As someone who has spent over a decade in sales, I always hate the value prop: Save time and money.

It’s a redundant statement because time is money, but the problem is money does not directly buy time. It can indirectly in some ways, but there is not an equal exchange.

This is why I’ve spent a large portion of my professional development over the last year figuring out how to maximize my day, and make sure that I run it, not the other way around.

People tend to be surprised when they hear everything I’m creating, building, and achiveing and then find out I also have a family of 5.

Well I don’t get my stuff done by sitting on my hands and waiting for my schedule to come to me.

So let me show you some of the ways I am able to do the work of 2 people in a single week, run two podcasts, post content 2 - 3 times per day on social, and still have time to focus on my health and my family.

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Step 1: Outsource

If you think I actually took this copy and put it into my newsletter, formatted it, and sent it out and then uploaded the formatted version to my website - you’re wrong.

If you have the means, you must find ways to outsource mundane tasks that are time suckers and justify the ROI.

A few months ago I looked at how much time it took me to strategize, plan, organize, publish, and evalute my social media content.

When it was all said and done I was spending anywhere from 2-3 hours a week on this and hired an excellent social media and content strategist for under $1,000 a month.

Now this is not meant to be a brag, but an explanation of the ROI behind why I hired someone to perform this for me.

The minimum cost for any engagement with The Sales Doctor is $5,000. It takes about 4-5 hours per opportunity to go from prospect to opp to closed won.

That means that if I was able to get back 12 hours a month (what I was spending on content creation), I could possibly win 2 more deals per month, that’s an extra $10,000!

That means at 1K per month I’ve now given myself the opportunity to 10X my ROI, and I don’t get content creation burnout anymore from the tasks I least enjoy.

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Step 2: Your Calendar is your Plan

Let me repeat, your calendar is your plan.

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The way I plan and run my day has changed with every new step in my career. I plan differently now as an entrepreneur than I did as a sales leader, and of course much differently than I did as an individual contributor.

When I was an individual contributor, I kepy my day HYPER-FOCUSED. It was here I created the GSD (Get Sh*t Done) method.

The method consists of splitting your eight (8) hour day into four (4) two (2) hour blocks. Each block has a different initiative.

That way when I was in my prospecting block, every task in that block had to do with pre and top of funnel activities. The goal is to break these blocks into 30 minute sprints and stack the right activities.

For Example: in my prospecting block it would be: List build, get my account and contact data into the CRM, add prospects to the most relevant sequence, complete the first series of outreach tasks (usually a LinkedIn add w/ a note, a piece of direct mail, and then a cold email).

As I said, the farther my career progressed, the less I could rely on this hyper-focused of a system. Now I still keep a part of my block scheduling in play, but my initiatives have moved from a 2 hour block to daily initiatives.

For Example: Mondays I don’t take any meetings with anyone (this is something I learned from Sam McKenna). Mondays are dedicated to cold outreach, follow-up, content writing, and content creation.

As you can see - the front half of my day is focused on the operator side of my business to bring in clients, and then the back half of my day is spend on the marketing side of my business to create awareness for my brand.

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Step 3: Be as Visual as Possible

I love a good color-coded calendar.

Pro-Tip - make sure your moveable calendar blocks are listed as “Free” in your calendar software, especially if you’re an individual contributor. The last thing you want to do is miss a prospect’s timing because you forgot to open up some recurring blocks every Tuesday.

When it comes to being visual, I follow a color scale from RED to GREEN to measure the dollar value of my blocks.

For Example: in the middle of everyday I have a one (1) hour block that is called “Recovery - DNB” which nobody is allowed to book over. The color associated with this block is RED, because the task doesn’t directly generate ANY money for me or my business.

As an individual contributor, and still as an entrepreneur, I like making my default meeting color GREEN since meetings that automatically get booked are usually with prospects. That said, I do review my calendar weekly on Sunday night for 30 minutes, and everyday prior to the next to see if I have internal meetings (those are PURPLE).

So decide your color scale, and start plugging away your color codes. I’ve always been a fan of using YELLOW for admin tasks as they neither contribute or take away directly from potential income.

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Step 4: Setup Different Rules for Different Calendars

Do you think that my contractors and vendors I work with have the same availability and priotity as my discovery call calendar? Heck no.

It’s not to say they aren’t valuable to my business, but I need to prioritize sales calls to be able to have business to give business to my contractors and vendors.

My podcast calendar links are only available between 11AM - 1PMPST Tuesdays and Thursdays, so good luck booking a recording with me on a Wednesday at 3PM!

I also setup different calendar rules for internal syncs (15 minutes) with my team, versus strategy calls with my contractors (30 minutes) to allow for us to be efficient with our time and not waste a single second.

Pro-Tip for meetings: Always confirm the duration of the meeting and that you have a hard stop at the end of the meeting. It establishes expectations and you will be surprised how much more effective meetings are.

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Conclusion:

Blocking out your time and scheduling when you want to accomplish certain tasks appropriately will help you hyper-focus and complete the task at hand.

This is how I was able to move away from my eyes wandering over to LinkedIn, or on my phone to browse TikToks.

You also shouldn’t forget to schedule your interruptions. I learned this from Kevin “KD” Dorsey. Schedule time to blow off some steam!

During my recovery block, I’m typically having some lunch, browsing on LinkedIn, watching a few TikToks and enjoying the presence of my family, when I’m working from home that is.

All in all you will be amazed at how much you can accomplish by following a block schedule and running your day so that it doesn’t run you.

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