Time is your most precious resource and must be used wisely.
I am going to make an assumption here, and I do appreciate it won’t be 100% true for everyone but, I assume that as a business owner you want your business to be stronger and more successful next year than it was last year.
To achieve this, your business needs to be shown some TLC. It needs to be nurtured. It needs support and guidance. It needs structures, frameworks and a reason for being. Just like a plant needs the right balance of light and water, so your business needs the right balance of strategy and operations.
One of the biggest challenges for business owners is finding the time to work on their business and not in it. The day to day job always needs to be done. The ‘to do’ list gets longer with every call, email and meeting, and the amount of time you have for strategy, thinking and planning is often diminished and even removed completely.
If you want to have a successful business, you need to make time.
You need to make time every week and every day to work on your business.
Here is my three step plan:
Work out how you are spending your time.
Set up a spreadsheet with 15 minute intervals from 6am to 10pm 7 days a week and account for all of your time. Then classify your time: Health and Fitness, family, friends, business development, day job…. Whatever the categories are for you and your business, make sure you know exactly how you spend your time and do this over a two week period.Plan your year
When are you going to take your holidays? When are you going to be out of the business? Building your rest breaks into your annual calendar is essential for your mental wellbeing and your business’s success.
Plan your week
Set up your diary so you have complete control. Nothing happens unless you permit it. Calendly is a fantastic tool for ensuring that you only have meetings when you want them. Build in travel time. Build in regular events. Build in working in the business time. Most importantly, build in working ON the business time. You need to plan for 60 – 90 minutes 5 days a week to work on your business. This time is protected. You can’t use it for anything else. You can only use it work working ON your business. Plan your next marketing campaigns, write a job advert for your next employee, analyse your cost per customer, your average lifetime value of a customer, plan for your business growth and therefore your business success.
