Loosen Your Schedule

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I was watching Brian Regan on Comedy Central when it happened.  Like always he said something that was hilarious, but only because of it's profundity. I used that word for YOU Brian :-)!  What he said was "Listen, if you need to zap fry your Pop-Tarts before you head out the door, you might wanna loosen up your schedule."
     What I got out of that was a way to be able to communicate with my clients, without expecting them to spend all day trying to figure out what I wrote, and me spending the better part of a week to write it.
      So I took out a timer and wrote a report. Right then and there.  I wrote for five minutes, and then I quit.  I then started a stopwatch and timed how long it took me to read the report. At the speed I type, it takes about one minute to read.  So... I decided to create reports to them based off "Five Minutes to Write - One Minute To Read".   It was very easy to explain to them that if they didn't have one minute to read something that might help their business... they were simply too busy.
     At first I called them "Area Fifty One Reports", named after the famouse Area 51. But that made them too mysterious. So I took away the mystery.  So here's the Fifty One on how you can create an effective communication channel using this method.
  1. Start a timer and type what you need to say to the recipient in five minutes. 
  2. Cover as many of these questions as you can... Who, What, When, Where, and Why. 
  3. Make sure that you don't confuse the message with Tech Talk.
  4. Create a form to make it easy. (I can send you my form in Outlook.oft if you'd like)
  5. Make "How" the main message.
This is what my form looked like at first


Try it. You'll be surprised how much your clients appreciate it!  
Take a few minutes to watch Brian's Video Below

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