Please don’t take years to learn this one. It’s a truth. If you figure out what your monster wants to eat, and you feed it to him on a regular basis, he will give you key to kingdom!

Are you ready to find out what you’ve been feeding your monster (i.e. “what you’re putting into your business)?

Don’t hate me when I ask you to track your time. ‘How boring’ you might say. Doesn’t she understand that taking time to track my time just takes more time (you can read that line again if you need to!)

Yes, it can be boring and it does take a little bit of time. However, if you invest tiny little bits of time throughout day (adding up to only 10 minutes/day probably), you can discover keys to propelling your business forward.

Start today by tracking how you spend your time (track every 15 minute segment) for next 5-7 days. Include all time you spend working, including evenings and weekends.

After week is over, look back over completed worksheets and tell me what you see. Look for things like:

* breakdown number of hours you are spending on: - marketing - providing your services - office work (invoicing, paying bills) - email - other functions

* add up number of hours it takes you to do certain standard functions that are part of your business - attending a meeting (driving to/from + meeting) - writing a proposal - adding a new client to your practice - doing your accounting work

Too much time spent on office work could tell you that you need to outsource some of your administrative work.

Too much time spent on email might tell you that you need to stop reading so many ezines (except mine!), only read/answer personal email during off hours, or learn how to use sorting function of your email program so most important emails are highlighted.

Too much time spent on marketing efforts that are not yielding new customers could tell you that it’s time to quit that networking club or stop using direct mail, so you’ll have more time to invest in types of marketing that are working well for your business (where have your current customers come from? Do more of that!)

Too much time spent attending prospect meetings might tell you that you need to reduce geographic area you are targeting in order to decrease time it takes to go to/from prospect and client meetings.

Too much time spent writing a proposal might tell you that you need to automate your process more so that you only have to input a few items of data to create each new proposal, contract, or spreadsheet.

There is so much to learn by tracking your time. Yes, it might be boring, but it’s an investment of 10 minutes a day for a week that might just buy you freedom and financial success you’ve been seeking.

Happy Time Tracking!

A HAPPINESS AUDIT

Anything in your workplace to which you should be taking a chainsaw? Is your business happiness centered? No? Then you are not taking one of most reliable and enjoyable paths to success. Not sure? You might to want conduct a happiness audit.

SMILES ON DEMAND?

Some of you are saying, “Yeah, right. You can’t mandate happiness.” Agreed!

Here’s an amusing story about one CEO who issued an order that his company better be fun or else http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/business_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_82_1457517,00.html

You can’t order happiness. Becoming a happiness centered business takes many steps. But, oh, joy and riches of all kinds that come to business taking that first step -- following in footsteps of one happy dentist.

©Copyright 2002 Stephanie West Allen

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