 Now are you guys ready to get started all right so let's talk about how to grow your business while you are busy with client work my name is Nathan Ingram I am for Birmingham Alabama just a couple of hours over Atlanta is my second word camp home I've been organizer for word camp Birmingham for several years now WP y'all we have the best hashtag ever right also WP y'all comm the website is up we're gonna be the second weekend of August if any of you guys want to drive over to Birmingham it's a great camp a lot smaller than this but I think the content is excellent so I am the host at I themes training we do WordPress education there have for many years I tell people it's like being at word camp all year long virtually everything we do is free we do two or three live webinars a week they're just like the word camp talks matter of fact I did 19 word camps last year and one of the things I did was cherry picked the best speakers from the word camps across the country and bring them on to do live webinars on I things training so check us out there at training dot I things dot com I'm also an ambassador for the liquid web partner program both I things in liquid web make it possible for me to be here I am a web business owner have been since 1995 I've been building websites since the internet just first started to walk upright that's when I built and sold my first project way back then and for a little over five years now I've been a business coach for WordPress freelancers so it's a passion of mine actually my first coaching client is sitting right there Mr. Debraun good to have him over here so I mentioned the book yes so let's do this when it comes to productivity I'm an expert at least by the definition of Dr. Niels Bohr who said an expert is a person who has by his own painful experience found out all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field so by that definition I'm absolutely an expert it's funny this talk actually gave last weekend at work camp Orange County as well and this issue right here of productivity has been the one that has kicked my butt for the first quarter of this year I think it's ironic that I'm giving this talk twice within a week so I'm you know I share that with you to say look this is a struggle it's a real struggle how many of you struggle being productive in your business so we come to word camps and we learn some great things and here's what I have to tell you you are not alone how many of you work with clients that is your thing you're doing something work with WordPress and clients excellent so how many of you have it all together one person yes Michelle you should get to know Michelle in the back she's got a talk later called how to have it all together in your WordPress business so here's the challenge when you come to a group like this and you meet a lot of great people they all seem like they're doing great they have this great persona that they're exhibiting and you look at them and you think they don't have the problems I have they don't deal with problem clients they don't struggle with revenue that does like this they don't struggle with being productive personally they've got everything together and what I've learned is that that is garbage we all face the same challenges in five years of coaching freelancers hundreds of conversations with freelancers male and female across the United States and Canada around the world I've discovered that there are no unique issues or at least very few unique issues now the details may be a little different but the core issues are the same many people in the WordPress space are one more bad client away from calling it quits there one more bad month away from throwing in the towel into shame because most of these frustrations are fixable by good systems and processes including some of the personal productivity habits that I'm going to talk about today by the way if you are struggling if you've come to this word camp and in a room that with as many people in it chances are there at least a few of you who've come to this word camp as a lifeline and you're thinking I don't know if I'm going to be able to continue this I don't know I'm tired of the struggles with clients I'm tired of the revenue going up and down I'm tired of all these things listen I say this very very sincerely I am here for you this weekend I come to these word camps to spend time with you to help you fix these problems because I am a passionate advocate of owning your own business being in control of your own destiny and using the wonderful tool of WordPress to empower whatever the priorities you have set for your life okay now I think has made that possible and liquid web has made that possible so thank them I think is liquid web company liquid web as a booth out there there we're a global sponsor this year they've made it possible for me to be here with you so I'm dead serious when I say this find me and let's talk just walk up and say hi and let's talk about the challenges that you're facing in your business and maybe I can help I'm here for you okay alright so here's what we're going to talk about today in the next 35 minutes or so the common struggle that we all face when it comes to productivity then we're going to spend some time understanding that problem a bit and developing a strategy to deal with that issue and last of all just a few suggestions from my own personal experience and failure of trying to do this myself okay so by the way if you are taking pictures slides you're welcome to do that or you can just go to this link Nathan ingram dot com slash WC ATL that's the hashtag for this event you can download all the slides as well as the tool this is very important if for no other reason that I'm going to give you a tool in the middle of this to help with your productivity it's a download it's free it's at that link okay so you can go there also liquid web has made it possible for me to give away two free one-on-one coaching sessions to anybody that signs up for free as a liquid web partner you can find out more about that at the table so if I can help you one-on-one they're gonna pay for that that's pretty awesome right okay so let's talk about the common struggle one of the issues that everybody who does any kind of business experiences is the struggle between strategy and execution now the execution are the things we do the strategy is the why and how we do it there's a lot of talks this weekend at word camp about the execution you got to know the SEO techniques right you got to know the PHP and JavaScript you got to know the plugins and all of those things you got to know this but here's what I've discovered a lot of people who go into WordPress as a freelancer and those of you who are freelancers here see if this sounds like you you go into business as a freelancer you love to do the WordPress thing you love to build websites for clients you get all nerded out into the tech and that's awesome and then about a year in you realize oh my gosh I have a business now and there's a whole other set of problems not only do you have to know the tech you got to know the strategy you got to know the why behind the what right and so we hit a wall it's predictable 18 months roughly and just about every freelance life how many of you hit that wall you've been a freelancer you hit that wall yeah me too so I want to spend some time in the first part of this talk putting some terminology to a struggle that I believe everybody in business of really any kind especially freelancers faces so both of these things are critical execution and strategy now here's the thing we all understand I mean you're reasonably intelligent people like Chris said earlier you're either insane or you're awesome for being here to tech conference on a Saturday we understand the need for strategy we understand that we need to be more efficient more productive more profitable we get that we understand how those things connect but it's the doing of the strategy the actually executing of the strategy on a weekly basis that gets messy right it gets tough that's why we go to a conference we pick up great ideas and we do nothing with them because we get stuff going on right so how many of you this is what I keep pointing to there as though there's slides here how many of you this is what your strategy looks like you are steadily improving over time steadily improving mark is steadily improving y'all can go to his talk later called steadily improving or does your productivity world look more like something similar to this yes right so we do okay and then we backtrack and we go around we get caught in the twists and turns for many of us we just get busy we get distracted we get distracted by old habits and we're backtracking and we're back to where we started why is it so hard to keep strategy in focus I mean you read a great book you read a great blog post you come to a word camp you listen to a webinar you find some amazing things that you know you need to learn the know you need to do things you know you need to put in to install into your business how many of you this morning have learned something in business or some tech thing that you know you need to do next week how many of you're going to do it right okay so we have a list of changes that we need to make usually that never seems to get shorter the list of things to accomplish that's always getting longer so what are you going to do with all the cool stuff that you learn this weekend at word camp what happens when you get home we tend never to put it into practice but why is that it's not that you didn't have good intentions it's not that the presenter wasn't awesome it's not that the author of the book wasn't awesome it's that you start thinking about putting them into practice and then life gets in the way right you get to your desk and there's 15 emails from clients the phone rings you have family stuff that goes along three months later no change whatsoever that sound familiar yeah me too so I want to put a word around this concept and it is whirlwind the whirlwind the whirlwind is the thing that keeps us from getting strategy done now let's spend a little bit of time understanding this concept of whirlwind we need to know what we're up against we need to know our enemy what is the whirlwind now the working definition we're going to use here is that the whirlwind is the energy and attention needed to run your business the whirlwind is the urgent the whirlwind is the 14 emails from clients that are waiting on you when you get into your office in the morning all with demands things for things that have to be done by noon you've been there it's the customer call that happens right when you were just about to work on your own website for a change it's the one hour meeting with a client that stretches into three and takes up the rest of your afternoon to sound familiar okay you come to your desk with the best of intentions it's going to be a day where I finally get to work on my stuff finally get some strategy accomplished and it lasts about ten minutes because the whirlwind showed up now it's been hours and hours and seminars and webinars and all these things and I've filled my brain with things that need to be done but never get done because I let the whirlwind get in the way now here's the problem the goals and the strategy are important we understand that but the whirlwind is the urgent and there's an astute statement that the Franklin Cubby Corporation maybe if you guys know of Franklin Cubby all the old-timers remember the Franklin Day planner anybody use that and then this is Stephen Cubby of the habits of highly effective people Franklin Cubby company says when urgency and importance clash urgency wins every time every time right and it does doesn't it every single time because it's urgent or perceived to be urgent that's a whole other talk urgency wins every time so when it comes to our own strategy and goals what do we say I'll do it later tomorrow next week next quarter here's the problem delaying strategy doesn't work because when you say I'll do it tomorrow guess what's waiting on you tomorrow the whirlwind when you say oh we'll get to that next week what happens what's waiting on you next week the whirlwind exactly and we never seem to learn that lesson now before you get the wrong idea about the whirlwind the whirlwind isn't bad okay the whirlwind is not bad it just is what it is the whirlwind is your business it's your work if you don't have the whirlwind you'd have nothing to be strategic about okay so it's not bad it just is what it is it's a fact of life you've got to realize this and take this concept of whirlwind into account while you're trying to grow your business we have to accept it and figure out some sort of strategy to move our businesses forward recognizing the reality of the whirlwind are you with me okay so let's talk about taming the whirlwind how do you get the whirlwind under control you need a plan you got to have a plan if you're a freelancer if you're a web business owner I'm gonna take it for granted that you're a smart person if you're here on a Saturday to tech conference I'm going to take it for granted that you understand the concepts and you have some reasonable level of discipline the challenge is not accomplishing goals the challenge is how do I accomplish my goals in the middle of the whirlwind because without a plan the whirlwind always wins it just does without a plan the whirlwind wins every time why because urgency wins every time and you've seen that happen right over and over week after week I go into the week with the greatest of intentions the whirlwind kicks my butt and I have nothing done strategically by the end of the week okay I told you there were no unique issues right how many of you face exact exactly that okay so here's the plan three parts it's easy to follow it's easy to understand it's harder to follow okay you're gonna start with an initial planning meeting with your own self we're gonna follow that up with some weekly planning and then weekly execution that's it one first meeting a weekly planning meeting and a weekly execution this works whether you're on a team or whether you are a solopreneur it works whether you own your own business or if you're an employee this works all the way around you're gonna start with an initial planning meeting that is two hours unplugged now let me emphasize the fact unplugged and I realize that's weird at a tech conference okay matter of fact the downloads I give you I used to make those a fillable PDF and I stopped doing that and I'll explain why in a little while you need to be completely unplugged you need to turn off the screens because this is what I learned after lots of years of doing this wrong you know where the whirlwind lives on the screen phone email Slack Twitter you name it right we have 1800 points of access into our life that we let things into so my suggestion is for this first initial planning meeting with yourself turn off screens turn off your phone go to some place where you can easily concentrate now for some of you that may be a stimulating environment like a coffee shop or some of the stuff going on or you may be the kind of person where you need to be alone isolated you know sitting on your deck and everything's quiet or somewhere like in a library or whatever go somewhere that you do not work don't try to do this in the office space where you normally work go somewhere else it's amazing what that little shift does to your mind get a notebook and a pen or if you're afraid of commitment a pencil and you're going to do some things take some time to let the whirlwind calm down in your mind that's a critical and you got to schedule this the scheduling of it and the actual having the meeting with yourself is as I've coached people through this process one of the hardest things and you I promise you you have to put this on the calendar with an alert or two to remind you to do this because otherwise the client work comes up the client work comes up and if the plan I'm gonna do this on Friday afternoon from 2 to 4 p.m. I'm gonna have this meeting with myself and a client calls and says I need to meet with you Friday afternoon you can't because you already have a meeting scheduled with your most important client yourself okay it's got to be scheduled so here's what you're gonna do two hours two tasks you got it two hours two tasks task number one is you're gonna identify the issues task number two you're gonna plan some action items here's how this works first thing you're gonna do in this two-hour meeting is identify some issues you need to ask yourself a very difficult question what are the changes that I need to make today to improve my business what are some things I need to improve today to improve my business what are the things that bring the most immediate impact now this is critical to the process immediate impact is important because anytime you're establishing new habits you need to have little wins that build momentum how many of you've learned that since December I dropped 80 pounds and I've learned that process that process was the result of little small changes micro habits that I could continue repeat every day okay and this is the same way you got to do some make some changes that are going to bring immediate impact to your business because the momentum that you get from small changes is whirlwind repellent it keeps the whirlwind away at least in your mind now the other thing I'll tell you is this the changes that you need to make that are gonna bring the most immediate impact you ready for this are probably not things you're gonna enjoy doing because you would have done them already right so pick pick you're gonna pick the top three prioritize them what are the things I need to do today they're gonna bring the most immediate impact to my business be honest with yourself and pick the top three the three most important things now the second thing you do in that planning meeting is some action items you're gonna look at those three items the three things you don't need to do today to bring immediate impact to your business you're gonna break those things down into action items are gonna take you two to four hours to complete there's a reason for that I'll get to it in a minute you got two-hour meeting two tasks task number one pick out your top three issues task number two break those issues down into two to four-hour action items are you with me everybody together you got it so far this is not hard to understand it's hard to do here's a tool and we're gonna try to swap to a different screen and see this again you can download this tool at Nathan Ingram comm slash WCATL the hashtag for this event you'll find the download for these slides and the tool there and did this just work no it did not okay let's try this again let's go out look at that awesome okay so this is a very simple little worksheet that I use in my coaching program which is called advanced and how many of you have heard the term smart goals smart goals right so smart as an acronym for specific measurable attainable or actionable depending on who you listen to relevant and time-bound without all five of those pieces it's not really a goal it's not a good goal it's not a smart goal for sure so this first page here is this is the printable I'm gonna skip down for our purposes to the next one which is an example so you can't see that at all let's zoom in all right so in this example our hypothetical person who is filling out this particular worksheet realizes that I need to have recurring revenue in my business to be stable how many of you've learned that hard lesson I talked about that I think last year here you got to have recurring revenue it starts with the WordPress maintenance plan centered around a great host and it also includes other things like for example a social media service so here is the specific part of this goal I need to create a social media services service to create and manage social properties and content for my clients that's specific it's answering the question what do I really want to accomplish and you're answering questions like who what when where and how it's the details of the goal that goes in that first box then we're gonna move into the measurable piece how do I know I'm making progress you think about how much and how many well I'm gonna start with Facebook then maybe consider adding interest Instagram and Pinterest then we're gonna move to the attainable piece is this a goal I can actually achieve sometimes your goal is so abstract it's not ever something you could take action on all right so it needs to be actionable attainable so at this point you're you know maybe some next steps or what are the obstacles in the way it's attainable but I need to understand Facebook ads I need to develop a template for social marketing I need to figure out a good platform for management all right then we move into the relevancy piece this is critical this is the piece of the goal that most people leave out and it's why in my opinion many goals fail because you fail to connect the goal to real life and say why it's important why is this goal important how does it fit in the rest of my business in life I am doing this so that what I'm doing this social media service because I need to offer more than just website creation services and adding a social media management service is key to building that recurring revenue that's gonna stabilize the rest of my world that's why it's important now the relevancy is important because when the whirlwind starts to spin this is where you remind yourself I am I have to do this so that I can get this thing out and build recurring revenue are you with me okay and last of all time bound when will this goal be completed because a goal without a deadline is just an idea so put a date on it I'll have it ready by April the 30th now that's typical smart goal right we've if you've seen smart goals this is very typical now I've taken it one step further because over here in the right hand column I like to phrase my goals in terms of a declaration it's like taking your goal and saying I will I will do this and I've given you a little formula I will some combination of the stuff in specific and measurable by the time bound piece because or so that the relevancy piece here's what this looks like for phrases a smart goal I will create a social media management service for my clients using Facebook by Marks the 31st because it's a key to building recurring revenue in my business that makes sense that's a good goal it's measurable it's time down and you know what I'm gonna do with that I'm gonna print that thing out in a 112 point font and put it right in front of me on my wall I will because this other thing is important to me and as I sit down at my desk every day and the whirlwind is I'm being tempted by the whirlwind to get distracted doing some other things I know I've got this time I've got to get this done I've got to get this done and it's important because I have to build that recurring revenue does that make sense all right now the next thing I mean this is the goal generator I'm suggesting that in that initial planning meeting with yourself you fill out three of these you pick your top three things you know you need to change and you phrase them in terms of a smart goal can you do that if you'll do this you'll move forward I promise you I'm not saying this is the only way I'm just saying it is a way that I've coached people through over the last several years and it totally works three items three goal generators now the other thing I told you to do was plan action items two to four hour action items and there's a second page of the packet you can download that's the goal manager that lets you flush these things out so you state your goal here's some spaces I'm gonna move on just for the sake of time but down here at the bottom is where you can write in action items they're gonna take you two to four hours to complete you got it so in that first meeting with yourself use these worksheets print them out if you find a better way fine use it it's not about those worksheets this is just boxes on a page right but you want to have three things you need to do and some action items broken down that's the big picture everybody can do that now let's get back into this one of the twists where people fall off in this model is we have the first meeting we get our goals set and never do anything else just like always never do it was a great idea I got some stuff on paper nothing ever changes you must you must you must before you start your week plan your week how many of you plan your week before it starts awesome so whenever that happens for me it's usually Friday afternoons usually clients don't call on Friday afternoons they're thinking about their weekend too and Friday afternoons generally speaking is when I stop and I plan the week ahead and I do some strategy work I'm gonna give you a little some format for this in a minute but whenever it is maybe it's Sunday evenings for you maybe it's early Monday mornings the point is before you hit your chair on Monday morning make sure the week is planned out because guess what happens as soon as you hit your chair on Monday morning the whirlwind is waiting on you you turn on 15 emails being two texts I hope you're not letting your clients text you that's a whole other that's a whole other talk we know we have to do this because without a plan the whirlwind always wins because the whirlwind is waiting on you to open your email on Monday morning to totally wipe out your plan if you don't have one okay so that weekly planning takes usually a half an hour it's not hard you get better at it as you go and during this weekly planning what you're gonna do is take one of those action items one of those two to four hour action items and you're gonna look at your calendar and you are going to schedule time that week to get it done so let's just say you've learned something cool at word campus this weekend and you know hey I need to do this in the next you know three weeks and you can break it down into four simple two to four hour things that you can do and over that time you'll have the thing done and before the week starts you're gonna plan okay you know what this week let's see how things look appointments here and there Wednesday afternoon I can schedule three hours to do this thing so I'm gonna put that on the calendar it's an appointment if a client calls and wants to talk or meet with me on Wednesday afternoon I'm not available you wouldn't cancel another client appointment to meet with a different no you are your most important client so it's scheduled it's on the calendar with a reminder and you stop you have to stop what you're doing and actually do the thing it's got to be on the calendar so plan that time to execute at least one action if you can do more schedule more maybe it's a light week so maybe you can do more strategy but just schedule it now here's the way in a very oversimplified manner this is the way I look at my week I break down my week every day of the week into three blocks there's a morning and afternoon and evening brilliant right okay brilliant so my family gets one the highest priority for me in this world is my family it's most important thing my family always gets one piece of my day so if I'm on a deadline and I have to work morning afternoon evening guess what my family gets paid back one block you know so if I'm working late one day maybe I take half a day off later that week to pay my family back I look at in a big picture this is how I'm going to block out my time here's like a typical oversimplified week with the whirlwind concept so Mondays the whirlwind lives on Mondays how many of you figured that out 88 support tickets came in this weekend so Monday you know in this week hey we're gonna sit we're gonna spend all day long just dealing with whirlwind stuff dealing with client requests whatever it gets in Monday night I'm with my family Tuesday hey we got a project we're working on we're building a website for a client and I'm gonna spend Tuesday afternoon working on that project if I'm in a project block everything gets turned off email gets turned off my phone gets turned off I'm not reachable during that time so I'm head down doing stuff for the client have you discovered that if you leave your email on and you're trying to focus on client work what happens whenever you get that alert for new email notification we are like Pavlov's dogs the email thing I gotta look at that we have multiple monitors we're looking all over the place or book slack has something has happened in slack we have to stop the world because something has happened in slack right turn all that stuff off your client unless the server goes down which is come on rare right your client can wait two to four hours or whatever it is so block the timeout I'm working on a project that day same for Wednesday again my family's getting even nights so this doesn't happen nearly as much as it used to but when my kids were smaller we homeschool and so a lot of times we'll go and do stuff as a family during the day maybe I'm taking Thursday morning and we're going to some museum or some whatever with the homeschool group I'm gonna take that time be with my kids it's awesome but I'm working that night my family gets one block see how that works now this is dramatically oversimplified but for the purposes of illustration there you go now Friday look at Friday there's a strategy block it's red Friday afternoon nothing gets scheduled Friday afternoon because that's the time when I am doing strategy for my business that's the time when I'm going to execute on a two to four hour action item one or more of those things and nothing gets scheduled during that time this is not hard to understand is it it's hard to do it's hard to make yourself do it that's the hard part so notice that the whirlwind can be contained it can be contained if you'll just put some good productivity habits in place now Adam right here Adam with the hat Adam is giving a talk tomorrow you guys should totally go to on productivity where he's going to talk about the more internal personal side is that right so make sure you look at Adam's talk when is it tomorrow 10 a.m. in this room on tomorrow so come back and hear that so just using some good techniques of time blocking again oversimplified look at that but it's there scheduling your phone and email time how many of you when your client calls no matter what you're doing you stop and pick up the phone and we call it we pat ourselves on the back it's great customer service it's terrible productivity habits terrible product or if the client sends you an email you reply right back no matter what else is going on we pat ourselves on the back wonderful customer service when in fact you have trained your client by that habit of expecting a reply from you immediately that is not sustainable as you grow it's not sustainable I've even gotten to where if a client if I happen to be doing email and an email comes in I will actually delay the sending of that email and pause the send for a few hours sometimes hope my clients aren't watching this video just thought about that anyhow so yes use uh totally if you're trying to run client support out of your inbox stop it today that's a whole other talk but yeah get those things out of your inbox you can focus on what matters all right so in the weekly execution time this is that red time I just showed you on that illustration two to four hours schedule a time don't compromise it maybe for a real emergency and it needs to be a real emergency a client needing something done is not usually a real emergency a client needs an image changed on their website can wait till tomorrow morning don't break your schedule you are more important than any of your clients if a client calls and you're trying to do strategy time don't stop doing what you're doing and pick up the phone if you are meeting with another client and another client called you would you walk away from your client meeting and take a call from another client that's insane so don't do it when you're dealing with your most important client which is yourself don't compromise the time all right now initial planning meeting two hours two tasks identify the issues and break them down into action items each week we're going to plan time to execute each one of those action items and then actually get it done now roughly every quarter you should have probably executed on those three items and so roughly every quarter ish repeat the process sit down with yourself again make a list of all the things that need to be done in your business or look at what you had from before make sure the priorities still fall in line and pick three more things you repeat that every there's a great book by the way called 12 week year if you haven't read that highly recommend it kind of gets into a quarterly planning process like this you repeat it every quarter it is a simple process to understand it's harder to execute but you simply have to say no i'm not going to let my life be ruled by the whirlwind i'm going to put some control around it and you can actually start to move your business forward so let's let's wrap up with a few practical suggestions the first and this is from all of my failures okay this is where i've screwed things up you got to prioritize be brutally honest and this is where it's helpful to have a business coach or someone as chris said earlier this morning someone who's okay with calling you stupid to your face you got to have some of those friendships in your life and if it's somebody else in the wordpress space or the web space who understands the challenges that we go through having somebody like that that you were that transparent with they can call and let them bounce off your priorities a little bit you got to prioritize because you will always have more goals than you have time you'll always have more goals than you have time that's why you have to focus on the things that build momentum what do you really really need to do because like i said there's a psychology to this do the things that bring immediate impact to build momentum because that's going to pay off franklin cubby company again had this statistic i'm sorry for those of you over here the statistic was if the number of goals you try to accomplish in addition to the chaos of the whirlwind if you have two to three goals to accomplish in addition to the whirlwind you'll accomplish two to three goals if you try to accomplish four to ten goals in addition to the whirlwind you'll accomplish one or two goals if you try to accomplish 11 to 20 first of all you're an insane and you'll accomplish nothing there's only so much time you got to focus on the things that bring immediate impact which means sometimes good ideas have to be put on the shelf that also means that you kind of really you got to look at how you're spending your time and what you're doing because i don't know about you but i understand that many people in the web space will allow a whole morning to go by tinkering with some fancy new tool they found on the web instead of doing what really matters for their business now i'm not sure none of you have that problem but i do sometimes because we're geeks right i mean we that's we enjoy this stuff sometimes good ideas need to be put on a shelf they're there they're on the list we'll get back to them but for now it's not what's going to bring impact to my business does that make sense i've wasted a lot of time tinkering with stuff that really didn't move the yardsticks okay second suggestion from my failures is this you've got to separate your roles particularly if you're a freelancer small business owner agency owner whoever you are you are both a ceo and an employee and you have to wear different hats how many of you wear multiple hats in your business oh yes all right so this is the way i've learned to think about it when i am doing the strategy i am the ceo of my company when i'm the one sitting at the desk executing the strategy i'm an employee now it's a subtle mental change that does this for me and i may be insane maybe this doesn't work for you maybe it does but if i think of myself that way i have a tendency while in the moment to decide i really don't want to do this today i don't know about you i would really rather not be doing this strategy piece i would rather be doing something else but no no no my role sitting in that chair is an employee who has to execute the plan the ceo set last week does that help the things that we do for strategy for our business are oftentimes incredibly difficult and it is easier hear this it's easier to do client work than it is to do sometimes the soul-searching gut-wrenching strategy that our business requires so when you as the ceo get a change of venue a change of scenery to let the whirlwind die down in your mind to figure out the things that really matter that's got to be the priority and when you're sitting in the desk as an employee executing the strategy you don't get to change what's going to happen because you're wearing a different hat okay third thing block your time i referenced this a minute ago in the little chart but you got to block your time it is critical to recognize the best time of day for you to do each kind of task if you can figure this out i'm working on a content piece for this but if you can figure this out it's absolutely it's empowering i realized a while back that in the morning between about eight and ten that is the time when i am innovative and creative and you know i did for years i'd come in sit at my desk and what do you think i did check your email and i squandered the best part of the day on knucklehead stuff when i learned to not look at my email till 10 30 11 o'clock in the morning and spend that high value highest quality time in my own thought space on the stuff that really matters when i'm the most creative and most innovative i'm doing design then i'm building content i'm doing those sorts of things at that time revolutionary now it took me forever to figure this out because i'm an idiot but maybe you figure this out already but take a hard look at the times of day when you do the best you know the certain kinds of work the best when do you do the innovative strategy stuff when are you good to figure out detail problems when should you just be you know it's kind of the down part of the day where you should just be doing knucklehead stuff like responding to client emails and things like that figure that out and you will be able to tame the whirlwind a lot faster because the whirlwind gets a lot smaller because you're more efficient in the moment does that make sense when are you the most energized figure that out also schedule those emails and phone calls schedule them it is clients generally speaking there's one or two clients who pay a lot of money who have access to me at any time and i'll pick up the phone except for strategy times if they call they don't call much but when they do i answer the rest of them we're going to schedule a call they always get voicemail they always get voicemail and we'll call and figure out a callback or have an online calendar system or they send in a support ticket or whatever you're you are not that necessary sometimes we have this in our mind look my client needs to have me right now no they just need to change an image on a blog post and that can wait till tomorrow you know really i mean really right i need to be spending my time doing something else that's more important to move my business forward never ever check your email first thing in the morning the whirlwind lives in your email okay last one this is where i admit the deep hypocrisy in my heart uh taming the whirlwind takes time so you got to give yourself a break there's a great quote that i've found attributed to many people i think it was gk chesterton who has a lot of great quotes the internet says so so you know it must be true anything worth doing is worth doing badly at first and i love that quote anything worth doing is worth doing badly at first it takes time to establish habits so i mentioned at the very beginning of this talk that i the issue that has kicked my butt more than any for the first quarter of this year is this very issue of strategy and productivity i my client the the client part of my time spun out of control completely spun out of control this first quarter i'm behind on stuff i'm never behind on stuff i'm behind on things there's way too many demands i'm stressed out i'm working at night way more than i should my wife is keeping a tally well i'll have to pay these nights back um which is fine i blew it royally which i think is just you know in providence really funny that i gave this talk last weekend in orange county i gave it once this week on i themes training and i'm giving it here today so three times in one week i'm giving this talk reminding myself you can't and as a result i've made some strategic changes in my business to deal with that but my point in telling that story is this i've been teaching this and coaching this for years and i screwed it up this past quarter screwed it up completely it's easy to do so give yourself a break pick yourself up and figure out okay i made a mess what's next what do i learn from that how do i do it better next time it's okay anything worth doing bad worth doing is worth doing badly at first so key takeaways the whirlwind never goes away it's always going to be there you can't push off strategy delaying strategy doesn't work because when urgency and importance clash urgency wins every time so you got to have this strategy to accomplish your goals in the middle of whirlwind now let me leave it off with this if you did this first of all let me ask this how many of you think you could execute that strategy have a meeting with yourself pick some goals spend some time each week sure what would happen what would happen after one quarter three months in your business of doing that what would happen how would your business change if you actually put this process into practice how would your business change if you did would you be more efficient more effective more profitable what would you be able to do that you haven't been able to do yet what's on your to-do list that needs to be accomplished that might finally get to be accomplished and if you did those things how would your life be different as a result how would your life change would your business maybe stop intruding on what really matters to you what kind of difference would that make how much less stress would you have if you actually started moving your business forward and started to get the whirlwind under control the concept here is margin when you let the whirlwind die down in the rest of your world and you start to keep it in those boxes it creates margin in your life that you get to do with what you want how are you going to spend it spend time more with your family spend time on some hobbies for a change take a vacation maybe spend some time being quiet and reflecting on some things maybe spend time on strategy in your business or building out the processes whatever it is it's margin you get to do with it whatever you want to do with it and the beauty of wordpress the beauty of freelancing and owning your own business is you're the boss you get to decide how you know what your priorities are and let your business fuel those priorities building margin into your world helps that process can you do it how would your life be different i'd love to hear stories if any of you actually put this in the process so thanks my name is Nathan Ingram you can find me on iThemes training and that link right there and again uh two free one-on-one coaching sessions if you'd like help getting this process of productivity integrated into your world talk to the liquid web table out here there's also a link on that particular page and liquid web is going to pay for two free coaching sessions 50 minutes long for us to sit down and talk through how to make this thing work or anything else you want to talk about as well as when you become a partner we have some time for questions otherwise i'll be outside and here all day tomorrow questions snide remarks questions yes sir okay great question so the question is for the video how do you handle weekends okay let's do this truth time how many of you work weekends a lot yeah me too i used to do that a lot i have not done client work on a weekend since i can remember even when i'm on a deadline weekends belong to family that's just a priority i set and you know your priorities can be different there's nothing wrong with that but those are priorities that i said and so when i plan it takes that into account now i will say this the time each week when i do the planning for the coming week for me works best on sunday night so sunday night you know after the family's wound down you know usually about eight eight thirty nine o'clock it's when i take about a half hour and i think through what's coming up this week and i start to put things in boxes for me that works some people it works great friday afternoons or early monday morning or whatever find the time that works for you but uh yeah but i mean i'm taking off from friday night to sunday night is my weekend right yes oh that's a great question okay so the question is how would you put a strategy like this in place if you have a full-time gig and you want to move towards freelancing or your own business of some sort uh the first thing i'll say is you've got to do that early if you can train yourself out of the gate to be uh to keep your time walled in it's better now that being said you as an employee you don't have nearly the control over how you spend your time typically as you would so the time you do have you need to structure it structure at big time i'd love to talk with you more about details later if you want to yes okay okay so after screwing up how do you recover okay uh you got to give yourself a lot of grace right and realize that yes even though i'm supposed to know what i'm talking about in this area it's okay that i screwed up because it just becomes another fun story to tell and i'll i get to learn from it right so practically speaking the way i'm recovering from having way too much work is i hired a bunch of people and for me this is a this might eventually turn into a talk but look it's i am by nature a perfectionist like bad how many of you're that way it's my greatest and worst asset you know your your greatest strength or pardon me your greatest weakness is your greatest strength taken to an extreme so i have trouble letting go and delegating always have always have it's awful it's a terrible thing i i struggle with it uh i'm finally at the point where i'm like i can't can't do it gotta let it go i got people i trust i'm gonna bring them in so in my particular case the the you have to figure out the root of the problem which was way too much work which is a good thing right i mean wow people want to hire me to do the thing this is great however too much work not great being busy is not a badge of honor margin is is a badge of honor having discretionary time is a badge of honor that's what measures success by the way margin should measure success not that i'm busy i don't like to be busy so i brought people in that i trust to help solve the problem yeah it's a great question did i answer your question okay other questions we have uh actually we're done okay so thank you guys very much