I help you scale and optimize your business through email marketing, business development, building systems, decision frameworks, revenue and cost optimization, and more. Scale and Optimize is the weekly newsletter so you can work on your business, not in it. Here's to lives worth living!
My life-changing hack for less than Five bucks
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Hey there, Do you ever have those nights that you just can't sleep. There's probably a million things going through your head, or there's something that just keeps nagging your emotions and it's like....surprise, get on up out of here! Well, that's not exactly how it worked out for me. I have this fun little nightly ritual that I've had for decades, probably since I grew up in a desert region with dry air almost all the time. Chapstick, that's right, this one little thing is the hill that I will proverbially die on. I can not sleep without chapstick, and not just any chapstick, it's the Burt's Bees vanilla bean. It's soooo good. if I run out of chapstick, it's like the end of a tv series that has a terrible ending and you just sit there like,"...I don't know what to do with my life anymore." So the other day, I ran out of chapstick and of course there's the dreaded thoughts flashing through my mind of how on earth am I going to sleep tonight? ugh, not really the big thing you should be thinking about over something small, but here we are. Being the good problem solver I am, i needed some ideas. Insert a good idea here..... no really, I thought that. I realized i could solve my problems with less than five dollars, or would I rather sit in my little comfortable thoughts of being uncomfortable. I fixed the entire problem for less than five bucks, but it really got me thinking as I was journaling like I've been doing for the past several years. Amazing Books (amazon links)
Sometimes, being annoyed and slightly stressed is more comfortable than fixing the problem even though your life is much better after making a simple fix. And, to take it a step further, I started with the focusing question. I learned it from Gary Keller. What is the one thing that costs less than $20 that I could buy today that would make my mini annoyances stop or be significantly reduced? So I made a list of things that could make my life much less stressful and it's surprising to me. Here are just a few that I listed
The list was definitely longer than that, but I instituted the bi-monthly practice of picking something off the list that I made and getting it. No more than 20 minutes was allowed at decision time. And you know what happened? It worked! I started to remove multiple little frustrations throughout the week, and that had a compound effect on my stress. I didn't even realize some things until I started to review my week and what was happening. So now I had more mental energy and time to devote to the big things that mattered, like growing my sales and marketing agency. If you're running a business, there's plenty of small frustrations and stresses that take time out of your day, but don't add dollars to your bank account. That's a massive problem, but we're so used to these little frustrations that we don't realize how to fix it, or even what the costs could be? If you don't want to miss out on more sales and drop that stress level down, let's have a conversation. 30 minutes to figure out if there's a solution and the costs are worth thousands and the choice that lots of executives make with me daily. Don't worry if you're not ready, there's always the chance you try the best chapstick in the world and get hooked on it. You've been warned, it's really good stuff! Vanilla Bean Burt's Bees Chapstick If you want to work through the sales in your business on your own, then try my free business development strategy course. It'll guide you through your sales cycle and how it impacts your profit to figure out if there are any areas that need improvement. Did I mention it's free? Business Development Mini Strategy Course If you need help increasing sales, just hit reply and we'll setup a conversation. Here's the latest on the blog if you want to read some more stories or just get ideas.
That's all for this month and as always, let me know if there's anything you'd like to learn or share with everyone. P.S. If you found this valuable, would you share it with a friend, please? Have a great month! Clayton |
Friday Fast Track: Optimize Your Business in Minutes
I help you scale and optimize your business through email marketing, business development, building systems, decision frameworks, revenue and cost optimization, and more. Scale and Optimize is the weekly newsletter so you can work on your business, not in it. Here's to lives worth living!
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