[00:00:00] Have you ever looked at your to-do list and instantly wanted to walk away and instead put price stickers on that latest order that arrived? Now, I don't know about you, but I find putting price stickers on products strangely therapeutic, I'm sure it's got something to do with the fact that it requires very little brain power and it's a really nice repetitive task.

Hey there. Welcome back to the Bringing Business to Retail podcast, where we talk all about the strategies to grow your retail or e-commerce business. Now, I've had a lot going on and. Last week as I jumped into Asana, which is our project management software, I seemed to have more tasks allocated to me than I had hours.

Not in the day or even the week, but probably in a year. This is complete leadership fail. So some of the things on those I on that list were ideas or concepts that I'd put onto Sal's Great Ideas board. It's a project that I have in Asana, and every time I have a great idea, I stick it in there. And I set a task for me to come back and reflect on whether it [00:01:00] is still a great idea that needs to be implemented.

So some of those were my great ideas that had come back around for me to reflect on. Some were very time-sensitive tasks where the team would be held up if I didn't get. My part of the job completed and then they were my general CEO type tasks, and it didn't take a genius to see that I had been using my project management software as a cranial dumping ground, but instead of jumping in and procrast to working on tidying it all up, I probably could have spent a good two hours.

Going through everything, rearranging it into different projects and putting priorities and stuff like that on it. But I decided to do something a little bit different. I turned to chat GPT. Now I know that you're probably thinking, well, Sal isn't using chat, GPT, playing around with chat, GPT, the very definition of procrast to working well, no.

Because I was [00:02:00] feeling very overwhelmed and I had a lot on my plate, and I was really struggling in that moment to figure out what did I really need to work on. And you may have found yourself, sometimes it's, it's, it's the paralysis analysis where you have so many things to do that you just can't work out what needs to be done first.

And that's where I was. I needed a sounding board. I needed someone to ask me the really hard questions. That I would normally ask myself or that I would normally ask you if you were paying me to be your consultant, the kinds of questions I would ask you. So in this episode, I want to share the four questions that I asked my own AI powered version of myself.

Yes. Really. That helped me break through the overwhelm and it helped me really get focused and get really clear to prioritize what was it on my list that actually was going to move the needle. So let me give you a little bit of a [00:03:00] backstory. I've been building out my own chat, GPT I've called it. Sal talks and I have been feeding it so much information.

I have been feeding it podcast transcripts. I've been feeding it call transcripts from my group coaching calls or. Calls that I have had with other businesses so that it starts to learn the way that I think, the way that I speak, and how I tackle problems. Now, I will say when you build your own GPT and you don't share it, you can click a button that says not to share this information anywhere else.

And so don't worry, I haven't been sharing anything with anybody else or even with chat GPT to be using in the background that could be of a sensitive nature. But what I have found, being in a position where you have to articulate the answers gives you so much more clarity than just staring at a spreadsheet or your project management software.

So if you're feeling overwhelmed, here is what the virtual version of [00:04:00] myself would ask you. The first thing it did was the headache was identify the biggest pain point. The question, so just just to to backstory a little bit more, I asked it to ask me a series of questions as if it was Selena Knight retail strategist using all of the information that it had at its disposal.

And I had listed those things and I asked it to ask me these questions one by one, because I was feeling overwhelmed with too many things on my project management plate. So the first question that it asked to identify the biggest pain point was what is currently on your plate? And this was a great first question because it forced me to physically list down all of the things that I currently had on my to-do list.

And so I jumped into Asana and I saw these dozens of tasks that needed to be done, but by simply being asked this question, what is on your plate? I was able to filter out the stuff that was just noise or ideas or nice to haves. The actual list of what had [00:05:00] to be done was a lot less than what I thought, and so by typing this much shorter list out and replying back to Chachi, pt, AKA, myself.

It immediately made me less overwhelmed because I had to evaluate and prioritize, and already I started to feel like I could make a plan. So my first tip there would be if you have a really long to-do list, and we're going to go through some steps and some frameworks and all those kinds of things, as well as the questions that chat GBT ask me, but simply clarifying.

What is on your plate? Writing it down. What are the personal things that you've got? What are the professional things? Write it all down because if you don't have it all listed somewhere, it's much harder to make a plan. So by doing this and writing down what was really on my plate versus all of the noise, I felt like I could make a plan.

So. That one little exercise made me realize that there were a bunch of operational tasks that were assigned to me that I really [00:06:00] shouldn't be doing moving forward. But that's a story for another podcast. Now, have you ever heard of the Eisenhower Matrix? It is quite simple. You draw across horizontal and a vertical on a page, and then you map out important versus urgent.

So you have four quadrants that you can put tasks into. The first quadrant is. Important and urgent. So that's something that is critical and time sensitive. Maybe your website is down, you need to fix it. It is important and it is urgent. The next quadrant is important, but not urgent, and these are the kinds of things that you should be scheduling into your day or into your week.

So maybe it is that you have to sit down and work out your next quarter's marketing plan. The other quadrants, the below the lines are not important. For you to do, but urgent. This is the stuff that you can delegate. Maybe a new product line came in and you don't need to be the one who uploads it to your [00:07:00] website, or maybe it's answering customer support emails.

Honestly, the not important for you, but urgent, it probably the biggest trap that most people fall into. This is where the procrast are working quite often, comes in, or this is where people default to because it is really easy to get caught up in the the dopamine here. Of being busy and ticking something off the list and getting it completed.

And you know, I say that because was the biggest trap for me as well. That's why I'm going through all of this. So, so far we have important and urgent, those critical things. Next we have important but not urgent. Those are the things that you're going to schedule. Maybe it is sitting down and doing marketing plan and then below that, the not important.

For you to do, but urgent things like answering those customer support emails and then the bottom quadrant is not important and not urgent. Why is it even on the list? Just delete that. So that is the Eisenhower Matrix Importance versus urgency. And remember, this is how important it is for you to do the [00:08:00] job.

Now, if I can just sidebar here for a moment. We recently implemented calendar blocking into our company, and this is where each team member on a Friday sits down with their calendar and looks at all the tasks that they have for the following week and blocks out time that they need to get that stuff done.

Now my calendar was all over the place, but the great thing about calendar blocking. Is that it made me realize that there were tasks that had already been resolved. So when I was looking at the team calendars, and this was really good because it gave me the opportunity to see what they thought was urgent versus what I thought was urgent.

And also looking to see that person A was working on Project X, but person B hadn't put Project X onto their calendar at all. And I could see quite easily that there was going to be. A discrepancy or a deficit. I was able to look at everybody's calendars and see that there were tasks on there. That had already [00:09:00] been resolved, or they were tasks that had disappeared because we had fixed something else.

Or maybe we'd moved on to another project and there were tasks that weren't even relevant. In fact, there were tasks that had been set as reoccurring tasks for a project that was finished, but no one had ever ticked it off and hadn't been deleted. So other people were booking time into their calendar to go and work on those tasks, and it didn't need to be done.

What I love about calendar blocking, and it is one of those things I kind of slap myself across the back of the head and go, why didn't you do this earlier? I love the fact that it gives me the opportunity to visualize expectations versus reality. What do you think is on your team's plate versus. What they think is important or what they think is a priority and they put on their own plate.

So that was just question one. What is currently on your plate? And by this time I was already feeling a little bit better, but call me and chat GPT me tenacious already because the second question [00:10:00] popped up. And the second question was, which task or which gap is causing the most wasted time or most lost revenue right now?

This is such a great question, right? Because time is money, and I had to think about this one a little bit because everything that was left on my list seemed important and urgent or important and not urgent. So it was stuff that needed to be done critically or stuff that needed to be scheduled. So harking back to what I just mentioned in the first round of culling, I'd managed to whittle my list down to.

Just the urgent and important and urgent and not important. And so this next question of which task or which gap is causing the most wasted time or most lost revenue? Help me narrow down those things that were on my urgent and important list. So would I lose time or money if a podcast didn't go live?

Well, [00:11:00] not directly, no. It would make me feel a little bit bad. It might disappoint some of you guys who, you know, eagerly wait for the podcast to go live, but it wasn't going to cost me the most amount of time or money if it didn't happen. My next one was, would I lose time or money if I didn't get a speaking proposal finished?

Hell yes, that wasn't due straight away, but two things. One, the longer I left it, the longer it would probably take me because I don't like writing out proposals. But the other thing was it made me look bad to the client and it also stopped the revenue flow coming in. 'cause the quicker I could get that the purchase order or the invoice through, we could realize that cash.

So yes, it was important for me to finish a speaking proposal, which was on the important but not urgent, but at the same time doing the latest podcast, which is also in the important, but I thought urge it. We [00:12:00] had to go and, hmm, have a bit of a think about it. The important quadrants were the ones that I, and I'm sure many people get stuck in because oftentimes it's the stuff that we really don't enjoy doing.

That's my important but not urgent. And so it just sits on that list for moving down until it becomes a last minute deadline. But asking yourself is not doing this task, going to result in the most wasted time or revenue right now. That is going to help you prioritize. So those two things together, those two questions, that was me in my current state, what's on your plate and what is causing the most wasted time or lost revenue right now?

The next two questions. Questions three and four. We're around future proofing your business or future pacing the business. So question three was six months from now, which of those tasks would cause the biggest setback if you didn't complete them? [00:13:00] Chad, GPT cell, can you seriously be before badass? Okay, we are now moving into the no holds barred territory, and I will remind you that I had asked my GPT, the one that I had built and had loaded up with my information and my coaching sessions to give an idea of how I work and the questions I would ask.

So this was such a me question, and it really comes back to the theory of constraints that our five pillars of retail success are built on. These are everything that our scaling methods are built on, and it's how I work with my consulting clients essentially. What is the one thing that if you just got it out of the way, a bunch of other problems would disappear?

So this question was flipping that concept on its head, and instead of thinking of, now I had to think about six months from now. Huh? Which meant really assessing where the tasks that I had on my much smaller list, were they in alignment with? My 10 x is easier than two x [00:14:00] version of myself, so I spent a lot of time reading and researching, and I've taken a lot away from the book.

10 X is easier than two X by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan. I've mentioned it a few times on the show, and the premise of the book is that when you're just aiming for incremental growth, two x year on year. Everything seems important, and so just like I was finding, it is really hard to identify those things to stop doing.

However, 10 goals, they're seemingly impossible, and so they force you outside of your current level of knowledge or your current assumptions, your current thinking pattern, because when you want to. One to two x, you find that there are so many little things that you can do to get there. If you wanna double your revenue, you just do a little bit of everything more.

But there are very few paths and actions that you can take to get you 10 x results. So you have to get really granular on where you want to put your focus, your money, your resources, [00:15:00] and your time. Hmm. So back to my list. Were the things that were on there really going to help me 10 x or. Had I got sidetracked and so by now chat, GPT cell had me list out what's on your plate, identify what is causing the most wasted time or lost revenue, and six months from now out of the tasks that are left, which would cause you the biggest setback if you didn't complete them.

Can you see how this is really starting to. Narrow down my focus. It's really starting to give me just a couple of core things that need to be done. So still in future pacing mode. Question number four, looking at where your business is heading in the next two years, which task is going to be the most critical to scaling and sustainability?

Break it down. Chat, GPT, and dig in. So continuing on with that 10 x framework, Hardie and Sullivan ask you to identify. What are you [00:16:00] optimizing for? What are the qualities that you want to develop and what are the standards by which you measure progress and success? So when you couple that framework with question four, looking at where your business is heading.

And so for me, looking at where the business was heading was the 10 x version, not the two x version. Looking at where my business is heading in the next two years, which task is going to be the most critical? Scaling and sustainability. Now, just a side note here when I'm talking about sustainability, um, as much as I love the environment, we're talking about sustainability of the business.

So how many of these things are sustainable to continue doing? So it really made me reassess that six month list and reflect on where those things stood in relation to my 10 x plan. Were the tasks on this list? In line with what I was optimizing for and what I wanted the company to be known for. [00:17:00] Hmm.

Lots of hmm moments with this chat, GPT, little interrogation of myself. So once I had that list, I was only then able to go back to my calendar and look at the list, or look at my calendar and decide where did they slot in. And then I had to look at what resources did I truly need to do them well. I have a habit of underestimating how much time things will take and.

How many resources they will need. So one of these exercises for me is really digging in and saying, okay, we did some time tracking. How long does this thing take? And then blocking that out. What are the resources am I going to have to assign to this project in order to be able to get it to where it needs to be for us to move the business forward?

And so for me. This is the deep work and that deep work is important, but it can be often overlooked when [00:18:00] something way more urgent comes up. So for me, the deep work is the strategy. It is looking at the two year, the five year, the 10 year plan, and looking at our 10 X goals, asking those questions. What do we want to be known?

What do we need to do to get there? How are we going to measure success and progress? These are the kinds of things that we don't tend to put time in our calendar for, because it is really easy to fall into the trap of busy work. But the reality is, if you don't take the time to do that deep work, then all that ends up happening is you just keep running on the hamster wheel of hope because you're so busy trying to get everything done.

You have to slot time into your calendar for that big picture thinking and for that deep. Work. So don't fall into the busy work trap. Take your time and look at these questions. If you're feeling overwhelmed, ask yourself those four questions. What's on your plate right now? Write them down. Out of those [00:19:00] tasks, which one is going to cause you the most lost time or most lost revenue?

The next one, six months from now, which one is going to cause the biggest bottleneck? And then the last one, looking at your. 10 x goals or looking at where you want to be in two years, which one of those is the most critical to help you scale and to make your business more sustainable in the future? So that's it guys.

I really hope that you've gotten value from this podcast. I've taken some advice from my mentors about how documenting your journey is so valuable to the people that you serve, rather than just creating content for the sake of it. And whilst I really do believe that there is a time and a place for episodes that focus on things like.

Four ways to segment your email list, those kind of more process driven episodes, they are valuable. And maybe some of 'em are even more trending, but when I hear someone that we're working with saying, Hey Sal, I'm struggling with this problem, or I'm having a problem with my team member, or, these are the roadblocks and [00:20:00] obstacles that are coming up in my own personal journey to scale, then if you are listening here, you've either been in the same boat or you might hit that boat in the future.

If you do, you'll be armed with at least some knowledge of how somebody else managed through that process. And to me, that is much more valuable. And so if you have loved this episode, I would love to hear your thoughts. Send me a dm, leave me a review, and let me know if you found this episode helpful. All righty, I'll see you on the next episode.