Retraining myself to be a [more] successful business owner

I'm not in a position to give advice... rather need it myself, but Randy Pausch has some golden nuggets in his lectures - especially on delegation and setting priorities:

Good move!

I'd suggest meditating, to become an observer of your thoughts. First step to some serious reprogramming.

All the best!

Always doing plenty of that! Whenever I notice I'm in a pattern, I'll immediately stop it.

The thing is, I often don't notice I'm in a pattern until it's 9 PM and I'm exhausted.

Thanks for the video, IrisMKH! I've saved it to my hard drive and have watched half ... while in the middle of consuming a number of other useful things, such as:

Email Is For Setting Expectations - 99U
How to Dramatically Reduce Time Typing | Real Life E®
Autotext - Text Expander for Windows - Snippets Organizer

I've reached out to a couple coaches whom I think may be able to give some pointers as well.

I'm certain that one of my new habits to adopt is to NOT try to multi-task ... but dammit, there's so much good stuff out there to learn O.o

Well, I had a really good one-hour session with a brilliant marketer yesterday.

I learned that I have a lot of work to do when it comes to selling myself. Not for getting new clients -- but telling my existing clients what I already do for them.

I host websites for over 60 people. Yet I'm broke. Clearly there's something wrong with this picture!

I think my next "habit" to adopt would be to regularly remember the value of what I do, what I provide, etc. -- and start telling people about it, rather than having the internal dialogue of "I don't provide anything unique."

Read The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber.

It talks through some of the pitfalls and issues people discover when moving from being an employee to running a business.

Then read it again in a year's time and see how many 'Duh!' moments you have as you look back and see all the mistakes you made.

Repeat annually until successful!

hehehe

Yeah, that book's been recommended to me more than a few times...

Thanks, I finally just finished watching it!

The best Habit Designer i ever known is BJ Fogg and His Fogg's Behavior Model.
It was surprising that his concept on Tyne Habits could help me so much on building new habit, so if you need to build new habit without motivation and will power but guaranteed work, try His Tyne Habits.

Did you mean Tiny Habits?

Tiny Habits w/ Dr. BJ Fogg - Behavior Change

Looks interesting. Thanks, I'll check it out!

That's really cool. I've signed up for the next "weekly session" thing. Thanks again for sharing it.

I'm discovering that I need help figuring out WHICH habits I want ... I'm sure his system will work great once I figure that part out. Or is the whole point to not get wrapped up in choosing huge, earth-shattering habits, but opt instead for little funny ones?

Find somebody that is doing what you want to do. In other words, get a mentor or a coach and/or study their books, videos, ways of doing things and apply what you learn to your own situation.

I thought this forum was full of such people?

Here's a little list I put together.

I've attempted to put, in priority order, how to go about my business working hours.

Thoughts?

1) Invoice clients
2) Follow up with new business prospects
3) Check up on, or create, business generation/promotion
4) Follow up with delegated tasks, continue working on projects
5) Answer other emails sitting in Inbox; if lengthy, schedule for another day and advise client
6) Work on the ebook/guide I'm writing
7) Develop/brainstorm new innovative services
8) Learning/experimenting with new programs, systems, etc.

Of course, all of the above takes place AFTER my personal "self care" for the day.

I wouldn't do all of these every single day, as the amount of work that needs to be done every day fluctuates -- if I somehow end up spending 12 hours troubleshooting an issue I'm clearly not going to be in a space to work on my ebook, for example.

But, what do you guys think in general? Should the priorities be switched around? Anything I've overlooked?

Okay fankyu!

Yes, limit your priorities to three or five.

Well, I suppose a simplification of my list above might be:

1) Get new business
2) Take care of existing clients
3) Learn/find/create new ways to continue growing the business and making it more efficient.

Yes?