Self-management, key to success
“There’s not enough time in my day.” As a business coach talking with hundreds of business owners, I hear that concern perhaps more than any other.
First, don’t get down on yourself. A Google search of “time management” showed 242 million hits. And that’s just one search engine. Clearly the issue is of concern to a great many.
Second, there’s nothing we can do to change the fact that we all have the same amount of it and we cannot speed it up or slow it down. Therefore, it is how we manage ourselves that separates winners and losers in business.
To put a finer point on it, the most dangerous adversary of business is poor self-management. It is also the danger that most business owners fail to recognize until things are getting out of hand.
Fortunately, there are easy and effective methods for self-management, so you will have more time to focus on the important things for your business’s success and your personal life too.
Three critical parts to managing yourself
- Planning: Many entrepreneurs think it’s gutsy to “fly by the seat of their pants”. As romantic as that sounds, it’s essential to develop a plan that assesses where you are and where you want to go. Make it for at least a year, five would be better. The goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-specific). If you have employees, create the plan with them to get input and gain buy-in. Review your plan at least monthly. While your plan is vitally important, don’t make it a complex, wordy thing. Brevity and clarity are the keys.
- Default calendar: In terms of managing your use of time, one of the most effective tools is to create a calendar of the things you should be doing during the critical hours of each day of the week in order to achieve your goals. “Default calendar” is a schedule of what you return to as quickly as you can following any unavoidable interruptions. It gets you back on track ASAP.
- Weighted Important Task System (WITS): When a conflict arises, WITS helps you separate essential from nonessential activities. Determine the priority of all your activities as one of the following:
—Urgent and important: All emergencies are urgent and important. But if you focus all your efforts on crisis management, you will take yourself away from your long-term goals.
—Not urgent and not important: Face it, if you really don’t know what is not urgent and not important in your line of work, you are very lucky or spending down your inheritance…
—Important but not urgent: These activities directly move your plan forward. They also offer you a choice: The less effort you devote to them, the less you stay focused on your own goals and future.
—Urgent but not important: You can’t ignore Email, phone calls, meetings. However, you do have a choice as to how to address them, instead of having them run your life. The more effort you devote to urgent but not important issues, the more you are like a hamster on an exercise wheel.
The choice is yours
The three steps to managing yourself are creating a SMART business plan, establishing a default calendar and keeping your WITS about you. The success of your business and life is in your hands. If you don’t manage yourself, you let others define your future and your fate. Taking responsibility for self-management gives you the power to make the best use of the time you have.
Take the first step and attend one of our upcoming profit building seminars.
To get started today click the link above. We look forward to helping you grow your business and making the kind of money you always thought possible.
TESS makes music for five years
TESS makes music for five years
By CHRIS BOSAK
This year’s annual Playdown concert put on by students of Norwalk’s Talent Education Suzuki School (TESS) will take on extra meaning.
More than 150 TESS students, aged 3 to 19, will help the local company mark a business milestone by playing in a Fifth Anniversary Celebration Concert at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 7 at the Norwalk Concert Hall. The students will play instruments such as violin, piano, cello, flute and guitar. The concert is free and open to the public.
Rebecca Christopherson, CEO and music director of Norwalk TESS, opened the business in 2005 in the East Avenue United Methodist Church. Later in 2005 the business moved to its current location at 3 Quincy St.
Now that she has surpassed the five-year hump, surviving even the economic doldrums of 2009, Christopherson can now turn her attention to outlining the company’s future.
“Having made it five years, the vision for the future of the school is crystal clear,” she said. “In the first five years you are experimenting a lot and figuring out what the clients want. Now we have a clear idea of where the school is going.”
One area Christopherson and TESS of Norwalk will concentrate on expanding and improving is the school’s elective offerings. Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, Christopherson had a university venue where she could expand her musical talents and feed her musical interests. That type of venue, she said, is lacking in the area.
“We’re offering creative electives, as if we are the university. You can take musical history, jazz piano, electric violin — any number of supplemental activities that doesn’t replace your core lessons with private teachers. It’s a way to be able to try other things and expand your musical experience. It’s a very novel idea for around here.”
Another key to her company’s success, she said, is sticking to the game plan. Many companies will do whatever a customer wants, but compromise quality in the process, she said. Sticking to the TESS philosophy has kept her business moving forward.
“The biggest reason we’ve been successful is hard work. It’s a commitment to what we do. We know what we do and we know what we don’t do,” she said. “The Suzuki method requires parental involvement. If a parent doesn’t want to be involved, we recommend other places — and there are good ones out there. It would dilute our program if we tried to do things we don’t do.”
Brian Griffin, vice president of the Greater Norwalk Chamber of Commerce, said sticking to the company’s standards has served Christopherson and TESS well.
“Becki and the team at TESS have done a phenomenal job in growing their business and achieving a position of high esteem within the realm of music instruction,” Griffin said. “They approach the school with a focused business mentality, while still maintaining a very creative and educational atmosphere. A true gem in our community.”
Christopherson also credited her work with Jim Malski of Action Coach, a Westport-based business consulting company, with helping guide TESS in the early stages.
“That gave us a grip on the financials,” she said. “We had the musical aspect, but it’s a business and there are true costs involved with having a business. Jim was helpful in putting a system in place to run a business.”
Christopherson has also immersed herself in the Norwalk business and arts communities. She is active with the Chamber of Commerce, Norwalk Arts Commission, Suzuki Association of America and is a board member with the American String Teachers Association.
“If I want my music business to thrive in Norwalk, it behooves me to want the community to have a strong cultural connection,” Christopherson said.
She passes that sense of involvement on to her students. Once a month TESS students play a free concert within the community at places such as the Norwalk Senior Center and Stepping Stones Museum for Children.
One of the highlights of her first five years in business was an experience that proved her students are taking a sense of community to heart. As Christmas approached, a Jewish family with two children enrolled in TESS asked Christopherson if she knew of a place where they could play on Christmas Day. On the holiday, five TESS students played at a senior center in Stamford.
” I was so pleased that they embraced that principle of giving back,” Christopherson said. “They saw how much their music touched others.”
Are you ready to make a change?
To make a difference in your business you have to change the way you do things. It begins by attending one of our upcoming profit building seminars. Come see how you can take your business to the next level just like TESS.
To get started today click the link above. We look forward to helping you grow your business and making the kind of money you always thought possible.
Business Seminars
Sign Up for our one of our FREE Business Seminars.
Simply click the link below to get started.
Use Promotional Code "ActionBlog" for FREE registration.
-
