No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs

My mission is helping as many open-minded entrepreneurs as possible to get a lot more out of what they really want from their businesses and their lives. Getting you to take this book seriously is a good step in that direction. A.J. Mirabedini A.J. Mirabedini has a diversified background in starting, developing, and assisting small businesses and mid-sized companies. He is the CEO of GKIC, the leading association of marketing-oriented entrepreneurs, business owners, and private practice professionals in the world. You can visit GKIC.com Preface The author's preface, not to skip Time under attack as never before It gets late early out here Yogi Berra It's a special kind of terrorism, the unrelenting, sometimes violent assault on your time, from all directions, every waking minute, even when you sleep. These desperate times demand extreme measures. Wimps beware, this book is not for the faint of heart, fawningly polite, or desperate to be liked. It is, I hope, the hardest-nosed, most pugnacious, toughest-minded, most brass-ballsy, and brass-knuckles material about the subject of time you have ever encountered. Hopefully you have picked this book because you are an entrepreneur. Your time is incredibly valuable to you, and you are constantly running out of it. If you know me, then you've also been motivated to get this book to find out how I manage to do all that I do. I have been asked so often by what seems like everybody who becomes familiar with my life, how the devil I fit it all in, that I sat down and wrote out the answer. This book. If you don't know me, then your curiosity about my methods may be further piqued by the description of my activities that follow this preface. If you know me, skip that section. This question, how do you do everything you do, how is it possible, has followed me around for about forty years, is getting asked more frequently by more people, now more desperately as they find themselves more overwhelmed than ever, and my own proliferate productivity becomes more and more known. When I wrote the first edition of this book in 1996, my personal modus operandi was only a curiosity. Now it has become of urgent interest. For the record, I work in ongoing consulting relationships with twelve to eighteen clients, and, in addition, deliver between thirty and forty consulting days a year, run a mastermind group that meets three times a year, accept about ten speaking engagements a year, contribute to or entirely write five monthly newsletters, write or co-author two or three business books a year, and, as my main vocation, work as an advertising and marketing copywriter on at least eighteen major six-figure-fee projects a year, three to six times par for most top-tier copywriters. I also have active business interests, manage an investment portfolio, and, on the side, own about twenty standard-bred racehorses, and even drive as a professional in over one hundred and fifty harness races a year. Recently, I squeezed in co-authoring two mystery novels. And I am managing to stay married. I do eat and sleep, and take four to five vacations a year. One other thing. I manage my entire business life with one staff person, located at an office at the opposite end of the country that I never set foot in. We speak for fifteen to thirty minutes most days, and move work product back and forth once a week by FedEx. As a very busy, sometimes frantic, time-pressured entrepreneur, a washing opportunity too often surrounded by nitwits and slower-than-molasses-pouring-uphill folk, I understand your needs, desires, and frustrations. The multiple demands on an entrepreneur's time are extraordinary. I am here to tell you that you need to take extraordinary measures to match those demands—measures so radical and extreme that others may question your sanity. This is no ordinary time-management book for the desk-bound or the person doing just one job. This book is expressly for the wearer of many hats, the inventive, opportunistic entrepreneur who can't resist piling more and more responsibility onto his own shoulders, who has many more great ideas than time and resources to take advantage of them, and who runs—not walks—through each day. I'm you, and this is our book. As you have undoubtedly discovered, time is the most precious asset any entrepreneur possesses. Time to solve problems. Time to invent, create, think, and plan. Time to gather and assimilate information. Time to develop sales, marketing, management, and profit breakthroughs. Time to network. Probably not a day goes by that you don't shove something aside, sigh, and say to yourself,