Susan Wilson Solovic is a small business expert, award-winning serial entrepreneur, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com top 100 and USA Today bestselling author, media personality, keynote speaker and attorney. Solovic regularly appears as a contributor on Fox Business, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal’s “Lunch Break”, MSNBC, CNN, CNBC and today - The Distracted Executive!
The Distracted Executive: What has become your greatest challenge around managing time? What is your very best practice for being as efficient as you are?
Susan Wilson Solovic: Actually, I am a good time manager. I learned when I was an executive with a Fortune 100 company, a night law-school student, a wife and a step-mom how to make every minute of the day count. The first thing I do when my feet hit the ground in the morning is schedule my day in my mind. That includes time for personal needs such as exercise or social interactions and of course family. My calendar is my Bible.
TDE: Everything seems important or urgent these days. How do you efficiently navigate your to-do list without hindering your success?
SWS: Every morning I consider what things absolutely must be done that day. I focus on those things first. Once they are done I start on the rest of my list. If you spend too much time looking at everything on your list you'll be overwhelmed and probably jump from one thing to another, not really accomplishing anything.
TDE: You must work with some people who are all over the place. How do you deal with someone who is very distracted and not giving you what you need in a timely manner?
SWS: I'm very focused on deadlines. Even for myself, I think deadlines are important. So I give someone a timeframe and expect them to honor it.
TDE: How are you impacted by interruptions during the day? What is your #1 tip for dealing with them?
SWS: Interruptions will always happen so I always have a little cushion in my "schedule." If something starts eating up my time, I usually try to end it but offer a time to return to the issue or project.
TDE: As an entrepreneur, author, speaker and media personality juggling many balls, what is the greatest challenge in your business today, and what are you doing to address it?
SWS: My biggest challenge is growing too quickly. It's hard for me to turn down opportunities, so sometimes I take on too much and I don't have the back room support I need. When that happens, I get stressed and so does my team. As a business owner, you should really look at each opportunity and make sure you can take on new opportunities without jeopardizing others. I tell business owners to remember, when you say yes to one thing, you effectively say no to something else because you simply can't do everything. I need to follow my own advice.
Thank you Susan, for your time!
If you'd like to get in touch with Susan, you can call her office directly at 866-227-8684 ext. 11.