Tag Archives: goals

The Busy Business Owner: Get Back 15 Minutes a Day

Meetings, phone calls, emails, text messages, and water cooler conversations with your employees constantly bombard you as a business owner. Freeing up even just another 15 minutes a day could dramatically improve both your workflow and peace of mind.

Here are some suggestions for getting back 15 minutes every day:

  • Use your phone. Whenever possible, use your phone instead of an email. Oftentimes talking with someone directly is more efficient than spending the time to compose an email. Plus, email chains can fill your inbox and require precious minutes to read and decipher. Using the phone can also help avoid potential misunderstandings, as a person’s tone of voice conveys information that may be lost or misinterpreted when shared via a written message.
  • Be brief with emails. Tech entrepreneurs Mark Cuban and Jeff Bezos are known for their brief emails that consist of only a couple words. In situations where you do use email, consider crafting a response that is only several words in length. And remember the golden rule of emails: send fewer emails to receive fewer emails.
  • Plan your meetings. Face-to-face time with colleagues, vendors, and customers is often productive and essential for growing a business. On the other hand, meetings can be a huge waste of time if not properly planned. Establish clear goals for a meeting in advance so your team can focus on priorities and get back to work.
  • Minimize distractions. Business owners enjoy developing a rapport with their employees. These personal conversations, however, need to have boundaries so that both you and your employee can stay on task. Tell your team if there’s a day you don’t have time for small talk. Consider putting an old-fashioned Do Not Disturb sign on your door when you need to get things done.
  • Delegate when possible. If you’re a small business owner who built a company from scratch, you may be reluctant to relinquish control over day-to-day operations. But failure to delegate can sap time from more important tasks like planning, building relationships with key vendors, and growing your customer base. So, develop a plan to train your employees to assume more responsibility over time.

Fifteen minutes may not seem like much, but a busy business owner can work wonders with just a little more time every day.

Fail-Proof Your New Year’s Resolutions

New Year’s resolutions get a bad rap — and for good reason. They are wildly unsuccessful. Millions of people have well-intentioned aspirations for the New Year, but only about one in 10 actually accomplish their goal, according to the Statistic Brain Research Center.

If you dig a little deeper into the reasons why they fail, you find it’s usually not the resolution itself, it’s in the execution. Here are four popular New Year’s resolutions and how to avoid messing them up:

  1. Resolution #1: Becoming healthier. The most popular resolution can take on many forms — losing weight, getting in better shape, eating healthier, and so on. This resolution usually fails because to be successful, it takes a major lifestyle change. You’re fighting against months or maybe years of poor behaviors, so expecting wholesale changes right out of the gate is not reasonable.
    Make it fail-proof: Start with smaller, simpler goals like not eating after 8 p.m., or exercising for 20 minutes a day for three times a week. Hitting manageable goals will build momentum and create good habits.
  2. Resolution #2: Spending less money. Depending on how much you spent on Christmas, this one might take care of itself for a few weeks. But if you don’t have a spending plan or budget, old spending habits will re-emerge.
    Make it fail-proof: Take some time at the beginning of the year to jot down some long-term spending and savings goals and then work backwards to figure out how those goals will affect your weekly purchases. As the year goes on, continue to track your progress and evaluate your purchases.
  3. Resolution #3: Getting more organized. Going from being disorganized to organized is not a quick fix. To make the switch, it takes an evaluation of your entire environment. Most people don’t have the time for such an extensive process so they buy some bins, stuff them full and call it good. That’s not going to work and it’ll cost you money.
    Make it fail-proof: Instead, start small. Pick one room in your house or one aspect of your life to focus on, like health care bills or your tax documents. Once you get some traction, you can apply the methods you learned to other things. Incremental improvement is the best long-term approach.
  4. Resolution #4: Spending less time on electronics. If this is a resolution that’s important to you, odds are you’ve had some trouble keeping electronic usage under control. With so many games, social media and streaming options at our fingertips, our brains are now conditioned to be engaged electronically at all times.
    Make it fail-proof: One way to start to break this habit is to change the accessibility you have to your devices. Remove apps from your phone and keep your devices out of reach when you don’t need them. Another way to curb electronic usage is to form a different habit, such as reading.

Resolutions, whether at New Year’s or any other time, are a good thing. To be successful, more planning and attention are required than most people think. And if you slip up, don’t quit! Learn from your mistakes and keeping going.

The Ten Commandments of Financial Common Sense

Most everyone knows you need to budget, balance and save. However, here’s a list of the ten steps to ensure you walk on stable financial ground.

  1. Set a budget and stick to it – Make financial goals and then create a budget that supports those goals. Account for expenses on a monthly basis and set budget limits for dinner out and other forms of entertainment.
  2. Pay off all debt (except a home mortgage) – Make debt payments a part of your budget until paid off.
  3. Set aside money for future expenses – Plan in advance for both short- and long-term big expenses and create a line item for them in your monthly budget.
  4. Save for emergencies – Set aside funds each month to build a reserve of three months living expenses (eventually build up to six) to guard against job loss or unexpected expenses. Having these savings automatically deducted you’re your income makes it easier.
  5. Take advantage of available plans – Company-sponsored 401(k) plans and/or other retirement plans, 529 savings plans and education funds will help you financially later. A little put away today can mean a lot is available tomorrow.
  6. Spend only what you have – Limit uses of credit vehicles like credit cards and high interest cash advances. Pay off credit cards by due dates each month.
  7. Manage your financial life – Regularly manage and monitor your accounts and statements, including balancing your debit/checking account and investment accounts.
  8. Keep an eye on your credit score – Making timely payments is one of the best ways to maintain good credit for future lending. If used responsibly, automatic payment systems like online banking can be beneficial.
  9. Set up Identity Theft Protection on your financial accounts – Regularly change your online and mobile passwords, and safeguard your financial statements.
  10. Openly communicate with your spouse about your family’s financial position – Make sure you both agree on short- and long-term goals. Teach your children the power of saving and budgeting to put them on the path to a successful financial future.