Stop Being Busy. Start Being Productive.

0:00My personal favorite kind of supplemental strategy to time blocking that I feel like we don't talk about nearly enough is what I call a chaos time. Now chaos time is another time block where usually people will do it in the afternoon. So you have a time block from 30 to 60 minutes that's called chaos time and it's just that. So when somebody calls you with their hair on fire and the world is falling down around them and you have to get something done right then in there right that day that's when chaos time comes into play and you actually deal with whatever those fires are saying. Now what that will do is that will protect the rest of your day because it's like every time you talk to him it's like how are you going to go out so busy I'm so busy I'm so busy it's like like are you really not busy and I hate saying the word busy so for me when everyone's like oh how are things going and it's like yeah we're stacked every day like I'm busy yeah I usually like to say oh man we're so productive right now like we got so much stuff going on it's it's amazing you know because for me I always I'm always like kind of positive it's Friday and

1:02so I love it it's like when someone's like busy it just sounds like such a negative thing and then a lot of times the people who say that a lot to me I'm like we're living every day like it's Friday around here not a carry on the world just ready there welcome the weekend well hey guys welcome back to the Friday habit I'm excited because today we're joined by Jacob Hicks he is a sales strategist and systems thinker who's passionate about helping entrepreneurs push past their comfort zone don't we all need to be push past our comfort zone because there's no growth without that you know he helps him master their time and build businesses that last he's got a proven track record of turning goals into sustainable results and Jacob brings powerful insight for small business owners ready to level up Jacob welcome to the Friday

2:03habit oh Mark thank you so much for having excited to be here love that intro yeah man so how are things going for you just going really well said let's live it up in in central Iowa and yeah okay waiting for summer I guess it's like the quarantine territory over there yeah we got a lot of core and a lot of cattle yeah okay yeah that's good it's humid I can't remember it's been a long time since I've been Iowa it can get yeah it can get pretty it can get really really hot and it can get really really cold too so it just depends on really the day of the week so nice is that was that where you grew up yeah yep so I grew up in a small town in southwest Iowa but yeah lived in different parts of Iowa all my life okay nice yeah I mean it's got the rolling hills the few times I've been there it's been beautiful you know yeah it's I spent a lot of time in orange city Iowa oh really what about orange city there's a college there that we I was in a band and we used to go and we used to play at that college so I love it man all right all right all right that's one small town

3:03Iowa yeah yeah exactly so like we was like late and we're hungry it's like all there's like a taco John you know like yep and I close the 12 so you want to get quick exactly exactly so but that's cool man so then as far as you know growing up there and kind of developing as a business leader entrepreneur all those other kind of things what was your journey like from that when you were young was it always you wanted to did you just have a knack for sales or things like that or what what what was that development like you know I mean sales has kind of always been kind of in the back of my mind my dad's old insurance her about 25 years when I was growing up so I mean it was kind of just always around and it's kind of funny you say that because I realized you know I was like I'm just thinking back through like my my work history and everything and I realized that my first sale I actually went door to door in my hometown and sold chocolates in eighth grade so that was my very that was my very first sale but kind of

4:08entrepreneurship and sales has kind of always been in the blood a little bit when I was by first kind of true sales role I was in college and I sold suits retail retail setting to that for about four or five years working my way up to the company it was a it was a really great way to cut my teeth but as anyway it's ever been in retail or like service nose like it's it can you have some really great customers and you can have some really really grumpy customers too but it was a good way to cut my teeth and you know from there I got into real estate for a little while and then most recently with the last few years I was an outside sales rep for a couple of companies in the optical world before launching my own business so okay nice that's awesome yeah I sometimes I feel like you have people who are natural at sales and it just comes naturally I think for me it was a little bit of that where I really wasn't like self-conscious about I was good at sales and I used to tell friends like oh I hate sales like I'm not that good they're like are you serious like you're really good I'm like really

5:09I didn't think about it but I you know and I think kind of in the 90s and 2000s there was this a lot of this mentality of hard closing and like yes and like you know always be closing and you know find the objections and it was always this thing of like oh my gosh like I really don't want to like do this you know for me it was like I just wanted to build relationships and get to know people well and then figure out how to just provide the best solution to them you know but not have like a you know well let's get your wife on the line right now and ask her I mean you know we just like yeah you know just I always hated that part of it so but I think with with anything when it comes to sales and I think a lot of small business owners a lot of creators and freelancers and you know entrepreneurs people that we talk to they dread sales you know it's like one of those things where it's like yeah they just don't want to do it but I do think that it is obviously if you're gonna be running business development or doing certain things like you need to sharpen that skill and have a self-awareness

6:11yeah but really it comes down and I know you talk about this comfort zone thing right it's like it's like okay how do we break through this this comfort zone that we have of approaching people are talking about a certain thing and so what does that look like do you think so I mean for me I mean you hit the nail on the head like most entrepreneurs they want like when they start a business you want the business to do the business right like you want to be you want to be a marketer or you know freelancer or like whatever the case might be you want to do those things you don't want to be you know somebody that's sitting down like cold calling people or whatever the case might be trying to drum up new business so for me what it really comes down to is just establishing systems that allow you to what I kind of call sell without selling meaning that you are you know meeting somebody at a networking event on LinkedIn or whatever the case might be getting some contact information hitting it off and then just establishing a strong cadence of follow-up I think that's I mean I think that's the the biggest thing that people can can miss and I mean the sales world for sure but also just in the business world in general I've seen stats that say that sales people the

7:16people that are I think paid to follow up on stuff yeah they it's one in two salespeople don't follow up more than once wow and most business 80% of business I just saw this the other day 80% of business is one in five or more follow-ups meaning that we are leaving I mean potentially four-fifths of our business on the table yeah that's not gonna get it that's interesting staff I'm gonna make sure that I go in I use Brevo as like my CRM yeah I have like a pipeline I'm like all these other kind of things and so typically a lead will come in through the website or I'll meet somebody at a networking event and I'll put them in there and then I have kind of like okay nurturing mode and qualifying and you know all these different phases that they go through and so a lot of times I'll email once email twice and then I'll be like all right I'm good because you clearly don't want my service but for there I need to make a mental note I got I got to email like three or four more times before I move

8:19them over to the not interested yeah so and honestly I would do even even more than that like my this is a personal philosophy but personally like if somebody like reaches out to me they you know I get their contact information whatever I will follow up with them until either are they die or I die or I get told no pretty aggressively okay I mean just because that's where most of your business is gonna live but we just have to get past this mindset of sales is just like me calling you know mark every single day until he says yes I'm gonna buy Jacob stuff that's not really what sales is sales of what you're talking about before it's for it's it's serving people in such a way that you are actually helping them if you don't believe in what you're selling and believe that it can actually help people then you know maybe we have to have a different discussion so when I say follow up I don't mean you know just calling mark every other week or whatever the cadence might be just saying oh hey are you ready to buy now it's following up in such a way that I'm providing value adding credibility to myself in your eyes and there's providing information that you find

9:20helpful so it doesn't have to be like hey do you want to buy stuff it can be you know hey mark you know things it was really great to chat at the networking event last week I would love to grab coffee that can be a follow up it can also be you know hey mark haven't talked to you in a couple of months we met at this networking event when we were talking you know you mentioned that you were struggling with you know x y and z you're thinking about you know this that of the other and you know I've I've dealt with a lot of that in my business these are kind of my top three tips when people are thinking about that particular issue that's a lot of value and that's that's the kind of follow that people want and if you do that on a consistent basis I mean any salesperson that's been in the business for more than five minutes has stories where they followed up with somebody sometimes over the course of years with zero response and ended up getting a random call from this whoever it was saying hey thanks so much for reaching out I'm ready to do business now yeah it's kind of like that top of mind is first in line when on a business and so trying to continually and that's why usually to I move people into an email list and then do like a

10:22monthly newsletter sure it's kind of like hey we have a new service or or whatever that is just to to kind of stay top of mind with them or remind them out here and then if they really hate me then they can unsubscribe to that news letter and then it's like all right like we're not doing business and that's that's fine but yeah so I mean so what do you think it is as far as that comfort zone you know did you kind of experience this in your own journey of kind of having some breakthroughs or whatever or did you were you kind of always just ice man so I've not always been the ice man and you know it's kind of funny like I growing up like before I really truly got into sales selling suits I was kind of a shy kid but sales you know either you kind of break out of that a little bit either kind of learn how to be extroverted or think or swim yeah you figure out something else to do well for me it's really just that mindset shift it's that I'm calling I'm calling Mark because I truly believe that what I have to offer him is a value and is something that could potentially help him and I just want to see if it makes sense for us to do business together and then like

11:25the following up piece and following up from a place of value if you're following up from value and providing information that is relevant and interesting and actually could help those people that are reading it you're again you're not going to be bothering people but if you are kind of like that like the still your typical like used car salesman kind of vibe where you're just bugging people trying to get them to buy something that you don't even know if it makes sense you're just trying to close a deal then that's where you're gonna start having issues yeah so how do you help people recognize you know when they're playing it too safe in their sales efforts like you know if they're not doing those things so I mean the first thing we always look at is like that follow a piece that we've talked about already it's like if if you aren't following up in a consistent manner whether it be like your newsletter like you mentioned before or if you're doing like you know a quarterly call or quarterly like very personalized check in email something like that if you aren't doing those things already then again you are leaving a lot of your business on the table you're just saying hey you know what if it's on the other side of that email I'm probably not gonna I don't even want the business so

12:26that's always the first place that we look and then establishing the cadence that makes sense so my my kind of next step always is if you do meet somebody at that networking event do you know what your next step is and it should be like a pretty immediate thing it doesn't have to be like I'm gonna send them a million emails and I'm gonna send a whole bunch of mail and all this stuff it could just be I met Mark at this great networking event we seem to hit it off I'm gonna give them a call tomorrow and see if we can set up a coffee but you should have those kind of things like just already in your head and just had those systems established so I mean in the sales world we do a lot of like scripting like role-playing things right and the reason that we do that is because we don't want when you are in a live sales situation to be when you're practicing yeah you want to practice beforehand and the same the same is true of your sales systems so you don't want to be like at a networking event meeting you know this awesome guy named Martha you think you could make sense to do business together and then you're just at a loss like oh well I don't know what to do I guess I'll put on a few more than I missed you collect all the business

13:28cards and then they just fall into a black hole they slide down your seat in the car like yeah you should have like I mean for me that's how it is like I get the business cards I enter them into my serum I make notes because you know I usually have conversations with everybody so I'm like making notes about like okay they have three kids they've lived in Colorado this long like you know just so that I'm it's not I'm always coming from a place when I'm trying to connect with them of like I already asked you those questions already know these things about you so trying to make sure all that stuff's entered in properly and so then it's like all right after I get down with this networking event I'm gonna enter their information and then I'm gonna reach out to him hey it was great meeting you with this thing and and for me one of the things I always try to do is I really try to provide like you were saying this free value like looking into their situation and just offering something with no expectation of getting something in return you know we're thinking oh if I give him this information they're gonna want to work with me like I really try to kind of keep it as pure if you will as possible as far as I generally

14:28want to get to know more people and build relationships authentically and if I don't think I have something that could value them or maybe there's another relationship that I should just try to connect them with in order to like move them you know on to somebody else because I'm like hey I don't think I can help you right now but you know I know someone else who's doing X Y Z you should contact them because it's just that reciprocity where of like at some point they might be like you know what marks never asked anything over me he's never tried to hard-close me or whatever and so maybe even if I don't get their business the thing that's happened to me a lot more recently this year is like people are just referring me like yes like I'm doing businesses one this one guy but this one guy's like referred me like three or four different people because I just had a good relationship with him now it's kind and I wasn't trying to like pressure him into doing something with us and so he just keeps referring us to other people and so that's been great I love that man I said yeah that's a ton of gold like the notes piece I love like if you're if you have a CRM and you are like putting your contacts in there and then you're not adding notes I mean you're you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot a little bit

15:29yeah one of my favorite kind of like little subtle tips is I love I like trying to figure out when somebody's birthday is and figure out like what their favorite flavor like ice cream or donut or whatever might be and get them that for their birthday get him a little bit I'm just because I mean in that shows like I'm authentic and I want to have a strong relationship with them the piece about you know the referral I love that because I think of those people as allies right because you said like you meet some people you really hit it off and you're just like it really doesn't make sense like we probably won't do business together just because you're doing your thing I'm doing my thing is just not a like a jiving thing right but like those people can still be I mean hugely influential in your business because you are providing value still and have an authentic relationship where they are like you said referring a ton of people to you over and over and over and over again because they know who you are and how you're gonna treat the people they send you yeah yeah totally so another thing we wanted to kind of chat about we I got I got time management you know systems and then you know some other stuff here

16:29but time mastering time management I mean that is a big thing yes this is the one thing I constantly hear from people to it's like oh I'm so busy here there's not enough hours in the day I'm like listen Elon Musk is like running freaking 14 companies yeah 14 companies but he's going to Mars like all of a week he's the same amount of 24 hours as everybody else in this world and so I feel like this is a constant thing with salespeople and entrepreneurs right they're always battling the clock and so it's like how do we manage our time and our priorities so for me like I guess like the simplest answer I can give you is it all comes down to intentionality so and I make for me personally and I've written quite a bit about this on my blog and everywhere else but I'm time blocking I'm a huge huge fan of time blocking so I do it I mean every day now when I say time blocking some folks think of that particularly the sales were and they think okay from 9 to 12 I'm working so 9 to 12 is my working time block and then from 12 to 1 on my lunch that's my lunch time block and then I come back from 1 to 5 and that's my afternoon working time block right you got

17:33to be a lot more specific than that so when I say yes so when I say time blocking I'm talking about like specific tasks with specific time so if you let's say you are like doing some cold calling in the sales world right or prospecting or whatever you have your call sheet and let's say you know it's probably going to take you roughly an hour and you do that from 9 to 10 so from 9 to 10 you have a time block in your calendar that says from 9 to 10 I am cold calling and then you have like whatever your notes are whatever you want to kind of put in there and then once 10 o'clock hits then you say okay I got my calling done and now I'm going to respond to emails or get back to whatever so from 10 to 11 that's your 10 to 11 time block so get really really granular on all of those things now the important thing to note is I believe it's called I think it's Parkinson's law if I remember right it's where a task will take the time that you give it meaning that if you're a cold calling and let's say let's say you time block an hour but it could really take you like half an hour because again we know most cold calling is smiling dialing leaving messages a lot of

18:36right so let's say it would normally take you half an hour but you schedule an hour it will most likely take that hour so really kind of sort of figuring out okay this really takes me I thought it was going to take me an hour really takes my 45 minutes so you start to adjust start to iterate a little bit and start working with your time blocks to see what it works now my personal favorite kind of supplemental strategy to time blocking that I feel like we don't talk about nearly enough is what I call chaos time now chaos time is another time block where usually people will do it in the afternoon so you have a time block from 30 to 60 minutes that's called chaos time and it's just that so when somebody calls you with their hair on fire and the world is falling down around them and you have to get something done right then and they're right that day that's when chaos time comes into play and you actually deal with whatever those fires are then now what that will do is that will protect the rest of your day right so as you're you're cold calling or whatever and you know Mrs. Jones calls and says hey my hair's on fire again I need you to fix it

19:36and you're like okay I'm gonna get that done this afternoon for you Mrs. Jones don't worry about it and then the rest of your day is not all messed up because you're trying to deal with these issues right because you already have a time block exactly now one other important note when it comes to chaos time that's been hugely successful for me and my clients is you know so I scheduled time chaos time every single day before let's say like a week or two at a time maybe once a quarter or every month or whatever makes sense for you take about a week or two and actually write down all the things that come up during chaos time and realize that let's see again like with my previous example let's say Mrs. Jones is calling you two three times a week with some other emergency that has to get taken care of now instead of always allocating chaos time to her needs you can actually time block four Mrs. Jones saying hey you know from 10 to 10 30 this is my Mrs. Jones time block she's probably gonna call me sometime today or tomorrow the next day and there's gonna be something I don't have to deal with now let's say she doesn't call you she's on vacation doesn't call you all that week that's both her time block and the chaos time becomes time

20:40you can allocate in a different way if you need to yeah so do you think it's important because I've heard of people doing this to when you're kind of first starting out with this whole time blocking yeah system really going through maybe two three days maybe even a week and you just kind of mark down your times okay I got to the office at nine o'clock and and then kind of micro organizing everything you've done throughout days I went to the bathroom and like I jacked around for you know what however long I went to the you know down to the vending machine and I looked in there for 10 minutes you know because I feel like sometimes to you kind of can your day can get away from you and you can lose a lot of that time and then you're like man I was busy but I don't know what I did today yeah so essentially the way that I think of what you're talking about I call it an audit and I recommend people do it if you're if you're time blocking and time blocking consistently doing it I mean depending on what you're doing particularly like right away right when you first start kind of messing with with the time blocking strategy just to see where your time

21:43is really going because especially early on in the entrepreneur like entrepreneurial thing like when you're playing the entrepreneur game like when you first start you have you know probably more time than money so your time is your main resource you need to really know where you're spending it and making sure that you're actually spending it on things that are hopefully driving you know hopefully you know people into your pipeline but then ultimately dollars to the bottom line and I recommend once people are doing this more consistently do it like said once a quarter or so an audit and just see okay I did time block for an hour for cold calling but then I you know hung out with John at the water cooler for 15 minutes and then you know I was I'm messing on my phone for another 15 minutes so just just making sure that what you're actually appointments that you're making with yourself you're actually honoring them yeah yeah totally that makes sense and and again I feel like it's just like I had a friend who he's always say busy busy is a form of laziness yeah yeah you know because it's like every time we talk to him it's like oh how are you gonna say oh I'm so busy I'm so busy I'm so busy it's like like are you really that busy and I hate

22:46saying the word busy so for me when everyone's like oh how are things going and it's like yeah we're we're stacked every day like I'm I'm busy yep I usually like to just say oh man I'm we're so productive right now like we got so much stuff going on it's it's amazing you know because for me I always I'm always like trying to be positive and living like it's Friday and so I love it it's like when someone's like busy it just sounds like such a negative thing and then a lot of times the people who say that a lot to me I'm like I know you're not busy so I love what you're saying because I mean people talk about it all the time like I'm super busy and it's so easy to fill your time but are you like are you actually getting things done that's really the kind of the critical thing yeah there's a there's a really really great book that I read several years ago called the four disciplines of execution and they talk about like getting caught up in the whirlwind like that's some of this chaos time stuff but then they also talk about like your wildly important goals so like setting the goals that are like actually meaningful and actually doing like helping you to get things done the way you need to and making sure that you are

23:47accomplishing at least one one sort of task or something that will drive you towards those goals every single day and I mean you ultimately you'll get to where you're going right yeah so so what is like when you coach somebody through this like like who's constantly busy and and and they're not really that productive like what are some of the things that you're kind of helping them them see so when I'm coaching somebody so I mean typically the way that I like the coach is we'll have like our weekly or you know by weekly session and then we have what I call for lack of a better word homework in between so if I'm coaching a salesperson this is hey you know I'm a newer salesperson or I'm trying to get to this next level and I really think that you know cold calling or prospecting in different ways will help me to get there so okay great so I mean accountability is going to be a big piece of this so if you if you tell me as a salesperson okay I have this huge list that I got a LinkedIn or I'm gonna message all these people on LinkedIn or on the phone or whatever I'm going to message you know 50 a day whatever it is and we will actually set up homework

24:51saying okay so over the next week over the next you know five working days then you are going to message you know 250 people is that what you want to do and they will say yeah that's exactly what I want to do I'm super excited about it's like okay great then the next time we meet we'll say okay so we set a goal of hitting 250 contacts or outreaches between you know last session and this session so did we do it and they'll say well you know I got some things put in the way and like I don't know you know that's okay I mean life happens right we get that but I mean if you're telling me that like this prospecting plan is really what you want to drive towards you like you you mean you've seen the results from other people so you believe that you know that it'll work but you're just telling me you're not getting things done so I mean sometimes it can be just a commitment to the process sometimes it can be like this time management piece like we were talking about before it's like hey okay are we going to set aside you know two hours every day to make sure we're hitting all of our contacts or whatever and sometimes it can be just like some mindset pieces where you're like I mean some got I mean some salespeople like love cold calling like that's where they

25:52live like they're just hungry for it and some salespeople like it I mean they get the shakes and get nervous and stuff so like starting to work through some of those things can really help so I'm just figuring out where the roadblocks is a huge piece of it yeah totally and and and again it's like I think setting those goals is important and then revisiting those goals and and even having the accountability right of a coach or somebody else on your sales team that's kind of holding you accountable because again we all have good intentions but sometimes you know we get in our own way and we can be our own worst enemies yeah so having that outside voice is always you know helpful so so systems I want to talk a little about systems you know why do you think so many small businesses struggle with building sustainable systems because I feel like they're one of those things where really systems are what we need in order to actually grow and be profitable and always other kind of things yeah and get ourselves you know we talk about you on the Friday habit right like spend less time working in your

26:53business and more time working on I love it yeah yeah so I mean I think there's a few kind of things that typically come up when we're talking about the entrepreneurial side of things so my favorite quote around systems I'm sure you've heard it a million times is from James Clear he says we don't rise to our goals we fall to our systems meeting that whatever we can do sustainably and consistently it's really where we are headed so if your goals exceed the systems you've built then I mean something else has to give in order to get to where you want to go I love that man that's really powerful and I even think about we so the Friday habit we're in our fifth year love it love the show and one of the big things that has helped us you know sustain over these years is we have systems you know around around when we record when stuff gets released around how we intake you know new guests and like it all kind of runs itself so over the past five years there's just minimal touch that I have to to do to kind of keep things

27:53moving forward and then and then I get to hang out with cool guys like you and talk every week you know with with with cool people and so but I think that it would have fallen apart and you know at Brand-Viva we do a lot of podcast production yeah we work with you know people to create content a consistent basis and one of the biggest things especially in the podcasting world it's called pod fade where you get excited about you know creating something and doing this thing and then something pops up and and you get busy and you have to put the podcast in the back burner and because you don't have those systems in place it all starts to crumble and fall apart yeah I mean you're absolutely right neck that's I mean the pod fade like that is a concept is true kind of regardless of what we're talking yeah what I was going to the gym eating coffee whatever it is yeah reading books whatever it is exactly or so really we're kind of talking about two different things so I mean we talked about goals a little bit before but always what I'm kind of digging into is why so like let's say like you started a business whatever it is you're selling x y and z you know like okay I'm gonna get more aggressive this year I want to grow the business a lot and I'm gonna hit I'm gonna sell you know this

28:55amount it's gonna be double whatever I sold last two years whatever it is right and I mean saying those things is great like in that there's nothing wrong with those kinds of goals but you have to understand why and you have to really tie it back to who you are and when I say tie it back to who you are I mean like okay let's say you do that let's say you hit and you you know you double your sales from last year to this year right fantastic it's an incredible goal but what would that do for you what would that really look like like what kind of life would you be leading if you did that with that I mean you were working you know 20 hours a day like would that mean that you're at the point where hey maybe you can take a step back a little bit and hire like a CEO or like that does that do a ton of great things for like your kids or your wife your family or whatever like really paint me the picture like I help me understand like why that's important to you and why you want to do it and then the second piece is the systems right so when it comes to to sale systems I kind of always start people with with two generally particularly on the follow-up side so the two that I always start and that there's kind of a third too that we can talk about we kind of mentioned earlier but the two that I

29:55start with is what I call a 10 by 10 meaning that you meet like you meet somebody at a networking event like we mentioned before so you know once a week for the next 10 weeks you're going to follow up with them in some form or fashion until you get a contact or sit down or whatever the case might be just trying to warm up the the prospect right the second one that I recommend people least start with it's our building they're kind of their own system version of this is I'm a big fan of Gary Keller from Keller Williams he was in real estate for a long time one thing yeah the one thing exactly and he recommends he does what's called the the 36 touch meaning that over and this is a long term like this is a long term drip campaign where the 10 by 10 would feed into the 36 touch but over 12 months you will in some form or fashion contact somebody 36 times now most people hear that and they start to panic a little bit and they're like I'm gonna call this guy 36 times what are you talking about no so usually well and again you kind of build it out the way that will work for you but usually you will contact somebody via phone like call them once a quarter

30:57just four times a year and the rest most majority of it is going to be like by weekly or weekly emails of like your newsletter or whatever the case might be and if you get some good contact information like anniversaries holidays birthdays those kind of things to make sure to reach out to them on those kind of days too but those are the systems that way you know like okay I'm at market this networking event I'm establishing a 10 by 10 or maybe an eight by eight works better for me so you know tomorrow I'm gonna call them see if I can get set up a coffee tomorrow I call you you know you're busy you don't get back to me whatever it's okay so you know a week from tomorrow I'm gonna I'm gonna touch base with them again maybe I'm gonna shoot them a text and just you just keep going that way so you always again know what the next steps are and you mentioned it before but a CRM I think is I mean absolutely a critical tool yeah a lot of entrepreneurs think okay well I've got a I got a spreadsheet right and I'm like okay that's I mean it's better to have that than nothing but I mean it's it's it's just it's almost it's almost nothing really yeah exactly or whiteboard or you know piece of paper in front of you you're starting to write stuff

31:59down yeah yeah totally gets I struggled I think for a while for that I actually I would say it's been about a year and a half or so that I've really implemented a CRM and really it's been great because one is I think in the past there's probably so many opportunities I missed out on because I didn't have proper notes or I didn't have like information of you know when I followed up with them last or you know you you think it I mean it's funny because even now like with the the system we have and I'm a huge fan of Brevo if you haven't checked it out you know I'll put show notes in the in the in the description about Brevo I'm not sure if you're familiar with it but one thing I love about it is that it's kind of all in one so yeah email marketing is in there communication is you can connect your email to it and then because one of the things I love about that is that in the pipeline where you have you know your different phases of your sale I can go in there and I can see exactly like the conversation like I'm just emailing them but it's

33:01sucking all that back in and then I can see like oh I followed up two weeks ago and it'll give me a time of like the last time there was some sort of it's been three weeks or a month or whatever since I communicated with them last but it's funny because without that tool in your brain you try to take some mental notes and I go yeah I think I just reached out to them it's like oh no that was like two months ago that I reached out to them and so yeah I agree having a good CRM a good you know place to to capture those notes and all that information is just priceless yeah 100% I kind of think of it I mean the way I've recommended it to clients like your second brain because you don't want like mental capacity to be taken up because you're trying to remember that you talked to John two days ago and you like you know you just shot the breeze or whatever nothing really came of it you don't want to try to remember that kind of stuff you want to be able to get that out of your mind so you can focus on working on your business like you said before that's really really critical yeah so what is I mean what so would you say the CRM is like the a good foundational like system piece is like having some sort of do you have do you have other

34:05museums that you like or so I mean like there's so there's I mean a ton out there I mean there's a million a million of it like it's a bunch of bunch anymore yeah um I mean I think a good place to kind of start and I don't know if I would call this like a true true CRM um but I mean a mail chip is kind of something inexpensive that has um like some CRM features I would say where you can you know have like a pop up on your website that somebody signs up for whatever then it immediately gets you know funneled into some of those things then you can say okay they're gonna get you know these five emails over the course of the next four or five days and like that's automatically done for you or like your newsletter and those kind of things yeah um I've had a lot of folks um have really good experience with HubSpot I think that's you know a nice staple to around the industry but really what I recommend to folks because there are just so many out there anymore is find the one that you will use and the best way I have found that to help folks do that is to Google like take like whatever your industry is like accounting and then assume CRM like accounting CRM and to see what comes up and start to do some research and see what is something

35:07that you will do sustainably because that's really the key part you might have the best CRM in the world but if you're not using it consistently then it's a moot point yeah yeah totally yeah and there's there's some really good stuff out there um I tested out one last year it's called less annoying CRM I've never heard of that I haven't yeah yeah you should it's and it's very basic but I think for a lot of people who just need like a very basic type CRM it's it's really good you know and uh and it's super cheap too I think it's like less than nine bucks a month or something like yeah just fantastic yeah um so yeah so that's cool man um so I guess you know some of the other things I was just curious about is uh you know what are some of the things that you do kind of like to practice because you're you're kind of growing your own business and and doing your your thing here so you know what are you kind of practicing uh you know what kind of habits and stuff uh look like for you on a weekly basis so for me I said time blocking I mean nobody's gonna be surprised by

36:11that I like to time block a lot um I kind of live live and breathe by my calendar um that's true like personally and professionally I really want to know where I'm at what I'm doing so I don't forget you kids married um not that I know of so maybe some in the uh you know Thailand some I'll let you know um like that's kind of a big piece of it for for me just like day to day particularly during like the working week is like I'm I'm just guilty of this is anybody else but like my my phone can kind of become bad habit for me where I just get sucked into some you know stupid series of videos that really aren't doing anything for me and before I know it it's you know four four hours later yeah um so what I really like doing is I've uh I've got a couple of apps that I'm I'm not affiliated with these guys at all um well one is like just the basic it's the shortcut app on um on your iPhone okay where I like I read a study that um if if your phone is in grayscale like black and white then everything on there whatever app it is is 30% less interesting to

37:15you so you can set up um your shortcut app to like let's say from like eight to five whatever it is your phone will be in grayscale and it can switch back automatically so that's been really great okay and then there's other apps out there that will block like your social medias and like that kind of stuff that can suck you in sometimes from like a certain period of time in a certain times of the day um so that I mean that's been really nice too yeah up I'll have a mess with that yeah I that's something that I've used throughout the years too where if you have a hard if you have 80d of hard time focusing or whatever like setting 25 minutes of focus time and then diminute break and you know you can install apps on your computer where it'll be like a little timer that's like 25 minutes yeah and now you know like okay for 25 minutes I'm just gonna focus on getting through my emails and and not be distracted by anything else and then when the timer goes off you know you can like switch to something else or take a five minute break and then do another 25 minute sprint and I think that that can be kind of helpful for those creative types yeah yep so I definitely I've definitely used that too over the years and that's really really fantastic

38:16but the the other the last thing I do just kind of help keep me focused is like like a lot of folks I like to listen to a little bit of white noise when I'm trying to fall asleep it just helps me you know get you know get to get a better fan on you know a little fan blowing air but what I've done is I will take my phone and I will actually plug it in again my living room and that's where my alarm is so that if I mean if I'm waking up you know at six o'clock in the morning or whatever it is I have to actually get up out of bed to turn my alarm off and then I mean I'm up so I might as well start you know start my day so I mean those are a few tips but I think the really important thing that anybody listening if they want to try some of this I love it fantastic definitely do that but my kind of key with all of this is to always be experimenting that's kind of one of my favorite strategies and don't say hey I heard this guy the Jacob on a podcast he's talking about time blocking I really want to try that absolutely try it but figure out what works for you so some folks like for me I like to do it for everything I do it for you know hey from you know six to seven

39:17or eight or over that's one that's my dinner time so I'm gonna have some dinner and hang out with my dog or whatever some people don't like to be as neurotic as I am yeah but just find the things that work for you yeah and then just keep doing those and find better ways to do them so we're like yeah one of the things that was really successful for me uh and I think I got this from James Clear from the Dominic habits book was um going to the gym you know it's like when the alarm goes off at 5 30 or 6 am you know I'm like I don't want to go to the gym yeah because you can't think straight you can't think clearly yeah and so what I would do was I'd start packing my bag for the gym the night before and I'd get everything laid out and I'd sleep in my clothes you know I was sweats in a t-shirt anyway so it's like I would just sleep in my my gym clothes or I do do that still and so then when my alarm goes off you know at 6 am I'm like I'm already dressed my bags over by the door yeah all right let's just go you know and then I you know even put my creatine in a in a thing so I don't have to use my brain at all it's just like really a lot of

40:18bed slip on your shoes and and then you know halfway by the time you get to the gym you're like oh okay I'm glad I'm here you know I love that because I mean you're talking about eliminating all the friction yeah much friction as you can I mean the same as true and sales eliminate the friction you know make it easy for people I think that's I mean it's really really critical and that's why like the CRN piece like find the things that you will actually do and yet you will do consistently I mean that's really really key I mean across regardless of the industry or whatever we're talking about right yeah yeah totally what if people wanted to kind of connect with you or you know kind of learn more follow you what's the best place to kind of connect so the best place to find me is on my website that's Jacob Hickscoach.com I also have my actual my own podcast called Purpose Schiff and Progress that's really great to find me if you're looking for some tools and tips that I've got a growth hub on my website there's a lot of good tools in there for you awesome what do you think as far as you know if we try to leave everybody with a good something they can

41:21start next week Monday morning kind of to get things kicked off on the right foot what is what is the one thing you would tell somebody to start doing honestly for me if they pick one thing to do today I would start doing some chaos time find find 30 to 60 minutes in your daily calendar that you can dedicate to all the crazy stuff that comes up during the day so you can protect the rest of your day and actually move things towards the goal do you want to achieve awesome I love it well hey thanks so much for hanging out with us on the show today and imparting some great wisdom as far as sales and systems and motivations and thank you for listening to the Friday habit if you go to the fridayhabit.com you can find show notes for this episode there you can also find links to our websites and ways to get in touch and at the bottom of the page you can download our guide to the fridayhabit system that's going to show you how to set aside one full day each week dedicated working on your business instead of always in your business hit us up at hello with the fridayhabit.com

42:23and until next time remember live every day like it's friday