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Greetings!
Did that title get your attention? You're not alone.
Most
of us struggle to manage an ever-growing, never-ending tidal wave of
email and voicemail, mountains of meetings and "time vampires*" who
suck up an inordinate amount of ene rgy and attention.
So, in honor of my own endeavors to become more efficient and effective, "get more done and stay sane,") this month's topic is Time Management.**
Bad Bold Statement here: Much of what you spend your day doing is a big, fat waste of time. There I said it.
Read on as I tackle just a few contentious time-management topics. I
know some of you will disagree. Awesome! I welcome differences of
opinion and encourage you to duke it out on my blog, where I'll post
this article too.
As usual, you'll have to scroll to the bottom to read it, and while you're scrolling, you may want to slow down and take a look at some of the fun events and offerings this month and over the next few months ;)
* "Time vampires" is a term I first heard from Dan Kennedy in The No BS Guide to Time Management.
** "Priorities management" is what Chuck Blakeman, author of Making Money Is Killing Your Business, calls it, because, as he reasons (paraphrased): "You can't change time, time IS. What you can change is what you do with your time and the way you prioritize those activities."
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UPCOMING EVENTS & PROGRAMS |
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Get More Done & Stay Sane: Time Management For Busy Execs
March 16, 5:30 pm
Are you a slave to your Inbox or BlackBerry? Sick of time-wasting meetings? Working too much? Learn the latest time management techniques for working smarter, faster, better. You'll walk away with several ways to immediately become more productive and shave minutes (or hours!) off your day. This is an invite-only, complimentary workshop courtesy of Nexogy Telecommunications, and hosted at Wind by Fortune International. Request an invite here. |
Headshot Workshop IV
Friday & Saturday,
March 19th & 20th, 2010
Within the first 3 seconds of seeing you, people have already made judgments about you. And with so much business now conducted online, your online image is as important as your in-person one.
Let us help you brand yourself online with a professional headshot that captures your unique personality, plus social media coaching to help you deploy your brand far and wide.
More information at www.HeadshotWorkshop.com
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Mivista Women's-Only
Marketing Mastermind
March 23rd, 2010, at AnexOffice
1000 5th Street, Miami Beach
Get together once a month with other ambitious and intelligent businesswomen to learn about marketing, branding and business-building techniques, give and get honest, critical feedback, and be held accountable each month for your progress! You must apply to be accepted into the program.Download the Mastermind One-Sheet here.
Hosted by:
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Communicate More Powerfully (Without Being A Bit%$)
April 13, 2010,
at Gotham Steak, Fontainebleau Hotel
This long-awaited event is finally here!Learn how women often undermine themselves - particularly when dealing with men - with weak communication, and learn ways to express yourself more clearly, effectively and powerfully. Beware! This workshop is only for women willing to hear open and honest feedback. It's also for those women who are more interested in being effective than being liked(hat tip to the crazy guy who created "Your Business Card Is Crap" for that one...)Register here.
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The Empowered Woman
Miami Success Summit
Friday/Saturday, June 11th & 12th, 2010
A 2-day business extravaganza at the Coconut Grove Women's Club, featuring keynotes, workshops, expo tables, gifts, VIP packages & more! THE premier women's business event of the year.You can also get involved as an exhibitor or sponsor, for information about pricing and sponsorships, download the event deck here.
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Le Petit Grand Tour
For Young Women
June 28th - July 18th, 2010
England, France, Italy, Spain
For parents who want their daughter to have everything - including a 4-star, 3-week tour of Western Europe plus life-changing self-improvement classes, etiquette training, and lessons in art, culture, society and history - from the oft-overlooked female perspective. Visit here for more info. |
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All New WEB VIDEO Workshop
March 30, 2010
Video is the future of the internet. It can drive traffic to your website, establish you as an "expert" in your field, and provide a way to "connect" with your audience and potential clients. If you've been putting it off, here's your chance to get a web video for your homepage that captures your unique brand. You'll work with 3-time Emmy Award Winning Writer, Ivonne Amor, who is also a media specialist and TV Producer (and does far better work than my low-budget-yet-extremely-effective Holly Hairdo video here at right,) AND you'll receive online branding help from yours truly to deploy the video and generate results! More information here.
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Mivista Newsletter
March 2010
| Conquering Time Wasting Emails, Meetings & More
(AKA: Work Smarter, Faster & Better To Get More Done)
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Why Time Management this month? Well, I had an epiphany: I can teach sales and marketing
till I'm blue in the face, but unless people have the TIME to IMPLEMENT
and EXECUTE what they learn, it's useless.
***
So what does "productive" mean? "Productive" varies from person to person and business to business, but most of us would probably agree that anything that generates revenues to our business, value to our clients or future strategic opportunities is productive, nearly everything else is just filler.
***
Let's start with the value of your TIME. Skip ahead to the next session if you'd hate math ;)
 There
are supposedly (approximately) 40 "work hours" in a week, and about 4
weeks in a month. That's about 160 work hours/month. Most of us work a
lot more than that, but at the end of the day, how many of those hours are really productive?** Chances are, only 1/3 (or less!) So let's say you have 50 or so productive hours a month...
If you're aiming to make $100,000/year, that means your productive
time is worth $167/hour. If you're aiming to make $200,000, that's
$333/hour. Half a million? Well, your precious productive time is worth
at least $800.
Are you guarding your productive time like it was a stack of $100 bills? Probably not...
*** What do you spend a lot of time doing that seems to 'suck up' your time or interfere with productivity each day? Almost invariably when I ask this question the answer falls into 1 of 3 categories:
1. Email/messaging 2. Meetings/people
3. Random little things that have to get done... but aren't directly related to generating or executing business, i.e., "Busywork."
If this sounds like you... keep reading.
I. A Nation Of (Email) Junkies
If you're like many of us these days, you're checking your email consistently and constantly all day long. Every time a message comes in, your BlackBerry buzzes, your iPhone chimes or your email icon starts bouncing (maybe that's just on a Mac?)
In any case, in the best case scenario, a good portion of us have become slaves our inbox, processing it as steadily as we accumulate it. Worst case, we're slaves to email AND we can't keep up with it as we accumulate it!
 If you think about it, email is a lot like laundry. What would happen if every day you came home and shed your clothes, separated them into lights, darks and like colors, and then washed them?
Chances are, you'd spend a couple of hours a day just doing laundry. It makes a lot more sense to let laundry pile up over a week or two and then "batch" it all at once.
Like laundry, email is something that you accumulate steadily over time. Unlike laundry, though, many of us (including me at times) are so completely hooked on processing email the second that it comes in that it's almost a compulsion, or even an addiction!
Let's try looking at this another way... What IS email?
If you think about it, your inbox is simply (mostly) a running list of other people's priorities! This is a concept I picked up from Julie Morgenstern who wrote the book Never Check Email In The Morning - she's crazy, right? For many of us, email is the very first thing we do in the morning!
Meanwhile, if you FIRST attack YOUR priorities, then you have the rest of your day to handle everyone else's!
 To paraphrase programmer Paul Graham... In addition to the direct cost in time we spend on email,
there's also a cost in fragmentation - breaking people's days up into bits
too small to be useful.
When I talk to people about changing their email behavior, I
regularly encounter responses like "well in my industry I have to be
available at a moment's notice" or "I'm in sales, if I don't respond
immediately, I'll lose the business."
While that may be true in some
cases, generally speaking, there are few things that can't wait a few
hours and by being completely and totally responsive to each email in
real time, we are actually training people to expect it - further
compounding the problem!
Not to mention that there ARE ways to compensate for a need to be available (i.e., instituting an auto-responder to let people know how to reach you for immediate attention.)
Finally, whatever happened to picking up the phone and calling? Often a 3-day email trail to set up a meeting can take less than 2 minutes over the phone. Phone calls are also much more effective in resolving interpersonal issues.
There are lots of ways to become more efficient with email, and I don't pretend to know all the answers, but I CAN tell you this: if we learn to manage our email more efficiently and effectively, some of us could literally add HOURS back to our day (depending how bad the situation is, of course)!
***
Just so that this email doesn't get too long, if you want the rest of this article (on meetings and busywork), click here to read the whole article.
***
If you like this topic and are interested in a WORKSHOP on it, you're in luck!
Tuesday, March 16th "Get More Done & Stay Sane: Time Management Techniques For Busy Execs" (see event section) will address this topic in depth.
There is very limited availability but if/when we fill up we will start a waitlist and do the event again (probably April or May).
** A concept I picked up from Dan Kennedy
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A strange thing is brewing... Back before... before... well, you know, before the whole (shhh) economy thing, I used to do these meetings called "WOWs" (Whole Organization Workshops). They're actually how I got started in this business. The strange thing is, after not booking one for ages, all of a sudden we have a bunch of them in a row.
Perhaps now that people are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and they're ready to start planning for the future (rather than just everyday survival?)
Whatever it is, a WOWs can help "shake up" and "wake up" a small business or organization. We spend anywhere from a half-day to a full-day focusing on your business: brainstorming, creating strategy, planning. [I know what I said about meetings earlier, that doesn't apply here - I use several techniques to ensure the WOWs are AWESOME, guaranteed.]
A WOW can range from 1 person (yes, I've done them with just one person) to 20 people, but no matter the size, it re-energizes, refocuses, motivates and helps plan, all at the same time.
As my friend Carlos Suarez used to say: it helps to "get all your ducks quacking in the same direction" ;)
Here's what one marketing agency had to say about a WOW we did for their brand new client:
My
client was considering a complete
overhaul of their brand. Two principals had lots of ideas and often differing opinions on where to go
and how to get there. Michelle's WOW provided the perfect
environment and structured approach to help them find the common vision
for the future and map out a path to get there.
This in turn helped me manage their marketing plan for the new brand and
relaunch, using what we learned during the workshop as the
foundation. This experience has proven invaluable, almost one year later, we STILL use the map that emerged from our WOW to guide us.
- Denise Galvez, President, Go To Marketing, Inc.
If you are interested in booking a WOW, contact Jessica Lurie (888) 531-3830 or jessica@mivistainc.com. WOWs range in price depending on the number of people, the length, the prep time and follow-up needed. They start at $770.
For a more complete list of services and pricing, download our media kit here.
That's all, ciao for now!
Michelle
Michelle Villalobos
(vee - ya - low - bos)
phone/fax: (888) 531-3830
email: michelle@mivistainc.com
website: www.MichelleVillalobos.com
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Help Us Pick An Upcoming Topic!
Audience Poll
By
the way, the results of last month's topic poll are in. "Women in
Business Topic" won by a large margin.
To vote, click below.
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