How to Manage Your Time When Building an Empire

Written by Dakotah Charron

There’s an iconic line that is oftentimes heard and likely familiar to you and it goes by “Rome was not built in a day”. Now, this could certainly be discussed with many different opinions, thoughts, philosophies or even be applied to your business(es) in many different capacities as well. 

Today, I want to discuss time management when building your empire. Building an empire does take time, and it certainly is not built in a day. What I’ve personally learned are a few things that will be discussed promptly but additionally, some exercises or tips that you can use to apply to your business as well. After all, we all know it too well, there’s far too many things, hats, & balls to juggle within our business and rarely do we as business owners (especially when building a modern day empire) end our days and believe we “crushed it” but rather we’re often times disappointed because we spent our day handling the unknown, putting out fires and attempting to manage the unforeseen day to day activities and can never catch up or work towards the significant task that you keep pushing to “tomorrow”.

Here’s what I’ve learned while amidst the chaos of restructuring, running, hiring and building 3 growing businesses and how I got out of it with time management and a few simple changes to the way I approached each new week and day.

Regardless of the craziness you must design your week. While running 3 businesses I found I was dealing with different fires from each business throughout my day at any given time and rarely did I accomplish anything significant in any of them.

First and foremost I began to transition my mindset to spending just as much time or more preparing for the task at hand as I have doing that task. There’s a quote that I’ve tried to emulate; “if I was asked to chop a tree, I’d spend the first 4 sharpening my axe”.

I usually spend several hours on Sunday evenings going through my goals, tasks, systems that need to be implemented, who and how I can delegate those things, what software I need, etc. and then I literally plan my entire week in 15 minute intervals…

Step 1:
Time block 3 hours in the evening on Sunday, grab a drink, coffee, tea, treat yourself to your favorite drink, get comfortable, turn off distractions and plan for your week:
- Set up your to do’s for the week and strategize the most effective way to get them done

- Schedule your meetings
- Go through all of your tasks and delegate
- Reflect on your goals and how you can work towards them this week
- Schedule your entire week

This will appear to be overwhelming in the beginning when you’re used to just having tasks and have the opportunity to procrastinate, scroll on social media, etc. but once you’ve made the change you will diligently and cautiously allocate your time. 

I then themed my days and week so that I had time blocks allocated for different tasks or businesses which meant I wouldn’t be distracted or juggling but rather extremely focused.  

Step 2:
Design your week and days! I designed my days and dedicated my time to that theme, business or task and did not let myself get interrupted. I.e, Monday mornings I spend with my team, delegating, training, etc. Monday afternoons I spend on NREIC taking back to back applications. Tuesdays and Thursdays are my deal hunting days, meaning I work on deals, prospect, etc. Wednesdays are my build days (I have a saying, if it isn’t building the business, I am not doing it). So on and so forth.

Additionally, I reflected on what my tasks were in my businesses and what were my “musts” from day to day to ensure I stay organized, efficient and healthy. I then created checklists. We are by nature lazy and creatures of habit, so I made my checklists a habit and ensure everyday that I fill those out prior to doing anything else which has led me to being up at 4:45am everyday and usually completing my to do list by around 730-830 am which means those are my critical tasks and I technically can choose what else I do throughout the day (whether it be still working in the business, on the business or out at the lake with my wife). 

Step 3:
Create checklists to stay organized, diligent and focused. There’s no key here. I’ve bounced around multiple software, paper notes, notes on my computer, sticky notes, etc. what I’ve chosen to stick with has actually been my apple notes on iCloud so that I could access it at anytime on any of my devices (the trick is that it’s always available and if I have 5 minutes in the car, or I am in an elevator, wherever, I can pull it up and potentially get something done). 

Organize your checklists and depending on your strategy make sure they’re done before anything else, for example, perhaps you can use my example above or if you’re a night owl do them between the hours of 11-1/2am so when you wake up later in the day your list already done and you’re ready to crush the day. Some of my checklists include; daily to do, weekly to do, monthly to do, deals, leads, etc. a tip that helps as well, is to do the hardest things first. 

Once I had optimized these things, it finally became apparent that I was achieving some level of control again on myself and my businesses. This allowed me to really become strategic now. I booked a 3 day weekend with my team and covered these next few steps…

Step 4:

Book a 2-3 day weekend. 

Book a weekend retreat with yourself if you’re a solopreneur or your leadership team depending on the size of your company or corporation. I set out to leave all distractions behind, meaning, my voicemail was changed to “absent”, my email responders said I was away, and everything else was off. Create a “ALL COMPANY TASKS” spreadsheet, have yourself and your team add every single task in your company, right down to ordering pens every 30 days because they go missing. Literally every single task. Then go through each task, determine whether a human must do it, or if it can be replaced by software. Once that’s determined, either research, locate and implement the software or have the “human” determine the most efficient way to complete each task - using my example of pens, perhaps you can do an automatic order so that pens automatically get delivered to your business every 30 days. If you start to over deliver, lower the amount, but that could save even 30 minutes of your staff's time every month and this is only 1 task. Once that’s complete, create checklists, training, videos, etc. and go back to your team, and implement. Set expectations, communicate effectively and watch yourself and your business transform. 

While on this getaway as well. Or potentially, separately and on its own, make sure to organize yourself. Being unorganized is oftentimes one of, if not the biggest time suckers.

Step 5:

Organize yourself. Spend a weekend deciding on organizational systems, processes for yourself personally, etc. I personally did the following:

• Organized my email

• Set up sub folders in my email

• Organized my dropbox

• Organized every single document on my computer

• Answered emails or deleted emails and got my inbox to “0”

• I went through all my texts and either answered, deleted or saved the relevant ones

• I saved unknown contacts into my phone

• I deleted all unnecessary apps, notes, or miscellaneous and useless things (i.e text messages that were no longer needed)

• Implemented organizational software (i.e shift)

So on and so forth, the point is, every time you search for something, lose something or need to be distracted from your flow state due to an unorganized system, business or personal processes then you’re losing time, a lot of it, and by a lot, I mean hundreds of hours over an annual timeframe (do the math on your time, it’s valuable and you won’t want to be wasting it).

Lastly, this is a forever process and I honestly repeat everything I did or do above on a quarterly basis, including the next and last point I will make before concluding this blog. 

Step 6:

Implement systems, software, and begin to delegate to your team - this will require you to evidently define, determine and effectively implement software, team members, and make changes within your business. It’s not easy and it will be overwhelming but this is what we call, short term pain for long term gain. 

To conclude, this is my exact step by step process for how I’ve transitioned into “controlling” the chaos and feeling I’ve lost sight of absolutely everything but with these few steps I’ve gained my freedom, time management and organization amidst the chaos. The chaos evidently has not disappeared but as a result, I have become a much better & stronger leader when faced with adversity & challenges and can therefore lead my team by example. I hope this is the same for you as well.

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