Rich Christiansen - Parallel Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurial Expert

You’ve probably never had someone tell you it’s a good idea to cross the line, but Rich will today. You’ll find out why…

Maintaining a perfect life balance as an entrepreneur is impossible. I’ll confess to anyone who asks, I live my life constantly and consistently out of balance. But, along the way, I’ve learned an invaluable principle: cross the line of balance as frequently as possible.

It’s unavoidable; you will have ups and downs depending on the dynamic demands of your business. There will be times when you can play golf in the mornings and have family picnics on the weekends. Other times you will lose sleep and go weeks without swinging an eight iron. I’ll say it again: find the line of balance and stick to it as often as possible.

If you find yourself at work constantly for a week, make time to be at home for a long weekend. Entrepreneurship occasionally requires you to live your life in extreme conditions. Make sure you’re switching back and forth between work and the rest of your life. You’ll cross the line of balance between extremes often enough to feel some sort of normalcy. Use your time wisely, and make sure your priorities are in order.

Another important note: when you must go out of balance at work, communicate to your loved ones that your schedule is a deliberate choice, not an uncontrollable accident. Help them understand that the effort is critical for a specific time period. Then ensure you stick with the time period.

Your conversation might look like this:

I’m going to have to spend a lot of time at the office the next two weeks. We have some critical milestones approaching, so I won’t be around much. At the end, though, let’s celebrate by going on a long weekend to the lake house.

Ed Viesturs made this statement about climbing and life, epitomizing the balance he maintains:

“The fact is, even before I was married, I made a commitment to myself to be smart when I climb in the Himalayas. What I’ve learned is that life is a balancing act, you can have a family life but you still have to work, you have to do what you do. Climbing big mountains is what I do, I love it and I’d say I have been fairly successful. But my personal style includes avoiding stupid mistakes. The life I live now shows me every day that there is more to life than climbing.” (“Viesturs Returns to Annapurna,” GreatOutdoors.com)

In keeping with the principles of “Reward Yourself,” don’t “forget” this reward! It’s the spirit of the adage work hard, play hard. It just so happens in entrepreneurship that the sentiment ends up looking more like work harder, play harder. The time to play hard is a freedom granted to entrepreneurs who are able to manage their time effectively.

Porter’s Points – Cross the Line

• Cross the line of balance into a balanced life as frequently as possible.
• Talk to your family and trust relationships. Let them know that your going out of balance is a deliberate choice, not an uncontrollable accident.
• Make The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey required reading and then live it. At our company, we do.
• Schedule important life events in your calendar. Stick to these commitments unapologetically.
• Schedule a long weekend every month or so and leave every respect of the office behind.

That concludes Chapter 11: Climb High, Sleep Low. Next time we’ll begin Chapter 12: The Heart and the Head of the Entrepreneur with an introduction from Ron Porter.

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Today we learn how to avoid burnouts as an entrepreneur.

One of the most important concepts in high-altitude climbing is “climb high, sleep low.” At higher altitudes, less oxygen is present in the air. In order to compensate, the body fills up with fluid. Altitude sickness, displayed as headaches, nausea, or vomiting, results from this is a caution to slow your ascent. If these warning signs go unheeded, altitude sickness can progress into HAPE, or high-altitude pulmonary edema, as the lungs fill with fluid. A similar problem referred to as HACE, or cerebral edema, might also occur in the brain.

These conditions are among the deadliest conditions associated with high-altitude climbing. If a person were dropped on the top of Mount Everest without giving the body time to acclimatize, he or she would die within five minutes. If you want to get to the top of a high mountain without experiencing the dilemmas of HAPE or HACE, you must sleep only 1,000 feet higher than the previous night: climb high, sleep low.

This mountain climbing metaphor translates directly into entrepreneurship: while you must be diligent, you cannot be reckless. My dear friend Pema Dorje Sherpa told me a story about a marathon runner who considered his physiology to be above and beyond that of high altitude climbers. Flying out of Katmandu at 4,000 feet he landed at Lukla, at about 10,000 feet. Jumping off the tiny Otter twin-engine he proceeded to attack the trail, running the entire distance to the 16,000-foot lakes of Gokyo, an amazing and seemingly impossible feat. In just one day he gained 12,000 feet in altitude.

Mountaineers take upwards of ten days to make that high of a climb, not because they can’t do it in two days, but because they know their bodies must acclimatize to ever-increasing altitude. The marathoner achieved his goal to cross the finish line at Gokyo in one day. The next morning he was dead.

Balance is an essential attribute of mountain climbing. When you climb 8,000-meter peaks, a four- or five-day rest period is part of the proven training regime. You need an ample reserve for the final assault on the summit. So it is when starting and growing your business. You cannot use this principle as an excuse to hang out at base camp. Be smart, and pace yourself for times that require gut-wrenching effort.

As I’ve built and grown businesses, I’ve often turned to different books on entrepreneurship for guidance. More often than not I’ve found examples of successful businessmen or women who sacrificed their families, social life, and personal goals to make their business successful. Early in my corporate career I was fooled into thinking that this kind of sacrifice was necessary. As a result, too much time was spent out of balance. The following consecutive events occurred, which changed my incorrect thinking.

While General Manager of Mitsubishi Electric PC Division I was summoned to Birmingham England for a chat with Dr. Peter Horne, my mentor and boss. As I arrived at Peter’s office he sat me down and offered sincere congratulations. He said, “You made marked progress; the USA division is starting to come together.” He continued:

“Rich, I want you to remember this: you can replace anything in life. You can replace a job, a car, money, anything, but you can’t replace your health, your trust relationships, or your family.” With that statement, he excused me from the meeting.

The 20-hour plane trip home gave me ample time to consider this practical, wise, and invaluable advice. The previous year I’d spent three weeks out of each month traveling, resulting in excess of 100,000 air miles. I was determined to “earn my stripes” at all cost.

Upon arriving home from this trip, I picked up my third son, only two years old at the time. He didn’t recognize me and pushed me away. It broke my heart. I reflected, “Why am I doing this? Is it worth it? Dr. Horne is right, I cannot replace this time with my child.” From this point forward I have made a very conscious attempt to guard my health, my family, and my trust relationships.

You do not need to sacrifice family, health, or trust relationships in exchange for entrepreneurial success. I contend that you will be more effective, happy, and successful if you do not.

Porter’s Points – Climb High, Sleep Low

• Ensure you build reserves for stretches that require gut-wrenching effort.
• Don’t hang out at “base camp” longer than necessary.
• Entrepreneurial success is not an equal exchange for the loss of family, health, and trust relationships.

So as you build your small business, make sure you strike a balance between work and play! Along those lines, we’ll talk next time about crossing the line….

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Today we finish the story of Ed Viesturs’ summit of Annapurna and relate his climbing philosophy to business creation.

Now, you have to keep in mind that Ed had already attempted this climb twice, and backed off both times. This was the last 8,000-meter peak he had left to conquer before attaining his goal of summiting all 14 peaks. Annapurna is arguably the most dangerous and most difficult of all of the 8,000 meter peaks, with the possible exception of K2. He had already tried and backed off twice.

Ed’s team chose a route that required them to be above 26,000 feet, the death zone, for an extended period of time. However, taking this route allowed them to avoid the huge avalanche-prone faces of the foreboding mountain. Well into their summit bid they came to a corniced face that “just did not feel right.” Ed and Veikka chose to go back down the mountain, but two other climbing partners decided to press forward.

In an amazing climb, those other two reached the summit successfully. Some people watching the climb called Ed and Veikka weak-kneed. They received an enormous amount of criticism for turning around when their partners summitted. However, they did not waver and offered no regrets. They had the courage and fortitude to “go to the tent” despite receiving peer pressure, despite it being the final summit, and despite the world watching.

I know of a local partnership that exemplified the need for this principle. After experiencing success at the outset of the venture, each partner was able to take huge disbursements rather frequently. Not sure of the upcoming terrain, the first partner chose to invest in some real estate and tucked money away for the future. The other partner built a gorgeous home, requiring him to take out two mortgages. He filled the new house with top-of-the-line furniture and increased his monthly burn to match the increase in the amount of money he was bringing home.

As often happens, technology and the market changed. The business hit a transition period requiring the partners to lay off employees and cut expenses (including disbursements) while they took time to regroup. They determined it would take at least six months to retool the business to a level where the cash flow would allow both partners to take a salary. The first partner had the resources to wait out the tough time and keep climbing: slowly, but steadily. The second partner was forced into the tent at a dead stop. He went back into corporate America seeking a salaried job that would support his new lifestyle.

Different choices have different consequences. There is no way to predict the future, and you must be prepared to accept what changes may come. In the above example, the second partner cannot be considered a failure. He accomplished a great deal and chose his own priorities. However, if you want to experience true entrepreneurial freedom, your priorities need to reflect your goals.

When things are going well, make sure you don’t burn up all the reserves. Put some away for the slow time. A good rule of thumb is to maintain three months of buffer, no matter what. This gives immense peace of mind when times get tough. It’s smart to be a little conservative now for peace of mind later; I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: live like others won’t now so you can live like others can’t later.

Getting to the top is optional, but getting back down is mandatory.

Porter’s Points – Seven Years of Plenty, Seven Years of Famine

• Live on less than you bring in.
• Do not buy the extras on your basic earnings; buy them on your extra income.
• Get your personal financial life in order and avoid putting your loved ones at risk.
• Save and maintain a three-month buffer of financial reserves.

As you start your business, make sure you’re saving enough resources that you can survive if things get tough. Next time we’ll talk about achieving balance, using the mountain climbing principle ‘climb high, sleep low’.

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Today we begin a section that focuses on building a reserve for your business and never jeopardizing everything you have in the pursuit of your small business idea.

You will inevitably encounter failures on the road of entrepreneurship. It is absolutely essential to prepare for setbacks. I find relevance in the story of Joseph, which is found in the Bible, the Koran, and a number of other religious texts from around the world. In a jealous rage Joseph’s brothers sold him as a slave into Egypt. After years of abuse and hardship, he was unjustly thrown into prison. Joseph had a talent, though: a gift for interpreting dreams.

Having heard of Joseph’s ability, the Pharaoh called upon him to decipher his disturbing dreams. After hearing the dream, Joseph warned Pharaoh that a famine was coming; seven years of plenty followed by devastating shortages. Joseph became Pharaoh’s chief steward and immediately began a program to set aside a reserve of food and supplies. Seven years later the famine hit, but Pharaoh and all of Egypt were ready.

Ed Viesturs, one of my personal heroes, was the first American to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter summits. He accomplished this remarkable success without the use of supplemental oxygen. Only those who have confronted high altitudes understand the superhuman ability required to accomplish this task.

I identify with Ed for two primary reasons:

1) His work ethic and attitude on the mountain.

Countless times he sacrificed his own summit bid in order to rescue others. How Ed climbs the mountain is as important to him as climbing it. Ed was a member of the IMAX team and one of the major heroes in the rescue attempt that occurred in the infamous 1996 Everest disaster.

2) His climbing philosophy.

When Ed is acclimatized and the conditions are right, he goes for it. When the conditions are not right or he considers the venture an unacceptable risk, he has the courage to back off and go back to the tent. Sometimes this frustrates others around him, but he does not let peer pressure push him to climb a mountain when it does not feel right.

In an article about his third attempt to summit Annapurna, Viesturs said:

“Veikka and I will approach this attempt the same way we have all our other climbs. I’m quite prepared to just turn around and come home if conditions are as dicey as they were on previous attempts. I admit to being pretty motivated to reach my goal of climbing all 14 peaks, but I’m not going to take unreasonable risks to do so. No mountain, no summit, is worth dying for. I do this for fun, not because I have to. I do this for me, and I do it my way. For me and the people I care about, my style of climbing is the right style. Getting to the top is optional, but getting back down is mandatory.”

In mountain climbing, it is not enough just to get to the top. The goal must be to get to the top and return home safely. In business you must plan for the difficult times. As you reap the rewards of your hard work, build a financial buffer for your future.

We’ll finish the story of Ed Viesturs’ attempt to summit Annapurna next time. Hope you’re enjoying the mountain climbing stories and their ties to entrepreneurship.

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Today’s section of Chapter 11: Climb High, Sleep Low is short, but still important!

During our first trip to Nepal, my wife and I hiked with our friends, Steve and Lanette Olsen. Steve was without a doubt the strongest climber in the group, but after one particularly difficult ascent he had difficulty acclimating to the new altitude. At one point, Steve had to go into an altitude compression chamber called a Gamoff bag. Despite the setback, Steve persevered, listened to his body, and kept climbing. He ended up being the strongest finisher of the trek. He overcame the obstacle and achieved his climbing objectives.

In reality, many small businesses do not succeed. Just like on the mountain, there is no one to tell you to turn around and go home. It doesn’t matter how many summit bids you make. As long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you will eventually reach your goal. Keep climbing.

Porter’s Points – Keep Climbing

• Expect to win and when you do, don’t be surprised!
• Experiencing failure does not make you a failure—learn from it and move on.

It’s important for entrepreneurs to push through challenge and keep climbing! Next time we’ll talk about building up a reserve to sustain your business through hard times.

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Today we talk about rewards and why they’re so important in your small business.

Not even a year after my injury my partners and I had reached our goal. We were ecstatic. It was a phenomenal achievement. I cannot convey the depth of my joy and satisfaction as I sat around the table on that cruise ship with my partners and our wives. My voice quivered with emotion as I stood, lifted my glass, and offered a toast, simply stating, “We did it. We made it.” My dream had become a reality.

In the end, dreaming about the cruise was every bit as enjoyable as actually living it. The satisfaction gained from completing the goal was just as fulfilling as the cruise in the Caribbean. However, what would have happened if I had blown off the cruise? After all, since I had enjoyed the dream, wasn’t that reward and motivation enough?

No. My subconscious would have revolted! Going back on a promised reward would have damaged my desire to dig deep and sacrifice in the future. Take this as a serious warning: you cannot go back on your rewards. Doing so is far more costly to you than the actual cost of the reward.

Even the smallest rewards motivate us to reach the top of big mountains. Standing at the bottom of Mount Everest looking heavenward overwhelms even the heartiest of climbers with the reality of the impossible. Smart mountaineers pick out a series of short-term goals and then reward themselves for reaching each and every single one. Perhaps the reward is a drink of water or 10 extra breaths before pressing upward. They chip away at the colossal goal bit by bit.

During one of our trips in the Himalayas, our trekking team had a difficult time getting used to the food. When we arrived in the village of Namche Bazaar, famished and needing something delicious, we found a little bakery called Everest Bakery that had the most amazing apple pie. We were willing to add an entire day’s hike just to be able to reward ourselves with one mouthwatering slice.

In the same hike, we had a first-timer cook, who just happened to be a vegetarian. Another big motivator to get to a higher camp was the knowledge we would be able to find canned Spam. After hiking for a few days with our vegetarian chef, this reward was particularly motivating. It’s important to realize that money is very seldom a powerful motivator. Small, meaningful, and tantalizing rewards elicit amazing efforts.

Just as on the mountain, you must reward yourself for achieving business milestones. Milestones can be small or big accomplishments. Match the reward to the effort required. If you don’t take time to reward yourself, your subconscious will start asking, “Why am I doing this, anyway?”

Porter’s Points - Reward Yourself

• Establish achievable but “stretch” goals for all your projects.
• Identify a reward for each goal.
• Make the rewards special and meaningful to you.
• Display a reminder of the goal in a prominent place.
• Make the reward a real reward: don’t reward yourself with a trip to an amusement park if you hate amusement parks.
• Once the goal is achieved don’t procrastinate giving the reward!
• Create both individual and team rewards: team rewards create a community of collaboration and mutual appreciation.

So take the time to enjoy your rewards! Don’t cheat yourself or your employees of the celebration that comes with accomplishing goals.

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Imagination is critical for an entrepreneur. As we dive in to Chapter 11: Climb High, Sleep Low, you’ll see why!

Someone once asked mountain climber George Mallory “Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?” His legendary replay was “Because it is there.” We recognize the authenticity of this quote is under debate. Bona fide quote or not, human beings are wired to search out unknown boundaries. It’s why people run marathons, are fascinated by space, or work to create new technology. It’s the same reason why many of us feel compelled to create new businesses.

Entrepreneurship cannot exist without imagination. You have to dream it before you make it a reality. Imagination is your mind’s ability to create a blueprint by which you achieve great things.

In 2003 I jumped from the seemingly safe, warm waters of a great salary, a matching 401k, and paid vacations, into the cold, deep water of entrepreneurship. Seven days after making the big jump I was playing basketball with some 12-year-old Boy Scouts. As I went for a three-pointer from the corner, I heard a puzzling pop. As I looked down, I saw that my right foot was hanging in an odd position. I had no control over it. I’d snapped my Achilles tendon.

The result of that surprising snap was two painful surgeries, prolonged bed rest, physical therapy, and six months of recuperation. Physically, I was unable to get out and be about the work of starting a business. But I quickly recognized that even though my leg was useless, I still had a sharp mind and boundless imagination. It was my imagination that fought off despair.

Each night as I fell asleep, I forced positive thoughts into my mind. These thoughts centered around one specific goal. Closing my eyes I visualized cruising the deep blue Caribbean with my new business partners. I saw myself standing, filled with the intense emotions of victory, offering a toast to attaining our objective. “We did it! We made it!” This vision was a stabilizing and motivating lifeline.

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Johann Wolfgang van Goethe (attributed in Murray, W. H. The Scottish Himalayan Expedition. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1951)

My wife and son drilled a hole in the bedroom floor in order to wire up a computer. Over the course of the next six weeks I taught myself how to program in HTML and built a website, 101waystosave.com. It was an ugly website, but it was a website! My partner Dan Handy had shown me a new advertising program from Google, and I was determined to check it out.

After loading a few advertisements onto the site, I drove some traffic to it. The first day the site made one dollar. Putting several more hours of work into the site resulted in a two-day profit of a whopping three dollars. I was on to something! At the end of the month the site was clearing over $100 per day. This little exercise went on to spawn several business ventures which became million dollar businesses at insane profit levels.

Reflecting on the experience I realized my injury forced me to take a break and rely on my imagination. This success had nothing to do with contacts, phone calls, lunch dates, big meetings, or a hundred other activities that make a “full work day.” Too often entrepreneurs get caught up in the day-to-day maintenance of an idea, forgetting that true strength lies in the idea itself!

There are times when intense focus can be destructive. If a climber spends all of his time feverishly focused on the summit, he could miss finding a more exciting or feasible route! Maybe there’s a better way to get to the top, or maybe there are more rewards to be experienced along the way. Whatever the case may be, the only way to find out is to take time to imagine the possibilities. I promise you that there is time enough in the day. The following section provides several ways to ensure you’re tapping into all of your entrepreneurial potential.

Porter’s Points – Imagine That!

• Making time to imagine is not counterproductive—it’s essential.
• Capture your ideas on paper, in a file, or on a whiteboard.
• Not good at “imagineering?” Practice.

Use your imagination to set goals and rewards – but then make sure you follow through! More on that next time….

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Today we begin Chapter 11: Climb High, Sleep Low from Bootstrap Business: A Step-by-Step Business Survival Guide. Those of you familiar with mountain climbing will recognize the principle “climb high, sleep low”.

Rich and his family are passionate mountain climbers. They’ve summitted mountains and hiked canyons throughout the United States and Nepal. He and his wife have trekked peaks in the Himalayas ranging from 14,000 to 20,000 feet, sometimes accompanied by two of their sons for the adventure. These boys were climbing in Nepal before they were 15 years old!

Safety is always an issue while climbing mountains, but in remembering the last trip his family took to Nepal, Rich remarked that safety was on his mind like never before. As he contemplated the risks his family took to gain altitude and resulting actions required to keep them safe, Rich realized how applicable his climbing rules are to entrepreneurship.

This chapter extracts the fundamental principles of mountain climbing and applies them to steps of creating a business. First, Rich will discuss a critical component of success: imagination! Second, he’ll explain the value of setting goals and rewarding yourself along the way. The third principle is to keep climbing! You will have failures along the way; the trick is to keep at it. The fourth concept in this chapter is entitled Seven Years of Plenty, Seven Years of Famine, highlighting the necessity of preparation. Fifth, the section for which this chapter is named: Climb High, Sleep Low. This principle is integral to Rich’s entrepreneurial philosophy and will provide a foundation upon which you can build success. Finally, Rich lays out his recipe for balancing all the demands of building a business in the section, Cross the Line.

This is one of my favorite chapters in the book. As I approached the full time commitment of stepping out of the corporate world and building my own business, these principles kept me sane and on track. They can do the same for you.

Hope you enjoy the concepts in this chapter and realize how they can be applied to your small business!

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Today we finish discussing the last two quadrants from Stephen R. Covey’s Time Management Matrix.

Now, on to quadrant III: these are tasks imposed on us by others. They occasionally become necessary to somebody, but not necessarily to your problem. We all know how friendly the guy next door gets when his fax machine breaks down, or how insistent door-to-door salesmen can be when they haven’t made their quota. When people start knocking on the door with all their little emergencies for you to handle, it is important to remember and live by the old adage: “Failure to plan on your part does not necessarily create a crisis on mine.”

We’re all hit with this. It’s important to realize that although you can’t help everyone, it is a valuable and important use of time to help some people, sometimes. Actually, it’s worth your time to help out as often as you can. In this way, you’ll develop relationships of trust and respect, and trust relationships are always an asset.

The key is to make sure you do what you can and not what you can’t. If you have the time, energy, and resources to help someone out, then by all means, help! If taking time away from the most important task at hand seriously injures your venture, then don’t do it. You need to achieve this important balance through practice and planning.

Finally, quadrant IV—the fluffy, fun quadrant IV, activities that are neither urgent nor important. Examples would be useless, mindless, endless video games and television shows. Don’t get me wrong; I’m up for some good TV shows or a fun game every once in a while, but if you’ve just finished 19 straight hours of Seinfeld reruns, you’ve got a problem. You are not producing, growing, or creating. You are simply existing.

Recreation is important and, when used for the purpose of recharging yourself and spending time with family and loved ones, it can often fit into quadrant II. Watch yourself, though; it’s easy to get sucked in.

So how do you identify quadrant IV at the office? Check your chat applications; do you chat with other people hourly? How meaningful or useful are those conversations to your strategy? Do you spend a lot of time online without needing to? I’ve even caught people watching DVDs or playing video games during “productivity time.” Statistically, Covey states that most people spend all their time in crisis mode, switching between quadrants I and III. The real power comes when you’re able to spend 80 percent of your time in quadrant II, 5 percent in quadrant I, and 15 percent in quadrant III.

As you find yourself scurrying around the office in pursuit of your busy work, keep these thoughts in mind and develop the discipline to say to yourself: “Back off here. This is a waste of time.” This ability is extremely powerful.

Finally, you must remember that you possess limited time and resources with which to accomplish your goals. Identify critical tasks and organize yourself around them. If you organize yourself, you will be able to lead a team of people confidently, competently, and consistently. Your team is obligated to develop their own critical reasoning so that they can make judgment calls as well, but it all starts with you.

Obviously, using this strategy requires prep work. I’ve found, however, that it doesn’t necessarily need to take a lot of time. The clearer you are with what you want to accomplish, the more quickly you can put a strategy in place and develop it within your team.

Porter’s Points – Urgent and Important

• When you are continually approached with quadrant III activities, learn to say “no.” Try something like, “Thank you so much for thinking of me, but this time I am going to have to pass.”
• Gather your thoughts. Take time to record your goals and the critical milestones involved in achieving them.
• Prioritize a series of tasks necessary to implement your strategy. Timing is essential in priorities. For example, you may need to finish developing a product before creating the marketing materials so that your marketing reflects the product as accurately as possible.
• Choose three important things to do today–and do them. If you have time for others, great; if you run out of time, rest assured that they will be there for you tomorrow. Mountains are climbed one step at a time.

And with that we’re done with Chapter 10: Motion or Momentum? Next time we’ll start my favorite chapter of Bootstrap Business – Chapter 11: Climb High, Sleep Low.

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Today we introduce the tool mentioned last time, the Time Management Matrix, that will help you as an entrepreneur to prioritize your tasks throughout the day.

The most powerful tool that I’ve found for sifting through piles of tasks is Stephen R. Covey’s “Time Management Matrix.” I do not claim any credit for these ideas but can definitely attest to their usefulness. This section is an explanation of how I have applied these concepts to my business practices.

More information on Covey’s “Time Management Matrix” can be found in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (149-156).

Covey labels these quadrants with numbers and names; for example, quadrant I is “both urgent and important.” I’ll start with a simple example of how quadrant I works. Let’s say you walk out into your front yard and see your child step off the curb directly into the path of a speeding truck. This situation requires you to take action immediately. It wouldn’t matter if the phone started ringing or you had left something boiling on the stove; all of your attention would shift to preserving your child’s life.

Take that principle into a business environment, and it is incredibly surprising the variety of emergencies that can occur. I had a quadrant I situation in my office the beginning of last week. I had just finished up SEO work on a famous musician’s web site. The project was completed by the Friday afternoon due date, but we had a call on Monday morning advising us that we had worked on the right artist but the wrong site!

It wasn’t our fault (the error grew out of a miscommunication between the two companies), but it resulted in my team starting from square one that morning, all of a sudden having two weeks worth of work to complete in just one. Our focus immediately jumped to correcting the oversight and getting ourselves back on track. The project hadn’t even been on our to-do list for that day, but as soon as the task arose, it became our highest priority.

In quadrant II we find tasks that are “the heart of effective personal management.” These items are important but not urgent—for example, finding the time to have a talk with your kids about drugs when they get old enough to understand. This is very important but has no real external deadline. “Old enough to understand” is a pretty loose guideline; you could even have part of the talk at ten, some at eleven, some at twelve, and so forth. However, if you ignore this conversation until your child is old enough to encounter and experiment with drugs, the need reaches quadrant I and becomes a crisis. Learning to make time to deal with quadrant II keeps you from living life in a state of urgency.

In the business world, quadrant II reflects the heavy lifting between you and your goals. This is the tedious work that you assign yourself in order to achieve your dreams. Covey maintains that a successful life is one that works mainly from this quadrant. For an entrepreneur whose entire life and livelihood hinges on the ability to follow through with long-term goals, quadrant II must be the priority.

We’ll cover quadrants II and IV next time – see you then!

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