Michelle Bridges on emails, early mornings and creativity

How do you spend the first hour of your work day? Leading businesswoman and TV personality Michelle Bridges has a better idea.

Ms Bridges was the keynote speaker at the award-winning Better Business Summit earlier this year, where she shared her story with an audience of mortgage professionals and business owners. 

She advised them against spending the first hour of the day reading emails, something many busy professionals are no doubt guilty of.

"If you start work at nine, don't check your emails until 10. Instead, use that hour to be creative and be working on your business rather than in your business," she said.

The fitness guru tasked attendees to come up with one thing they will implement in their week for their personal time, customer relations and their brand.

Ms Bridges likened business planning to training: "It's the early morning exercisers that are more regular. They get it done before life starts."

She urged business owners to ditch the hours spent each morning clearing their inbox, saying, "it kills creativity".

"I recently read a study that found the average worker spends 6.3 hours on email a day, which equates to 30 hours a week, not counting the weekends," Ms Bridges said.

"I challenge you to spend an hour in the morning, not even every day, just a few times each week putting some creativity into your business.

"It's exciting to think that you can step back and take a bird's eye view to discover what is going on in your business."

Ms Bridges believes that when people look after themselves, everything else runs smoothly. She also challenged business owners to ask themselves what they really want. 

"A lot of people know what they don't want," she said.

"Do you want to start a small business if you haven't already? Do you want some staff training? Do you want to be more organised? Do you want more customers? Do you want to build a brand? Do you want to have kids? Do you want to lose weight? What do you want?

"You need to have a plan, but having a plan isn't enough. You also need action. What action will you take to achieve your goal?"