Every entrepreneur, every small business owner, every VP or manager of marketing and sales I\u2019ve ever worked with runs into the same problem as their business grows. They push themselves to succeed, become proficient at more and more tasks, and pretty soon they\u2019re trying to do everything.<\/p>\n
Sound familiar? You get to work early. You launch right in, going through the emails that are stacked up or looking over your sales numbers, and then you\u2019re interrupted by a phone call, or one of your staff stops by with an \u201curgent\u201d question.<\/p>\n
Finally, at around 5:30 \u2014 or 6:30 or 7:30 p.m. \u2014 you check your \u2018To Do list\u2019 and find you\u2019ve barely made any progress. And you tell yourself the same lie that you tell yourself almost every day. It\u2019s the same lie that most busy people tell themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have enough time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The truth is that those who struggle to get all their work done and those who are super-successful all have the same amount of time. <\/em><\/p>\n Time is not the problem; it\u2019s how you use it that makes the difference. <\/strong>You can either passively let the insistent demands of emails, phone calls and employees and colleagues run your workdays, or you can make a conscious decision to take charge of your time and make it work for you<\/strong>. <\/strong><\/p>\n If you\u2019re anything like the smart business owners and corporate vice presidents I work with, you feel chained to your desk, your computer, and your Blackberry. You\u2019re expected to be available to answer questions and respond to emails and messages almost 24\/7. Talk about feeling overwhelmed! <\/strong><\/p>\n What can you do about it?<\/p>\n You can take charge of your time and get almost twice as much done in a week. You could have time to get out on the golf course or spend more time with friends and family. (Or go skiing in Vermont every week, as I do during the winter while continuing to see my business prosper!)<\/p>\n Put Yourself In Charge<\/strong><\/p>\n Years ago the concept of servant leadership was touted. The idea was that as the head of the business or your department, you fostered the success of the whole unit by helping the people who worked for you and giving them the guidance and support they needed. Instead of dictating to your staff, your role was to listen to your employees and help them be better at their jobs.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot to be said for the servant leadership concept, but almost every business owner and manager I work with seems to be using the model of slave leadership<\/strong>. Instead of leading their company, they\u2019ve become a slave to their company communications, to their email, to their phone, to their staff and to customers and suppliers.<\/p>\n How about you? Have you become a slave to your business?<\/p>\n One CEO told me that he thought he should be pitching in by sweeping the floors and answering the phones when his receptionist was on lunch break. He thought it was important to send the message to his staff that he was part of the team.<\/p>\n It\u2019s true that when urgent projects have to get out the door, showing up and helping out can be a big morale booster. This doesn\u2019t mean you should regularly spend time doing janitorial or clerical tasks!<\/p>\n Another VP of Marketing at a Fortune 500 company told me he had an open door policy, where employees could stop by at any time and ask him questions. He went on to tell me he rarely left the office before 7:30pm and usually his to do list was in the same state as when he\u2019d arrived at 7:30am.<\/p>\n Sure, you should make yourself available for informal communication with your staff; but not all day, every day.<\/p>\n The most important message to send is that you are the visionary and the captain. You\u2019re the one in charge of leading the company to greater levels of success, whether you\u2019re a one-person company or a hundred-person company.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how to find the time to be the leader your company needs.<\/p>\n \n Every day ask yourself: what are the most important things I can do to grow the business and increase long-term profits?<\/strong><\/p>\n If you\u2019re unsure about the answer, here it is: spend your time developing your vision, your marketing strategy and managing implementation.<\/strong><\/p>\n Over and over I hear people tell me that they\u2019re too busy to clarify their vision, they don\u2019t have time to work on their marketing strategy. The result is that they and the rest of their company waste most of their time and only accomplish a fraction of what they could if their work were focused.<\/p>\n Without a clear vision and a marketing strategy to achieve it, you and your staff will be shooting in the dark. One sales manager who signed up for my coaching told me that he woke up each morning with no idea who to call or whom he should be selling to. He didn\u2019t know what direction his company was heading in. As you can imagine, sales were suffering.<\/p>\n Your role as the leader of your company or your department is to point the business in the most profitable direction and then create a map for getting to your destination quickly.<\/p>\n Action Steps<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n When you start your day tomorrow, don’t look at your To Do List. Before you even check your email, make a Not To Do List<\/strong>. That’s right; list all the things that you, as the owner of the business, should not<\/strong> be spending your time doing.<\/p>\n Now make a second list of the tasks and projects that will require or benefit from outside expert help.<\/p>\n Third, list the tasks or projects that only you, with your talents, brains and experience can do and want to do.<\/p>\n Here’s a short sample to give you the idea:<\/p>\n Not To Do<\/strong><\/p>\n Tactical work to delegate to others<\/em><\/p>\n Use Experts To Do<\/strong><\/p>\n Areas where your company doesn’t have sufficient in-house time, experience or expertise<\/em><\/p>\n Only I Can Do<\/strong><\/p>\n Short and long-term strategic planning<\/em><\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Development of vision Ultimately the success of your business will be determined by the role you play in it. Get a handle on your time by checking your Not To Do<\/strong> list daily and focus on the strategic tasks that will help you lead your business to the top!<\/p>\n \n Remember the VP of Marketing with the open door policy? I want you to picture what happens every time someone walks in his door.<\/p>\n He stops what he is doing, listens to their question, provides an answer and after they walk out he has to pick up his work where he left off. It takes time to collect his thoughts and recover his concentration. Even someone doing clerical tasks will be less efficient and productive if their work is constantly interrupted.<\/p>\n I\u2019m the big cheese in my small business and if I\u2019m working on a strategy, a product or mapping out a sales sequence, I can\u2019t jump back and forth between answering the phone or emails and doing complex \u201cbig thinking\u201d tasks. Neither can you.<\/p>\n Trying to do everything at once is a great way to feel busy, but you\u2019re minimizing the amount of work you get done. For example, research shows that software engineers take an average of 15 minutes to start a task, become engaged in it and start being productive. Interrupt them even once every 12 minutes and they\u2019ll never finish anything, or certainly not do their work well.<\/p>\n According to time management guru Dave Crenshaw, most business managers lose 40% of their time to switch-tasking or multi-tasking<\/strong>. He\u2019s referring to the amount of time it takes to regain focus when you\u2019re regularly interrupting one task with another.<\/p>\n Let me repeat that because it is so important. Most business leaders are wasting 16 or more hours a week<\/strong> because they are constantly switching from one type of task to another; from email to phone calls to face-to-face-conversations to writing to a zillion other tasks. The more technology we add to our work lives, the greater the tendency to switch-task has become.<\/p>\n But the solution is simple. Organize your tasks by grouping like tasks together. Do them sequentially during the day or week. You could free up 16 to 20 hours a week!<\/p>\n Action Steps<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n What are the primary causes of switch-tasking in your day?<\/p>\n Identify them and group your activities to minimize switch-tasking. \n You\u2019re sitting in the movie theatre (you finally organized your time well enough to get out of the office! Congratulations!). Just before the movie starts, you turn off your cell phone so you can enjoy the movie uninterrupted.<\/p>\n That\u2019s time blocking, pure and simple! You set aside a chunk of time to do something you value and made sure you wouldn\u2019t be interrupted or distracted. People do this weekly for various reasons and yet rarely apply it to their workday. Time blocking can help you get more work done each week.<\/p>\n Look back at your list of top priority activities, the ones that require focus and concentration. These in particular are the tasks that never seem to get done. Now, block out time each and every week to work on those tasks.<\/p>\n One of the most common things my coaching clients tell me is that they never have time to work on their marketing strategies. John, the CEO of medical supply company was no exception. So I asked him when during the day he was at his freshest and would best be able to make progress on the planning and big thinking tasks he needed to get done.<\/p>\n John said that in the morning between 7am and 11am is when his head is clearest. Then I asked John why he wasn\u2019t using that time to work on his marketing strategy.<\/p>\n His answer was the same one I hear from most people. He said that he checks his email and his phone messages first thing in the morning. Then he goes to work responding to these and pretty soon he\u2019s frazzled, stressed out and the morning is gone. What\u2019s wrong with this picture?<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what I told John and it\u2019s a good reminder for most of us. Just because an email is sitting there in your inbox or you have a phone message in voicemail, doesn\u2019t mean that you need to answer it right away. If it\u2019s the first thing in the morning, it\u2019s already sat there all night, and unless it\u2019s a full-blown emergency, there isn\u2019t any reason it can\u2019t wait a few more hours.<\/p>\n Action Steps<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Use time blocking to schedule when you:<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Do your best thinking on marketing strategy Stick to the schedule and your time blocking and shut off all the things that distract you \u2014 just like you\u2019d do if you went to see a movie.<\/p>\n \n How can you make the shift from being<\/em> your business to running <\/em>your business? <\/strong><\/p>\n Are you up to your eyeballs in work? Are you spending dawn to dusk doing marketing, administration and fulfillment? If you are, you\u2019re wearing too many hats and it\u2019s time to relinquish most of them.<\/p>\n When I first started my marketing business, I spent my time writing, building and improving my web site, boxing and shipping my marketing courses, providing one-one-one coaching and a host of other tasks that kept me busy six days a week. My hard work paid off and my business grew \u2014 up to a point.<\/p>\n Then I got smart and fired myself. I fired myself from a whole host of job responsibilities that were holding me back.<\/p>\n Several years ago, I reorganized my business and virtually kicked myself upstairs to a corner office. I let go of all administrative and operational tasks and hired an assistant, Ros, to manage email broadcasts, product delivery, customer service, project management, PR and new product development.<\/p>\n And here\u2019s what I discovered. Ros and now my current second in command, Jessica are far better than I ever was at handling the whole host of administrative tasks that are needed to keep the business running. (More often than not, when I stick my fingers into trying to schedule my calls, or the details of fulfillment, I mess it up.)<\/p>\n Effective delegation is the key to freeing up your time. Delegate and you can focus on the leadership-level thinking you\u2019re supposed to be doing and your staff can focus on what they do best, implementing your ideas.<\/p>\n Typically when I ask a client what they think their time is worth per hour, the number is close to a thousand or more dollars per hour. And they are right. If you want your company to make two to twenty million dollars a year, you as the owner need to provide leadership worth a thousand or more dollars an hour.<\/p>\n But in far too many small and large companies, senior managers spend upwards of 18% to 40% of their time doing clerical work. They could easily find someone else to do such tasks for $20 to $40 an hour.<\/p>\n How about you? Are you working below your pay grade? If you are, you\u2019re undermining your chances of being successful.<\/p>\n I know, you\u2019re thinking, \u201cI\u2019m trying to grow my company and don\u2019t have the resources or the cash flow to hire any staff\/more staff\/anyone but my cousin who will work for peanuts.\u201d But you\u2019re dead wrong.<\/p>\n If you had ten more hours a week to finally get your marketing strategy together, develop new relationships with clients and oversee the implementation of your upsell strategy, for example, how much more money could your company make?<\/p>\n You\u2019d make in excess of an additional thousand dollars a week. You\u2019d more than cover the cost of hiring either a virtual assistant or full-time employee to do all those tasks which are below your pay grade.<\/p>\n The simple truth is if you are serious about seeing your business grow, you can\u2019t afford to put off delegating any longer. The CEOs of the largest companies are master delegators.<\/p>\n Some small business owners have a hard time delegating substantial work after being in control of every aspect of the business, but take it from me; the first week you do it you\u2019ll pat yourself on the back.<\/p>\n Delegating administrative tasks and web site maintenance freed me to focus on the core of my business, where my real passion is, and to pursue another passion. I was able to work from my ski home in Vermont for the first time. My sales grew to record levels and now I head for Vermont\u00a0 every winter.<\/p>\n Action Steps<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Relinquish all those time consuming administrative tasks.<\/p>\n Go back to your Not To Do List<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Turn those lists of tasks into lists of skills your support team needs to have, and then into job descriptions. Then go out and find the talent you need so you can focus on growing the business instead of being the business.<\/p>\n Go back to your Use Experts To Do List<\/strong><\/p>\n Get referrals from friends or colleagues or do your own research and screening to find the expert outside help your business needs to grow.<\/p>\n In any business there are always more ways to attract better clients and make money,<\/strong> but you can only identify and implement them if you set aside the time. You and I have only got once to get it right, so make the pledge to yourself not to fritter it away. <\/strong><\/p>\n You\u2019ve got plenty of time to accomplish your goals, if you use it wisely.<\/p>\n Speaking of using your time wisely. Since last month we\u2019ve added dozens of new resources online in the Insiders\u2019 Club. We\u2019ve added tools to help you improve your marketing and get results, but they\u2019ll only save you time if you use them. Login at: www.marketingforsuccess.com\/ic\/login<\/a><\/p>\n Additional Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2022 Dave Crenshaw\u2019s book, The Myth of Multitasking<\/em> available on Amazon.com, It\u2019s one of the first gifts I send to new coaching clients.<\/p>\n \u2022 If you haven\u2019t done so already, download the free report, The New Profit Rules at: http:\/\/www.marketingforsuccss.com\/dlnr.html <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Want to put your business on the fast track to success? Occasionally I have space in my one-on-one coaching program for ambitious business owners and managers of marketing and sales.<\/p>\n Among my current coaching clients are the CEO of a company that sells composting systems to large scale farming operations, a VP of Marketing for one of the largest hotel chains in the country, a business owner who provides Corporate Benefits Communications services to Fortune 500 companies, and a sales manager for a company that provides supply chain management services.<\/p>\n1. Set Your Priorities<\/h4>\n
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\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Creation of strategy
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oversight of strategy implementation
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Management
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Contact with your most important clients
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Reviewing the numbers and direction<\/p>\n2. Eliminate Multi-tasking or Switch-tasking<\/h4>\n
\nHere are a few ways to reduce time wasted due to switch-tasking:
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Only check your email once or twice a day
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Schedule incoming and outgoing calls
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Don\u2019t use instant messaging. Turn it off!
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Schedule open door times.<\/p>\n3. Use Time Blocking<\/h4>\n
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Answer email (save it for before lunch or for the end of the day)
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Meet with employees to answer their questions or give them guidance. You\u2019ll be amazed at how many of those so-called urgent questions they needed you to answer they\u2019ll be able to answer themselves while they are waiting to talk to you.
\n\u2022\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Block out time for key tasks that never get done because the daily minutia takes over.<\/p>\n4. Delegate<\/h4>\n