Am I busy or productive? How to tell the difference!
A lot of us will keep busy but it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re being productive. Unfortunately, business can sneak up on us and before we know it, we have shifted from doing productive work to simply doing work and keeping busy. As a professional and entrepreneur, it’s critical that we make sure we are being productive. Here’s how you can tell the difference between being busy and being productive. This will be productive! We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our gift to you. Access it here! What is the difference between busy and productive? Being Busy Being busy means a lot of your attention, resources and energy are going into tasks and your day is filled with getting things done. However, if these tasks are not helping you fulfill your goals and your vision or worse are merely distractions from what you really need to get done, than you are focusing on tasks that are not going to result in significant progress. Being Productive Productivity is all about how effective your efforts are in respect to your goals and your vision. Being productive is all about prioritizing the tasks that will result in the greatest return on your time energy and resources. The amazing thing about productivity is you can spend less time being productive and be closer to your goal as long as your focus is on the right activities. Here are 3 tips to tell if you’re being busy or productive! Evaluate your goals and progress Review your goals and make sure the activity you’re working on will deliver results and bring you closer to your goals. If you can’t draw a clear line between activity and results, then you are likely doing busy work and not being productive. Prioritize Take a look at how you’re prioritizing your work. Prioritization is the first step in being productive! Reflect Our time is our most precious asset, yet we rarely treat it that way. Make sure you’re reviewing how you’re spending your time and calendaring out your quarter, month, weeks, and days. We recommend using a project planner to ensure the work you’re doing will help you deliver the results you want! Are you productive? Let us know your thoughts, you can email us at info@jbandthedoctor.com! Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your soft skills to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
Productivity and Tech: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
We all want to be as productive as possible, and we’ve never met anyone who was happy filling their time with busy work (once they realized what they were doing at least). Technology has transformed our lives and continues to do so, and our default is to believe we are much more productive than we used to be. Yet by economics standards, productivity has been falling for years. What we’ll explore today is how technology influences productivity and we’ll go into the good, the bad, and the ugly of productivity and technology. It may be productive to learn that we have a free gift that you may be interested in We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you. Access it here! Productivity shows up with technology in the ways we communicate, the tools we use, the ability to outsource and delegate and so many more ways. For today’s article we’re going to take a look at what we consider the best benefits of productivity from technology, where it doesn’t make a difference even when we think it does and how it can actually hurt us! 1. The Good Technology has enabled us to communicate and work with other people in ways we could never have imagined in the past. Today we can communicate synchronously and asynchronously, we instantly video chat with people around the world and has truly allowed us to globalize in a way we would never have dreamed of just a few years ago. We also have access to a tremendous amount of information, nearly instantaneously. Access to this amount of information can make us all capable of doing amazing things and eliminate barriers that would have been in place for so many of us. 2. The Bad Technology certainly makes us feel more productive. But how much of what we do is busy work instead of productive. If you’re in sales this hits home when you think about all the reporting and dual reporting, you sometimes feel you must do! Constant notifications, distractions and the erosion of personal boundaries has put us in a position where we are often working and busy but not always productive! 3. The Ugly Technology makes us feel like we can multitask. Our brains are simply not wired to multitask. We are very capable of automating tasks and for some of us, we’re very good at this. It allows us to quickly shift between different tasks. But the part of our brain that consumes the most resources, the part of the brain required to solve complex and difficult problems, that part of the brain struggles to focus on one task at a time let alone multiple. In fact, that part of the brain hates working so much it often helps us reduce complexity and take short cuts instead of working through problems. Multitasking only exacerbates this. We call these heuristics and while they can be helpful, they absolutely confirm our inability to effectively multitask. We are also at risk of technology burnout and overload. With access to social media, videos, entertainment and a never-ending supply of content it’s easy to get lost in the internet and lose hours a day, week and month using technology to no productive effect. Technology addiction is real and dangerous, and we are more at risk of this today than we have ever been in the past. What do you think of technology and productivity? Let us know your thoughts, you can email us at info@jbandthedoctor.com! Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your soft skills to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
Soft Skills: The Future Determinant of Success in an AI world
While we’ve been promoting the importance of soft skills for years and there have been plenty of studies that substantiate the benefit of soft skill development, today soft skills are the most investment you can make into yourself and your business. Why? What if we told you that AI is going to transform the way we work and that technical expertise is going to be primarily supported by AI function? You probably wouldn’t be surprised. If our technical expertise can be transitioned over to technology, then it becomes clear that what will set us apart is the skills that AI cannot replace. These are the decidedly human soft skills like emotional intelligence, empathy, active listening, and communication. Soft skill investment today is the best way to guarantee future success in an AI world. Excited about AI? We are too, in fact, we’re so excited we have a free gift that you may be interested in! We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you. Access it here! AI has advanced exponentially in an incredibly short period of time. As we publish this blog, we are seeing plug-in support and AI like ChatGPT has already established itself as power enough to pass several business school exams, the United States Licensure Exam and has performed better than many students typically would. While ChatGPT and other AI have a long way to go the functionality is undeniable and it’s clear that given enough time, ChatGPT and AI will be able to more effectively, more efficiently and more accurately provide technical expertise to consumers at (potentially) a fraction of the cost that experts charge today. This will be hugely disruptive for many professionals and businesses. AI is not perfect, however, and struggles with many of the same challenges that people struggle with today. ChatGPT and AI are not great at active listening. The software is incapable, and we believe will remain incapable of being able to understand the many levels of nuance in human communication and interaction. Without active listening we cannot effectively display empathy and we cannot connect well with other people. The greatest strength we have as people is to be people and to grow and develop the skills that allow us to work alongside other people. If our technical skills are easily commoditized, then it makes complete sense for us to be doubling down on our soft skills. These are the skills that will separate us from other professionals and businesses. These are the skills that will allow us to better understand our consumers, their behaviors, and their biases. What do you think? How will AI handle soft skills? Will it ever come close to what we can accomplish as people? For now, we’re confident the answer is NO! Let us know at info@jbandthedoctor.com Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your time, sales, and confidence, to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
3 Tips To Effectively Use Creativity in Marketing
If you want to get heard today, you need to be able to cut through the noise. One of the best ways to do that? Be creative! Creativity and innovation are the fuel for your messaging and branding. In this blog we offer 3 tips to be effective with creativity in your marketing. Embrace Experimentation and Failure The greatest challenge to being inventive and creative in our approaches is we never can know exactly what will or won’t work. Being willing to embrace failure and continue to experiment will allow you to dig deeper into your creativity and build something innovative and effective. If you’re too afraid to get creative you’ll limit your effectiveness. Push Boundaries What do the greatest and most memorable of us have in common? They push boundaries. Pushing boundaries allows you to see how far you can take your creativity and allows you to truly set yourself and your business apart. To be most effective in marketing you have to be willing to push boundaries on occasion. Be Contrarian Questioning the status quo is a fantastic way to inspire creativity in your marketing. One of the most effective ways to make waves is to take an established belief and turn it on it’s head. This could be serious or satirical in nature but it’s sure to create some waves! How do you make sure your marketing is creative and effective? Let us know, we still accept snail mail if you ask for our address politely! Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your time, sales, and confidence, to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
Three Simple Ways To Create Authority
It can be said that there are two schools of thought in sales about how clients would like to be treated. 1. Clients want options. 2. Clients want to be told what to do. A savvy business person will recognize that some clients will prefer options and others will want to be told what to do. This is the basis to understanding that one size does not fit all. There is something in common when it comes to both types of clients. The likelihood of your recommendation or recommendations being taken by a client is dependent on your authority. It’s helpful to remind ourselves how strong authority can be over people. If you ever doubt it for a second take a look at a classroom, camp, team sport or any group of children with an adult around. The adult has automatic authority derived from their position, from their age and from the structure of the program around them. This authority is immediately understood and for the most part accepted by the children. As adults, in a lot of ways we are just bigger kids. We too respond when we are faced with authority. If you want people to follow what you recommend then it’s incredibly important to establish authority. It is an important ingredient in your overall credibility when you’re working with someone as a consultant. Here are there simple ways: Get something recorded. Whether it’s a podcast, video, tv spot, or published in a newspaper, magazine or blog, it’s incredible important to have yourself recorded. This will generate immediate and lasting authority. Get a testimonial. There may be nothing more powerful than another human being acknowledging your authority in your field. If you don’t’ have a testimonial, do non paid-work for someone and go get it in lieu of payment. Get public on platforms that are focused on your subject matter. Today there are a million ways to engage with people all over the country and the world. Find something that works for you and start to develop an extended network of people that trust and respect your opinion on your subject matter expertise. If you’re interested in having questions answered just like this, then check out our live Q&A sessions recorded in our free facebook community. You can access a recording of our most recent live Q&A on our podcast, here! We strongly believe in creating a space where everyone in business can be successful. Where all of the resources, wisdom and insight needed for business owners and entrepreneurs is at your fingertips. Where experts all over the world can share their experiences and celebrate their knowledge. If you’d like to join us in our vision of building out this dream, join us in our free facebook group here!
Ready, Aim, Clients!
In our most recent podcast, we were joined by our good friend, Steve Frey. Steve’s built a career working alongside business owners and operates both a retail and wholesale distribution model in two of his businesses. Steve has a mantra he lives by and we strongly agree with People. Process. Product. Too often today, people and business owners start with product. Steve was noted as comparing it to “Ready, Fire, Aim!” Probably not the greatest recipe for success. The reality is, if we want great success in our roles and our businesses, we need to keep product to the end and we need to put people first. By starting with our clients first we aren’t pushing a product. What we’re pushing is to better understand our audience, and our audiences needs. Even more importantly it allows our clients to share about themselves and feel connected to us. Connection and relationships is everything in business. Look no further than Peloton. What a fantastic example of connection. You can buy exercise bikes and treadmills for 40-70% less than the Peloton brand. However, nobody in the exercise machine space has built a better connection with their audience than Peloton and it allows them to charge an absurdly high price point for the same exact style of product easily available for much less. If you’re still doubtful about how impactful this is, go speak to someone who has a Peloton. Do they have a group they ride with? Chances are, yes. Do they have a coach or two they absolutely love? For sure, they do. Would they ever leave Peloton for another community? What other community, they’d ask you back. The common thread here is simple. Connection between people. The very best way we can build a connection with people is by putting our clients first. If you’re in business and you’re struggling to scale, looking for ideas on how to get past a plateau, or just getting started, you can take a look at whether you’re creating a connection with your clients and ask yourself am I putting my clients first? To listen to more of the podcast with Steve Frey, check it out here! To gain access to our own community where we provide additional insight, resources and access to professionals like Steve don’t forget to check out our free, private Facebook group Entrepreneur Mastery Lab. You can join our movement to create the very best space for business owners, entrepreneurs and service based professionals, right here!
Cat In The Hat Syndrome
You likely know the book and can even picture the drawing. The cat is riding a unicycle, it’s got a cane, it’s juggling plates, a goldfish in a bowl, all sorts of things are flying in the air. Thing 1 and 2 are crashing around the cat and the house is an absolute mess. A lot of times it can feel like this especially when we’re juggling multiple projects. We already know multi-tasking as a means of achieving success only gives us the perception of productivity and instead of helping actually hurts our efforts. How do we go from the Cat In The Hat to the spotless house at the end of the book. We’ll let you in on a little hint, it’s not magic, it’s about self-management and project management. Here are a couple of tips to help you get back on track to a less chaotic environment when you’re juggling multiple projects. Always prioritize and focus on tasks that will help you make progress on the priority. This is especially difficult when we are in the weeds. If you’re too much in the weeds, step away for a while to allow your unconscious mind to work through the issue or get an outsider to help you identify the best way to achieve your near term goals and power through the work in front of you. Capability and capacity are both important. You’ll always be capable of doing what’s in front of you, but will you have the capacity to do it? At times we will struggle with certain activities. Be prepared to pivot and change your focus to something else when you’re struggling. You’ll find, for example, some activities you can crush in the morning and feel like you’re walking through quicksand if you do them in the afternoon. Life isn’t simple and linear. We will often deal with multiple projects and conflicting priorities. Learning to manage to these beyond the ineffective multi-task will make a small change today seriously compound over time to amazing results. For more conversation around project management check out our most recent podcast with HennepX co-founder, Drew DiAlberto. You can listen in here. If you’re looking for even more great content around time management head on over to our private, free facebook group the Entrepreneur Mastery Lab where other professionals like Drew and ourselves offer you free, incredible content, daily! You can join us here!
3 Ways to Embrace Change
Change is always happening. When we really look hard at our lives, our businesses, our relationships, nothing ever stops changing. We are constantly shifting, adapting and transforming. You’d think with all of that non stop change happening it wouldn’t be so hard. Change is hard though because we all know that change carries uncertainty and discomfort. There are times when resisting change can make sense. In practice, we don’t want to constantly shift away from our driving principles, mission statement, values or vision. This constant causes confusion from our clients, prospects and business partners. It makes them uncomfortable, it makes them nervous and it creates additional uncertainty (which they already have enough of, if you ask them). Other times, change is absolutely necessary. We find that the models, the behaviors, the way we handled ourselves and our business in the past has changed and hopefully, evolved. Taking it a step further – as our environment changes, so too must we, after all, it’s not the strongest, smartest or fastest who are most likely to survive; the best survivors are the most adaptable. Here are 3 tips to embrace change: 1. Focus on the positive opportunities change brings. Every change is a new burgeoning opportunity for you and your business. Stop focusing on the challenge and focus on what the future can hold. Focusing on the future possibilities the change can bring will help you bring the best mindset to changes. 2. Changes forces you to take a more objective look at your behavior and models. It’s easy to get rigid. Process and routines are incredibly powerful tools, but to be too stuck in our ways, makes us predictable and vulnerable to risk. Embracing change will help you and your business continue to grow and protect you against risk. 3. Think back to a starting point. In our minds we can always look back to the start of our journey, whether it’s personal, relationship oriented or business related. Where were you at the start of the journey? Would you still want to be there today? More often than not we only notice the large changes in our lives and this is where discomfort kicks in. It’d be a tremendous loss to fail to see how the smaller changes have added up and helped us evolve. When we look back to where we started it brings into focus all of the compounding of those little changes. This perspective can help you better embrace change. Bonus! – If you’re just getting started on something. Write down some objective measurable thoughts about where you are today. Think about what are your current strengths and weaknesses as you’re getting started. Save the thoughts and take a look at them in 6 months. You’ll be shocked at how much the small changes have helped you continue growing your strengths and/or reduce your weaknesses. For more around the topic of change you can check out our most recent podcast here. To get access to more great content like this please join our free facebook community where we offer great tips, insights and resources to entrepreneurs and service based professionals. If what you’ve read has been helpful, don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter! JB and The Doctor
The Power in Storytelling
A lot of times in business and in life we over complicate things. We try to innovate and build a better mousetrap, and, often there is a better mousetrap that can be built. People, however, haven’t evolved that much since our earliest ancestors. You can go back thousands of years to drawings on a cave wall and realize something pretty awesome. People like to tell stories and listen to stories. We are story-driven. Think of sports and entertainment. The best rivalries, the best individuals, the best movies the best series. They have one distinct thing in common. Great stories. Think about the media. What sells? Stories do. It’s why the news has become so sensationalized. Information alone doesn’t catch our attention, but you give that information a fresh shower, wrap it up in some nice clothes and all of a sudden you’ll catch people’s attention when it walks across the street in front of them. Why then aren’t we perfecting the art of storytelling? Why do I hear, and I hear it all the time, pitches and presentations and entrepreneurs talking about their business and forgetting the story? I don’t believe there is a better mousetrap than the story. The story is the world’s greatest honeypot. So instead of focusing on getting better at what we already know is the greatest mousetrap we put a lot of our attention on unimportant and ineffective ways of trying to innovate something that really doesn’t require innovation at all. If you want to stand out in business and you want to really become an effective communicator you need to become an absolute monster at telling a good story. You don’t need a lot of stories to tell. Just some good ones. A good story, like a good joke will get passed around to more and more people. If it’s your story, think about how your sphere of influence can take off and go viral. I can promise it won’t happen because your information is great. It’ll happen because the story you wrap around your information is. A great question to ask yourself. Have I perfected even a single story about my business? If the answer is no, you might want to take a listen to what else we have to say about storytelling and presentations. We covered this in our most recent podcast and it’s the theme of the week in our absolutely FREE private facebook community. You can access both here and here! -JB
Growing Our Businesses
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas Edison There are any number of ways to grow a business. There are some of the most common that we see put to use today: Social media Networking Affiliate Events – promotional & educational Advertising Funnels Client referrals Wholesale A lot of times we get caught up in trying to do too many different strategies at once. The challenge of course is if we put our focus on too many areas, it will never be sharp in any given area. Like our messaging, it’s important to keep our focus tight. I’m not suggesting that you only focus on one area for growth in your business, I am suggesting that you consider that at any given time, you should be HYPER focused on one of these growth strategies until it is more self-sustaining. For a lot of us, we lose that focus before we see a lot of traction gained. It’s what makes Thomas Edison’s quote so relevant. As in anything, if we are consistent, we will see results. Want to grow a business through social media? Start doing what social media influencers do. Post every day, create content and engagement, build online relationships and one day you will have a business built through social media and you will be a social media influencer. If you want to achieve the most growth in your business, identify the business growth model you are most comfortable with and be incredibly focused and intentional on it. When I moved to South Florida my network consisted of my sister – in the medical field and my cousin and her husband, I didn’t even know what she did at the time I moved here. Essentially ZERO. I took it on myself to start networking. I turned down almost no events or opportunities to meet people. My very first piece of business ultimately came from the very first networking event I attended in Florida. That connection today continues to be a valued friend and business partner and has led to multiple pieces of business. For over 2 years I spent countless hours, mornings, lunches and evenings networking and meeting as many professionals that helped serve my market as I could. I dedicated myself to always showing up and always booking 1 on 1s with the people I met networking. I soon began to see my business grow and from there I was able to start to put my focus on other areas of business growth. Today, the focus on networking has paid incredible dividends and given my business a foundation that allows me to focus on other growth vehicles, such as client referrals and social media. Keep in mind that I did not stop my networking, I’ve just put some of my focus from there to other areas of my business to allow for greater, scalable growth. Remember if we’re not growing, we’re shrinking! On our most recent podcast Doc and I talked about personal growth. Just like the story above, personal growth and business growth operate under the same principles. You’re either growing or you’re shrinking. To hear what we had to say about our personal growth you can check out the podcast here! To join us and other incredible professionals to achieve our ultimate vision – providing a community with all of the resources to make you successful in business, you can access our free content in our Facebook community here!