Are you spending your time wisely?
Hi! My name is Coach Jimmy and I bet you’re busy. I bet you have a really busy schedule and you have probably either school or a career or kids or a spouse or all of those combined and you are trying to do something more with your life. You are really trying to…maybe it’s a building a business on the side, maybe it’s creating a product…you have something entrepreneurial in your spirit that you want to do something great.
But right now, it seems like you don’t have any time in the world at all to do anything like that. You’re like, “Jimmy, I am so busy I don’t have time to do XYZ. I don’t have time to take the course and learn this thing and apply whatever.” Maybe it’s just you’re just trying to reclaim your health and fitness. I know for me that I used to be a hundred pounds overweight. It took me reclaiming my health and my fitness to really spark this entrepreneurial side of me that allowed this 3 time college dropout to create this 7 figure business online and become a business coach for other people.
So I really got to thinking about how do you make the most of your time? Specifically, when it comes to learning something new. Maybe you are learning a new business, maybe in order to launch that online business or that entrepreneurial thing that you want to learn, you have to plugging to a teacher or a trainer or a mentor.
So what do you do with the most of that time?
Because I find that there are a lot of people who…they either don’t make time to learn and invest in learning and knowledge and buying the program or buying the book or investing in that event or, what they do is, they spend so much time in learning mode, they feel like they can never take action until they “know it all”.
Which, I am just going to be forthright with you and just say that if you are waiting until you know all the ins and outs of the thing that you want to create or build, you are never going to get anything done.
I did a video recently about a mentor of mine that passed away, but had a huge impact on my life name Jack Lee and he was my musical theater, voice coach in New York City, and I learned so much from learning from this man in four years.
Stop trying to know everything
This morning during my workout, I really got to thinking. I was reflecting on Jack and how much I learned from him and it’s funny because I run multiple Facebook groups. I mentor a team of thousands of people and everybody wants to pick the mentor’s brain. Which I get because I’ve had mentors before and you are like, “If I can only know what you know and only execute how you execute,” and in this world of immediate gratification, there seems to be those people that are asking a question everyday in the Facebook group or I am getting a text or it’s just constant, “I need to know this. I need to know this. I need to know this.”
As the mentor, you want to serve these people, but I really got to thinking, are these people utilizing their time the best? I am going to tell you exactly what I mean by that.
When I was working with Jack in New York City for four years, I learned so much, I grew so much as an artist with my work ethic just as a human being and you know how much time I got from Jack? One hour a week. One hour a week that I paid him a lot of money to get that hour and it was a lot of money to me at the time in New York City, right?
$60,000 in debt, I was juggling crappy side jobs, I was doing coffee demonstration in stores, and I was passing out coffee in Times Square and I really didn’t have like a steady income, but it was important enough for me to make a sacrifice to find this money because to invest in this gentleman because I needed to know what he knew.
He was so willing to put so much into his students, but I got one hour of his time a week. Usually it was Tuesday’s in the afternoon and I got to thinking today, I was like, “So how did I continue to grow? How did I continue to grow if I didn’t have…I couldn’t text him all the time?” You got to understand Jack Lee, little old man in his 70s, 80s at the time or whatever, the guy wasn’t texting people, he definitely wasn’t on YouTube, he didn’t have a Facebook account, and I learned more from him than anybody I have ever learned from as far as performing. It really was amazing.
It was important enough for me to make a sacrifice to find this money because I needed to know what he knew.
So what did I do? Well number one, the hour I got from him, I was not late. I showed up ready to go and it was like, dude, the clock hit and we got to work immediately. Jack didn’t ease me into anything. He didn’t sugar coat anything. We hit the ground running and he told me what it was that I needed to do to get better.
Learn from your mentor’s feedback
So I kind of had to put my feelings on the shelf and know for that hour, he is going to tell me, and no bullshit, what it is that I needed to do to move forward. Then that hour would end and I would come in with my tape recorder and I would record that session. For the rest of the week, instead of calling Jack every time I have a problem or something I was struggling with, I would make sure that I re-listened to that lesson two, three, four times that week and then, also not only just listen, but practice the things that we worked on because you know what? When I showed up the next week, it was super apparent to Jack if I had practiced or done anything on my own time without him of what he had thought me.
So think about that in your training right now whether it’s you’ve bought that book, you’ve got that online course, you have access to a mentor and a Facebook group, are you the person that is so afraid to take a step on your own because you need to dominate their time or do you honor their time with what they’ve taught you and then learn some things on your own?
I mean think about it now. If I have a question or something I am not really sure about, with Google and YouTube and so many other resources, there are ways to find answers. There are ways to find answers that I could go do something and execute it, again not just staying in learning mode but actually executing that, then the next time I get my time with my mentor, I can say, “Hey, I didn’t know this so I went here to look and I did it this way,” and they may say, “You know what? Awesome job. You did great. You’re absolutely right.” Or they may say, “Hey, great job taking the initiative. Let me help you tweak that a little bit. Let me shift this for you just a little bit.”
Instead of calling Jack, I would re-listen to that lesson two, three, four times and then practice the things that we worked on.
But as the mentor, they are going to respect the fact that I was proactive in my own time and the time away from them. That I found ways to activate, to put some things into practice, and to either grow or fail and either way you are growing. I could come back the next week and say, “Man, I am really trying to work this and I keep getting stuck here,” or “I keep running into this problem,” but he was excited because I had taken the time on my own to really invest in practice and putting it into practice.
I find this in business all the time. People learn, but they don’t take the time to go test it in the real world for a week. Not try something once and say, “Ah, my mentor told me to do that and it didn’t work.” To really give it a week or two weeks’ time of practice and practice and failing and tweaking and figuring out how execute it really in a way that’s uniquely you.
Put your lessons into action
I am going to use Jack as an example, you know all of his students got the exact same teaching and lessons from Jack, but each of us were very unique in the way that we perform or sang or did something with the exact same training, because we had to bring something that was uniquely us to the table. To use these fundamentals that Jack just live and breathe by and he had a track record of success with the people that he worked with.
So, again, we invested this money in him to really…and then we hung on pins and needles and then we put it into action because he wasn’t going to baby step us every way. It was, “Here’s your lesson, go out into the world and use it.” When I would go to auditions during the week, I would put into practice the things that he had thought me. When I was practicing at home by myself when nobody else was around. Nobody knows if you’re practicing or not, but Jack did because he could tell the next week whether or not I had put that into practice.
So, what does my musical theater thing have to do with you? Well number one, whatever it is that thing that you want to get better at, that you want to create that business, you want to create that product, you are taking control of your health and fitness, I don’t know what it is that you are looking to do, but have you identified a mentor that you want to learn from? Somebody that is going to help speed up your process than just doing it all by yourself? That’s number one.
Are you honoring their time? Are you showing up to calls late? Are you showing up to the times that they give access? Are you taking advantage of that Facebook group? If you can’t make the call live, are you sending in questions? Are you making sure you watch the recordings and letting them know what it is that you are activating afterwards?
When I would go to auditions during the week, I would put into practice the things that he had thought me. When I was practicing at home by myself when nobody else was around. Nobody knows if you’re practicing or not.
These are the things that come up with the people that I mentor, because I notice. If I have a group call for somebody, well somebody goes, “Well, that time doesn’t work for me,” but they didn’t necessarily say, “Well, these are the questions I am going to have,” and then when I post the recording they don’t say, “Yes, Jimmy. I took the time to watch the recordings and these are the things that I am activating.” Again, that’s going to be respecting my time as the mentor.
Right now, I am really working with three mentors that I spent tens of thousands of dollars to work with and I don’t get them everyday in a Facebook group. I may be in a Facebook group, but they are not in there everyday, because they know as professionals, they are going to come in, they are going to invest in me, they are going to give me some things, and I am going to need some time to go apply those things. Not a day. I am going to need some time to come back with a litmus test of, “Hey, this week, these two weeks, these three weeks I have been practicing what you have thought me and this is what I have to show for it.”
Don’t be afraid to mess up
That’s what I mean of are you using…how are you using your time in a busy, busy life? Are you constantly saying, “I need…I need reassurance before I take every step,” but I get it. I used to be that person.
Also growing up, I was an artist and I remember being so petrified. I took an art…I guess what would you call it? It guess it as like an art camp one summer. We were asked to create our own superhero and I remember having my piece of paper and I had some ideas, but I would only get a few lines in before asking the teacher to come back over and go, “Is this okay? Is this alright?”
And I wasn’t making any progress because I didn’t just trust my instincts enough to take the instructions that I had gotten and do a full drawing and then have the teacher come back over and give me some pointers. I was so asking at every little step I needed reassurance. Every little way, I needed, “Hey, is this line okay? Do you think this is a good idea?” and I didn’t really make much progress.
You got to trust yourself. You got to trust the teaching. You got to trust yourself to go make the most of that because you only have a limited time to create this thing.
You have a busy life and so you need to honor the time that you got taught something, that you went to the online course, that you read the book, and then get out of that and use that limited time you have to go activate it over a period of time so you have something you can come back and show your work when you get access to that mentor again.
You are going to save yourself so much time because you only have so much time to work with and you want results. You deserve results. There is something in your gut that says, “I am supposed to be doing something greater with my life than what I am doing right now.” So part of that is learning, but so much of that is in application by putting it out into the world, by practicing before you come back to that mentor and show your work and say, “Look, I’ve honored your time by putting this into practice.”
I really hope that helps with you today. What I would love to know in the comments is what is it? What is the thing that you are putting into practice? That you are taking this week and putting into practice every single day?
If you found value in this video, I would really appreciate it if you ‘like’ it. Like I said, leave me the comment and let me know what it is that you are putting into practice and share this with somebody else that needs to hear it.
My name is Coach Jimmy. Keep doing awesome things and I will talk to you next time.