For anyone who knows me well, they know that I network, a lot, battling it out for the title ‘Networking Tart’ and one of the common things I hear people saying all the time is the following.
‘I just don’t have enough time in the week’ I find serious issues with this statement:
Firstly, why is it that they don’t have enough time? Are they bad at time management, do they struggle with being productive?
Secondly, if they’re that overrun with work, why are they out networking prospecting for more work? (I’ll extend on this shortly).
What I often find is that people saying that they don’t have enough time is simply a default response, as is ‘Yeah, things are great, I’m really busy right now’ You got to get honest, I’m not saying be negative and say that business sucks and the world’s falling apart, tipping off its axis. But say things are going in the right direction, but I need more business.
I find that people are helpful when they know you need help and support, so ask for it.
Next up, just create more time, seriously if you honestly don’t have enough time in a week, either work the weekend or create an extra working day. Stick with me here; this is gold…
Most people I know get up in the morning around 7:00-7:30 am, do their morning chores, then hit the home office or head off to work. They return at a little after 6 pm and clock off for the evening, feet up, watch trash TV and hit the sack between 10 pm and 12 am.
Let’s create an extra working day, get up at 5:30 am, that’s 2 hours earlier than usual, do all the things that don’t need human contact, do your emails, your social media, write the proposals, design work etc, do this Monday to Friday and you just created 10 hours of extra work time, equivalent to an extra day with spare time. Imagine if you did this each evening too, 2 hours in the evening, plus a couple of extra hours over the weekend.
You have just created an extra 3 days, you now have a 10 day working week, but here’s the interesting part, you still get a nice lay in each weekend, you get 6 and a half hours sleep each night in the week, and approx 3 – 4 hours recreation time each evening, with most of the weekend to burn.
Time is never really the problem, its how you spend it that’s the problem. Plan your days, do tasks that require no human interaction in the extra hours and save the human hours for communication and selling.
Now back to the point I made above about not networking if you’re overloaded with work. You should always be looking for more work, even if you don’t have the capacity to take it on, find a way to complete the work, even if it means passing it to your competition with a margin left on for you. You could even look at outsourcing, the world is filled with freelancers who guess what they want? More work…
Have I missed anything? Have your say below…
Jon Covey
Covey, captivates audiences with his 'do it anyway' style, working through business issues and topics to help individuals and businesses explode productivity and sales.
For over a decade and a half Jon has been working with companies large and small. He is a seasoned entrepreneur with many business ventures under his belt and he is not afraid to tell you about the failures as well as the successes.
What you get from working with Jon is a clear concise straight to the point program that delivers an end result that you only dreamed of. With financial, work, and personal areas of your life balancing, this gives you a real sense of fulfillment in your life.
He often shares his wisdom through many media channels, which instantly turn viral with others eager to learn from his creativity and style.
You can follow Jon on twitter @Jon_Covey
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