Influencer Series: Susan Wilson Solovic

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Susan Wilson Solovic is a small business expert, award-winning serial entrepreneur, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com top 100 and USA Today bestselling author, media personality, keynote speaker and attorney. Solovic regularly appears as a contributor on Fox Business, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal’s “Lunch Break”, MSNBC, CNN, CNBC and today - The Distracted Executive!

The Distracted Executive: What has become your greatest challenge around managing time? What is your very best practice for being as efficient as you are?

Susan Wilson Solovic: Actually, I am a good time manager.  I learned when I was an executive with a Fortune 100 company, a night law-school student, a wife and a step-mom how to make every minute of the day count.  The first thing I do when my feet hit the ground in the morning is schedule my day in my mind.  That includes time for personal needs such as exercise or social interactions and of course family.  My calendar is my Bible.

TDE: Everything seems important or urgent these days. How do you efficiently navigate your to-do list without hindering your success?

SWS: Every morning I consider what things absolutely must be done that day.  I focus on those things first.  Once they are done I start on the rest of my list.  If you spend too much time looking at everything on your list you'll be overwhelmed and probably jump from one thing to another, not really accomplishing anything.

TDE: You must work with some people who are all over the place. How do you deal with someone who is very distracted and not giving you what you need in a timely manner?

SWS: I'm very focused on deadlines.  Even for myself, I think deadlines are important.  So I give someone a timeframe and expect them to honor it.

TDE: How are you impacted by interruptions during the day? What is your #1 tip for dealing with them?

SWS: Interruptions will always happen so I always have a little cushion in my "schedule."  If something starts eating up my time, I usually try to end it but offer a time to return to the issue or project.

TDE: As an entrepreneur, author, speaker and media personality  juggling many balls, what is the greatest challenge in your business today, and what are you doing to address it?

SWS: My biggest challenge is growing too quickly.  It's hard for me to turn down opportunities, so sometimes I take on too much and I don't have the back room support I need.  When that happens, I get stressed and so does my team. As a business owner, you should really look at each opportunity and make sure you can take on new opportunities without jeopardizing others. I tell business owners to remember, when you say yes to one thing, you effectively say no to something else because you simply can't do everything. I need to follow my own advice.

Thank you Susan, for your time!

If you'd like to get in touch with Susan, you can call her office directly at 866-227-8684 ext. 11.

Digital Detox

A digital detox can be a scary proposition!

We went to a BBQ last week at the beach.

Our hostess had a fabulous "Hamptons chic" basket and asked each of us to put our cell phones in there upon arriving. She said she wanted to do an experiment to see what it would be like to have one evening - just one - where we could focus on one another and have real uninterrupted conversations. A throwback to days and times gone by.

Some guests balked. Some felt naked. Some of us were skeptical but willing. Some thought it was the most ingenious thing they had ever heard of.

What happened? The first few minutes were a bit uncomfortable as our fingers twitched to click something, anything, look at a screen or see what someone we barely knew was up to. There was a definite hole that was yearning to be filled.

Then something interesting and wonderful happened. We all began to chat (remember that form of socialization?) and get to know about each other. Meaning that we had real conversations with real live people. We looked one another in the eyes and learned about our kids, work, interests, etc. We ended up all having a really great time and really enjoyed ourselves. Nobody was checking Instagram or distracted by texts.

We all survived. In fact, after the initial awkwardness, we didn't even miss them at all. So what I am saying here is "try it". Not only at a party but turning off and giving yourself the dignity of it all.

You just might even reconnect with yourself!

Have a productive day.

Coach Nancy

Influencer Series: Susan Combs

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Susan L. Combs is pretty remarkable. She began her entrepreneurial journey in 2005, forming her own company at age 26. She was encouraged by a mentor who believed that her tenacious spirit and “fixer” personality would shake things up in the insurance industry. Combs & Company, LLC, is a full service insurance brokerage firm that has an expertise on the “weird and unusual.” Leveraging a knack for addressing and solving difficult circumstances, Combs has become a go-to resource for those companies that don’t fit an insurance carrier’s typical profile, especially entertainment, food, and international companies setting up their first U.S. operation.

Additionally, Combs mentors members of Women in Insurance & Financial Services (WIFS), an organization where she has served on the National Board since 2008 and currently sits as the youngest National President of the 79-year history of the organization.

The Distracted Executive: What would you say is your biggest distraction when you are working these days and what are you doing to address it?

Susan Combs: In addition to the business I own, I’m also the National President of Women in Insurance & Financial Services, so the biggest distraction I have right now is the multiple pulls on my time in multiple directions. One of the biggest things I do to address it is color block my calendar to show the following topics:  Mentoring, Networking, WIFS and Combs & Co – this way at a glance I can see if I need to shift items on my week to focus efforts in a different area.

TDE: What has become your greatest challenge around managing time? What is your very best practice for being as efficient as you are?

SC: My biggest distraction was getting derailed by phone calls. When I would be working on something for a client and another would call, it would take my focus away and also keep me in the office longer. About 3 years ago I started taking only scheduled calls, and this has helped tremendously! Not only has it given me more time in my day, but I no longer have the word “phonetag” in my vocabulary and it has elevated my rock star status ☺.

TDE: Prioritizing. Everything seems important or urgent these days. How do you efficiently navigate your to-do list without hindering your success?

SC: I treat everything the same. No matter if it’s work, board, personal or networking, however it comes in, I try to get the ball out of my court as quick as possible so then it is on the other person to do their part.

TDE: You manage people and work with some people who are all over the place. How do you deal with someone who is very distracted and not giving you what you need in a timely manner?

SC: I actually don’t deal with those people ☺.  If they are scattered and don’t focus, I get my staff to deal with them the best way possible.

TDE: How are you impacted by interruptions during the day? What is your #1 tip for dealing with them?

SC: I think the sheer volume of email and just client issues in general are the things that impact me the most.  One of the things I have started doing - since, many times, my staff members are on emails - is that when I get back into the office, I go through emails backwards.  I know that this means that someone that emailed most recently will get a response sooner than one that did say an hour ago, but I found that it cut down on confusion and double work. When I would start at the oldest and work my way to the newest I found myself responding to things that my staff had already handled. By reversing the process, it cuts down on double work and makes the office more efficient.

TDE: As an entrepreneur and rock star business owner,  what is the greatest challenge in your business today and what are you doing to address it?

SC: The 24/7 mentality that you should always be responding. As with anything, you have to train your clients.  My clients know that I won’t respond on weekends unless they put “Urgent” in the subject line.  They also know how to utilize my staff and trust that they will handle things as I would.

Thank you Susan for your candor and expertise!

If you want to get in touch with Susan, you can email her at scombs@combsandco.comor visit her company website here.

What Gets In Your Way?

How to stay on top of everything you have to do to build your business while simultaneously being pulled in a million directions

I was in sales. I am an entrepreneur. I am the quintessential distracted executive. I get it!

Information overload is one of the biggest distractions. We never quite feel like we know enough, and we always feel incomplete, like we are missing something. I think that one of the best things to do is get into the habit of routinely and consistently asking yourself a few simple questions and writing down the answers. Yes, writing.

For example, as a business owner you might want to ask yourself the following as you come into Q3.

WHAT IS YOUR SALES GOAL BY THE END OF SEPTEMBER?

WRITE IT DOWN.

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST CONCERN IN TERMS OF MAKING IT HAPPEN?

WRITE IT DOWN.

THINK ABOUT WHAT GETS IN YOUR WAY. (could be the condition of your desk, calendar etc.)

WRITE IT DOWN.

WHAT SYSTEM ARE YOU WORKING AND HOW IS IT WORKING?

WRITE IT DOWN.

The act of stopping and thinking and putting pen to paper is transformational. It is the first step to doing something about it.

RESOURCES TO DEAL WITH OVERWHELM AND DISTRACTION:

1. Need a plan. Mini actions.

2. Need to prioritize to stay out of overwhelm.

3. Need to block time, and commit to execution.

COMMITMENT

What ONE thing will you do differently in the next 12 weeks?

It's all about being purposeful and aware.

In this crazy distracted world of ours, stopping to ask yourself the right questions is mission critical.

Here's to your success!

Coach Nancy

Influencer Series: Conrad Strabone, Web Developer Extraordinaire

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Conrad Strabone is a leading web strategist and developer with a career that goes back to New York City’s Silicon Alley in the late 1990's. In 2001, he founded and ran a successful software development company that sold in 2006. In 2007, Conrad felt a natural inclination toward helping smaller businesses, where he could leverage past successes and make a bigger difference, and thus, e9digital, a full-service, boutique, digital agency was born. The Distracted Executive: So, what would you say is your biggest distraction when you are working these days and what do you do about it?

Conrad Strabone: I think the biggest distraction for me is e-mail. I probably get hundreds of e-mails per day. And what I do about it when I need to get some concentrated work done is I just shut off the e-mail and shut off the phone. There’s nothing that is life or death in this business. The fact that somebody waits there for me for a couple of hours won’t really affect anything. If there’s a website problem, we have other people here that they can reach out that would deal with that.

And, the other thing is setting expectations so that if I'm offline I have an auto-responder saying that I’m not answering e-mails this morning and will get back to you. If you set expectations so people know when you’re going to be offline on vacation,they seem to be OK. It is being respectful.

TDE: It’s really about expectations and boundaries.

CS: That’s true. There’s constant connectivity with your cellphone and your text and your e-mail, and people expect instant communication, so I think it’s just good to set expectations where possible. If there’s something urgent, well, let’s talk about it. We’ll deal with it. But if it’s not urgent, how about we talk on Tuesday?

TDE: Okay. So, what would you say has become your greatest challenge around managing time? Or even better, what do you notice regarding your clients’ challenges around managing time these days?

CS: There are no surprises, and there’s communication and the expectations are where they are, and the consequences for not doing it are very clear.

TDE: And so even people who are not time-challenged probably have an easy time working with you because of your process.

CS: It makes it easier for them, but it’s still something we work on everyday: improving our process of managing clients. It is an iterative process. I’ve been doing this almost 20 years, and it’s still not perfected, and it never will be. So it doesn’t become overwhelming. We don’t have to worry about the whole thing at once. We just have to go step by step by step.

So, I guess what would be helpful for your readers is that you map out your process, and be clear about what it is.

TDE: Okay. So, prioritizing is a big issue. Today, everything seems important or urgent. How do you efficiently navigate your to-do list without hindering your success?

CS: I work on that every day. We have a nice project management and cash tracking systems in place so, number one, having the right tools is helpful. I realize that I can’t do everything that needs to be done in a given day, so what I basically do every morning is look at the list and go: what absolutely has to be done today? What would be nice to get done today? And what can be pushed off to another day?

And so, I’m constantly looking at the task queue and, if something doesn’t need to be done today, it’s fine, I’m going to use the brain power to do something. You know what? That’s not that important; it can wait another day. So, it’s not really procrastinating as it is that you know you have limited capacity.

TDE: It’s prioritizing. And you’re looking at it every day, it’s not like you’re avoiding it.

CS: Right.

TDE: You’re looking at your inventory every day.

CS: I look at that task list and say, these are the seven things that need to get done today. If I have a little more time, I could do these five other things. These remaining twenty things are not going to get done today; I’ll move them to a future day and revisit them then. So, it’s a constant shuffling.

TDE: How are you impacted by interruptions during the day, and what’s your number one tip for dealing with them?

CS: I think it’s just about having your boundaries and your priorities set. If somebody runs into the room and they’re on fire, you've got to get the water and put them out. But other than that, it's rare that something needs to be dealt with right now. I think that it is important to understand that 99.9% of things don’t need to be done at this particular second. I say "Listen, I could talk to you at 2:30. I could talk to you tomorrow at 1:00." And it works just fine.

TDE: So, as an entrepreneur and basically overall successful guy, what’s the greatest challenge in your business today, and what are you doing to address it?

CS: The greatest challenge in my business today is managing my people, personnel. We go through a hundred résumés to find one person that we feel is qualified to work on our team. So I think hiring well and managing people and keeping your people happy is important. Everything else we do - the computers and all that - it’s all inexpensive, relatively speaking. Managing talent is the key thing - preserving and developing our human capital. My thing has always been try to hire the absolute best that I could afford and then empower them to do their job and be there to support them, answer their questions and lead.

TDE: Conrad… Thanks for this wonderful insight. You did a fabulous job creating my website so I know first-hand that you are a true professional. The process was just as impressive as the product.

If anyone wants a great website or facelift on what you have, don’t hesitate to contact e9digital.

Have an aggravation-free day!

-Coach Nancy