How to Prioritize Effectively to Take on More Clients

Welcome to today's episode of Black Belt Startup. Thank you for tuning in. So what's new in the world of entrepreneurship? We're talking about reclaiming your time. See, as far back as I remember running companies, the first 2 weeks of December, my teams and I finalized our plans for next year. So we gather formally or we huddle and speak informally and reflect on the year and then also make plans, bold plans for the next one. And this last year was no exception. In one of the meetings, one of my colleagues asked me, Feras, what's the one thing that can either make or break the next year for you? And it got me thinking. About some concepts I read about and I experienced working with Google for over 10 years when we were a leading Google partner. And I also remember reading Eric Schmidt's book, who was the CEO of Google for a while. The book was How Google Works. And I remember the importance of prioritizing projects that align with the company's core mission and have the potential for significant impact. So prioritizing time, prioritizing projects was really key. And when Google was scaling like crazy, they had every reason to be overwhelmed. Too many ideas, too many demands, and a million urgent tasks. But instead of getting lost in the chaos, they prioritized. They zoomed in on their big rocks at the time, things like search quality and scaling their infrastructure, and let the smaller stuff wait. So that focus, it just didn't happen and didn't just keep them afloat, it's the reason they blew past the competitors. So this concept of prioritizing what is really important for you, the big rocks for your business, isn't just for tech giants, It's for all of us too. So whether you're running a consulting business, managing clients, or just trying to tackle your goals without losing your mind, it is the same deal. So today I want to cover how to take control of our time and priorities, because the way I see it, that is what separates the best years from the ones we barely survive. Now, before we dive in, a couple of housekeeping items as always. Whether you are watching or listening live or tuning in later, I'd love to hear from you. Leave me a comment, email me at blackbelt@startupwithferas.com. Let me know about your big wins, your struggles, or any other topic or idea you have that you need help with because every Thursday in 2025, Every Thursday at 3 PM Pacific, 6 PM Eastern, we will be having these episodes, these, um, these shows here, and we cover a business topic that is related to entrepreneurship. And at the same time, we answer questions that come from the community. So I'd love to hear from you about your wins, about your struggles, about questions that are, uh, that you are facing and not, not, uh, preventing you from, from growing your business. And I'll be more than happy to be of help. Now let's go back into the topic of reclaiming your time. Not too long ago, I tried to juggle 3 big projects at once, and then I had realized that it was so tangled up, I, I just couldn't, couldn't function and couldn't do any of them properly till I adjusted 2 things that I will talk about later in this, in this episode. It felt like I was racing at full speed with a flat tire and making progress on the surface, but something was always dragging me back. One project was deeply personal, a big family wedding that required planning, coordination, and showing up fully present. At the same time, I had a major, major client deliverable and on a tight deadline and something that could not, absolutely could not slip. After that, and just to keep things interesting, I decided it was the perfect time to set up a new CRM for the business, and it's an internal project, so it was important, but it wasn't exactly urgent right then. So I'd get halfway through, so 3 projects, One personal, one client-related, one internal. So I'd get halfway through working on the CRM and then realize that I need to go and get data from a number of clients after their deliverables, including the client that was working with us, to input things properly into that CRM. I wanted to enhance our workflow. So there was a whole lot of conversations with clients that had to happen while we also— Right. I had the big deliverable. Now the client deliverables also needed a lot of my attention, so I couldn't even think about personalizing the CRM. And meanwhile, the wedding planning kept interrupting, pulling me into calls, emails, and errands. So everything depended on something else, and I felt I was constantly stuck spinning my wheels without actually moving forward. It was a mess, but it taught me 2 crucial lessons. First, tackle tasks in the right order. Tasks could be like dominoes. You knock one over too early and the rest don't fall the way they should. In my case, the client deliverable was my critical path. So it was the priority because everything else, my internal systems, my family commitments, needed that deliverable off my plate before I could give them my full attention. So in hindsight, when I made those commitments with a client knowing that there was a wedding, I could have committed to different timelines. I could have told people that, hey, I'm going to be busy for these, you know, 2 days a week or whatever the case might be. But trying to jam everything at the same time was definitely a big mistake. The second lesson Some deadlines need to be non-negotiable. So in this case, the client project, I had set up a firm deadline and I treated it like it was carved in stone. So that's, that's important. The CRM, on the other hand, could have waited. We've been without a CRM for a while. Adding a week or 2 or 3 without a CRM would not have been the end of the, the end of the world. So delivering on time for the client was important because they'd be happy, they would refer other customers, they would— obviously we would get paid. That's all great. And that's an important habit to build, that habit of accountability, you know, for myself, for my team, for our clients. So that was really important. But that internal CRM system could have waited a little bit. But things sometimes don't always go as planned. Sometimes deadlines could slip. It happens. But when it does, you've got to own it. So in this case where the wedding, I didn't do that. I was able to maybe sleep a little bit less, get the help of a couple of contractors, Worked on the weekend, got what I need to do for the customer. But at times you can't. At times a deadline will slip. You don't want to make it a habit. Not good for your reputation, not good for just for, for, for the business. But when a deadline slips, assess why it happened. Communicate, communicate transparently with everyone involved— your own team, the client, of course. If you have partners part of it, make sure everybody is, is aware. And then We learn from that and we take proactive steps to get back on track. And we have a whole— we have an article on our Startup with Feras site. Feras is spelled F-E-R-A-S. And we do have a live— we did a livestream last year on doing project retrospective. So when things happen on a project as it relates to maybe the quality of the work or as it relates to the deadlines, doing these postmortems or doing these Project retrospectives at the end of the project will help you learn, assess what happened, what went well, you want to do more of that, and then what went wrong and fix it for the next, for the next project. And that, you know, going back to a client and say, I'm going to miss a deadline, is not, is not fun. It's going to be an awkward conversation. But, but, you know, the joke, you know, when everything fails, tell the truth. So, so go and let people know what's going on and, and go with solutions, with alternatives. And own it and make it up. So, you know, I thought I could do this deliverable with the wedding going on, but realistically I can't. So I'm going to shift this deliverable by a week. But at the same time, I could maybe expedite something else. I can bring in the final deliverable ahead. I can potentially tell the client I'm getting a contractor to help me and then maybe make it up to the client by offering maybe an extra training session. Or if you, you sell Monthly support, give them a month of support. So do own up to slipping on that deliverable. Go back to the stakeholder, in this case the client, with alternatives and then make it up for them. And when you do a project retrospective, as I mentioned earlier, you can go back and adjust maybe your timeline commitments and what led so that you don't make the same mistake on a future project. So whether it's a client project, a personal commitment, or an internal goal, prioritizing and really focusing on these deadlines should be top of mind. Now, so now that we talked about juggling, the chaos of juggling, and the importance of tackling them in order, I want to talk about the method that I've been using for a while now to prioritize projects, to prioritize projects and tasks effectively. So if you are multitasking right now, I hope you're not, but if you do, if you are multitasking, please stop. Trust me, I'm about to share will help you change the way you approach your day, maybe, maybe your week, your month, maybe your business, uh, And, and to— so that you have more time, more mental space to focus on the business. A lot of us business owners, entrepreneurs, we end up getting very stuck working in the business, delivering projects. We are also, obviously, we're out there marketing and selling, but we don't spend enough time thinking about the business. So when we free up some time, that's why we titled this episode Reclaim Your Time. When we free up, free up time from being maybe more efficient in marketing and sales, or even more efficient in delivering projects. That freed up time— first, you can take some rest. Second, you can use that time to think about the business. All right, so work on the business. So I'll share 2 methods that I believe are very powerful, and as you start to use them, I think you'll wonder how you, you've ever got anything done without them. So let's Lean in and let's get into them. But before we do that, let me make sure we have— okay, tech is all good. And you know, for those of you who are just joining, we are talking about reclaiming your time. I talked about, about a situation that happened to me where I was juggling 3 different things: a personal project, an internal business project, and a client deliverable. And how, how, you know, and how focusing on deadlines is important, but you have to look at everything that's going on in your life. And then we also talked about if you end up missing a deadline, you want to be able— you want to build this habit of owning the issue and going back to clients with solutions, alternatives, and then making that up for the client. But now in terms of reclaiming your time, what are these 2 methods that have worked well? One is time blocking. And task batching. So we feel we're scrolling, you know, on the laptop, we're scrolling on the phone, we're checking email while we are on Zoom. This is— we're all multitasking. Most of us are. I think there are a lot of studies out there on the lack of effectiveness or the ineffectiveness of multitasking. But I think the practical way, at least one practical way for me to be laser-focused, and knocking out tasks like a machine is this magic of time blocking and task batching. So here's how it works. You take your day and carve it out into specific blocks of time. You might have some time to meet clients. You might have time to be at a networking event. You might have some time to do some internal work. That's fine. But carve out specific blocks of time dedicated to your most important tasks. So for me, example, um, we have a specific initiative that we want to market with one of my colleagues. So we have it on our calendar. I start early, so 7:30 AM my time, and I have it on Monday, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. This is only to talk about marketing and those couple initiatives that we have are focusing on this month or this quarter, nothing else. Nothing else. We start the day with this meeting. We focus on marketing. No distractions, no interruptions, just the task at hand. So, so that, that's important. Now, some of us might be— might not be early morning people. You can do it in the afternoon, it doesn't matter. But find time where you're not checking email. Find time where you're not scrolling. Of course But time where there's typically less, uh, less, less emails going on. You, you know, your team's on Slack, they're not pinging you for a lot of stuff that they are waiting on, waiting, you know, for you on. So find this block of time and, and, and treat them like appointments that you cannot miss. Now for the smaller tasks, you also can group the smaller ones together. Again, maybe checking out email, some quick client follow-ups. Those also you can assign some time. So I typically do something towards the end of the day before I call it a day. I typically go, I've kind of flagged things during the day and said those I'll do the last 30 minutes. I'm just gonna go and knock these things out. They don't need a lot of creative thinking. You know, by the end of my working day, like probably all the creative juices are gone. So go in and take care of these smaller tasks that don't need a whole lot of a whole lot of creative juices. Maybe they're mundane, administrative, what have you. So, so that, that's important. So again, I don't need to preach about multitasking. I think they're a very small percentage of, of the population according to medical resources that, that can multitask effectively. Very, very, very small percentage. The rest of us, we're just not built— our brains are not built to multitask. So, so So every time we're switching between tasks, we are losing momentum. And it is a muscle. I was like, we do a lot of content production. We write content for YouTube, for scripts for the YouTube videos. We write content for LinkedIn. We write content for our articles on the website. So it's, I found it with myself. I start to read an article and comment on it and edit it. And I'm in the zone. When I go back, I go out and try to check on an email, check my text messages, and I come back into the article, I need to spend 2, 3 minutes just reorienting myself with what I was thinking, what I was talking about, what I was thinking about, what is it that I want to do with the article? So I think focusing, blocking the time, and focusing on these bigger rocks, And then maybe batching smaller activities together. This way you stay in the zone, you work faster, and you make fewer mistakes. And get this, Daniel Pink— does he go by Dan Pink or Daniel Pink? I think Daniel Pink— in his book When, he explains that we all have peak hours when our— peak hours when our minds are sharpest. Now, for most people, it's earlier in the day. some of us is in the afternoon. He has— he's proven it scientifically, or he quotes scientific data on that. So find the time where you think you're the sharpest, and then when you want to tackle those big rocks, and that's when you need that deep focus and creativity. Now, if you've got a big proposal to write or an important strategy to plan, Time block your mornings for it. If you have to do some, a lot of client follow-ups during the day, this is probably, or you're waiting on things from your colleagues and there's maybe you're doing some, excuse me, some customer support and you're just getting a lot of input and signals and emails and calls like during maybe 2 or 3 hours of the day. Like this is not the time for deep thinking. This is not the time to work on these, trying to move these big rocks. So that is, that's something to keep in mind is, is again, block the time for bigger tasks and, and put the phone away. I, I usually hide my email. I don't close the browser. I just minimize the browser that has email and I just have one thing on the screen. No Slack, no email, nothing. Just the thing I'm working on. I'm not, I'm not saying I'm perfect at it, but I'm 80, 90% at it now where I'm just not, not leaving I'm working on, and I want to get that done in this time that I blocked. So, uh, that's the first method that we— I wanted to cover. The second method— and again, if you have any questions, or if you have tools or approaches or tips on how to do these, uh, these— the time blocking method that has worked well for you, please share with us here in a comment. Let me know. I'd love to hear your experience on how you are reclaiming your time. Now the second method is on building your prioritization system. So this is about creating a system that works for you. I'm not talking about software, we'll get to that in a second. But because, you know, let's face it, there's so many productivity tools out there and they're great, but they're not magic. It's how we use these tools, how we use software, is that that is what will make the difference. So, and I've, you know, every, every person I talk to, I ask them about how they manage their tasks and what they do. So some people use handwritten notes, Post-it, they use checklist, whatever system you have, that's fine, but find something that works for you. I use Gmail calendars for all the things that are, of course, time-bound, time-specific. And then within Gmail, there's this task list. So anything that is— that needs to be done during that day that is not time sensitive, I just use that task list in there. So it shows on top of my calendar, I have a meeting at 7, I have a meeting at 9, I have a meeting at 10. Those are there in the calendar. And then on top of it, there's a list of tasks, usually 3 or 4 tasks that I gotta do this day. Like, I want to post on LinkedIn Mondays through Fridays, so I have reminder there. So, and it feels good to complete, click complete, and you're done with that task. So every morning I check my list, I update it, I make sure I know exactly what needs to be done that day. Now you could be using ClickUp, you could be using Basecamp, you could be using— we also use Notion, uh, in, in at Startup with Feras. So, so there's a lot of things that, that need to be done that can be done via templates and also Repetitive tasks can be regenerated, so you can do a lot of— introduce a lot of efficiency, especially on recurring tasks in a lot of these tools. So I'm not saying avoid using these tools. I'm saying use these tools, especially if you have things that depend on other team members to complete the project. But for your own prioritization, use a tool and use it in a way that works for you and be consistent in using that tool. Don't have a task in Gmail and then a few tasks in Notion and then one task you have on a Post-it note and then you have an email reminder. Just use a system that works for you. So whether you are, again, Asana, Trello, notebook, the goal is to be consistent and clear in your own mind, like where I'm taking notes and where am I prioritizing things to be done on a certain day. So you want to have that system. Again, the idea is to help you stay focused. Here are the priorities for today. And then you— this way you can track your deadlines and help you stay accountable. And as I said earlier, it feels amazing when— I don't know, it's dopamine or something, but when I click task complete, it just feels great. And that's, that's what I do at the end of the day. I go and close, close, close, close. It feels great at the end of the day. I've done, I've done many things I wanted to do today. But the idea again is to really to stick with it. This is, this is the— if you, if you, if you don't stick to a similar approach, consistency in how you prioritize your tasks, I think things will start to slip. So because a system is, is only as good as, you know, you actually using the system, and when you do, uh, you know, magic happens. Now why this matters right now these 2 methods, the time blocking and building a system to prioritize your tasks. I think as we start this new year, as we think of improving on what we did last year, reclaiming your time, finding things that were causing you to be overwhelmed, finding things that Uh, you were consistently slipping on specific deliverables, you know, identifying what happened last year and using these 2 methods should get you— I think, I don't know what the percentage of time is, but I would say a noticeable improvement in terms of your ability to do more work in the same time allowed. So what I want you to do is start blocking at least a couple times a week for next week, starting next week. Like, what is this one thing? I think it was the book, um, what was it, uh, what was it about eating the frog? Or I forgot the name of it. It's to do with the frog. I can't believe I forgot the name. It's a famous book and I read it. I mean, start with that, with the difficult thing. Um, if some of, some of the folks watching or listening, if you remember the name of the book, you can put it in the comment. But the idea is we psychologically, subconsciously, the difficult tasks, the big rocks, we sort of wait. We don't want to tackle them. They're intimidating. They take a lot of time. But if you, whether it's at the end of the day, the middle of the day, or in the morning, block this time and focus on sort of the hardest thing, the most difficult thing that's been on your agenda and And just every day, if you knock off 5% of it within 20 days, you'll be done. So keep that in mind as you set the priorities for this year. And if you come across ideas, methods, or ways you've implemented time blocking or the way you prioritized your projects that will be beneficial to the community, let me know. I'd love to hear from you. That is it for today. I want to cover one more thing, and that is about our— 2 things. One, about the channel. So if you're liking this content and you have specific topics you want us to cover, subscribe to the channel and then let us know. Hit the like button and let us know what you want us to cover next. And also, I want to mention our Black Belt Startup program. It's a training and coaching program where You have access to me through our office hours once a week, and then we have a complete curriculum on how to turn your skills into a business, into a 7 and later an 8-figure business. So you have over, over 65 modules on everything from vetting a business idea to business planning to accounting, legal, how to market, how to sell, how to service clients, how to hire people. Every pillar of starting and building and growing a sustainable business. We've got it covered. We have it covered in the Black Belt Startup program. So you can check it out at blackbeltstartup.com. And it is all built on these concepts of having a disciplined mind and also that deliberate practice. And this comes from my martial arts training also. these, uh, 20-plus years of entrepreneurship. So check it out. Um, it's a month-to-month. We do have a free course you can sign up for it, and then we, we have a full membership at $499, and we, um, we have no yearly commitment. It's month-to-month. We want to make sure you're getting the benefit out of the, out of the program. That is, that is it for today. Thank you for tuning in again, and see you next week. Have a good one. Bye.