I’m sure you’ve heard of Happy Hour, but have you heard about Power Hour? Power Hour is something you should be doing at least once a week during your working day. It’s the time that you carve out of your busy schedule to do the highest-payback tasks for your business. These include items like strategic planning, product or service development, deal-making, and leveraged revenue-building activities.

Chances are some of these power hour tasks may not even be on your to do list. Sometimes it takes some brainstorming and being away from working “in” your business to develop the innovative ideas you need to move your business forward.

To make Power Hour the most effective, schedule it on your calendar on at least a weekly basis (a few times a week would be better). The entire hour should be uninterrupted and free of phone calls, email, and current clients.

Power Hour should NOT include:

• Doing billable work for current clients. This will bring in income, but it will not move your business forward like higher-payback ideas.
• Checking email.
• Answering unscheduled phone calls.
• Putting out fires.
• Routine marketing work, such as going to a networking meeting or creating a web site.
• Administrative work or work that falls into your overhead bucket.
• Supervising employees.

We all keep very busy in our businesses, and if we don’t take the time to occasionally stop and take stock, we often become distracted working on things that are urgent but not important.

The things you do in a Power Hour should be a little bit (if not a lot) scary to you. In fact, that’s why we put them off. But they’re the exact things that will allow our business to really take off when we make the time and face our trepidations.

Some of the things you can consider that would go into a Power Hour:

• Identifying power partners that you can make major deals with to bring in substantial contracts or clients.
• Developing new revenue stream ideas.
• Developing human performance skills such as speaking, writing, or negotiating.
• Working with a coach or doing homework a coach gives you.
• Doing a survey to see how you can look for new ideas for new service lines to serve your customers better.
• Going after leveraged reputation-building opportunities, such as speaking to 1,000 ideal prospects or appearing in the news media.

What can you do that is going to bring in a significant amount of business across a multiple number of clients? If you think of some things, make a note right now.

Power Hour also brings perspective. It allows you to slow down and examine all of the tasks on your list to see what may not make sense to do. As your Power Hour ideas take root and produce revenue, you may very well be able to delete some items on your to-do list that are less profitable. That will free you up so that you’re working less and making more. In effect, you’ve just given yourself a raise by implementing Power Hour.

Try Power Hour for a month and see what happens in your business. If you’re already doing some form of Power Hour, formalize it, expand it, and leverage it so that you’re benefiting even more.