Cashflow Follows Your Calendar

What’s good, everybody. Greg Hickman here and this is the Scalable podcast and in this episode, we’re talking about cash flow follows your calendar, showing your priorities, fool.

Let’s get it going.

All right guys welcome back. And like I said this is probably going to be a quicker episode.

This is a lesson that I learned that I apply in my business all the time.

And I also raised this issue to my clients as well and it’s really this concept that your cash flow follows your calendar.

And there was this great quote, by Ramit Sethi that I heard.

And in his book, he said, ‘if you want to show me your priorities, show me your calendar, show me your bank account”.

Because if you’re not dedicating time to the things that are important to you and you’re not investing in or buying things that are important to you, or investing the time and energy in the things that are important to you, then I would challenge that it’s actually a priority at all.

And so I see this show up in a lot of folks, uh, lives, especially entrepreneurs, many of our clients, and often honestly at times myself. So for example, you want to get more clients, thus you need to sell, well, show me your calendar. Uh, where on your calendar do you have time designated and blocked off for sales activities? Right? Oftentimes, you know, people say they want to make more money yet you look at their calendar and there’s no time blocked for sales calls or MMM. Trading sales materials or doing any sort of marketing activities, things that will actually drive sales that aren’t even on their calendar. So very quickly I can say, okay, cool, well sales aren’t that important to you because you’re not designing your week or your days in order to actually sell more. So [inaudible] herself that and then say, hey my, if you say something like, my health is really important to me and I go look at your bank account and aren’t investing in a gym or you aren’t buying, you know, any sort of supplements or you haven’t spent any money on anything tied to your health, then I would go and say, hey, you’re probably not that, uh, that interested in getting healthier.

Right, because you haven’t spent any money on it. Oh look, there is no time on your calendar to go to the gym or to run or to work out. And that then becomes the reality is that you say it’s important, but you aren’t committed to actually doing the things that are necessary to make it a part of your life or to actually have success with it. So cashflow follows your calendar. So in the business world, um, if you want to be generating more sales, you should have sales blocks. Where is the time on your calendar where you’re going to take sales calls? If you need to be doing activities that will generate those sales calls, where is the time on your calendar that is going to be filled with the sales and marketing activities that are going to lead to people being on your calendar?

If that time does not exist, when is it going to happen? Right? Which leads into, um, you know, another thing that, uh, actually I learned from roommate say you as well was, um, if it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t exist. And if you look at my calendar, um, and many of our clients calendars, we have this thing called the optimize week. Some people call it the perfect week. Um, and I literally blocked time for everything. And so on my calendar each and every day there’s, you know, there’s tons of colors. Let me pull up kind of the day view. Um, like you can see here that there are, you know, different blocks, right, that are filled and there are different colors. And I have my wife’s calendar that comes in there that I can see my team’s calendar and I even put stuff on the weekends. Right. Um, when I first got started with this, it was, so, it was, it was a muscle that I hadn’t been working that if there was a block of time where I wanted to actually do nothing, say on Saturday, I don’t want to do any work.

Um, I would literally put a block on my time from when I wake up, till when I go to sleep. And it would say, have fun, do whatever you want so that I could visually see that I have permission to do that and not feel bad. Because when I was first getting started with this notion of blocking time and calendar blocking, um, you know, having each and every minute of the day essentially allocated for, I would get to Friday and I looked back at my week and I’d see a lot of white chunks, you know, pieces of time that didn’t have things blocked in them. And I would start to feel really guilty because I would look back and I’d say, what the heck was I doing during this time or that time? Like I don’t even know where that time went. And I started to beat myself up.

Right. So that in those early stages, again, like if this is something you’re not used to calendar blocking, that is, you kind of need to start working at like, it’s a muscle, like you go to the gym. I’m not just gonna Start, um, you know, bench pressing 350 pounds if I’ve never walked into a gym and done a bench press before, just like with calendar blocking. Like I can’t, I can’t trust myself having tons of empty pockets of time cause I’ll probably not do anything. So again, those early stages, I would literally block every minute from when I woke up. So I went to sleep. Now as I’ve been doing this for four plus years, um, I have a lot more discipline with this, uh, but pretty much my workdays and family activities, I still block all of it. I just don’t block every like break time.

Right. And so, um, like for example, if we look at, you know, my day yesterday, a wake up 5:00 AM and I do this thing called the core floor until six 30, then between seven and eight, I’m taking my son to school. Uh, by the time I get back, I’m going for a run. By that time, uh, I’m able to shower and eat. So like shower and eat would not be on there, but that’s an a gap between my run block and the next block, which from 10:00 AM til 1130 was a content creation block. So I have creation blocks where my team is not allowed to schedule any meetings with me and that’s why I create the things that I need create sort of like what I’m doing right now in recording. Like I’m going to creation block, then I have two calls, then I have a managed block.

These are for me to do things for my team. Um, you know, any sort of manage management type activities. I have a an hour block for that. And then I have a couple of calls before I have to leave again to pick up my son. And then we were, when we went to family night last night and so that was on my calendar. So I knew that I needed to be at family night by a specific time. Like all of those things are on my calendar blocked and I get to show up and see exactly where I’m supposed to be very visually for me. And so for me, if it’s not on my calendar, it doesn’t exist. And, um, it serves as a little bit of a to do list, although I do use my, my work, my notebook as well. But if you look at my calendar, you’ll see sales blocks, you’ll see blocks of time for me to create content like this, which helps leads to sales conversations, helps build my audience, things that will help my business grow.

Like all of that’s on my calendar. You’ll see me invest in gear for, you know, running the half marathon that I just did. Uh, you know, Jim getting coaches and mentors and invested in courses and programs and, you know, uh, you know, technology to help my team become better, right? I’m investing in things that will help us get to our goals. And when it comes to experiences with family, we invest our money in, uh, you know, trips and stuff that we want to have around the house to make our environment feel a certain way. So if you were to look at our bank account, you would see us spending money on the things that are important to us. And in the business you would see us using our time and money on things that are actually going to help our business grow. So where in your business and where in your life, um, do you feel a little bit off?

And can you look at your calendar or look at your bank account to see, like, are you actually dedicating the time and committed to using the time, uh, and your money and resources on the things that you’re actually saying are important to you? Because at the end of the day, cash flow will follow your calendar, right? Cashflow will follow your calendar. And while for some of you, this might be extreme, some of you probably need to start doing this. If it’s not on your calendar, it doesn’t exist. So that is what I have for you guys today. If you’re enjoying this show, please leave a review in iTunes or give us a subscribe on Youtube if that’s where you’re falling along. And look, if you want to, um, kind of be exposed to more training and content like this that goes a little bit deeper, uh, please join us in our free Facebook group called the scalable service provider.

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