No matter how busy you are, schedule a meeting with yourself every week.
Years ago, I was flying from Toronto to LA when a customs agent recognized me. As it turns out, he was enrolled in the Successful Investing and Money Management course my company, Hume Publishing, had produced. He made an interesting comment: “The course is great but, instead of teaching me how to invest, it would be even better if you just would take over the management of my investments.”
A few days later, I had a meeting with one of our senior editors at the LA office. He mentioned that one of his friends, who was also enrolled in our course, had called asking for advice on where to find a good money manager.
I was crazy busy at the time. Every day was tightly scheduled with meetings and my work on a new course I was developing. But, no matter how busy I am, I always make time to review what’s going well, what needs to be fixed, and to consider new opportunities for my businesses. So, at the scheduled time for my self-meeting, I closed the door of my LA office and began my weekly routine. First, what had I learned since my last meeting that could be applied to making our organization more efficient, next, were there an issues that had to be urgently addressed, and finally, had what I learned that week that revealed new opportunities that should be explored.
When I reached this stage of my weekly routine, I recalled the comments from the customs agent and our editor. Both wanted advice on how to invest. The dots immediately begin connecting in my brain;
- Hume Publishing had a database of over 2,000,000 individuals who have enrolled in our Successful Investing and Money Management course.
- Clearly, these people were all interested in personal investing, and considered the Hume organization as experts in the field.
- Many of those who enrolled in our course probably feel the same way as the customs agent I’d met and the friend of our editor.
- Both were looking for someone they could trust to manage their investments.
- Hume Publishing has professional relationships with some of North America’s leading investment authorities.
As these dots connected in my brain I got excited. I thought, why not launch a Hume Group of Mutual funds and market them to those who have enrolled in Successful Investing and Money Management course. As this thought gelled, the idea seemed to be too good to be true. I spent the rest of the morning looking for reasons why this was not a good idea. But I couldn’t come with any serious obstacles that stood in the way of Hume entering the mutual fund business.
Now, whenever I developed an idea during my weekly self-meeting, my next step was to involve the entire management team. When my meeting ended, the idea of founding a Hume Group of mutual funds was added to the agenda to be discussed at our next management meeting and after a lengthy discussion, our management team agreed this was an idea worth pursuing. We formed a committee to come up with a detailed business plan to have the Hume organization set up a new mutual fund company.
Fast track two years later and we launched a test of The Hume Group of Funds in the Canadian market. Within two years of its launch, The Hume Group of Funds had over 40,000 unit holders and about $300,000,000 in assets under management.
This company was hugely successful for me, yet it’s highly unlikely the idea would have come to me if I had failed to keep that meeting with myself. To take what I had learned over the past week and come up with ideas like that one, I needed that uninterrupted private time to connect a few dots based on a few unrelated incidents that had occurred during the previous week.
A recent study by The Harvard Review states that senior executives spend their work time as follows: 61% on face-to-face interactions, 15% on the phone or reading, and 24% on digital media. Based on my experience, there is a serious omission in this time allocation. If this describes you, are you taking the time to think about your business?
Every week busy entrepreneurs pick up an avalanche of new information. It comes through reports that cross their desk, from one-on-one conversations with prospective clients, customers, colleagues and employees, during group meetings, reading articles in newspapers and magazines, meeting people at seminars or trade events, and through online media. This flood of information cannot be absorbed, put in perspective, analysed, and put to us, on the fly. Management’s failure to use information wisely, or overlook problems, is a major reason many businesses fail or never meet their full potential.
After being introduced to the practice of booking in thinking time for myself I religiously adhered to this practice over my entire career with great success. Every week, I would go over the following:
- What’s succeeding
- What can be improved
- Explore potential opportunities
This is why I urge every entrepreneur to schedule a weekly meeting with themselves. This is a time to absorb, analyse, and think about all the information you have been exposed to over the past week ─ then connect the dots ─ and consider how this information will impact your business.
During this pre-scheduled time each week you can give serious uninterrupted thought to potential problems and opportunities that could be on the horizon, how to deal with problems before they get out of control, and to figure out how best to capitalize on new opportunities.
