I had planned to go into all the details about how time management can help you:
- make more money
- have happier customers and business members
- be healthier
- have more time
- achieve everything you could have dreamed of and more
I was going to go into all the things that go wrong with you and your business if you don’t have good time management.
However, as John Lennon said:
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.“
At 2 AM this morning my wife was admitted to the emergency room, now I say that not to get your sympathy but rather for you to understand what transpired. I sent out a few emails and informed the people on my calendar that were part of a fixed training appointmentsthat due to a family emergency the call would still be at the scheduled time; however I had a special guest who is doing phenomenal in their business who was going to lead the call. I still got on the call but just briefly to introduce my guest caller. Unless I had taken the time to plan for this ahead of time I wouldn’t have been able to pull this off. In my case I knew that there would always be instances that could come up where I couldn’t devote all of my attention to a call but I wanted to make sure that everyone on the call got the maximum benefit so I created a list of stand-by guests. For today, the first one on my list was available but had they not been I had an extensive list of fallbacks.
I also quickly called two members of my team, leaders in their own right, and asked them to handle follow-up calls on my behalf with a few customers and potential clients. I felt comfortable doing this because I knew I had grown the leaders in my group to do everything I do. Again I still got on the call initially to introduce my team members who would be covering for me due to a family emergency; however I also sent out an email to each consumer and potential client before hand letting them know that I wouldn’t be able to take their call personally and while I had someone I trusted and valued to follow-up with them at the scheduled time I would completely understand if they would like to reschedule. I built up my team members but at the same time acknowledged the trust and rapport that I had already built with my consumers and prospects.
End result all calls were made, everything on my calendar for today was completed, and I spent 18 hours at the hospital with my wife making sure she got the attention of all the doctors and specialists that could be brought to bear on her problem.
If I didn’t have effective time management and plans for “outsourcing” all of my activities along with training my team members to be leaders in their own right, I could not have spent the time with my wife and not lost a single bit of momentum in building my business.
Effective time management allows you to handle what life throws at you no matter how stressful it may be.
P.S. For those of you interested, my wife will be coming home tomorrow and she has recovered from her ordeal.
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