Business Coach: How To Manage Time

In this transcript, Clay Clark (Business Coach, Founder of Thrive15.com and owner of 9 businesses) and Deedra Determan (PR Consultant/Guru) discuss the importance of managing time on Thrive15.com, the best sales training program.

Caleb Taylor:    My name is Caleb Taylor and I’m one of the hosts here at Thrive15.com. Today, Clay is sitting down with Deedra Determan, the “Mompreneur”, founder of D2 branding and 918 Moms. They’re going to be talking about effectively managing your time, and trust me, there’s no one better to learn from than Deedra. She’s somehow learned to successfully juggle being a mom, a wife, and a “Mompreneur” all at the same time, and as you know, being an entrepreneur does take a fair amount of time.

Clay:    All right, today we are joined with Deedra Determan. How are you?

Deedra:    Hello, how are you? Thanks for having me!

Clay:    Hey, you are welcome. As a business coach I love having you on here. Now just for the folks at home who might not know, I’m going to give a little bit of a buildup here.

Deedra:    Okay.

Clay:    You are a “Mompreneur” … and I am a winning business coach.

Deedra:    Correct.

Clay:    … which means you are an active mom. How many kids do you have?

Deedra:    Two kids.

Clay:    Two kids. You have an incredible husband …

Deedra:    Yes.

Clay:    … and, you managed that all while growing a successful business.

Deedra:    Right.

Clay:    And rumor has it you started a business out of your home called 918 Moms.

Deedra:    Correct, 918Moms.com.

Clay:    At one point you were doing almost $70,000 a month of advertisement revenue on this site?

Deedra:    Right.

Clay:    Have you ever started an online blogging, website sort of thing before?

Deedra:    Nope. First venture.

Clay:    Okay tell it to this business coach straight, obviously as you built this, you probably got busy and found yourself running out of time as you’re taking kids from A to B, so therefore you’re a time management expert.

Deedra:    Okay.

Clay:    Today we’re going to see if we can learn a little bit about some of the success principles that successful people do to keep their life in order. I’m going to learn a little bit about how you do it on a daily basis. I think there’s a lot of moms and dads who wonder how you fit it all in.

Deedra:    Right.

Clay:    As far as principle number one, our Steve Jobs, famous entrepreneur who is the founder of Apple, he said this quote which blows my mind. He says, “When I was seventeen I read a quote that went something like ‘If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘no’, for too many days in a row, I know I needed to change something. Which is why I started a sales training program on Thrive15.com.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you’re going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”

When you started your business, did you decide, okay, that’s it, I’m leaving the corporate world and I’m doing my own thing? Walk me through what you were thinking. Many people ask me what to do as a business coach.

Deedra:    I had my son … my son Jace is eight … he was born 12 weeks early.

Clay:    Oh.

Deedra:    I delivered at six months instead of nine months, kind of a tragic deal there. He was born basically two pounds, nine ounces. This little tiny guy could fit in my hand.

Clay:    Really?

Deedra:    In the hospital 77 days, so that right there, your whole life is just perspective and that was right when I was thinking about maybe do I want to leave, do I want to do something on my own? I have two kids; I want to see them a little bit more. I was pregnant and then that happened.

Clay:    Let’s … real quick, context here, because I know your story a little bit, but I want to make sure I get into this. Before you had your son, you traveled for work.

Deedra:    Right.

Clay:    How often were you gone?

Deedra:    I was gone … home a week, gone a week, home a week, gone a week. I was the director of marketing for a local Fox affiliate here, so I worked in television and then I went on with Clear Channel television and traveled the country, and consulted their TV stations.

Clay:    Your husband was working in sales in some capacity?

Deedra:    He was pharmaceutical sales, so he traveled, I traveled, we had to like … we passed in the halls and waved at each other and …

Clay:    How often did you see each other on a weekly basis at that point?

Deedra:    Life was pretty crazy.

Clay:    Okay.

Deedra:    Weekends, and it was crazy.

Clay:    Did you take some maternity leave?

Deedra:    Yes.

Clay:    Okay, so you are dealing with … you have a child that fits in your hand …

Deedra:    Yup.

Clay:    … and you’re like, there’s got to be a better way.

Deedra:    Right.

Clay:    Okay, now so that was kind of your ‘aha’ moment almost.

Deedra:    Yes, yes. I had thought about starting a business and starting an online mom site, and that really kind of kicked it in that, not only from the perspective of I was a mom, that I could really use advice from other moms at that point, other moms going through that, and also from a business side, just be home more, be with my family. I didn’t know if he’d be a special needs child, which he was not, but, you know, what would I need to do to move forward with that?

Clay:    Today we were visited by Lee Cockerel, the guy who used to run Disney World, and he was telling us … he was speaking to a group of people and he does this research for his talks, and I looked this up and seen this stat too. Over 90% of Americans who are entering into retirement age … Now you might be watching this from Costa Rica … but 90% of Americans are basically in debt at the time of retirement. I mean they owe more money than they actually have at the time of retirement, and furthermore, the average American, when you look at all the stats … there’s unbelievable research, just Google this mess and you’ll see it … over 45% of Americans report that they strongly dislike their job. This is crazy to me as a business coach.

It means people are exchanging five sevenths of their week, Monday through Friday, at a job they don’t like, for nothing! They don’t actually get anything at the end, and so I think that it’s important that we all kind of decide to live before we die, and I think that’s a huge place to start.