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Time Management Tips That Can Mean Dramatic Growth in Your Business

Guest post by: Janis Pettit

Article Overview: In my experience the biggest problem small business owners face is time management - getting stuck doing mundane tasks or putting out fires, instead of being the CEO, the one who develops and implements the strategy and uses their expertise delivering the services they are passionate about.

Time Management Tips That Can Mean Dramatic Growth in Your Business

In my experience the biggest problem small business owners face is time management - getting stuck doing mundane tasks or putting out fires, instead of being the CEO, the one who develops and implements the strategy and uses their expertise delivering the services they are passionate about.

I am no stranger to this problem and have to work hard to keep myself on track and not get side-tracked with all the opportunities and ideas that come my way. But the payoff is huge. I know a number of entrepreneurs who are highly creative but suffer from lack of focus. It's important to be creative but the downside is lack of focus and planning. Even if you don't suffer from this problem, our sound byte society has shortened all of our attention spans to our detriment. We are supposed to multi task all day long and digest hundreds of snippets of information, but that is not the best way to make progress because each time you are interrupted or shift gears you lose momentum and have to backtrack.

I remember when my daughter was a baby and I could never complete anything without the constant interruptions that are normal when you have a young child. This is to be expected and all moms are used to completing tasks one small piece at a time. But I must admit it was difficult because it took so much longer to complete something than it would have if I could have kept my concentration. However, many people work like this even when they don’t need to do so.

So here are some time management tips to help you change the way you use time so you can work less and make more.

One of the first things you need to do to change this habit is identify those tasks which are mundane, repetitive and not money generating. Then you need to enlist the help of others to do some of these time draining tasks.

You may be wondering, "Who is going to do this stuff and how will I pay them?" I'm going to give you some really great suggestions. It's true that in the beginning you may have to wear many hats, but you need to have a plan to "move up the ladder" to CEO as soon as possible. What is your time worth? If you are spending time on non-priority tasks you’re taking that time away from marketing, planning and delivering services to clients.

If you love to have control over every little thing, if you're a micro manager, get over it now! You'll need to decide from day one what you can ultimately outsource and what you need to keep doing yourself, like taking care of your paying clients, developing new products and services and overseeing customer service and business planning.

I teach a Time Effectiveness Model, the goal of which is to get you to the point where you spend at least 75% of your working time on money generating activities, strategic planning and implementing, and lead generation. When your Time Efficiency level reaches 75% to 80% you will see DRAMATIC shifts taking place in your sales and productivity.



It's important to remember the 80-20 rule. You'll always get 80% or your sales from 20% of your clients. You'll always get 80% of your results from 20% of your efforts. That 20% is focused, priority based action. So if you increase that 20% your results will increase accordingly. No entrepreneur succeeds long term without mastering time efficiency



Time Thieves

What are some of the time thieves that can sabotage your time effectiveness and leave you feeling tired and frustrated? See if any of these ring a bell?

· Checking e-mail too often or not organizing your e-mail

· Too many phone or people interruptions

· Multi-tasking-it's proven to actually lower your IQ! It robs you of focus.

· Time wasted on Instant Messaging

· Too much time on "Internet research"

· Over committing

· Spending considerable time on admin tasks, bookkeeping and invoicing

· Answering the phone each time it rings, even though it's probably a telemarketer or not a priority

· Responding to requests that seem urgent--but are actually someone else's priority--not yours.

· Not protecting your quiet, productive time

· Not setting clear boundaries with clients and vendors about when they can contact you or about how quickly you'll respond to their requests.

· Spending more time on a client project or appointment than you're being paid for.

· Spending too much time surfing the internet, doing "research."

· Being an "information junky" and thinking the next bit of information will be the one that makes you rich.

· Feeling overwhelmed by all the work, or all the choices, feeling like a deer in the headlights, so you doing nothing.

Eliminating these time thieves and tracking how you use your time for just one week can be an eye-opening exercise. Want to dramatically increase your sales this year? Learn to use your time like the true CEO that you are.

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Article Tags: small business growth, time management tips



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No B.S. Time Management - A great book I read on Time Management is No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy.
Your Intial Mistakes Business - Hi, When I started my business I had made a lot of mistakes initially. These helped me in learning the art of the trade and today when I look back, I feel that these mistakes were quite silly. I had made my learnings then and those learnings have helped me time and again. Some of the mistakes I made were - i. Wrong Time Management ii. Wasting money on glossy Brochures and Business cards iii. Believing what they taught me at school was 100% correct iv. Giving too much when it was not required...... I would like to find out what have been your faltering moments in Business when you had started and what/how did they help you grow. Regards
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Business Tips - How about: Tips for managers to handle employees more effectively? Tips on how to deal with difficult customers? Tips on how to deal more effectively with suppliers? The only three I have in mind right now, but will try to come up with something else. Chris
Different Hats - CEO Sales & Marketing & Leadership Development Company Strategic Vision 10 Alliances & Growth Strategies 10 Hiring & Managing People 8 Mentoring 8-9 Strategic Planning for Clients 10 Execution of Marketing Campaigns 9-10 (i have great people who do the nitty gritty) Financial Management 9 Bookkeeping 3 (outsourced as I really hate the fine details like GST0 Administrative Follow Up 6-7 (again have great staff) Writing & Publishing 9 (getting better all the time!) Speaking 10 (so I have been told) Self Promotion 9-10 Web development & Promotion 6-7 (learning more and have brought on players who are 10+) Babysitting Employees (1 - wont do it, that's why I work so hard to hire and motivate the people I have) Great topic Kevin!! Jude


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