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I'm so excited to be here. So how many of you own businesses in here? How many of you support business owners? Okay, so a little bit of a mix. So in business, I used to hear return ROI return on investment. I didn't know what that was 10 years ago. But I'd had a company for 10 years. But now post pandemic, we really want to think about our return on time. Because time is the most valuable asset that we have. Who thinks that? Anybody know the only one? Yeah, the pandemic did that to us. Right? So how many of you think that time is money? Anybody? Okay? How many of you think also time is precious? Okay. Now, when the pandemic started, who had a compass in here, y'all, I don't know, directions, thank goodness for Turkish Airlines, you just get on the fly, and show up, right? I don't know where I'm at half the time, I'm not good at geography, you can't be good at everything. But when the pandemic started, luckily, like some of our speakers today, awesome speakers. We've been through shit before. And we don't have a backpack of tools that tells us this is what you need to be successful. Right? Who had the backpack in here for the pandemic? Who was ready? We have one person, right? It's just stuff we don't think about. So I'm going to share with you some of the stuff. It GSC my company that we've learned through time over the pandemic, because through all the tragedies that I've experienced, and being a business owner for 22 years, no one gives us a backpack to be good leaders is that intuition that we have that helps us be better. I'll take care of it.
Hi, Angela. Angela, and we're gonna have a three o'clock call and it's like free
market
how many of you feel like that's your life? Your weekend? Anybody? Like be honest. Come on, guys. We're in events. So that video was 10 years ago, last month and every weekend as a case study because I had a new business mentor who literally saved my life and my business, who said I want you to time lapse all the events you have Have this weekend. And I want you to save all your voicemails, like, okay, whatever. And then I want you to put it together. So we hired an editor to do it. Because clients don't know what's going on behind the scenes, right? We're magicians we make it perfect. Because that's what we do. We just don't tell people. But how are you spending your time, when you could plan ahead a little bit more efficiently, with your time, so that your phone is not ringing like that, and you're not getting panic, voicemails like that you can plan for it. And now because of the pandemic, and we've made it through, right, we have this huge opportunity to shift because consumer behavior has shifted, I don't know how many of you, it was acceptable to sit on, zoom in your yoga pants, and my T shirt, and do meetings all day. That was not acceptable where I live, people can't keep their hands to themselves. Everybody is like hospitality, we hug we kiss. Like we're all very affectionate people, we thrive and get our energy from other people. But now we have this opportunity. Because everything has shifted. So it's an opportunity to create boundaries. And really ask yourself, What do I love doing? And not only do what what do you love, but your team members, your employees, your family, because people don't do shit they don't love and they definitely don't want to be more productive at it. So who likes to drive fast and hear anybody. I like Porsche, so like to drive fast. But it's like we have to shift gears. Anybody drive a stick shift? I can't, I would wreck it's supposed to be funny, guys. Haha. But we're all going so fast. And it's time to slow down. And to think before we react. Just think before you react. So I love this little cartoon, there's things that we cannot buy in stores. Although I'm sure all of us have clients in here that think you can buy love. You can buy happiness, you can buy friends, you can buy all these things. Money is a tool money is great, but doesn't solve your problem. And the number one challenge we have now is time you can't buy your time back. You cannot buy your time back. And as some of the other speakers have said, when you go through life, and I don't like to get into age and stuff, but it's like the older you are the more experience you have in life and you learn to cope and deal with things. But if you have a loved one or someone that is diagnosed with cancer or a horrible disease that completely alters your life, you have to shift your time. Because Have you really asked yourself, Why the hell do I work 20 hours a day, seven days a week, we go to these events, we don't eat or pee for 25 hours. And then we feel like we've been hit by a train. On Sunday and Monday, at least that used to be my life. I don't know if anybody else in here feels like that. But that's just the truth. And if you don't feel that way after doing that, let me know what you're eating or drinking. Because I would love to know. So time is priceless. Really, really priceless. Does anybody time block in here? Anybody? Nobody? This is amazing. Okay, so the one thing that completely changed my business in my life was understanding time blocking is the hardest thing I did to shift my mindset in my business. But what my mentor taught me is that everybody else's emergency is not your emergency. But it's all about creating boundaries and expectations and communicating to your clients. What they're going to expect, and how you are going to show up for them and how you are going to spend your time with them. And if you outline that on the front end, you will not get the text messages. And I know we all love WhatsApp in here. But I tell my clients, it's best to email or it's best to do this. This is your contact for this. You cannot be everything to everybody. You simply can't. So we went that that video that I showed you from 250 Plus events a year to 30. It took us two years to get there. We changed two things. I started to learn my numbers which is not the fun and sexy part of design and weddings and events. But I hired an accountant and a business manager who looked at me and said you did 37 events for free last year. Not only did you didn't do it for free, but you pay them to do their event because I didn't know what I didn't know, I didn't know how to charge I didn't understand markup. Like I didn't understand any of that. I didn't understand gross profit and net profit. So this is how I remembered it. My family, they all fished. My family had a wedding venue for 35 years. And he's like your family fishes and they catch fish in a net, and they take it home. And that's what you're going to take home with you. And for the past 10 years, you haven't taken home anything, no fish, right? I've worked really hard. And I feel like I'm gonna dive a stroke of stress half the time. Do you realize how many people are counting on you? Like, alone, you. So it takes a long time to remove yourself from doing everything and being everything to everybody. And so saying no, is sometimes what we have to do. So we're just thrilled to be psychologists. I thought I was going to work in healthcare for the rest of my life, because that's what my parents taught me. And working in health care. And working in a mental hospital was very eye opening. You learn a lot about people and I learned a lot about myself. The last week right before I graduated, and y'all I hated school. It was not easy. Thank God for flashcards, my computer crashed. This was my computer super old. Like, some of you probably don't remember, but there were these things called floppy drives. And so I took my tower in to the computer doctor that I looked up in the phonebook the Yellow Pages, because our phones didn't exist back then. And it wasn't like Hey, Siri, Google this, right? Alright, if the Google existed back then. So I lost everything. Six months worth of clinical trials. My professor did not care. He's like, if you don't turn in your notebook, you're not graduating. I'm like, Oh, hell no. So I stayed up for three nights and prayed and recreated, and I got this sick feeling of I will never fill this empty again. So there was this thing called the cloud. And Apple started to put stuff out about it. And I'm like, I'm gonna learn about this cloud thing. And then a week later, my car was broken into my planner was stolen, my cute little monogram planner that my parents had gotten me for college, and I was on your five. And I kept up with it that long. Because I wrote down every single detail, and I feel so good. When I cross my list off. Anybody else, you feel so good when you like, cross those things off? Right? I didn't know what I was supposed to do. The next day, in my life was not important. back then. I was in college, I taught aerobics, I did gymnastics, I was being prepped to manage millions and millions and millions of dollars in details way later. So everything happens for a reason. You may not be able to find the good in it at that time that you're in it. But everything happens for a reason. So working in mental health, what I really learned is it's all about communication, everything. And it's not about how you communicate. It's about how the person you're speaking with, they need to hear it. So learning how to communicate the message, the way the other person needs to hear it is very key, in business and in everything. And when you don't set up your time, and you're scattered, or your calendar is not set up, I guarantee you your team feels the exact same way. And so having an open door policy with my team and with my clients, hey, if you don't understand something, please tell us. Please tell us. I've done weddings and events all over the world. And like someone was saying earlier, I didn't even No, private Allen's existed 12 years ago, it just took one
one event. And they're like, you're not crazy. You know what you're doing? And you're fine. And you'd like to dance, tick tock tick. Is this back then? Okay, maybe there's an Instagram rules. But this one wedding from Kelly Pickler who was a singer on American Idol completely changed my life. And it taught me how I needed to time block. Now in 2010, again, that 11 years ago, this was our interstate. The first weekend of May 2010, our town completely flooded. We had eight displaced events. I was like, I am in a nightmare. What is my alarm gonna go off and wake me up? Because everyone was looking at me. How do you fix this? I'm not God. I don't know. I can't control the weather. How many of you can control the weather in here?
Wait for it. This is perfect. God, how many of you live for that? Perfect?
How many of you live for that moment? It's the adrenaline, right? But the horrible thing about that moment, is there so many more people involved behind the scenes. So I knew I needed to bring my people from behind the scenes, and put them forward facing to clients to release my time and free up my time to grow the company and travel and do things that we wanted to do to grow. So then we go into GST mode, which is, again, time blocking, if you don't know what GST is, it is not German Shepherd Dog, and not a dog trainer. It means get shit done. So who likes to get shit done in here? Anybody? Right? Okay, but we want to get shit done that we love. Not that we hate. So five Ps, five Ps to GSD. This is your takeaway, you can walk away and do this today. So plan most of us all we're planners in here. And I'm a quote girl. So if you fail to prepare, you're preparing to fail. Benjamin Franklin, I think was like onto something, right? So the first thing you can do, how many of you use post it notes. And a client calls or texts or the WhatsApp is coming in and you're like grabbing a note. I mean, I've seen people write on their arm. I'm like, use your iPhone, rather than a pin, put it in a note, delegate it out, share it with your assistant or share with someone? Do you really have to do all of that? Like, I'm really nosy don't sit next to me on a plane. Especially if I'm looking at your Apple Computer. Like can I just fix that for you real quick, so much better way to do that. So the first thing is to move your to do list that you put on a post it note to get started onto your calendar, because all that shit takes time. It takes time. It's a really think about what demands your attention and your focus first. I promise you, because I was this girl for 10 years, no one can do it like me. No one can do it better than me. They don't see what I see. Now, when it comes to design, that is still true. is still very true. But only doing those things that you have to do. And that you love doing is what brings you happiness. So we make buckets. Oh, let me go back and just remind you 41% have to do with never get done. Never. Can you imagine planning a wedding or event where someone has spent $1,000,000.02 million three 5,000,041% of the shit doesn't get done? What would happen? None of us will be in business sitting here, right? Can you imagine? So none of us in this room operate like this? No one. I guarantee you I bet my life my right my left arm on it. So your buckets are really important. Everyone is going to have these buckets no matter if you own a business or not. You have your personal bucket. Why do we work so hard? Why do we work so much? It's not about the money. We want security. We want to take care of our family and our friends and our kids in our parents. So think about that personal time comes first. First, how many of you agree with that? Okay, some of you. As you get older, and you're faced with new experiences in life, you're going to shift and that's okay. You have a business bucket, you have a growth bucket, growing your business working on your business on in your business. Or if you're supporting someone in the events industry, you still want to grow personally and professionally. We all should do a lifeline at the end of every year. We all take little video snippets of everything I do. There's one app called One S II it's one second every day. So something I'm doing a second goes in and then it puts everything together 365 days later. And then I go back and look at what we've done over the year and it's really incredible. Then you've got your meetings, that's your time with your clients and your team but then you've got the work of what you just made a list of all the stuff that you have to due from those meetings, I've never put the time on my calendar. In fact, I would do it from 10pm to 3am. Ish. And then I develop this horrible reputation of Oh, Angelus robot. She doesn't need to sleep. I mean, right? No, that's terrible. It's horrible. We are not robots. And one of my mentors Pat Summitt, who was a basketball coach Rowan's college, she died in her early 60s from Alzheimer's. And guess what the number one leading thing was, she never slept. I was like, Oh, shit, I want to live past that. So I better start sleeping. So I got myself a melatonin. And some th something I don't know, like, I gotta sleep. And I gotta learn to keep my mind off of work. Because when you love what you do, it's really hard to prioritize your time. So how do we make these those priorities? We say yes, to the right things. Now we all do shit we don't want to do, how many of you have held the hair back while they're puking and pain and shitting? While they're so drunk at an event? I don't know. I've done it. I don't have enough fingers and toes to count. We don't want to do that. But we do it we show up. Right? So I'm not talking about those things. I'm talking about planning ahead, saying yes to the right things. How many of you say no to incoming leads? More than you say? Yes. Anybody? Nobody. You'll get there one person. And I'm going to be the second to raise my hand. And it took a while to get there. But on your websites and in social media, and you keep saying it over and over and over and you sound like a broken record. But consistency is speed. And clarity is speed. And when you have clarity. In your business, your clients have clarity. So guess what starts to happen? When you say we do full service planning design, we take care of everything? Yes, hell yes, I'm a control freak, because shit has to be perfect. And most of these events, you get one chance? Well, we have had repeat clients get married for the second, third and fourth time. And that's okay. But saying yes to the right things and knowing who you enjoy working with. So when you've got your buckets identified the next thing to start because I have people say how do we even start doing this. You go through your calendar through the year, obviously, holidays, things like that. But what needs to happen monthly, weekly, and daily. And as you make a list, and this is where I do love big post it notes on the wall, and we cover the wall. And I don't love paper, we're paperless. But that's when you need to see the big picture, and put the vision on the wall and get your team involved and get your family involved. Make sure everybody is on the same page. Because when you're clear, you can go faster. I can share my slides with you guys. I'm not going to go through all of this. This is just like my own personal like what's in my buckets for my personal bucket, my business bucket, my growth bucket, your meetings, and your work. And it's going to change year to year and it should shift and it should change. If it's not and you stay the same you die out. Right. So how do we stay productive doing it? Anybody know Tim Ferriss, he's an American author. And he wrote this book called The Four Hour Workweek. And if you've read the book, there's not a damn thing about working four hours in that book, the title, right? Titles and covers sell. But one thing I took away from listening to the book, I do audible because I'm not a great reader is to focus on being productive, not busy. And when you start to think about that mindset, it changes everything. Is this actually productive? Just because we've done it that way for the past 10 years, doesn't mean it's the best way. And with technology changing every single day, I feel like every day I get new apps from my team, or I go to a conference like a tech conference or like oh shit, what is she going to come back and change now, but that keeps our team evolving, which helps our clients evolve. So you've got to evolve.
And that's my timer. So I need to wrap up. So for us, when you're doing your buckets, you can color code your calendars, and I'm going to share a screenshot. And this is blurry for a reason last night at rehearsal. They're like, you know, that's blurry. I'm like, there's some confidential shit in there. Yes, it's blurry for purpose. That's not the reason. The reason is you'll see days blocked and colors when you look at your calendar weekly at a weekly view. How balanced Are you? There is that thing we all hear work life balance, work life balance for years. I'm like that should don't exist. It does exist. But you have to create it. So I also have a podcast since 2017. I'm the host of the podcast, nobody else can interview the guests on the podcast, I have to do that. Everything else that goes with the podcast, the scheduling, the preventing the reviews, the editing, putting the music behind it, doing the copy doing all the images for nine different social platforms. This is a full time business. I don't have to do any of that. I just got to show up and talk. So in your businesses, and what you're working on making a list of things that Oh, I actually don't have to do that. And what can you create a process? Because if you don't have a process, you're gonna procrastinate. Because guess what, I don't like doing any of that other stuff. I like talking to people and getting to know people and building relationships. And you don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step. Martin Luther King quote. So just think about that, consider how are you spending your time because it matters. one more book, empowering yourself. It's not on Audible, I paid someone to read it. And then I interviewed her and my podcast. But the one takeaway from this was the pie. The pie chart. P is for performance eyes for image, E is for exposure. And we are living in a very different time when I started my first company, we didn't have social media. And so reframing and using social media as a way to create content, and putting time on your calendar to actually do that. We batch everything. For me to post real time. Last night, we're sitting at the bar having a drink, I'm like, This is gonna take forever and ever. Because I don't usually post I create all the content somebody else does it. I can do it. I know how to do it. But posting real time I get it. It's hard. But exposure. Those are the people that's winning. So my mom saw this, she listens to all my podcasts, and then she tells me what she thinks about it's super cute. 10% 10% of getting leads and jobs is performance. Isn't that insane? My mom's like, Oh, when I was your age, Angela. performance was a free thing. She's super country. Image was only 30%. That's what people think about you. And guess what, what people think about you is what you put out it's perception. But the people that are exposing themselves. And I'm not talking about a dirty, exposing yourself, that was the headline of email last year. And it was the number one open email. And I'm like, where is everyone's head, I'm not talking about anything sexual. It's exposing yourself on social media. So start creating content, start educating your clients, on how valuable their time is, and things will start to shift and change. These are a few native apps, you got Outlook calendar, you have an iPhone, you have a built in iCal, which what you saw, there's all at GAO. And then you have Google, a lot of our calendars are built on Google and then we pull them all into iCloud. It doesn't take a lot of money, and it's not fancy. And there's one app that we use called Calendly, that we put in our email signature that goes to my assistant. So we Potty Train the brain, as leads are coming in. You've got to schedule time, we value your time you value our time, shit happens, life happens, you have to stay flexible. But 83% of the time, last year, even during a pandemic, we kept our calendar. And so it happens. But remember, someone else's emergency is not your emergency. You guys understand that? Right? So it takes discipline to have major boundaries, major boundaries, we scheduled everything, even phone calls, I thought I was going to lose business from it the exact opposite happened. We raised our prices, we started to track our time we sell time and time blocks. We do design very differently. You can't put creative time on design. So that's a separate service. Stop the distractions and start thinking differently. And things will be different. How many of you your iPhone or your Droid you have bubbles like this constantly, right? So my assistant whose brain is wired very different way than mine, she's like, Oh my God, you have so many bubbles, like I just gave him like your button. We're gonna vomit. It'll be there when you bought Tom for it, which usually is at night when I'm on my treadmill are working out and I'm looking at notifications, but also have people helping me do the things that I don't need to be doing. And you can do it too. So all the clients that we've helped understand time blocking and understand the value of time we asked them because I love surveys. They said they felt less anxiety, less tension, less stress. They're actually more patient at home. They're more patient with their team members, and they're just happy. And they're loving life, it does exist. You can bring peace to your company culture to your clients. God people make sure you're profitable. Don't do shit for free like I did. We all have to start somewhere. We all started out, oh, no, I started as a hobbyist. I grew up in this industry. And sleep, just get sleep. As we wrap up my two favorite apps to engage that are not a Tom Sup, or Marco Polo, which is a video texting app. When people can see your face and your expressions. They feel like they're getting time with you. And you do it on your time. But set up a process and set up boundaries. I'm Marco Polo, way more, I don't do emails anymore. Someone else my company does it and she loves doing it is the hardest thing to give up. But if you're a leader, you train these people. And then loom which is a free screen recording tool. Free until 250 megabytes my friends, it's worth the $10 a month, we record our screen and we show people and walk them through, they can see my face they can hear my voice or you can turn your logo on if it's late at night and you're in bed with your your kids or your dogs. Do it on your time. But when people can see that you are making an effort to give them the best customer service, things start to be different. And the last thing I'll leave you with is remember to get shit done that you love doing. Thank you so much for your time.
That's it for this week's episode of business unveiled. Now that you have all the tools that you need to conquer the world and GSD get shit done. Would you share this with your friends and fellow business leaders? One thing that would really really help us and help new listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a comment and Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you tune in and listen to business unveiled. You can check out the show notes at Angela proffitt.com/podcast and link up with us on social media so you can share your biggest insights and I want to know your aha moments. Until next week, remember the profitable shifts and structures you're creating in your business help you be more present in your life. So get out there and GSD