On Wednesday I attended the monthly eWomen Network luncheon. This month we were treated to Tammy Redmon, a Business Growth Strategist. Like me, she jumped ship on “cubical nation” and runs a thriving consulting business. Tammy talked about Knowing your Blind Spots. She gave 7 power tips to keep you moving forward and not getting stuck in the roud about of business and life.
My favorite tip was the first- Know Your Energy Zappers. This has been my biggest challenge since starting Yellow Dog Consulting. Since starting my business everyone wants to grab coffee, meet for a drink, or have lunch. And that’s great. I love to catch up with friends and meet new people who might become a friend or business connection. But I also have a business to run and leaving my house for two hours for a meeting with travel time that gives someone a lot of great tips but leaves me with a bigger pile of work is a challenge.
To combate my Energy Zappers I schedule days at home, and if someone wants to meet (that’s not a client) I try to build those meetings around OTHER meetings, especially if I can do it before or after a client meeting (so I’m at least billing something that day!).
Take a look at your schedule. Where are your Energy Zappers? And what gives you energy? Who and where do you need to spend more of your energy?
Excellent Post Elizabeth! Of course, I might be a little biased on the content. 🙂 It is a very wise strategy to know what zaps your energy so that you can build a strategy to combat it. And look, that’s what you have done. Great idea to build those ‘extra’ meetings around business you already have on the calendar. Thanks for introducing yourself this week, I look forward to many more great conversations – around other meetings of course.
I have just recently come to this conclusion as well about meetings. As great as some of those meetings can be, I was running all day and coming home at the end of the work day, not feeling like I had done any work.
Now, as often as possible, I start every day in my office and if I’m making appointments, they are lunch or early afternoon.
I definitely get energy from spending time around other people, but I get satisfaction from knowing my work is getting done!
Thanks for sharing!