Summary: I started a new challenge this month for my Total Market Domination clients. It's about how to grow your sales and start dominating your market in just 22 minutes a day. Sound crazy? Not when you consider the fact that many people, in fact most people, blow a lot more time than that on activities that are completely counterproductive or even harmful, while spending little to no time at all on the very specific activities that will grow your sales and allow you to dominate your market.<br> <br> <br> <br> For a long time, news radio stations like 1010 WINS in New York and KYW in Philadelphia have promoted a tagline that says "You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world." The idea is that if you listen to them for 22 minutes straight, you'll hear a combination of local, regional and national news, sports, weather and of course, a bunch of commercials, so you'll know what's going on in the world and also, who you need to buy stuff from.<br> <br> And it occurred to me that millions of business owners do exactly this each day. Not just with news, but with anything. It's easy to spend lots more than 22 minutes a day filling our brains with, whatever... news, sports, music or talk shows, watching TV or YouTube videos, surfing the web and distracting us from our own lives and our own responsibilities.<br> What does that do for focus and productivity?<br> In most cases, it drives it right into the toilet. I know people who will tune into political shows for hours each week -- in some cases, hours each day -- making themselves furious, driving up their blood pressure, getting themselves angry and frustrated about the fact that not everyone sees world issues the same way they do.<br> <br> They obsess about how other people are thinking, what other people should be doing and how other people should be behaving, completely oblivious to the fact that when they're so wrapped up in other people's lives and actions, they're completely missing out on their own lives and failing to take the actions they should be taking to move things forward.<br> So where's the market domination magic in 22 minutes?<br> Well, my theory is that if you start each day, or at least each work day focused for a minimum of just 22 minutes on the specific activities that will allow you to grow your sales and dominate your market, a bunch of good things will happen.<br> First of all, you're setting your own agenda.<br> You're not allowing yourself to be distracted or sucked into other people's drama. You're starting the work day with the activities you decided are most important to you. That means you're acting on your own priorities, instead of reacting to the priorities of others.<br> Second, you're setting a direction for yourself for the day.<br> Henry Ward Beecher said, "The first hour is the rudder of the day." This implies that the first hour of each day controls your direction, and that is very often true. Stub your toe getting out of bed and if you focus on that, you can use it as an excuse to be miserable all day. But if you take hold of the first 22 minutes or so of your business day and focus it on the activities that will allow you to grow your sales and dominate your market, you'll adjust the rudder and change your direction to create a much better day.<br> Third, activities stretch and hours expand.<br> 22 minutes on social media can turn into hours. 22 minutes on other people's priorities can turn into days. But when you start your work day with 22 minutes of your own priorities, it's likely you'll find an excuse to keep going.<br> <br> Just as the news stations want you to start with 22 minutes and then keep it on all day, this same logic applies to positive habits like sales growth and market domination. You commit to 22 minutes in the morning, but you might end up doing 30 or 45 or an hour. But now, the hours that are stretching out are the ones related to your priorities,
