Jay Abraham has something he talks about, which is your three ways to grow a business. Now, this is something that I use in all of my businesses on a regular basis, but I especially use it for my strategic planning, and when I’m forming my 90-day goals.

So it’s very simple, and it’s going to require you to actually write some things down. So grab a blank piece of paper, and if you have your own business, you’re going to need to do some research with this, but first thing, that … What are the three ways? Well, the three ways are: To increase the number of customers. So, obviously, the number of customers or clients you have, increasing That base is one way. Number two is to increase the average transactional value. So, if somebody’s buying one widget, can you get them to buy another?

Now, what do I mean by extra time. I know you’re thinking like “Doug, you know we all have 24 hours in a day. Nobody has extra time.” And that’s totally true, but let’s say you’re the average American.

This is a topic around business, and a topic I’ve had several times in the last week when I’m talking to business owners about their business model and how they actually want to get out of their business so they can become the authors of their own story. Oftentimes what happens is a business owner’s building the business as a solopreneur and they surround themselves by key people, yet they haven’t been able to take themselves out of the business. In fact, even a worst case scenario, they branded their business around their skill sets and about their name. Now their business is synonymous with them.

Now, this is a tip I got from Robin Sharma, now as leaders in our communities and leaders in business, we get hit by a barrage of information every day. You know right here, right now, I’m talking to you, I have three screens going. There’s information coming at us at all angles. We have chats going on, we have social media, we have messages from our friends and our family. And oftentimes, what happens if we lose focus.

I actually heard this years ago from a friend Robert, and Robert actually was an entrepreneur along with myself. One of the things that he told me that really resonated with me and it still does today was that actually when you look at somebody who’s doing construction, they always put their tools away at the end of the day. No matter what they’re doing, they put their tools away in an organized fashion and close their day out.

This question comes from Victor, and Victor says, “Doug I’ve got a question that might be a great highlight for the Daily Growth Hacks. What problems or questions deserve our attention? I mean, how do we distinguish which aspects of our life we should be paying attention to, and which ones are a waste of time, money and energy?”

Victor, this is a great question and thank you for submitting it. Now there’s a lot of follow-up questions I’d want to know, like how do you define the problem? Is this a problem that you’re having internally or something that you feel someone’s bringing on to you? And what kinds of problems are these? So there’s a variety of questions.

Today’s insight comes to a result of a phone call that I just got from a friend of mine. Now, I haven’t spoken to this friend in quite a while, and I’m outside in my adventure van getting things ready for a trip that my family and I are going on. We take these trips regularly, and this is actually what prompted this phone call because my friend found out. He called me to say, “Doug, it seems like you’re doing all these great things; however, it just seems like a lot of work. I really don’t want to put all the work into going on. I have a decent job, a decent family, a decent life, yet I feel like I’m stuck in a rut and it just seems like a lot of work. Taking care of my family, my health, my wealth, my relationships, and all these things that encompassed in my business. It just seems like taking things to the next level is just a pain in the butt. Do you have any secrets?”