Five Minute Friday: The One Thing

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Business can be a lonely game. But it doesn't have to be. Welcome to Boutique Chat where we explore community over competition and how to scale your company with the balance and the happiness that we all seek. We'll hear from product based businesses of all types, retailers, e commerce and wholesale brands, along with industry experts shaping the future of our industry. I'm your host Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub and and I can't wait to chat.

So one of the most impactful books I've ever read is the One Thing by Gary Keller. I'm curious if you've read it or not. You'll have to send me a message on Instagram and let me know.

The Boutique Hub or AJ Alderson.

But I love this book because when it comes to you being the CEO of your business and the CEO of your life and getting the most done and getting the most out of every day, it just challenges you with the way to get more done is by answering this one simple question every day. When you look at your mounting to do list and you look at all the things that are before you, everything comes down to this one question. And the question is, what is the one thing I could do today to make everything else on my list easier or unnecessary? Ooh, it kind of hits you right? What's the one thing on my list that would make everything else easier or unnecessary? And it helps us prioritize real quick what's important. And so after I read this book, it's really around the time that I created the four part to do list and a lot of the productivity tools that we have here at the Hub, like the Boutique boss planner and again that four part to do list and just some of our own strategies around being a CEO versus an entrepreneur. And the way I interpreted this question for myself, and maybe you will too, is okay. When I'm looking at this to do list, I first have to decide what's rocks and what sand. And you've maybe heard that entire analogy and I won't go into it. It's longer than five minutes. But essentially of my to do list, what's the 20% of my list that's going to hone 80% of the results? What are the big rocks, the big things, the hard things, the things I keep putting off versus what's the busy work and the sand, the phone calls, the customer service, the emails, the just things that I could knock out really fast that my brain wants to because I really want to go get that, you know, release the excitement when it comes of crossing off my to do list, but they really aren't impactful. They're busy but they're not impactful. So that's the first step for me was okay, if I'm going to identify what is the one thing I first have to know, what's rocks and what sand and how do I prioritize to do the rocks, the hard thing, the big thing first. That also meant for me narrowing down every day. My to do list is no more than three things. I may have a long list of things like of sand and rocks mixed together, but I have to really decide and circle what are the three biggest things I will get done today and focus on those first and then the sand can come and all the other things, tomorrow's to do list, but the big things have to come first. And finally the last thing this really challenged me to think about and honestly the thing that for the first several years in business, Eric challenged me to think about and that was what on your list is an actual income generating activity. And that's tough when you're a solo entrepreneur especially. I remember these days going, yeah, I know I need to track my data. Yeah, I know I need these reports. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm a one woman show and I'm over here just trying to post on social media today and just trying to do the basics of keeping this business running. How do I do both? And so I had to get really smart about how do I prioritize my time and tiger time myself out so I have room, even if it's just 30 minutes at a time to work on the data and the tracking and the numbers and the things that are not necessarily income generating activities today, but our income generating activities and mile markers for the long term and then balance that with the income generating activities of right now which is going live and posting on social and working on this product and taking a sales call and all these other things that were also happening. So help yourself prioritize long term, short term, what is an income generating activity and is it a right now or is it later and is it a $10 income generating activity or is it a hundred thousand dollar income generating activity when it's multiplied over time? So hopefully that question, you know, what is the one thing that you could do today that would make everything else on your list easier or unnecessary? Hopefully that question just helps you sift through some of those hard parts of prioritizing what's rocks versus sand? What's income generating right now versus long term and how do I ultimately narrow down my to do list every day to the three biggest rocks to focus on and then really prioritize my time to let the other things come after those biggest things have first been accomplished. You know, it's hard when you're a retailer and you're like, yeah, I should create an email list or yeah, I should create a website or yeah, I should try going live. But you're busy trying to keep up with all this other stuff. But I'm here to tell you, those three things I just mentioned, those are big rocks. Having an email list, maximizing your website, trying going live, maximizing your photography is another one. Like those are four really big rocks that I think should be on everyone's list if they aren't already a standard part of your business. So hopefully that little quick win will help you. Hopefully that question will help you think about how to better live as a CEO of your business and not just a hustling entrepreneur. No matter if you're a solopreneur or you've got 30 employees, it certainly applies to every single one of us. So that's it for five Minute Friday, you guys. This week inside of our community for members at the Boutique Hub. I want to hear more. I want to hear the conversation continue. So when you think about the one thing in your business, how are you prioritizing your to do list on a daily basis in order to get more done and focus on the big rocks versus the small grains of sand? All right, I hope you love this one. Let me know what you think over on the Boutique Hub or AJ Alderson on Instagram. And I can't wait to hear from you guys. And as always, I will talk to you again next week. Thanks for being here guys.

Thanks for listening guys. I hope you took away all kinds of nuggets and new ideas from this week's episode. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a rating and review. We love to hear your feedback and give you a chance to be featured on the show each and every week. For more information on our spirit of community over competition and to access guest downloads and bonuses and all the resources we talked about on the show and head on over to the boutiquehub.com and join the community. We'll see you next week.