Cliché, but I am going to say it anyway. Time is the most prized asset for an entrepreneur. How you choose to use your 24 hours can make or break your business.
It is understandable that in the early stage of the business, you may not have the resources to employ anyone. Also, you are learning the business, and creating efficiencies is not a priority. Although it should be, building efficiencies whilst you learn amplifies your productivity and performance.
As time progresses, it is challenging and impractical for you to be hands-on in every aspect of operations. If all your 24 hours are spent on operations, when do you focus on strategies that will help you grow the business? When do you focus on the family, your home, you, the warrior who is battling with symptoms of illness, fatigue, mood swings, and other health conditions?
It is all about balance.
If you keep your head buried in operations with tiny intervals to come up for air, then all that you are doing is struggling to survive.
I am sure you did not start a business merely to survive.
To create that balance and make the best use of your time, the number one behavior to adopt is self-awareness.
The major rule to making the best use of your time
Forget the number one behavior, self-awareness is the only behavior you must be disciplined at to leverage your time. It involves understanding what you are good at and not so good at. It also includes acknowledging when you need help. Thinking you can do it all in the interest of either saving money or protecting your ego is not a viable strategy for your business’ growth and relationships, and neither is it helpful to your livelihood.
Another aspect of being self-aware is understanding the nature of your business so much so that without hesitation you can list the tasks that contribute to the creation of income, and you can identify opportunities that will allow you to leverage time and resources.
What is an income-generating task
An income-generating task is an activity that has great potential of making you revenue. In most cases, it is what you are highly proficient at and closely aligns with the core of your business.
Let’s say you are in the real-estate business; an income-generating task can be networking, seeking new deals, and planning how to increase your portfolio. Some non-income generating tasks may be managing operations and back-office duties like paying commissions, office maintenance, bookkeeping, etc.
To be successful, your income-generating tasks must be the priority of focus.
How to determine which tasks are the best use of your time
The challenge is how to determine which tasks are the best use of your time.
First, you identify which tasks are income-generating, then you consider which of those are “value-driven”. Value-driven tasks are generally built around strategy, branding, and partnerships. If the tasks are not enhancing the value of your assets and do not directly align with the growth, development, or reinvention of products or services, increasing market share, or forming alliances with other businesses that can create synergies then it is not key to results.
The previous paragraph focused on business tasks but the same is true for your personal tasks as it relates to you “the asset”.
Life does not stop when you are in business, your responsibilities surrounding your home, and family, maintaining relationships, and taking care of yourself still exist. These tasks, if not controlled, can consume you and prevent you from focusing on the tasks that contribute to enhancing the value of your assets.
After all, the reason why you became an entrepreneur was to develop assets that create recurring income which will eventually allow you the freedom to live how you choose and not be burdened by activities that are time suckers, and in some instances, not enjoyable.
From my experience, there are four major ways in which you can maximize the use of your 24 hours, without compromising your health, family, other relationships, business, and happiness.
Quick caveat…. There are no quick fixes, and all the recommendations require a clear understanding of the nature and outcome of the task in question.
Four major ways to maximize your 24 hours are:
- Automate
- Delegate
- Outsource
- Collaborate
Automation
There is a misconception that automation is only relevant to a production line. The truth is any task that has recurring monotonous steps can be automated.
In business, most modern software has the function to activate automatic repeatable entries. Like accounting for an invoice or posting on social media.
With technology nowadays there are also shortcuts to eliminate the time spent on any one given task. Take the invention of the bots that can now respond on your behalf to emails using keywords or instant forward of a receipt when a customer pays an invoice.
Automation can also be effective for your personal life. Setting up recurring bank payments, scheduling calendar appointments, and even taking off the lights or turning on the crock pot or washer at a predetermined time.
The idea behind automation is to simplify or eradicate activities that would unnecessarily consume your time and provide no reward.
“If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.”
John C Maxwell
Delegation
Delegation is a highly valued skill that most people have not mastered.
Most times they are reluctant to delegate because they believe the person cannot do the job as well as they will, or they do not want to take the initial time to sufficiently train and coach the person.
These things can be summed up as ego, lack of trust, and fear of change.
Delegation is simply transferring the responsibility of a function to another person.
Delegation requires trust, patience, and an understanding that there is always a better way.
Allowing someone else to perform the tasks provides a different perspective which forces evaluation of the tasks, subsequently improving the workflows and building overall efficiencies in the process.
Training someone to complete a task and allowing them to execute contributes to their growth and relieves you of the responsibility, freeing up your time to perform more high-valued tasks.
If your gut tells you that they are not going to do it exactly like you, chances are your gut is right.
However, there is a huge possibility that they would do it better, faster, and cheaper.
They may make some mistakes in the beginning, but the mistakes will ultimately evolve into time and money savings for you and your business. It can even multiply 10X if you give them the autonomy to manage the tasks and make recommendations for improvement where necessary.
For delegation to be rewarding, trust is key.
Outsourcing
In my view, outsourcing is like delegation. With delegation, the responsibility of the task is transferred to someone internal to your business. Whereas by outsourcing the person or company you are assigning the task to is external to your business and does not have a direct affiliation with you. Another major differentiation is the perceived cost and complexity of the process being outsourced.
The adoption of outsourcing can strengthen your business, enhancing its ability to be agile and flexible to changing business conditions and better position your business for growth and scale opportunities.
Outsourcing can be a major safeguard for any business. In addition to you being able to focus on core high-valued tasks, three other key benefits come to mind.
One; you have access to an array of skills and resources. Skills and resources that you do not have to hire or manage.
Two; you alleviate the risk of business continuity. Your business does not shut down due to a shortage of capital or human resources.
Three; the savings derived due to economies of scale and lower labor costs.
Outsourcing can also be applied to your personal life.
Consider preparing for a family function or vacation or even maintaining your home environment. The time required for you to do these tasks yourself, compromising your capacity to focus on higher valued or higher priority tasks is extremely expensive when compared to the outsourcing spend.
Note, a higher priority task can simply be spending time with your loved ones freely without thinking about your to-do list.
“No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.”
Andrew Carnegie
Collaboration
Collaboration is partnering with other people or business(es) on a project who has the resources that you lack.
Resources can be manpower, know-how, capital expenditure like equipment, or even location. Basically, it can be anything that you do not own or have access to and in partnering with them you have the advantage of using their assets to create earnings for your business.
I will highly recommend collaboration; the benefits are endless.
There are time savings, you do not have to place effort in the part of the project that you do not have the expertise in, learning time is reduced, and brainstorming time is enhanced as there are more knowledgeable persons to share ideas with who may not be on your salary list. There are opportunities for scaling as you can take advantage of the markets your partner(s) are exposed to and have access to their networks.
For collaboration to be successful, whom you collaborate with is of much importance. You must ensure that the collaborator’s values and beliefs align with yours and that the goals and objectives are common and fully understood. Collaboration is meant to be a win-win process for all parties.
In selecting your collaborators do not overlook your rivals, the businesses that you look up to, and even compete against. They are your competitor for a reason, they know something that you don’t or are more proficient than you are. Other collaborators may be businesses within your supply chain or businesses external to your niche of varying sizes.
With collaboration risk and rewards are shared but rewards can yield exponential earnings and benefits.
To conclude…..
Time is a significant value for everyone. Always ask yourself, how can I get this job done cheaper, faster, better? How can I become resourceful?
To protect your time, you must develop healthy habits, prioritize tasks that are of high value to you and practice saying no to those invitations or events that are not worth your time.
At least eighty percent of your success will come from the involvement of other people in your business and life.
Remember this; it is not about what you can do, the prized question is, what should you do.
