Transcript
Joe Troyer: Jerome is talking about last week. Jerome says, thanks for sharing your story and for sharing a lot of tips too. So he’s talking about the AMA last week. By the way, are your Q and A’s recorded? Yes. Obviously every Thursday they go up on the channel. Or if I do a YouTube live at the same time, like right here, right now they’re on YouTube right away. Um, I’d like to know how you manage your time with details when it comes to your busy schedule. With details when it pertains to business and just an overall peak of families slash hobbies slash blocks to real stuff. If it’s 30 hours a week or 80, if a varies, if it’s really fixed, uh, not any theory. What’s your ideal week look like to show us the real stuff? I want to model a few people and you’re one of them for sure.
Joe Troyer: Hence why I’ve purchased everything from you. Okay. So a peek inside, some of the real stuff. Not Very. All right, cool. Not a problem. So for me, I’ll share with you guys like what my ideal week is like and I’ll be 100% honest. It’s my ideal week. It doesn’t happen every day. I tried to be super disciplined with this. And sometimes things pop up and I’ll give you guys some examples of things pop up and how I handled them. And I’ll tell you guys where I say no and kind of how I say no as well. So Jerome, good question.
Joe Troyer: So as it sits, let’s see
Joe Troyer: Trying to find the, where the camera sees the screen and doesn’t see the screen. So like here.
Joe Troyer: All right. It’s like here.
Joe Troyer: All right, so let’s say Monday, Tuesday and there’s going to be sloppy. I’m sorry. Wednesday, and Thursday.
Joe Troyer: So I’m not gonna draw, I’m not going to draw on Friday. And the reason is, I am working really, really hard stuff on my rechargeable batteries. I’m working really, really hard to take one day off per week. And just thinking about it this morning actually, and I think Friday is going to be the day I had actually wanted to do Monday. But that’s not quite working. So what I’ve planned is basically Monday through Thursday. And so for me, I know and you guys should know too if you guys have been on these AMA’s as of late, last week we talked about like chunking things out and the calendar and that you got to take care of, the things that are most important to you. And those are the things that need to go in your calendar first. So at the end of the day for me, let’s see how far down the stairs.
Joe Troyer: All right. So for me, I have basically a 4:00 PM hard stop. Okay. 4:00 PM hard stop. So the only time that things go past 4:00 PM okay. Is Wednesdays potentially on the AMA? Right. So this runs from 3:00 to 4:00 eastern. Okay. And so my latest day typically right is Wednesday. So this is important to me because this is when I spend time with my family. So my kids just got out of school, both of them Silas and Parker. So now it’s even more important that I’m home because when I get home, my wife spends with the kids all day long. You need to break, right? And I want to get in my family time. For me at the end of the day, that is the most important thing. So, in the morning is when I work out and this changes a little bit. This is going to change a little bit with summer, but, the most important thing is every morning, um, is working out, and the sauna and then Cryo. So, working out the sauna, infrared sauna, and then cryotherapy. So this happens, on good weeks, right? I’m sharing with you guys the good weeks. This happens every single day, right?
Joe Troyer: And for me, it’s Uber important that the working out, and the sauna and the cryo happens. And the reason that it’s so important is because this sets up my debt. Okay. This is like, this is the most important to my mood and how I feel if I work out right. If I work out, I sat in the sauna and I cryo’d. I feel amazing. And one of the things to note in here is that, during this time who is also my education time. So for me guys, I’m a lifelong learner, a life long learner, that I am always in the mode of learning. I am always in the mode of, of investing in myself. And so, my education time, my learning time, happens as well during the same session. So while I’m working out, while I’m in the sauna, while I do cryo during that block, that time block is when I go through my education.
Joe Troyer: And guys, this, this really ranges from like 90 minutes to 120 minutes depending on what I have going on. Okay. I can crunch it down to 90, but it can go up to two hours. And so typically this happens in the morning. During school when my kids were at school, I need to be back and showered and I like to take my kids to school. It’s one of the things that, like, I’ve made the commitment, so to speak, to feel, at least my oldest. And so, this had to be done by like 7:30. And so I would go work out at 5:00, for example, to be back in time. Okay. So I can do everything in two hours, right. And then I’d be back home. So this is, this is the most important time for me throughout the entire day. So then filling out the rest of the blocks in the calendar, so to speak. So Wednesday at 4:00, I have the AMA. I also have blocked off Wednesdays to be like my training day. So AMA is here for those of you guys inside of the agency Growth Vortex, pro membership. This is also right now, uh, where we have our weekly calls. Okay. So I do a call right now, and these are just starting up here, but the AGV pro, calls happen. I think that happens. Uh, yeah, 12:00 to 1:00 PM is basically when these happen.
Joe Troyer: Okay.
Joe Troyer: And then Tuesday, Tuesday’s from 2:00 to 4:00 or 2:00 to 3:00, and also Thursdays from 2:00 to 4:00 are always blocked out for promotions. So guys, at the end of the day, the thing that drives my info marketing training software company companies, right? Um, is promotions. I’m primarily through joint venture partners and internally my own list, A.k.a you guys and us running promos. So from 2:00 to 4:00 PM Eastern is on Tuesday or Thursday, is where 90% of the time I run a promo. Okay. So if I’m going to run a promo for the week, you’re can know it’s going to be like one of those two times typically. then at 10:30.
Joe Troyer: So let’s actually start up a little bit further. So at 9:00 AM is when I’m in the office by and here I do basically, my forum check-in. So this my, my one on one, I’m just going to put four. I’m Check in FCI. So this is my one on one with people inside of my mastermind. So inside of the mastermind, you get access to like quite literally hundreds of hours of training, without a doubt. Definitely some of the best content that I’ve ever done. And I mean there is just like system and process after process after system and scripts and all that right in there. Um, but because there’s so much, um, and because we’ve gotten it request and so often, this is also the only place really that I do any, scalable one on one sessions. So from 9:00 to 9:30 or 10:00 every day, I’m running these, these check-ins and these check-ins or with the active members inside of the membership that is asking me for help, Joe, I did this, what do you think is the next step? I think the next step is this or that. Right? And this is where, uh, right now I’m really doing the most of my coaching, at least on that kind of one on one spectrum. if you’re running an agency business, this is probably where I would put the agency business right now. So then, 10:00 AM.
Joe Troyer: To roughly 10:30, or let’s just say from 10:00 to 11:00 AM, are my stand-up meetings and, these happen every day. And for me, guys stand up meeting is me a corralling the troops and me helping my trips and helping my team. Okay. So what did you do yesterday? What problems did you run into? What do you need help from me from or somebody else on the team from, right? And then what are your priorities for, you know, today? And do you need anything? Is there anything inhibiting you or stopping you from, from doing that today is kind of the agenda or the outline that we follow, so to speak? And the goal is to really take two to three minutes just per person. And it helps everybody on the team really be organized for the day. And it also helps me have peace of mind that I know what’s happening. Right. It’s my, opportunity to reflect and give feedback for everybody too. Like, Hey, I saw this one out yesterday. Do you think maybe we should do this instead? Or have you thought about this? And I’ll often times they’re like, yeah, Joe, we Tested that last week it didn’t work as well. But you know, that’s why we’re doing it this way, but it’s my opportunity to be caught up with everybody else on the team and understand what’s happening.
Joe Troyer: So trying to think of any other big blocks that you guys should know about. Um, so education, workouts, sauna, cryo, forum check-in, stand up meetings. Mondays, Mondays we have a call. Mondays at 3:00 I think it’s at 3:00, for agency growth vortex members on basic and pro members. And this is like a ask me anything type of call so to speak. As well as like new developments, inside of the program that we run. Okay. So you guys can see that basically at the end of the day, really from like 12:00 to 2:00 here, you guys can see like I’ve mapped out my entire day, except for a couple of time blocks, right? You guys can see that it’s basically full.
Joe Troyer: So, these are the most important things that I do in my business to keep my business on track, to keep the business moving forward. And then basically this has me deep in some type of creation. Um, you know, one to two times per day, right? I’ll get one, you know, an hour to two-hour block, right? For me to go create something for me to build something. Um, how many of you guys would like me to take you guys through the exercise, of how I figure out what to do in the gaps?
Joe Troyer: How many of you guys would like me to take you through a quick exercise, right? Because you guys can see that like most of my day is already full. Most of my week is already full, right? Like my commitments have been made, my calendar is busy, right? So really the only thing that I have to think about on a daily basis is just executing what’s on the calendar. Um, but then there’s a more practical thing that I have to go through all the time and that’s like, what’s going to get my priority? Please do. All right. Good stuff. So that’s the tricky thing, right? The prioritization is the tricky thing. Understand guys, that this has already taken into account all the most important things in my life, right? Friday’s gone. That’s a family day, right? The morning has gone and by the time I’m done with the gym, I’m able to wake my kids up and hang out with them for a little bit, right.
Joe Troyer: See them in the morning. So I’m not just gone right away in the morning. I’ve always wanted to do that. I’ve always wanted to have some, some time there with my kids. And by 4:00, I’m out every day. And a lot of times by really by 3:00, I’m out. And then obviously I had the whole Friday off. So I’ve already taken into account. My biggest priorities right. Like the things that mattered to me most in life. Like my family working out, my Wednesday AMA’s with you guys. My promotions, Tuesdays and Thursdays, my supporting webinars for the agency, Group of Vortex, right? My time to check in and work one on one with people inside of the mastermind. You know, like those are, those are my big time commitments. Those are the big chunks. Those are the things that I’ve agreed to. And that is gonna happen weekend and week out for you guys. If you’re running a traditional agency business, so to speak.
Joe Troyer: If I were you, I would block out time to, um, I would block out time to check on fulfillment, right? I would block out working out. I would block out the days and the Times that you’re going to work and figure out your schedule, right? What days are you going to have monthly meetings with clients? What days are you going to check in on fulfillment? And folks, at the end of the day, the rest of your schedule should really be blocks of consults or strategy sessions for you to sell other people, right, for you to bring people into your business.
Joe Troyer: So the way that I decide priorities for everything else, is really, folks at the end of the day is really important, understand at the end of the day. I say no to a lot of things now. And the reason that I say no is because I have to, I have to be disciplined, right? And I have to be, have to be crazy about my calendar very quickly. Everything slides for the day and I’m 10 minutes late to this. I’m 30 minutes late to this. By the end of the day, I’m two hours late and now I’m at the office until 6:00. Right? And that’s not how my schedule rolls, that’s not what I’m supposed to do, right? The most important thing in my life is my family. And now I’m late to see them. So, and to be with them for that time. So, at the end of the day, everything that comes up now, most things I have to say no to.
Joe Troyer: And frankly at first this makes you feel bad. But you got to understand that, uh, that, that you have priorities. And if something is taking priority over your calendar that you have like laid out and put all this time and effort into, you’re saying that that one thing that just came up is more important than everything else that’s in the calendar. Like that’s, that’s a problem, right? Like that’s an issue. So for me, when things come up, there’s a 90% chance that I’m saying no unless. It is life-threatening. Product threatening, um, a frickin emergency, right? If I can’t take credit card payments if my bank is giving me problems, right? Like, unless it is a huge fire, there’s a 90% chance that I’m saying, no, I can’t do it and I’m just okay with it.
Joe Troyer: Right? I don’t care what the repercussions are. Right? And you guys like, you have to have that discipline, but so when things crop up and they just come out of nowhere, 9 times out of 10, I’m just saying, no, nope. Sorry. Nope. Sorry. But I still have gaps and I keep turning to look at the calendar I just erased. But I still have gaps in the calendar. So essentially what I’m doing is is weekly or bimonthly, I’m looking at my business, right? And I’m looking at my business as individual systems and processes. And I’m looking at the health of those systems and processes. I’m looking at KPI’s, looking at outbound prospecting. I’m looking at how many strategy sessions are we doing? I’m looking at how many people just signed up for the Webinar, what was our close rate on the last Webinar?
Joe Troyer: Right. I’m looking at all the KPI’s in our business. I’m looking at the vital signs. Okay. And those then are the things that I consider doing when I find a problem when I find something that has really low vital signs when I find a problem that that seems like the whole department is dead or the system’s just not running or working. Right? Those are the things I consider working on. Okay. So I essentially kind of look at all the pieces and all the systems from a very 500-foot view of them. Like I’m looking down on them. Right. And then I’m figuring out what are the potential things that I’m going to work on and I’ll just make a list of the potentials.
Joe Troyer: Okay. So, if you know, support desk gets a question, or gets 10 questions stating that their membership email when somebody purchase is going to spam, right? And they don’t know how to fix it, that’s going to come up for me as a list of potential things that I’m on the lookout for the week. Right. When I look at, you know, every week doing this promotion and the conversion rate and the number of customers I’m getting just flat-lined, that’s going to be a list of potential things that I’m going to focus on a little beyond that list, right? So I’m going to look at all the KPI’s when I see, you know, for example, for the support that, you know, the average response time is like two hours. I’m like, no, that’s good. Like, that’s, that’s great. Most people take three, four days, seven days, 10 days, right.
Joe Troyer: To get back with people. Right? Then I leave that, that’s fine. Right back. That doesn’t need to be improved. Okay. So I take kind of a high-level view of, of what’s happening, but then once I have this list of potentials, I really want to take that list of potentials and I need to come up with a valuation, right, of the impact that that item or each of those items is going to have on my business. Because as a business owner, we have to fricking do everything right? Like I just got an email and it’s like, your merchant account hasn’t passed. It’s PCI compliance scan for this year. You’re going to get fined $250. I guys, I’m PCI compliant. I use a third party shopping cart that thousands of other people use. It’s PCI compliant and I can take 6, 8, 10 hours and go through that process to get it PCI compliant.
Joe Troyer: But what’s the valuation of that task? I just told you that this $250, would I be better off working on this or what? I’d be better off focusing on my outbound email campaign. Just took a shit. Right? And it’s been bringing me three customer bookings a day for consults and strategy sessions. And now it’s only doing one. Which one is a bigger opportunity? Which one do you guys think I’m going to focus on? Right? The answer is obvious, right? Or it should be okay. Just because at the end of the day, somebody says that you are your business need to do something doesn’t mean that you have to do it now. Okay. Understand that everything has an evaluation and everything has ramifications with it. That’s fine. Understand what’s at stake. Okay. So what I like to do is create a valuation of each opportunity. Okay. So essentially I create the valuation and, and I like to think about the evaluation like this, right? So, out of a scale of 1 to 10, okay, how important is it? So how important is it? Next is how important is it now?
Joe Troyer: Okay. Then flat out guys, just what’s the value of the problem or the opportunity? Right? Because guys, that’s how I think about issues is really their problems. Right? But there are opportunities if I fixed them, what happens? I give you guys the example of the PCI compliance. If I fixed that, it’s $250 like that. That’s not a big problem. I should be focusing on bringing in a customer, right? That’s going to pay me a thousand dollars $2,000 a month and I’m going to take home 90% of that, right? I’d much rather focus on that than being PCI compliant.
Joe Troyer: Okay, so how important is it 1 to 10 how important is it that I do it now? What’s the value and then what happens if I don’t do it right? What happens if I don’t do it and this one isn’t a one to 10 this is just a place for me to write out an explanation and by me actually going through each and every one of these things, I can take things like the PCI compliant and it’s like this is a 10 how important is it that it happens now? 1, what’s the value of this? $250 right? No value. That’s a fricking 1. What happens if I don’t do it? $250 and am I going to lose my merchant account? No, they’re just going to keep billing me $250 a year. This problem that I once thought was hugely important, I should quite literally give no shits about, so this is how, right I figure out what I’m going to focus on in my business and this is exactly how, okay, essentially by at the end of the day just valuating each of the tasks and I use this four-point system to really evaluate the tasks.
Joe Troyer: Okay. The other thing that I do then and that I would highly recommend, I use, I loosely, I gotta say loosely, I loosely use the Pomodoro effect, okay, or the Pomodoro method. And basically what that is, is for a set amount of time, you remain hyper-focused only concentrating on the one thing that you’re doing. Meaning you get a sales call, it’s not on your calendar. You ignore it, right? You get a call from your wife like I just did, and you’re on a Webinar. You ignore it. Sorry, honey. right. Somebody in your team is asking you something and in the middle, the middle of another task, you ignore it, right? Like you only concentrate on that task. You don’t let yourself get distracted. And typically my windows are 20 to 30 minutes long. So if I only have a 30-minute block to do something and then I got another commitment, I will quite literally collapse.
Joe Troyer: You know, I won’t just go 20 minutes. Like the Pomodoro method talks about, I’ll go 30 minutes, right? Because I know that’s all the time that I have. So I, that’s why I say I loosely follow it. So, so then I take what’s important. I figured out the gaps in my calendar and I prioritize these, and then I hit the Pomodoro method timer. Let’s go 20 minutes, 30 minutes, Max, 40 minutes depending on the task. I know some tasks. Uh, I know some, uh, some activities that I can work on where I can get into a really, really good flow for 40 minutes and some tasks that like, I need a longer set of time in order for me to actually be able to get the task done. I know that if I only work on it for 20 minutes at a time, it’s gonna take me on a lot longer. So for example, writing, VSLs, writing cold emails, writing webinars, um, all those things, they take me a long time, right? You guys might think that they just like popped out in my head like magic. They don’t, right, those take me 40 minutes, hour blocks and multiples of those in a day for me to really nail that to the wall. So hope that was helpful.
