better and better. Otherwise, you will not be able to build on your success.
As I bring this edition to a close, I’ll leave you with a piece of homework. Protect your time in one way that makes you slightly uncomfortable or out of your element in the next week. See what it does for you. Then keep building on it. You’ll thank yourself later.
In the meantime, if you’ve been following along, and are curious where I’m at with building my private equity company from scratch, I did a video recently where I explain how Private Equity funds make money and what our personal strategy is. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/kN3BmNP2xbM
Be great. Keeping growing and aspiring. And as always: I hope you got something from this.
If you did, share it with a friend who may too, as this is the best way for me to grow it and make this better.
They can even sign up here :)
Happy value-building to all of you!
See you next time for Better Business Brief,
-Brody
