Whether you are an entreprneur or you work for someone else, if you wish to reach your next level, you have to learn to manage both your time and our money with a new level of proficiency beyond your current one. Setting yourself up for greater success by disciplining your choices, staying focused, and being proactive in terms of your actions regarding both time and money will pay your future self more dividends than you might imagine.

This article is derrived from a conversation I had with Kelly Smith on her show, the Podcast Launchpad. To listen to the full episode click here. For the transcript click here. 

Over the years, I have utilized many different time management systems. Presently, I color code my activities in my analog planner.

Pink for administrative. Yellow for product creation. Green for activities that make me money. Purple for seed activities that may make me revenue in the future. Blue for networking and friendships.

By doing this, I can tell at a glance how I am spending my days. It helps me keep my finger on the pulse of my business and life.

Staying Focused

One of the things that can eat up my time is ever-present distractions. It is SO easy to get distracted.

Sometimes I need to coach myself and tell myself that you can do it—I can stay focused. I can finish the task. Let me challenge you:

Push yourself a little bit.

Stay focused and take a break 10 minutes after you accomplish the next little thing.

Research is mixed about when you should take breaks, but you need to find what works for you.

What works well with your brain? Find out when your brain wants to take a break and make that work for you.

If you can stay in a flow for three hours without taking a break, do it. If you are someone that needs a break every 50 minutes? Be kind and give those breaks to yourself.

We are in the habit of taking direction from everyone outside of ourselves, but you know yourself best and know what you need.

Here is a question:

What is your perfect scenario regarding money? Everyone has that internal ideal and it is different for everyone. It is extremely useful to know what your ideal is, because then you make decisions based on this principle.

For me, the ideal scenario is that I never have to make a decision based on whether or not I have enough money in the bank. I want to make decisions from a standpoint of —is this the right decision? Therefore, I need to have enough money to allow for my ideal.

What is your ideal scenario regarding finances?

Setting Yourself Up to be Proactive

You want to be proactive with both your time and money.

I have found that it is easier to become and remain “not stressed” than it is to talk yourself off the ledge, whatever it may be that created the ledge.

It is curious how willing people are to be in the dark regarding their life. They don’t know what is going on with their money and they don’t actually audit their time.

I have observed that as entrepreneurs get to a certain level, they start spinning off satalite businesses here and there and they begin to lose sight of who and what is supposed to be happening in each.

I knew one guy who lost over $13K, because he never invoiced his customers. His email inbox was overflowing.

You can’t run so fast trying to fulfill the business that you are not working on the business. (Which is a topic for another article).

Pay attention. What products are making you money? What products are costing you money?

Open your statements, create a plan, and take action.

Don’t put your head in the sand.

(This blog post was excerpted from a podcast interview that I did with Kelly Smith on The Podcast Launchpad. Click here to listen to the full interview.)

Best Friends Animal Society is a place that provides animals safety and a sancuary. They beleive every pet has a story and each one is worth saving. They work hard and strive to acheive no-kill across the entire country. It all comes down to the small and simple acts that helps save animal lives. Everyone deserves access to loving pet, and pets deserve a loving home. Learn more about Best Friends at  www.bestfriends.org

Then Best Friends came along. They asked the question “Why are we doing it this way? Why are we thinking about the best ways to dispose of our best friends, rather than trying to save our best friends?” Best Friends became the beacon of light in this broken system. 

The Mission and Strategy

Best Friends Animal Sanctuary has built a strong team and continues to try to improve. Julie gives us some insight into how they built and maintained a great team. People need to understand why they are here, why they are helping, and what they are focussed on. This provides a “why'” and can instill motivation and passion. This is the foundation, that is the first step. The next step is empowering your team based on that vision, that “why”. They are going to create their own roadmap to success. They become their own problem solvers once they know the direction they are going to go. This ihelps the team grow which in turn helps the organization grow. This has provided the opportunity to achieve their vision and mission.

Keeping Up with Breeding Cycles

One of the hardest things is to keep up with breeding cycles. If you go into a community once a year, you’d be wasting money because you can’t keep up with the breeding cycles. Every community has different demographics. Some communities have more animals than others. It all comes down to targeting. It’s about formulas and following the data and being smart about the resources you have. The resources have to come from the community. Look at how the shelters are doing in your community by using the Pet Lifesaving Dashboard! Go to bestfriends.org and find your state and community and see how your shelter is doing and what you can do to help!

Investing in the Culture

When you think about life, you go through high school, maybe college, you graduate, you get your first job. Then you work from that point forward until you are 67 or 70 and you are spending most of your waking hours with a group of people that you don’t really have a choice over. Then you retire and you maybe have 10-15 years left. It’s kind of a sour view of life, but that means that where you chose to work and where you work should be incredible. The experience there should be one of respect, kindess, generosity, where you feel safe and where you feel like you are truly taken care of. That is Julie’s number one goal in being the CEO of Best Friends. They were on that everyday. When people feel that way, they show up and do their best everyday. That is the outline of the Best Friends culture.

Adam Tank is a entrepreneur who has found a passion for helping change the world in more ways than you can imagine. Finding his “why” helps him continue to change the world through water robotics, business coaching in prisons, and being a parent in the foster care system. Adam gives us advice on why you need a “why” and how to help you see people for who they truly are, challenge expectations, and become an entrepreneur.

If you liked this episode, check out Season 1 Ep. 26: Be the Change David Marquis and The River Always Wins  

Most of the pipes that were put underground were put in place in the 40s and 50s. They had about a 40-50 year lifespan. Now we are 70-80 years into that lifespan, and everything is breaking and cracking. This leads to more water loss. So, anything we can do to help the utilities, the ones in charge of delivering clean water to homes and businesses, is a win for everyone involved. Especially us as taxpayers.

Enabling the World

How do we enable the world to have more clean water? The way Adam is working towards that is working with a software company that designs this water infrastructure instantly using artificial intelligence. Previously, it would take hundreds, if not thousands of hours to design these unbelievably complex assets. However, with software you can do it in hours. It enables engineers, utilities, and people responsible for building this stuff to do it in a better, faster and more sustainable way. This brings water to the masses.

If you shared that stuff, you got beat up physically or metaphorically. However, when you walk in you realize we are all on the same page. We want to help each other. As much as you can help them think about the world in a different way, the inmate can help you see the world in a different way too.

Challenging Expectations

Expectations can put us into boxes that we may not want to be in, or at least stay in. Challenging them can be one of the hardest things to do. This comes through changing our mindset and realizing it is okay to live the life you want to live. You don’t need permission from anyone to just go do it. 

Becoming Childlike

One of the biggest lessons Adam learned was to become childlike. In working in an orphanage in Mexico, he realized that you don’t need a lot to be happy. These kids don’t have a parent aroudn and are being taken care of by another entity. They had nothing, everything stripped from them. However, they were the happiest  kids on the planet. That goes for the kids in foster care. These kids of have come from the most hellish situations and they are just the happiest kids in the world. That just goes to show that no matter how bad it is, it’s going to be okay. There is always a silver lining. It is just all about perspective. In the entreprenuer world, there is not enough of that. You have to go back to “why are you doing this in the first place?”. So you had to miss a meeting. It’s not the end of the world. things are going to be okay. Regardless of how bad things may seen there is always something beneifical. There is always something you can move past, get over, and get through. 

The Why

With a coach you can make exponential growth. Instead of one plus one. It’s 1, 10, 20, a hundred. Coaching gives you the opportunity to 10 x yourself. Sometimes people look at progress in a linear fashion and they’re moving along and they’re getting better and better at X.  Like for example, getting better and better at playing the piano. And sometimes a coach will come in and say, have you ever considered the cello? That person had never considered the cello, but maybe they’re uniquely designed for that, and all of a sudden they just take off.

Some of these thoughts happen in a millisecond and you have to actually train yourself to hear what is happening between your thoughts. You have to get to the identity of I can make it happen. Some people have that identity in spades and other people have to develop that

Driving Actions

What are you thinking? What is your mindset? What are the values that drive your actions? Those are usually habits. I find that if you can get people to assess the actions they’re doing today that are contributing to the life they have right now. Those actions were usually created about six months earlier in terms of their view of themselves, their identity. It takes time to develop those but once you look back, you see the growth and changes you have made. That is what helps you change the identity to something you want it to be. 

Action Then Confidence 

A lot of people want to feel confident first and then take action. However it usually happens in the opposite way. You take action and then the confidence follows. You need to take that first step. Even if it is just a small step, it gets you moving in the right direction. It may seem daunting, but it gives you that slight nudge to just start. Then determine what success is. Success is not determined by completing X, but by starting X. If it’s a workout, your success is not determined by, “did I work out for 40 minutes doing this or that?” The success is “did I change my clothes, put on my shoes and drive to the gym?” Did I start? Because usually if you start, your brain will say, you’ve already spent this time to get here, we may as well finish it.

Three steps to a healthier you—Everyone is always looking for ways to become a healthier version of themselves. Dr. Mike Van Thielen gives some advice on the LeaveBetter Podcast with Miriam Gunn. How to get there, how to stay there, how to optimize. With his education in holistic nutrition, Dr. Mike provides ways to regain control of your health and become a healthier version of you. He also shares information about Biohacking and how it contributes to these three steps:

Step 1: Balance your Body

Step 2: Optimize Your Health

Step 3: Maximize the Benfits of Biohacking

This causes the rest of our hormones in our body to be unbalanced. This can cause fatigue, lathergy, and brain fog. Because we feel tired and lethargic, we reach out for sugar, coffee, energy drinks that helps us feel that dopamine. It becomes a viscious cycle. We need to become aware of what is causing the fatige and the brain fog, and work to eliminate or reduce it.

Eliminating Fatigue

Create an envrionment for you to focus on what you are doing. Create a system that works for you, you are the expert on what works for you. If you are working, set a time for 20 minutes and after that timer goes off, give yourself a 5 minute break.

There are different supplements that can balance your hormones and help you be more focussed.

Try different techniques and see what works best for you, where you are at, and what you are doing.

Accountability

Once we start trying to change those unhealthy habits to healthy habits, it can be hard to persevere and get to the point we want to go. It is about longevity. it comes down to sleep, exercise, nutrition, and then supplementation.

These all feed into each other in a positive way or a negative way. Those are the basics that we want to start with and maintain consistencey with.

Where are you at in your life right now?

Take a second to slow down and really think about where you are at with the basics, and that will help you find out where you need/want to go next and what habits you want to change.

Changing the Habits

There are three steps to changing your habits:

1. Knowledge: What is the problem? Where is the problem coming from?

2. Acquiring the skills: Skills are necessary to change the habit.

3. Be Willing: if you aren’t willing to work hard, you aren’t willing to change the habit. It can only come from you. No one else can do it for you. Find why you want to change the habit and that will   help you persevere and get through the tough spots.

Success

Remember, success comes little-by-little and every small increment counts!

If you set those little steps, you are going to be able to achieve your big goals. You won’t get there with big steps.

Find your why, and remember it while you are taking the three steps to a healthier you.

You CAN do it if you have the will power to try. Small steps in any healthy direction.

To learn more visit Dr. Mike’s website, biohackingunlimited.com