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Quick Links
Business Mentors
Select the link above to learn more about the Business Mentors Service and how we can assist your restoration company.
Restoration Excellence Training - 48 hours online restoration training
ELC Training is a Training system designed to improve internal training and orientation and is available for most positions in your restoration company. We have over 48 hours training - on Demand from some of the best instructors in the industry. We are pleased to have Dan Murray as a part of our team. Dan is a veteran of the industry. He
successfully owned and operated Disaster Restoration businesses in eastern
Canada for over 16 years. He was a National Business Leader of Disaster
Restoration Services supporting 70 franchise locations in Canada for the past 4
years. |
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Please contact our office to learn how Business Mentors can help you transform your business.
541 687 - 8390
Philsr@businessmentors.net
www.businessmentors.net
477 Dartmoor Dr
Eugene, OR 97401
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Seven Habits of Highly Effective People:
Covey takes you through a paradigm shift - the way you look at the world - which affects how you perceive and act regarding productivity, time management, positive thinking, developing your "proactive muscles" (acting with initiative rather than reacting), and much more. Learn time management and prioritization techniques that can change your life and your business. Even though this was written over 20 years ago (wow) the lessons are still prescient today.
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Greetings!
I hope you had a great summer. I am surprised how busy I was and when I talk to others I hear the same thing. Whether it was vacation, summer camp or family weddings, it seemed as though every weekend and most weeks were occupied. This made for a fun summer but it also seemed as though I needed a break when the kids returned to school. If you were in the same boat as me then welcome back to sanity. This summer brought a bit of time to focus on the family and take stock of the things that are truly important in my life.
If you have turned your full attention to your business this is a good time to take a critical look at your business plan and big picture goals for your company. Many entrepreneurs find that they are very busy but not working on goal achievement, rather they are wrapped up in crisis management, which is caused by lack of planning and prioritization. When you look at your day and try to figure how you could spend time planning it seems elusive. The reality is that you did not have time due to lack of this planning activity. In today's newsletter I will discuss how you can use time management to increase the effectiveness of each day and remove yourself from crisis management.
Take the next 30 days to focus on the big picture activities in your business and on your personal life. New Year's is not the time to change your habits, there are too many distractions - make this your October Resolutions - maybe come January you will have the discipline to keep them.
Regards,
Phillip Rosebrook, JR
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 | Making Your Time Count
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Today's message is created through practical application of Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which is also today's book recommendation. There are many great concepts presented in the book and it may be overlooked because it was published some time ago. I started working restoration at the same time I was attending the University of Oregon. It was a real challenge being a full time student and a mostly full time employee. I had a copy of the Seven Habits audio series that I would listen to as I drove back and forth to school or on the way to projects. I heard the time management lessons yet the challenge of applying the lessons delivered were lost on me due to the crisis that I created due to my lack of planning. The irony should have been so obvious at the time. I loaded up on nearly a double load of classes my final two terms and cut back my hours significantly. It was at this time that I first applied the time management concepts taught in Seven Habits. I found that applying the principals taught, allowed me to get more done in less time and to be much more effective.
The time management concepts require that you think about activities and categorize all that you do based on urgency and importance. With this concept you can develop four quadrants for all activities. The four quadrants are I - Urgent and Important; II Important but not Urgent; III Not important but urgent; and IV not important and not urgent. When you break down the tasks that are performed during the day, you can place them into each of the above categories. Effective time management takes place when you properly allocate your time in the correct quadrants.
Quadrant I - Crisis Management: Items in quadrant I need to be addressed immediately. The key is to push quadrant I activities back to quadrant II and perform them before they become urgent. When items are forced into quadrant I, they cause much greater stress, and usually take more time to complete.
Quadrant II - Planning: Effective time mangers usually spend most of their time operating in quadrant II. Issues are effectively addressed before they are forced into quadrant I. Of coarse, quadrant II activities cannot be addressed until quadrant I activities are complete.
Quadrant III - Poor Planning, Poor Prioritization: Managers that do not effectively plan and prioritize tasks in their day spend a lot of time working on non essential activities that appear to be necessary, yet are trivial in nature. Activities that are not important shouldn't be addressed unless they become important thus moving into quadrant I, or if all quadrant I &II activities have been completed.
Quadrant IV - Displacement Activities: Activities that are not urgent or important should be avoided. Displacement activities are usually performed in an effort to avoid working on important projects.
Most people spend all of their time working in quadrants I, III, & IV. If they were to avoid quadrants III &IV, it would free up a lot of time to focus and finish most of the urgent and important activities. Once the crisis management activities are complete (quadrant I), focus needs to shift to working only in quadrant II. This will remove a lot of stress from your life and make you a much more effective manager. A challenge that many restorers have is that they feel restoration is a crisis business and plans cannot be made due to the inevitable crisis that will emerge. Therefore these people fail to make plans due to the exceptions that will occur rather than making plans and then having exceptions if they occur. This lack of planning pushes you into crisis management and your key activities become other people's priorities. If you look at the quadrants above you will find that you have transferred much of your time to quadrants III, and IV. When you start to plan and prioritize then you can eliminate many of these activities that are not important then you will find much more time in your day. This does not preclude some of these activities from becoming urgent and important but you will have more time to deal with these activities. When you start to focus on Urgent and mostly Important activities you will transform your job duties to major in major activities rather than majoring in minor activities. When you properly plan you can also properly delegate and find that you have more time and are much more effective.
To bring things full circle to my college days, I found that when I was able to focus on quadrant II activities it prevented me from having to work in quadrant I. I was able to eliminate the non-essential non-important events and focus on the important items before they became urgent. During this time I found that I studied less and achieved straight A's in my classes. If only I would have paid attention to these lessons four years earlier college would have been much easier. These same lessons can be used to become efficient in your business and provide time, both in your work and home life.
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ELC Training
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ELC is a fundamental building block for a
growing organization. You will
find twelve subjects and over 48 hours of instruction that will provide a
platform for internal training as well as a turn key orientation program for
new staff. Please send an email if
you would like a pass to view the training. Reply to this email for a 10% off coupon on our subscription. You can also purchase individual subjects for your IICRC CE Needs. |
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Profile in Success
Business Mentors is proud to announce that Southeast Restoration Group in Georgia has received the Excellence in Innovation Award from the Georgia Lt. Governor.
We are very proud of Ben Looper and the entire team and Southeast Restoration Group and Business Mentors is very pleased to have been associated with SRG. Follow this link to the Press Release of the Award
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| Leadership and Business Development Summit - April 27, 28, 2011 - Chicago, IL
Save the Date - we are going to be holding our 3rd Annual Business Development Summit in Chicago on April 27, 28, 2011. We sold out the event the previous two years and we are certain that will happen again this year. Please keep an eye out for the official announcement. This year we are very excited to announce that best selling author - David Cottrell (Monday Morning Leadership) will be headlining our event.
You can send an EMAIL if you have any other questions or if you want to be notified when the registration opens.
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On the Road With Mentors Look for us at the following events:
Restoration Industry Association Fall Conference - Albuquerque NM - Oct 5-7, 2010 LINK
Insights conference - San Diego CA - January 22-27, 2011 LINK
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