As a business coach for more than 25 years, I have lost count of how many business owners I have talked to who work 60, 70, even 80 hours a week in their business. They are working non-stop, stressed out, and still can’t seem to make any progress in their business. And by the time they come to me, they are at their wit’s end and often a little skeptical of anything I suggest. Because, there is no way that they could work any more. So any tips, tricks, or systems that I suggest would just put them over the edge and add more unto their already full plate. Sound familiar? You aren’t alone. You don’t have any more time to work. But there is an important distinction between the time that most of us are working on our business each week and the time that we should be working on our business.
Time Spent Versus Time Well Spent
Business owners are like scuba divers. You have a limited amount of oxygen (aka time) and what you do with that oxygen makes a difference. You could spend 70 hours this week answering customer service emails and boxing up orders. You could spend 30 hours this week paying bills and filing your taxes. All of those actions are time spent on your business.
Or you could spend 30 hours this week landing that new account that would double your profits over the next six months. Or you could spend 20 hours finding a rock-star COO who will help keep your team scale and grow. You could spend 10 hours training your sales team to increase their conversions and help grow your business. Those actions would be considered time well spent. And the difference may mean the difference between growing your business or burning out.
Feed Your Winners, Starve Your Losers
When it comes to allocating your time, we call this technique feeding your winners and starving your losers. Your winners could be strategies that are working, products that are paying off, or training or mentoring a team member. It could be processes that seem to be more efficient. Tactics in your marketing that are actually producing results. Whatever you have that is working, you should focus your time doing more of that.
You should constantly be looking for what’s working and ask, if I feed it more resources, will it go better? If the answer is yes, then you have to decide where those resources will come from? Can you outsource help, sure. Can you devote more time to that winner, sure. But you have to give up something in return, which is where the starving part comes in. Eighty percent of your daily tasks won’t move the needle. So, you should identify those activities and stop doing them, or move them over to someone else on your team. Chances are you won’t even notice the difference by delegating those low level tasks to someone else. But you will start to see a difference when you replace those hours working on things that truly move the needle.
And as an added bonus, you might find that you actually end up working less and producing more value for your business. So it’s a win-win situation.
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