The Fitness Business School – Priorities & Time Management…Simplified

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And in today’s episode, I want to talk with you about being more productive, getting more out of your day and really starting to own your time. I’ve got a few thoughts on this that I think will really be of use to you. So let’s get it.

Welcome to the fitness business school with Pat Rigsby, the podcast for fitness entrepreneurs who want to make more income, have greater impact, and enjoy more freedom in their ideal business. If you’d like an accelerated route to these goals, email me at [email protected] and put BGA in the subject line and I’ll get you all the details about our business growth accelerator program.

So I’m not sure that most people think of things this way, but today is really just your life in a microcosm. Now the average person lives about 27,500 days total. So if you’re 35, you’re a little bit, a little bit more than the halfway point for the average person by some people’s estimates. Now I’m not telling you any of this stuff to be morbid. I’m telling you because every day that you spend as a day, you don’t get back. I mean, think of it. We’re actually saying spending time, the same way that we spend money, except money is renewable. Time is not. And how you choose to spend this time is really the difference between running a successful business, living a full fulfilled, happy life, reaching your goals or going through the motions, being disappointed, underperforming, and really not being satisfied at all. So, I mean, you can spend your time investing it in building a business you’ll love, or you can just work day to day getting by going through the motions, always putting off the important stuff til tomorrow. You can procrastinate. You can call yourself a perfectionist, which is just another way to say procrastination. That may not be as damaging your self image. You can invest in experiences with the people that you love and care about, or you could say, Hey tomorrow, we’ll get to that. You can put off spending that time with a loved one with a child til tomorrow. I mean, today is the currency that we all have. We may not all have the same amount of resources or anything else, but we all have time. We have the day and we can use it however we want. We can use it to build the business we want the life we want, but we have to decide.

So I know for me, I’m spending today serving my clients and improving my business, but I’m also spending time with my family. I’m spending time with my kids and spending time with my wife and for me, that’s a good day. You know, it doesn’t have to be this grandiose thing. If I’m out here trying to make my clients a little bit better. If I’m trying to move my business incrementally forward and I’m spending time with my loved ones, that’s a day one. But if you don’t like how you’re spending your time, you’re the one who gets to decide. You’re the one who gets to change it. Don’t settle for having something you’re not happy about. Don’t settle for having something you don’t love. Really do what you need to do to move forward personally and professionally surround yourself with other people who are going to empower you to do that. The people that you want to be with the people that are going to lift you up, the people that you enjoy training, spend your time in the company and people that you enjoy. I mean, really every day we’ve got 1,440 minutes. We get to decide how we invest it. We get to decide what we’re going to benefit from. We’re not piling this stuff up for a rainy day. We can win today.

So how does that look and practicality? Well, you know, we’ve been teaching a planning system to all of our clients for years, where basically what we want to do is start with the things we’re already obligated to their commitments. We’ve already made to clients, to family, maybe training sessions that you have. It may be a doctor’s appointment that you’ve already scheduled. It may be taking your kids up, taking your kids to school or practice. Block that time off. My wife would call that a container of time. That time that container is already full. And then we look at the time that is still available. And we look at the goals that we have, the things we want to achieve personally and professionally. It doesn’t matter if you want more clients, or if you want to spend time with your family, pick your top three priorities for the day, put them in order. What are the three things that if you get done, just those three, in addition to what you’re already obligated to you feel confident and fulfilled that you won the day.

Now, if you’re really trying to move your business forward, you may say one of those things should be allocated to lead generation. I want to go make two new contacts. I want to add five people to my email list. And you’re going to know how you’re going about doing that. You’re not just going to have some arbitrary goal with no path to achieve it. Then maybe secondly, you want to add one new client. You get two sales appointments today and your, your mission is to close one of the two. And then finally, maybe that third one to make sure that we have the balance or the rhythm in our life that we need is a family thing. Maybe you’re going to watch a movie with your, with your family, the seasonings. So that to me would be a day one. If we’re doing the things to sustain where we’re at, that’s what the containers of time are, right? They’re already obligations. They’re things to sustain where we’re at serving the clients already paying us, fulfilling our family obligations, doing things like that. Well, if we want to go from where we are to where we want to be, we have to allocate that time for those top three priorities towards things that move us forward personally or professionally. So if you need more clients, we have to allocate time to that. If you need more, more support from your team, we have to allocate time to staff training, or hiring new people. If you need to maybe integrate online training into what you’re doing, there may be a study component that you need allocate time to, but allocate the time.

Underestimate how much time you have, overestimate how long things will take. So if you have an hour, don’t try to squeeze an hour and a half of work into an hour, make sure that you’ve got 45 minutes of work for that hour that you know, you can get done. So you feel the fulfillment, that sense of accomplishment that gives you the momentum to keep going forward. So plug in those things that you need to do to move forward, be specific, set yourself up. Don’t put marketing say this as, I’m going to write my email newsletter. And I’m going to write it about this specific topic. And if that means that you need to allocate 45 minutes to do that, even though you may be able to get it done in 25 or 30, allocate 45, you can always do something else with that additional 15 minutes. I know we use a 10 minute sprint with our clients to fill in any extra time to move their business forward, but be specific about what you’re going to do at that time, whether it’s personal or professional, don’t just say family time, kind of plot out what you’re going to do.

So you’re not spending time in decision mode. When you get there, that indecision paralyzes us. How much time is wasted trying to choose what you’re going to eat this evening or what movie you’re going to watch? Plan it in advance. Know what you’re going to have. That way you can use that time in fulfilling and accomplished a way as possible. If we do this, we’re going to stack up those days one and really any accomplishment, any success is nothing more than a crude days. One over time. If you win enough days and make no mistake, you don’t have to win them all. You don’t even have to win 300 out of the 365 to really accomplish so many great things, but we have to probably win more than not. And guess what? If we have a day that doesn’t go the way that we plan, we go ahead and we figure out what, what went off the rails for the day in the, you know, that evening. And we plan tomorrow and we win that day and we get back on track, do that.

You’re going to own your time. You’re going to get out of whatever kind of stagnation that you’re in. All those times that I speak with people and they’re saying, you know what? I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what to do. Never, never are they planning their day the evening before and getting clarity on their, their top three things. Never are they allocating the appropriate amount of time for the things that they’re trying to accomplish. Get a handle on your time. You’re going to get a handle on your life. Get a handle on those two things. You’re going to reach your goals. You’re going to be happy personally And professionally.

Thanks for listening. I’m giving away a bundle of my bestselling books, the ideal business formula, the fitness entrepreneur handbook in the path. All you have to do is go to patrigsby.com/podgift to get it. Also, make sure to subscribe to The Fitness Business School with Pat Rigsby so you don’t miss an episode and you get yourself on the fast track to creating your ideal business.