Valuetainment - Episode 193： 10 Time Saving Hacks for the Entrepreneur

00:00:00.360 30 seconds. One time for the underdog. Technician sequence start.

00:00:06.980 Let me see you put them up. Reach the sky, touch the stars up above.

00:00:11.100 Cause it's one time for the underdog. One time for the underdog.

00:00:17.320 I'm Patrick Bedevi, your host of Value Team, and today I'm going to talk to you about 10 time-saving hacks for entrepreneurs.

00:00:23.280 Number one.

00:00:26.000 Listen, as an entrepreneur, you're going to have a lot of different meetings,

00:00:28.140 but sometimes you'll have a lot of meetings and all of a sudden you're like,

00:00:30.380 why did I have this meeting? This was a waste.

00:00:32.180 I don't even know what the whole purpose of this meeting was.

00:00:34.840 And that brings me to number one phrase, which is you ask everybody this question.

00:00:38.760 What's our outcome of this meeting? Very simple.

00:00:40.980 Hey, if it's a one-on-one, what's our outcome of this meeting?

00:00:43.260 Five, what's our outcome of the meeting?

00:00:44.580 Board meeting, what's our outcome of the meeting?

00:00:46.360 A meeting with 100 people, what is our outcome of this meeting?

00:00:48.540 And you ask a few people and see if they know the outcome.

00:00:51.460 If the group doesn't have an outcome, there doesn't need to be a meeting.

00:00:54.000 If the group does have an outcome, let's manage the expectation up front on what the outcome of this meeting gives.

00:01:00.680 Number two.

00:01:03.020 A lot of times people will come up to you, they'll call you.

00:01:05.240 And you'll pick up a call because it's maybe an executive or an important person you're working with.

00:01:09.020 It's a VIP contact that you have.

00:01:10.800 Whoever it is.

00:01:11.360 In your company, a partner, a vendor.

00:01:13.100 Or they'll come to your office.

00:01:14.720 And they want to call you.

00:01:15.900 Right off the bat, if you're running doing other things, this is how you answer the phone.

00:01:20.100 Hey John, brother, this is great that we're talking.

00:01:21.960 I've got a question for you.

00:01:22.780 Is this a five-minute conversation or a 15-minute conversation?

00:01:26.580 Pat, this is a 15-minute conversation.

00:01:28.480 Perfect.

00:01:29.120 I don't have 15 minutes right now.

00:01:30.760 Can we schedule this for later on today to have 15 minutes?

00:01:33.960 We certainly can.

00:01:35.260 I'm available at 6 p.m. tonight, Central Standard Time.

00:01:38.460 Are you?

00:01:38.880 Yes.

00:01:39.160 Put it in your calendar.

00:01:40.140 I'll call you at 6 and I'll give you 15 minutes of my time.

00:01:43.520 No problem.

00:01:44.080 Thank you.

00:01:44.580 Click.

00:01:45.160 Done.

00:01:45.700 So let me tell you what the other person is thinking about.

00:01:47.500 The other person is saying, wow, this person respects and values their time.

00:01:50.940 When they call you at 6 o'clock, they're not going to waste your time.

00:01:54.660 They're going to go 15 minutes because you made it very clear.

00:01:57.560 Is this a 15-minute conversation or a 15-minute conversation?

00:02:01.000 And by the way, the more you do that, the more of your employees and executives are also

00:02:06.220 going to be doing that with their teams and they're going to say, is this a five-minute

00:02:09.520 conversation or 15 minutes?

00:02:11.440 So not only are you saving time, everybody else on your team is saving time.

00:02:15.180 Number three.

00:02:19.260 So now it's a complete opposite side.

00:02:20.940 Sometimes you're calling somebody, right?

00:02:22.580 And they pick up the call.

00:02:23.600 And let's just say you're the executive or you're the leader or you're somebody of influence

00:02:26.860 and they're kind of excited to pick up your call.

00:02:28.780 And you say right off the bat, hey, John, I know you're busy.

00:02:31.360 I only have five minutes.

00:02:32.400 I just want to address one thing with you.

00:02:34.020 Do you have five minutes for this?

00:02:35.220 Yes.

00:02:35.380 So here's what's on my mind.

00:02:36.660 They already know it's a five-minute conversation.

00:02:38.880 If you don't say that, then it's all about how, what do you think about this?

00:02:42.800 What do you think about Croatia?

00:02:43.880 What do you think about the World Cup?

00:02:44.920 What do you think about LeBron James?

00:02:45.900 What do you think?

00:02:46.260 That's a 42-minute conversation.

00:02:48.040 It could have been a seven-minute conversation.

00:02:49.540 You're done.

00:02:49.860 You're off the phone.

00:02:50.480 Okay?

00:02:51.160 So when you call someone, let them know.

00:02:52.880 I only need five minutes of your time.

00:02:54.520 Great.

00:02:54.780 Let's get right into it.

00:02:57.020 Number four.

00:02:59.160 So sometimes you'll have somebody that walks into your office or they'll call you.

00:03:02.460 You're picking up the phone.

00:03:03.180 You're talking to them.

00:03:04.140 And they ask you a question or make a request.

00:03:06.380 And you really want to help them out.

00:03:07.600 But then you catch yourself like thinking on the call, five, 10, 15, 20 minutes to try

00:03:12.820 to make the right decision rather than just saying, listen, this requires me to think

00:03:18.200 and process.

00:03:19.640 Let me get back to you this afternoon at four o'clock or let me get back to you and sleep

00:03:24.600 on this.

00:03:25.340 I'll call you tomorrow at three o'clock.

00:03:27.020 Does that work for you?

00:03:27.920 Yes.

00:03:28.660 Then you schedule it.

00:03:29.960 Then you simmer on it.

00:03:31.320 And simmering could be at night while you're sleeping.

00:03:33.660 It could be when you went on the drive.

00:03:35.180 You're going home during lunch.

00:03:36.420 It doesn't matter.

00:03:36.940 However, you'll have a better answer for them.

00:03:38.860 And it saved you time from not getting distracted of the project you were working on on that

00:03:42.620 specific time.

00:03:43.320 Now, by the way, when you say, let me get back to you, it doesn't work if you actually

00:03:47.540 don't get back to them.

00:03:48.800 You got to call them back.

00:03:50.900 Number five.

00:03:53.760 So a lot of times there will be an email trail, right?

00:03:55.940 And people will add you in an email and they'll send the calendar for an appointment that they're

00:03:59.120 having tomorrow at two o'clock with this meeting of nine people at the office.

00:04:01.780 And you don't really know what the purpose of the meeting is, but you'll ask the question.

00:04:05.080 It's a very simple question I ask.

00:04:06.880 Am I needed for this meeting?

00:04:10.080 Then somebody who's the decision maker, they will say, actually, after thinking about it

00:04:14.240 with the two of us, you are not needed in this meeting, but we are going to need you for

00:04:17.820 the next meeting.

00:04:18.640 No problem.

00:04:19.620 You just dismiss yourself from a one-hour meeting that everybody will have and they'll

00:04:22.720 come back to with issues that you need to process with them, but for the first preliminary

00:04:26.300 one, they didn't need you.

00:04:27.480 Just yesterday, there was something taking place upstairs for watching a certain video

00:04:30.960 to make sure it was ready.

00:04:31.820 And I went up there and I said, listen, am I needed for this decisions that you guys

00:04:34.560 are making?

00:04:35.340 Then they said, no, Pat, we don't need you for this one, but we'll need you for the

00:04:37.800 next one.

00:04:38.160 No problem.

00:04:38.700 Come and get me there.

00:04:39.360 I do need this last 17 minutes to watch.

00:04:41.620 Everything else, I don't need to.

00:04:42.840 Thank you, Pat.

00:04:43.420 I walked away.

00:04:44.380 I got back to my business.

00:04:45.680 If you're not aware of this, what you'll catch yourself doing is being part of meetings.

00:04:49.540 Hours and hours of meetings that you do not need to be a part of.

00:04:54.600 Number six.

00:04:56.720 You'll have a strategy session and you're sitting there and no one can come up with the answer

00:05:00.140 or the solution, right?

00:05:01.160 I just don't know what we're going to do.

00:05:02.820 What do we do about this?

00:05:03.740 So everybody goes, I think we should do this.

00:05:05.080 I think we should, I don't know.

00:05:06.200 I'll get right to the question.

00:05:07.160 I'll say this.

00:05:08.180 Who do we know that has the right answer to this question?

00:05:12.300 Oh, who do we know?

00:05:13.260 John.

00:05:14.020 Perfect.

00:05:14.480 Let's call John right now.

00:05:16.000 Hey, John, what do you think about this?

00:05:17.080 Oh, this is how it works.

00:05:18.060 Perfect.

00:05:18.280 We just say 45 minutes.

00:05:19.820 By the way, this is the same thing when I'm in Athens and I'm lost and I don't know how

00:05:23.760 to get back on the ship.

00:05:25.000 I ask somebody, where are the ships at?

00:05:28.200 Versus my wife, who's a master with maps. 1.00

00:05:30.480 She'll say, we have to go through this street and this.

00:05:33.020 No, no.

00:05:33.200 I don't.

00:05:33.540 Listen, where are the ships?

00:05:35.520 Ships are this way. 1.00

00:05:36.760 Let's go to the ships and we find it because someone who lives there is going to have a

00:05:39.960 better way of assisting us on how to get there versus us trying to learn the city.

00:05:44.180 That saves you a lot of time and a lot of drama.

00:05:46.980 Number seven.

00:05:47.740 So, look, a lot of times as you're building a business, you have a lot of different projects

00:05:53.220 that you're building.

00:05:53.900 We have Project X, Project A, Project B, whatever it is.

00:05:57.080 And as you have these projects, at the end of every project, you need to come out with

00:06:00.400 a game plan.

00:06:01.340 And what's the game plan?

00:06:02.300 Step-by-step process on what we need to do to solve this issue and make this project

00:06:06.420 become a reality, right?

00:06:07.460 At the end of the project, you've got to ask one question.

00:06:11.100 And the question is, who is taking the lead on this project?

00:06:14.500 So, for instance, you've got six steps.

00:06:16.600 Who's taking the lead on step number one?

00:06:18.680 I got this one.

00:06:19.560 Great.

00:06:20.340 Who's taking the lead on number two?

00:06:21.720 Me too, because that's part of me.

00:06:22.960 Great.

00:06:23.680 How about you two work on that?

00:06:24.860 Is that cool?

00:06:25.320 Yes.

00:06:25.880 Three, four, five.

00:06:26.880 If you don't do that, then everybody feels committed to every single project rather than people

00:06:32.360 saying, this is my responsibility.

00:06:34.640 This is my responsibility.

00:06:35.580 And then at the end, you ask the one question that I asked earlier, which is what?

00:06:39.540 What do you need from me in this project?

00:06:42.240 Pat, we need you for X, Y, Z.

00:06:44.260 Perfect.

00:06:44.820 I can't do this.

00:06:46.100 I can do this.

00:06:47.280 I will commit to this.

00:06:48.420 No problem.

00:06:49.100 I can't do this because I think she will do it better than I will do it.

00:06:52.160 She's the expert in that area.

00:06:53.620 Fair enough.

00:06:54.320 Thanks, guys.

00:06:55.080 Boom.

00:06:55.520 You step away.

00:06:56.500 So the question is, who is taking the lead on this step of the project before you finish

00:07:01.620 the strategy session that you had on a project that you're working on?

00:07:04.520 That will save you a lot of time.

00:07:07.340 Number eight.

00:07:10.160 So you're in a boardroom.

00:07:11.680 You're trying to overcome something.

00:07:12.980 You have some issue, a crisis, something, whatever that's taking place that's come up, right?

00:07:16.840 As you're going through step-by-step of processing this issue, you've either hit a wall or you've

00:07:21.980 already solved it and processed the issue, but people are still talking.

00:07:25.300 So you have to ask a simple question.

00:07:27.700 Are we done as a team processing this issue?

00:07:31.420 And this is typically what will happen.

00:07:33.000 Everybody will go like this.

00:07:35.960 I think so.

00:07:37.520 Are we?

00:07:37.800 I think we're done.

00:07:39.300 We're done.

00:07:40.060 Okay, cool.

00:07:40.780 Perfect.

00:07:41.120 Thanks, guys.

00:07:41.840 We're good to go.

00:07:42.460 Everybody knows what to do after here.

00:07:44.000 Great meeting, guys.

00:07:44.880 We'll see you guys.

00:07:45.440 Boom.

00:07:45.740 And you get to work, right?

00:07:47.200 That question right there stops everybody.

00:07:50.220 Everybody looks at each other.

00:07:51.640 Boom.

00:07:52.100 We get up.

00:07:52.640 We get back to work, whatever we're working on.

00:07:54.500 But that meeting is done with.

00:07:56.980 Number nine.

00:07:59.980 So many times, you'll have a lot of people that are constantly asking questions from the

00:08:03.740 home office.

00:08:04.220 So they'll call the headquarters.

00:08:05.480 How does this work?

00:08:06.520 How does that work?

00:08:07.380 How does this work?

00:08:08.480 How does that work?

00:08:09.540 Rather than creating a CRM, like for instance, we spent over seven figures on an app that allows

00:08:15.020 me to have geoconference that a message, we have 7,000 agents nationwide.

00:08:19.280 I can't direct a message to everybody.

00:08:21.760 This geoconference allows me to send a message to any zip code, 50 mile radius, 100 mile radius,

00:08:27.380 and everybody there gets it, right?

00:08:28.880 And allows me to have a timer on there where the message disappears in six hours.

00:08:33.580 So everybody has to read the message.

00:08:35.200 So having a CRM, a communication platform where people in different departments can get

00:08:41.080 updates on what's going on.

00:08:42.380 So at any given moment, I can go and say, what's going on over here?

00:08:44.620 This relates to me because it's my department.

00:08:46.460 Got to check.

00:08:47.340 I'll move on and go back to what I was doing.

00:08:49.220 So look, as you grow, and eventually you're going to have a lot of different departments

00:08:52.120 that's running the business, right?

00:08:53.460 Compliance, sales, backend, support, customer service, customer retention, finance department.

00:08:58.680 You have all these different departments.

00:09:00.180 But before you have all these different departments, you may be running a team of three people,

00:09:04.000 four people, five people.

00:09:05.340 For us at this point, we bought a multi-seven figure app that we designed only for us that

00:09:10.540 communicates, that's got so much security in it, that's insane.

00:09:13.340 And it's got different departments, different level leadership.

00:09:15.960 Because a lot of times, if one department is distracting another department, is distracting

00:09:20.500 another department, that department is dealing with an issue that's none of their business,

00:09:24.560 but these guys are bothering them.

00:09:26.140 They're focused doing their part.

00:09:27.360 So you have to figure out a way to get the messages amongst each department to them.

00:09:31.680 So how do you do that at your level?

00:09:33.140 Maybe you're not a billion dollar company now.

00:09:34.760 Maybe you're not a hundred million dollar company now.

00:09:36.220 Maybe you're just starting out your $100,000 business.

00:09:38.220 You create certain communication groups like a GroupMe or a CyberDust or a text or a certain

00:09:46.340 communication that you can do collectively, the team can in that department collectively,

00:09:50.140 for them to know exactly what's going on with the updates.

00:09:52.840 And then as you grow, these communication platforms are going to get bigger and bigger

00:09:56.280 and bigger.

00:09:57.040 And eventually, you will also probably have your own proprietary communication tool you use

00:10:01.080 to save you a lot of time.

00:10:02.940 And number 10.

00:10:06.080 So a lot of times when you're new, your employees need education and you're the one that's educating

00:10:10.280 everybody because you know what you expect from people.

00:10:12.580 So you'll sit with an employee 42 minutes here, you know, 38 minutes here, another 48 minutes

00:10:17.780 here, and you'll find yourself saying the same thing to 50 other people, right?

00:10:22.740 And by the way, I am all about face-to-face, one-on-one orientation with new people to get

00:10:28.460 them acclimated.

00:10:29.200 You can't just say, watch this video and that's it.

00:10:30.600 There's got to be a human being that's sitting there talking to them.

00:10:33.560 But in order to really scale, you need to have an educational system in place.

00:10:36.400 And here's what I mean by that.

00:10:37.760 We created an educational system very similar to valutainment.

00:10:41.320 Valuetainment, a big part of it was a lot of people kept asking me questions.

00:10:44.320 What are the rules of money, Pat?

00:10:45.620 How do I become an entrepreneur, Pat?

00:10:47.540 You know, what is the struggles as an entrepreneur?

00:10:49.220 How do I sell?

00:10:49.760 How do I become a better salesperson?

00:10:51.320 How do I do this?

00:10:51.980 How do I network?

00:10:53.220 Eventually, so many questions were asked.

00:10:54.760 I made videos.

00:10:55.500 So now anybody that asked me questions, watch this video, watch this video, watch this video.

00:10:58.620 You know, I'm not explaining 22 minutes of the video because it's there for somebody

00:11:02.020 to watch it, right?

00:11:03.340 That same principle was used with our company way before valutainment came out.

00:11:08.180 And so if you're watching and say, well, Pat, how do I do it?

00:11:10.420 Do I put the videos on YouTube?

00:11:11.520 If you put it on YouTube, and let's just say you have a password-protected website where

00:11:16.220 you just want your employees to see, you don't want it to be open to the public, then you

00:11:20.140 can use YouTube, even if it's an unlisted video because it can be shared.

00:11:23.500 But you can use Wistia, which allows you to put the video and embed it on your website.

00:11:28.520 And the only way I can see it is based on the password, login, all that stuff I got to

00:11:32.760 go through, but it's your video.

00:11:34.180 And you spend $100, $200 a month with them, depending on how much bandwidth you have.

00:11:38.180 But having an educational platform with your business, no matter how big or small you are,

00:11:43.320 that can give you hundreds, if not thousands of hours that gets back to you instead of

00:11:48.400 having to train everybody.

00:11:49.660 Thanks, everybody, for listening.

00:11:51.020 And by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so.

00:11:55.640 Give us a five-star.

00:11:56.940 Write a review if you haven't already.

00:11:58.400 And if you have any questions for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat,

00:12:02.620 Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.

00:12:04.580 Just search my name, Patrick VidDavid.

00:12:06.500 And I actually do respond back when you snap me or send me a message on Instagram.

00:12:11.460 With that being said, have a great day today.

00:12:13.200 Take care, everybody.

00:12:13.920 Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - October 22, 2018

Episode 193： 10 Time Saving Hacks for the Entrepreneur

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