Business Coach : Keep A Checklist
-Now, I have noticed– I’m trying to psychoanalyze myself as I interview great people like yourself because I’m learning so much about what I can do better, and one of things I have discovered is that when I don’t make a list–
-Now one thing to keep in mind– let me say what else it is, too. I get to work before everyone else does.
-You get to work before everybody else?
-Oh yeah.
-Even though you’re the owner?
-Yes, I get to work before everybody else. Owner and business coach.
-So you wake up at 5:00 AM.
-Yeah. Workout.
-Workout?
-Cleanup, eat breakfast, and hit the road.
-So you’re working out. You eat breakfast every day?
-Every day.
-Really?
-But sometimes it’s not a good breakfast. But I do eat every day.
-Do a Pop Tart at breakfast?
-No.
-Oh, you don’t do that.
-No.
-So you wake up at 5:00 AM. You work out. What time you working out?
-Probably around 5:10.
-5:10.
-I roll out of the bed to the treadmill.
-OK. And then what time are you at the office?
-I am usually at the office around 7:10.
-710. And you take pride in being the first one there, or you just do it–
-I love it.
–out of necessity. As a boss and business coach.
-No. I like those people working with me to understand that I value what I do, and I expect them to value what they do. And time is a good measurement. How we use time is a good measurement of the valuing process. A business coach can help you use time better.
-Now I’ve been told, when you make these lists– I’m obsessive about these. But there’s three rules you keep in mind. I want to see if you believe in these. You ask yourself, first, what needs to be done? It sounds like you do that. A business coach would tell you to do that.
-Yeah.
-Then the next one is when does it need to be done.
CLIFTON TAULBERT: Correct.
-And then the other one is who needs to do it.
CLIFTON TAULBERT: Got it.
-So do you ever have stuff on your list where you’re like that’s not for me to do. As a company, we need to do that, but that needs–
CLIFTON TAULBERT: And see another thing that the list will help you do, especially when you have multiple employees, it will help you with the delegation process. Because as long as it’s in my head, that means I gotta do it. But once I take it out of my head and put it on paper and begin to look at it– wait a minute! Pat knows how to do that.
CLAY CLARK: Pat knows how to do that.
-Yeah, so I’ll let Pat do that.
-And I– so you’re asking yourself, what do you need to do on here. And then you can delegate. So maybe you come over here. Let’s just say that we had on the list, we say drop off mail. I’m just going to put that down here. And then you might look at this and say, well, Pat needs to do that. So do you just circle it and write Pat by it or something?
-No. I do more than circling. I take that up to the staff meeting because everybody who comes to the staff meeting, they have to bring their list maker as well.
-Oh, so they come to the staff meeting, they have to bring their–
-Yeah.
-Wow! And again, I’m– this is huge for me. I know there’s a lot of maybe stay-at-home moms watching this. There’s probably dads watching this. There’s people that the mom and dad both work. There’s entrepreneurs. There’s interpreters. There’s employees. Everybody can benefit from making this kind of list.
-Yeah, they can. There is no doubt about it because it helps to organize your mind. It helps to organize your effort, and so that you’re not expending effort wastefully, but really being productive in your day.
-I noticed that, for me, I used to think– just the last month, I used to think, man, I have a hard time on vacation. My wife, bless her heart. She would- we’d go on this cruise. We go on the cruise, and it takes me like two days to get into vacation mode. I’m like on two days where I feel discombobulated, and about the third or fourth day, I start to get into vacation mode.
And what I’ve discovered is my issue really is that I’m not making a to-do list at all for the trip. I have nothing I’m going to get done.
-I feel so sorry for you.
CLAY CLARK: It freaks me out.
-But I’m just like that.
CLAY CLARK: You are?
-And I understand that. My wife is probably the world’s greatest vacation goer. I mean you just hint and Barbara has all ready packed stuff. I mean the food bag. I mean you’d have a traveling picnic. She’s ready to go.
Me, I’m in the car. I’m driving, but I’m also pulling the office behind me until about the third day. And finally, I don’t know what happens. Something happened and it cuts the chain of the office. And it goes back, and I’m enjoying myself.
-Well, that’s interesting. So you, basically, wake up every day. This is your system. You organized– you get up at 5:00 AM. You work out. You make your to-do list. Do you have a day planner, like an actual calendar?
-I know I should say yes because there are very important people that make day planners, and they’re in every major store for you to buy them.
CLAY CLARK: But you don’t have one?
-But I don’t have one.
-Does your secretary have one?
-Yeah, they have one.
-OK, so in your– let’s go back old school. Let’s pretend that you are not where you are at today. Did you have a day planner then when you were working in the bank and when you were doing some of your earlier career things? Did you have a day planner so you knew at 10 o’clock you meet with Greg and at 12 o’clock to meet with Pat? Or did you just memorize it?
-I would say, when I was an employee, that I always had some form of acknowledging what I needed to do. It may have been informal, but I’ve always had that. And I think that– god bless this thing. I knew what I could and could not do in the field. You literally– even though you’re there all day, you had to plan your day even though it was fairly routine and never changed, but you planned it anyway.
And I think that idea of planning how I wanted my life to look has always stayed with me. And it shows up in different ways and in different places. A business coach can help you to get a plan together