Get the Life You Really Want

by James Caan

  I started doing a paper round and saved enough to buy a Chopper. After a while I set my sights on a racing bike. Then from a racing bike I went to a moped and from a moped I went to a 50cc motorbike before moving up to a 250cc bike.

  In one of my first jobs I kept enough money back to buy my first car, a little MG Midget. Then I had to take my driving test: I’d got the car, but not the licence! If I look back at that particular journey I realize my targets were quite realistic and very achievable (and yes, in the end, I did get that Rolls-Royce Phantom).

  The big difference with using milestones rather than huge targets is that whenever you encounter a problem or a setback you only fall back to the last milestone you reached. In everything I have ever done I have gone from step to step. I am almost fearful of jumping too many steps at one go because, without knowing it, I think that there’s a risk. If you try and jump too far, you run the risk of falling a long way back.

  It is inevitable you will drop back at some point, because in life things tend not to go exactly to plan. The good thing is that with milestones in place you won’t fall right back to the beginning.

  That’s why I have planned my life in manageable steps. There have been many situations where I have jumped a few milestones but equally there have been plenty where I have slipped back a few. But so far I have never dropped back to the bottom.

  Targets: the JC approach

  You need targets to move forwards and achieve the change you want. But if you only set one huge target you’ll find it really difficult to get started and overcome natural lack of progress.

  Try to get the balance right between positive ambitions and what is realistic. You want to feel forward movement, not frustration.

  Make sure there are short gaps between each of your milestones. Then you can see where you are going.

  Always relish the pleasure of making it to your next milestone.

  3

  Reclaim the Day

  Managing your time

  The kind of computer power that once used to fill a room now fits into our phones. We have reduced the time it takes to communicate. We can phone each other round the world instantly. Yet despite all the time-saving devices we have, we haven’t managed to add any more hours to the day.

  There are still only twenty-four hours in each day. Still only seven days in each week. We are constantly being harassed by work deadlines. We can often feel bombarded by e-mails and texts, let alone trying to fit in our family and social life.

  I know my own time is increasingly stretched. The one thing I never have is enough time. Time is the most precious thing we have. Every day, including Saturdays and most Sundays, I have meetings from first thing in the morning through to the evening.

  I realized this when my daughter Jemma said, ‘Dad, this is weird. We live in the same house, and yet we can have a whole week when none of us see each other.’

  She wasn’t exaggerating. It was true. My average day is quite ridiculous. I now manage over forty companies. I deal with forty chief executives. I start at 6 a.m. and check and respond to e-mails up until 8 a.m. Then it’s meetings throughout the day, which is split into fifteen-minute blocks in a diary that is booked five to six months in advance.

  So although I spoke to Jemma on the phone every day, we didn’t get much genuine one-on-one time. I had work commitments all day and usually a business event in the evening. My daughter has her own busy work and social life. We were easily capable of going through an entire week not seeing each other.

  Jemma’s comment made me think about the practical ways you can de-clutter your life. How can you make space to think about what you want to do and then do it?

  For me, the simple answer is deciding between what is essential and what is simply ‘nice to have’. Time management is about looking at your diary every morning. Ask yourself whether each task or activity is crucial and critical to what you are doing. This is especially important when you are in the middle of trying to change your life.

  ‘Critical’ in this context doesn’t always have to be ticking off something on the ‘to do’ list. Critical could be making time for the family as much as arranging another meeting.

  I work hard to try and make my time work hard for me, especially when I am travelling. The other day I had to go to a meeting in the City of London. The meeting was a forty-five-minute car journey from my office. Amelia, who manages my diary, knew there were three people who wanted to talk to me that morning. It was impossible to see them in person, and I physically didn’t have any gaps in the diary.

  But I did have those forty-five minutes. So Amelia called each of the people who wanted meetings. She said, ‘I know you really want to speak to James. Would you be happy to do a fifteen-minute conference call while he’s in the car?’ Between us we managed to fit those three ‘meetings’ into the one car journey.

  Careful time management is absolutely crucial for me. I am always being asked to do more than I can possibly cram into my day. So every day appears to be bursting at the seams. Most people don’t value their time enough. I aim to maximize the value of every second of my day. I am very careful about allocating time for everything I need to do. That includes time to go jogging in the park, time to have a massage. It’s all scheduled in.

  Even when I have down time, I try to use it wisely. In my personal life, when I am away with my family on holiday, I get up early because I am incapable of lying in. I will be thinking about things, doodling ideas. Then between 9 and 11 each morning we have breakfast as a family. The next couple of hours after that are down time before lunch.

  I am not that keen on lounging by the pool. It’s not in my character. I remember having a chat once with my wife, Aisha, about this. I said, ‘Darling, if you were going to be on the beach having a swim and I was sitting there reading a book, you’d be fine with that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘So in that case would you mind if I was on the iPad or my Blackberry rather than reading a book? I want to keep in touch with my business. For you, having a swim or reading, that’s what you enjoy. That’s your chilling-out time. But I am quite happy to be on the Blackberry.’

  So we agreed that in those couple of hours between 11 and 1, I could do some work. The same applied between 3 and 5 in the afternoon. We’d have more family time at lunch. The whole evening was for us to have dinner together before taking a walk or going to a show.

  It works really well. My office knows they can organize calls and batch e-mails for me to answer. It doesn’t affect my wife or my children because it is controlled. If we decide we actually want go out all day together, I will simply cancel the work slot.

  I generally find that in a week away I can do several hours’ work on four of the seven days. It means there is never a situation at work where something can’t move forward because I am not in the office. As an entrepreneur in business that is really important. The deals and the discussions don’t stop for my holidays. However, I can also have plenty of fun with the family.

  Once you start thinking about organizing your time like that you can apply it every day. It becomes second nature. So when Jemma made me realize we weren’t seeing each other enough, we changed things around. We said, ‘Let’s agree that, whatever else happens, every fortnight we have dinner together.’

  So that’s what we do. Dinner is in the diary every other Wednesday. I will never try and change it. The girls pick a restaurant and Aisha and I will be there at 8.30 sharp. Guess what? It is one of the highlights of my week.

  But – and this is an important but – planning your time doesn’t mean you can’t be flexible. In fact, just the opposite. Clearly you can’t plan for the unexpected. It doesn’t fit into the diary. So when the unexpected happens you have to look at your priorities. What you thought was the most important thing in your day is no longer so. Something else is now more of a priority: you simply re-schedule. It’s about good decision-making.

  The structure I have set u
p allows me to get the best from a day, but it can all be changed. I review my schedule every Monday, and first thing every morning.

  If I wake up one morning with a touch of flu and have to stay in bed to recover, these things happen. For the next two or three days I’ll have to cancel everything. It’s not the end of the world.

  I realize that I am fortunate to be able to plan from first thing in the morning to the end of the evening. My daughters are adults now: I don’t have to ferry them to and fro. Yet, even if your time is constrained by school runs and after-school clubs, you can block out the time that you do have available. Maybe you can set aside a four-hour block each day from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. or 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.? Take those four hours and slice them up so you are twice as effective, and you will do as much as somebody dawdling through an eight-hour day.

  Time: the JC approach

  Managing time is all about working out how you can be in control of your time, not the other way around. You are in charge.

  Remember the difference between what is critical and what is ‘nice to have’. Reduce the amount of time spent on the ‘nice to have’ and you will become more efficient.

  Don’t forget to make sure you are building in time to enjoy yourself, time to relax with the kids. It is just as crucial to your well-being. Build it in to your diary and stick to it.

  If something unexpected crops up, re-think your plans. You want your time management to be flexible, not a straitjacket.

  Value your time, and it will become your most valuable asset.

  4

  Reaching Out

  Sharing your plans

  Let me tell you a story about my younger sister, Nazima. One Sunday afternoon I popped over to see her for a catch-up about what we were both doing. She had made some tea and put a plate of samosas on the table for us to share.

  Now I love samosas. I really love samosas. I tried a few of hers and said, ‘Nisa, I’ve had loads of samosas, but these are delicious. Why don’t you make some more and sell them to your friends?’

  ‘Do you think they’re that good?’ she asked.

  ‘Actually, I do.’

  The next weekend she spent some time cooking in her kitchen and made 250 samosas. On Monday morning she went off on the school run with a few of them in her bag. She asked the other mums she knew to taste them to see if they’d like to buy some. By the end of that first day she had sold out her 250 samosas.

  The following Sunday, Nazima got up a little bit earlier and made 500 samosas. The same thing happened. She did the school run, but this time she also got on her phone. She rang the rest of our family and some of her other friends. Lo and behold, she sold all 500.

  When I next saw her, she told me she’d got one of the other mums involved to give her a hand. Between them they were now turning out around 1,000 samosas a week. I was astonished and thrilled for her. ‘Are you kidding me? How are you making them?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we spend all day Sunday together making them, but it’s really good. I’m having fun. I’m enjoying it.’

  Nazima had just proved to me the power of networking. She had talked to the other mums on the school run. They had bought her samosas. One of them had volunteered to join in. She had followed her instinct and understood about unleashing the power of other people to help her.

  You can only unleash all that power by talking to people. Don’t keep all your thoughts and ambitions to yourself. Tell other people what you are hoping for and what you are trying to achieve. Share your plans.

  Maybe you are trying to launch a charity to help your local community. Perhaps you’re looking for somebody who can give you some specific training. Or, like Nazima, you have a product or service you think you can sell. You’ll be amazed how often somebody you know from the school run, or who you meet at a party, knows the very person who can help.

  There is no need to change your life all by yourself. Yes, you are the person who will be providing the energy and the drive. You will have dug down and found the trigger to move you onwards and upwards. That doesn’t mean it has to be a one-man or one-woman job.

  Whenever I work with new businesses, one of the things I tell them is to go and talk to other people about what they are doing. They often don’t believe me, especially the ones who think they’ve invented the next cat’s-eye or iPod. They want to keep it secret. They think that by sharing they are going to let somebody steal their idea. They get obsessed by sorting out patents and letters of agreement. Frankly, I think that level of secrecy is over-valued. In fact, it’s often counter-productive.

  I understand why they think that, but I think they are kidding themselves. I ask them to ask themselves just how good an idea it can be if somebody could reproduce it after a five-minute chat. The answer is that it can’t be that unique if it’s so easy to copy.

  The other key point is that if you are very close to an idea, it’s easy to miss the problem, the critical flaw, in it. Since other people are generally going to have some distance and be more objective, they are very good at putting their finger on something you’ve missed.

  This was something else I learnt from my dad. I upset him hugely when I decided not to go into the family business and do my own thing instead. Yet he still gave me the best advice he could, quietly and patiently. As time went on I realized how smart he was. He would spend time sitting, watching, listening and taking things in. He taught me that if I wanted to improve any idea I had, I should talk to other people and ask them for their feedback.

  So I always talk about my ideas with as many people as possible. When I come away from a conversation or a meeting, I have always picked up some new piece of information. I have usually had my eyes opened to a completely different angle.

  It has always been one of my strengths to recognize my weaknesses. I know I am good at certain things, not so good at others. Another of my skills has been working out how to find somebody who knows how to hang a picture on a wall far better than I could ever do.

  You can do this in a less random, more structured way too. There are networking groups, self-help organizations and websites talking about the part of your life you particularly want to change.

  When attending a networking event I’m often amazed by how many people don’t seem to want to grasp the opportunity to network. I’m not sure what they hope to achieve by hovering on the fringes and not actually having a conversation with anybody. Be proactive, open up, engage – and remember to listen as much as you talk. It should be a 50:50 balance. You’ll come away on a high, boosted by the number of people who want to help you.

  However, don’t ignore or neglect your old or current networks in the excitement of making new contacts. It is always easier to draw on existing contacts than to build new ones.

  Sharing ideas: the JC approach

  You don’t have to change your life all by yourself. In fact, involving other people and telling them your plans will be life-changing in itself.

  Always look for feedback. You usually come away from any conversation with one extra piece of advice or idea that you didn’t have before. It could be the one that makes all the difference.

  When you go to any kind of networking event, don’t forget to network. There’s no value in sitting there being shy. Get out there and talk about what you want to achieve.

  The more you talk to people, the more questions you ask, the better informed and the stronger you are going to be – but listen just as much as you talk.

  Use every single one of your networks, old and new: they will all reinforce Team You.

  5

  Ready Reckoning

  Thinking about money

  In difficult financial times, one of the greatest sources of stress is money or, more usually, the lack of it. By applying some basic business thinking, you can start freeing yourself from those mental pressures.

  Remember my sister Nazima. There she was producing her 1,000 samosas a week. On my next visit to see her I had to have a few more, just to check on qu
ality control. They were still delicious.

  I suggested she should think about turning her cooking hobby into a proper business. ‘Why don’t you find yourself a small industrial unit? You could hire some more people to help you,’ I said.

  ‘No, no, James,’ she protested. ‘I’m not a businesswoman, I’m a mum with three kids. I can’t do this. You’re freaking me out! I don’t know anything about business and finance. That’s what you’re good at.’

  So I asked her to think about how she organized her household bills. She had the mortgage to pay, the electricity and gas, shopping bills.

  ‘You’ve got a mortgage on your house. So now we’re going to call that the rent for the industrial unit. You go to the shops to buy your groceries. Well, now you are going to go to a wholesaler. You are going to buy exactly the same groceries, only more of them. That is called your cost of sales.

  ‘At the moment you set aside money for your kids, for all their bits and pieces. In a business that’s going to be the money for your staff … There is no major difference.’

  She wasn’t at all convinced. ‘James, you are over-simplifying it. It can’t be that easy. I don’t know how to make a profit.’

  ‘Let’s think about that,’ I said. ‘Right now, if you need a little extra money for a new sofa, you cut back on something. You say, “I won’t go out to a restaurant this week, or I’ll wait to get that coat I’ve seen.” You trim your costs.

  ‘In a business all you have to do is make sure that your income is more than your costs are. If it isn’t, you have to reduce part of your costs. It is exactly the same principle.’