Prioritizing is Juggling.....With a Twist

We all have a lot of balls in the air. You've heard it said in business, you've probably even said it yourself. We're essentially comparing ourselves to jugglers. Someone who juggles is skilled. Someone who can juggle a lot of things is very skilled. Not to take away from the skill and coordination of a juggler, but to compare our business priorities to a juggling act really oversimplifies how complex and challenging it is to keep them in the air. To make it apples to apples, I've never seen a juggler (maybe you have) juggling any items of any number that weren't all nearly identical in size and weight. Learning to juggle is a matter of hand-eye coordination and muscle memory. The more you do it the better you'll be.

Business priorities are like juggling a vase, a feather, a chainsaw, a rubber ball and an anvil. No amount of practice, strength or coordination will make you great at juggling this combination of items. Your best bet is to know which are the most important, which you can handle and which shouldn't be priorities.

The best advice I've received on the topic: "Know which priorities are glass and which are rubber. Don't break the glass".

You Will Never Regret Making a Phone Call

Do you remember the phone? In the words of one of my mentors, "It's that dusty thing on the corner of your desk." I don't want this to be the millionth blog you've read that points out how surrounded we are by technology. Instead I want to focus on what that technology has led to, which is an erosion of conversational skill.

Having the ability to reach out to an endless amount of people almost instantly has made it so easy for us to only engage in conversations with the very small minority of people who reply positively that everyone else gets ignored. How many of those in the silent majority could we engage in a conversation if we would have just picked up the phone? What if they don't want to speak?

In 10 years of business I've never picked up the phone to call someone I don't know without butterflies in my stomach. The butterflies are perfectly normal and should indicate that you 1) care about what you're doing and want to do it right and 2) are doing something challenging and difficult. It's supposed to be difficult. You're about to call someone you don't know and have no idea how you'll be received. You probably have one shot at learning just enough about them to earn a deeper conversation or a future conversation. You'll fail, you'll be rejected and hung up on, but so what? You'll also establish rapport with some great business contacts that will hopefully become strong business relationships. In the process, you'll become skilled in listening, seeing opportunities and overcoming objections. The only way to gain these skills is to make yourself pick up the phone.

Can you even think of a phone call you regretted making? I can't.
Can you think of times you wish you would have picked up the phone? YEP.