Become The CEO Of Your Life

TWT Newsletter #2One of the greatest mindset shifts that altered my life was from my mindset mentor. He said, "Become the CEO of Your Life". It means you have to be a CEO that takes full ownership of your life and runs it like a business. A successful CEO makes plans, sets goals, implements systems and executes strategies, and tracks performances and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to improve their business. This is how you should be living your life.

I incorporated this mindset and it changed my lifestyle. And I'm going to share the 3 things I did to live my life like a business.

Personal CRM

A CRM is a Customer Relationship Management tool that is mostly used to track customer relationships that help facilitate communication and marketing. Yes, I track people I come into contact with - whether it’s someone I meet at a coffee shop, networking at a conference, or even an old college buddy. Having a Personal CRM will help you nurture relationships that you want to grow in your personal/professional life. 

Some important benefits I’ve discovered are:

1. It allows you to keep all of your contacts in one central location, making it easy to access and manage your relationships.

2. It helps you organize your contacts by categories and prioritize your most valuable relationships.

3. It notes previous discussions and interactions with your contacts, so you don’t forget anything.

4. It reminds you to follow up with contacts regularly, helping you maintain active relationships.

A real example of how I used my Personal CRM was last year – when I connected with someone I’ll call Henry. I was interested in buying cabins in the Smoky Mountains to rent as vacation rentals. I found Henry on a Real Estate forum I use to browse. We had similar interests and I discovered he owns a bunch of cabins in the Smokies. My curiosity led me to seek a conversation with him. We scheduled a chat where we had a great time learning about each other’s backgrounds. Henry also shared his experience managing his cabins in the Smoky Mountains. As well as their return on investments and financials. The information Henry provided was genuine and helpful - which was a deciding factor for me to not invest there at the time. After this initial conversation, Henry’s contact was synced to my Personal CRM, where I took notes of our discussion. My CRM would remind me to keep in touch with him every year. As our relationship continued. I kept reaching out to him, and our bond grew. Now Henry reaches out to me! Last Thanksgiving, we caught up on each other's lives and how our Real Estate portfolio was doing. This shows how powerful having a Personal CRM can be and how quickly it can help build an authentic relationship online. In my experience, people in general want to help people. It’s in our nature.

A secret that people don't know is that opportunities come from people. The more genuine and intentional you are with your connections; it will manifest more opportunities because you are increasing your surface area of it. So think about using a Personal CRM in your life to build and nurture relationships, because as cliche as it sounds the next person you meet could change your life.

Have Goals And Track Performance

Coming up with goals that you want to achieve and then utilizing a tool to track your performance is key. Anyone can have goals but if it’s not written down and tracked, how will you know how far you’re coming along?

That’s why I recommend having a personal journal or notebook to write your goals and track your performance on them. I use a physical planner and an app called Notion.so. Notion is my favorite tool right now (I feel I should get a referral for how much I talk about it). It is one of the most powerful note-taking apps that you should try. I’m probably using like 2% of its potential, it has amazing templates and features that go beyond note-taking.

Once you have some note-taking system set up -  come up with goals you want to achieve and track your performance on them. Also, be open to change the actions and habits towards achieving those goals when you're not getting the results you want. As Albert Einstein said, "Doing something over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity". That's the hardcore truth. Once you find something that is slightly showing results, is when you keep doing it until it becomes so repetitive that you can’t get that thing wrong.

An example is if you want to have more money, you have to track your bank account. Businesses track the money coming in and the money coming out. No business would exist and operate if it didn't make a profit. That should be the same for you.

If you're serious about changing your life and building wealth, you have to track. You must measure before something can be improved. Check your bank account every day and remember the simple formula that all businesses run by:

Profit = Income - Expenses

So track your income. Track how much you spend. Invest the rest. You got this. Make it happen.

Audit Where Your Time Goes

Businesses always look at what they're doing and always evaluate if their time and resources are being used effectively. You have to do the same. Your time is truly the only thing you have in this world. Be extremely selfish with it. 

One strategy that has been a pillar in how I can achieve more with the same time as others is intentional time-boxing. Timeboxing is a goal-oriented time management strategy to help you increase productivity and reduce procrastination. When you create a “timebox,” you’re setting a goal to finish a particular task within a certain time frame. By being intentional about it, you plan how long a task should take before getting started on it. It will force you to be present and focus on the task at hand within the allotted time. This allows you to track where you’re spending your time and what you’re going to do during the allocated time as well.

Here are my simple steps to implement intentional time-boxing:

1. Set-up a calendar tool and have a timer - I use Google Calendar and my Apple watch.

2. Add your normal day-to-day activities that are required like work meetings.

3. Interweave tasks that need to be done into your schedule and allocate the amount of time to do them - I usually add 15 extra minutes and refine when necessary.

4. When a new task appears on your calendar, set the timer to the allotted time frame and press start.

5. Start Doing The Work.

6. Repeat Daily.

This proven time management technique also makes auditing your time a lot easier. Since you already have a calendar view of where your time is going down to 30-minute increments or smaller, you can then start evaluating where your time is going. I usually do this bi-weekly or monthly, but tune in when necessary.Here are questions I ask myself to audit how I’m spending my time:

• Is this task the highest dollar amount/hour?

• Does this have to be done by me or can I delegate to someone to make my life easier?

• What is the highest lever-pulling task I can focus on or work towards?

• Is what I’m doing right now taking me closer or further away from my goals?

The last one is the most important question you should ask yourself. Through constant iteration and improvement using the above techniques, you will be able to refine how you spend your time. You will become more productive, less stressed, and take more action towards your goals systematically.

So to wrap it up:

• Have a Personal CRM to manage relationships

• Track your goals and performance on them

• Audit where your time goes systematically

Hope you learned and enjoyed my newsletter!

If you want to learn more about building a wealthier life for yourself through mindset and investing subscribe here. Also, share with someone who might gain value from this newsletter. Remember you can make magic happen and have an awesome day!