If you're anything like me, there never seems to be enough time
to get all of the things done that you'd like to do. If your
income goals are as high as mine (seven-figures,) then you also
realize that you'll have a very hard time reaching them if you're
trading time for money. I realized this second point when I first
noticed all of the doctors and lawyers leaving those practices to
start their own businesses. When I asked them why, they explained
that they only got paid when they worked, and that the fact that
they could only work so many hours per day was what limited their
incomes the most.
Assuming you're not simply trading your time for money... working
for a salary or at an hourly wage, how do you simply get more
done?
First of all, you need to make sure that you're only trying to do
the things that you should be doing. For most entrepreneurs that
means doing things to grow and market your business. Most other
work should be farmed out... subcontracted or outsourced to
technicians. If you can easily hire someone to do it cheaper
than you can do it, then YOU shouldn't be doing it.
Trying to do everything yourself is one of the biggest reasons I
see most netrepreneurs failing. You simply can't be an expert
at everything, or do everything yourself. You need to identify
those things that will offer you the highest return on your most
limited asset (your time), and then you need to focus on doing
just those things.
Yes, you may need to understand how to do some basic things
yourself at first. For example, when putting up your first
website, it may make sense to learn some basic html or at-least
how to use a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor.
If you can afford to hire a webmaster and programmers to do
everything for you though, even learning those things may not
be the best and highest use of your time.
My personal experience, like that of many of my contemporaries,
is that I learned to use DreamWeaver to do my own webpages. I
simply didn't want to be trapped waiting for my webmaster to make
minor changes (that I knew would dramatically improve my bottom
line) to a webpage. Good webmasters and programmers are often
in high demand and very busy.
After I learned to do the basics, I also often fell into the trap
that I want YOU to avoid. I want you to do two things. First,
learn to say "NO" and secondly, learn to prioritize.
Learning to say "no" can be hard. It's human nature to want to
do favors for others. We want to be liked. We believe that if we
say "no" to requests for assistance, we will be liked less. Until
you learn to say "no" when you have a full plate, others will
control your time and decide what you do... when. You can't
afford to put that much control over your time, your business,
and your LIFE into the hands of others. So, it's critical to
master the skill of saying "no" sometimes. You can do it
politely :-)
Learning to prioritize is the second essential that you must
master. Otherwise, you'll simply find yourself doing the easy,
enjoyable things that produce little long-term benefit, while
you ignore the very things that you should be doing.
There are a lot of systems for prioritizing, and you have to
choose the one that works best for you. For me, it involves
making a list of the things that I must get done and then doing
the most important ones first. This takes firmness and being
honest with yourself. You have to do the most important things
first because, then, if something doesn't get done, it will be
the less important things that you simply can't fit in.
In prioritizing, you do need to seek balance though. Things you
probably don't want to compromise are your health and your
relationships with your family. Make those a higher priority than
business.
A common trap too many netrepreneurs fall into... one that I've
fallen into, is offering to do too many things for others. In a
phone conversation, or perhaps a discussion board thread, someone
needs help doing something that is very simple to you. You try to
explain to them how to do it, and they just don't seem to "get
it." So you offer to do it for them. Before you know it, you
find yourself doing the very things that you normally get someone
else to do for you so that you can focus on better uses of your
time.
Here's how I got out of the trap I just described... I often had
clients who needed to get minor things done before we could get
other goals accomplished. They needed to know how to do minor
things like FTP’ing a file, making minor edits to webpages, or
perhaps changing out a graphic. In the interest of expediency, I
often offered to do these minor chores... until I saw how often
they mushroomed into major projects. My solution.... I found, or
created, video tutorials explaining how to do these simple task.
I reasoned that it made more sense to just do the task once, and
record it so that I would have it handy if needed again.
If you visit my site at: http://WillieCrawford.com/how.html
you'll find links to a few of these videos I did in Camtasia.
These are flash videos on how to:
1) Copy and paste
2) FTP a file
3) Make minor webpage edits
etc.
I actually have dozens of these but just share these few with you
for illustrative purposes. Setting up something like this may be
a great time-saver.
Very similar to the concept above, if you find yourself getting
asked the same questions over and over again, perhaps you should
set up a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section on your
website. This will stop hundreds of emails or phone calls.
Just make the link to it prominent on your website.
If you find yourself answering the same email questions, or
requests, over and over again, set up email templates in your
email program so that you have those answers handy. Then, often
all you will need to do is pull up the template and change the
name to respond quickly via email. You could also use programs
that scan an email looking for keywords and then automatically
send a response based upon the context of the email. That's a
little advanced for this article, so I won't explain it here.
Similar to the Camtasia videos, if you find you’re explaining the
same thing over and over again, you could also post an MP3 tele-
class recording online for your clients. You could also just set
up a phone line with the recorded messages, instructions, or
other information, and provide your clients with the phone number
for listening to the recording. Many sales organizations use
this idea for weekly training meetings, etc.
There are many other common sense things you can do to get more
done. A couple of quick ones that I use are:
1) Just working smarter... i.e., I don't stand in line at the
post office. My staff and I have arranged to just walk up to the
counter and leave the containers full of mail on the counter.
The clerk simply gives us more mail "buckets," and we buy postage
in bulk or over the Internet. If we do need to actually talk to
a clerk, we visit the post office during the least busy times of
the day... NOT during lunchtime when everyone visits the post
office.
2) Avoid time wasters such as spending too much time at online
discussion forums. These can be great places to network,
brainstorm, or do research, but make sure you're not just
avoiding getting started on an urgent project.
3) Identify when you are most productive and use that time to do
your most challenging work. Set aside times when you are least
productive (based upon your natural body cycles) to answer email
or return phone calls.
4) Stop procrastinating! Often we procrastinate because a task
seems so large. Simply break it down into bit-sized steps and it
will seem less ominous. Then choose a step and do it. Mark that
step off your schedule to reinforce the fact that you are making
progress :-)
5) Automate where possible using things like autoresponders and
interactive web forms to dispense commonly requested documents.
You can even use software to automatically update or change the
content on your webpages. One such piece of software that I use
and love is called "Traffic On Steroids." You can check it out
at: http://WillieCrawford.com/traffic-on-steroids.html
These are just a few of the ways that you can get more focused
and get more done. It's really just a matter of prioritizing
and then doing it. Adopt just a few of these ideas and you'll
be surprised at how much more you do actually get DONE! Without
implementing a few of these suggestions you can't be successful
simply because you'll never finish all of the tasks that you
need to do.
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