FREE UP TIME TO MAKE MORE MONEY FOR YOUR BUSINESS

 

How to step off the hamster wheel and lead from a more strategic orbit 

Have you emerged from the dark end of 2020 with a grim determination to absolutely get your business back on track into 2021, but after just the first 3 weeks feel like you’re drowning in the everyday problems again? 

Have the first few weeks of January dragged you straight back into the gravitational pull of firefighting and reacting to the day to day issues, that prevent you from working on those profit generating projects you’d set your heart on accomplishing? 

You are not alone. Every Business Owner I work with suffers this constant battle of finding time to work ON your business.  Dedicating enough time to developing the wider strategic, marketing and operating efficiency ideas requires days or even weeks of focus and concentration. Getting the projects mapped out and implemented requires strong leadership and getting the team onboard with you. 

But if you are continually involved with, or doing the work of the sales team, office administration, bookkeeping and accounts etc, you have little chance of finding time to dedicate to the bigger business picture, and you’ll end up on the hamster wheel going nowhere. 

Prioritising & Planning

Most managers are aware of the principles of prioritising. My previous blog “Live to Work or Work to Live” described how to find a positive work life balance between home and office. This has become even more poignant during the last 12 months as remote working has become the norm, adding pressure to the already blurred lines of working time. During the second lockdown of 2020, 22% of remote workers were finding it hard to create the necessary boundaries to keep work separate from home life with the associated mental health issues this brought with it. 

Defining your proactive and reactive tasks and how to prioritise between the important and urgent activities, are fundamental to start making more money for your business. Very few business owners however, can extract themselves from the vicious circle they find themselves in and avoid being sucked into the detail. The second issue is having the know-how to apply these principles to your own circumstances. 

The Wrong Objectives 

Before you can determine which activities you should be scheduling as priority, you must have a clear business plan setting out your overall objectives. Without these it’s difficult to find the pathway to achieving them. The objectives have to be SMART, and not necessarily focused on the finances. Turnover is Vanity, Profit is Sanity. 

A frequent mistake many business owners make is believing that the higher the turnover, the more profitable the business will be. This is a fallacy. If the systems and processes are set up effectively, and the information is available to review their continued efficiency, then greater profits can often be achieved through doing less. 

This is the fundamental principle of productivity, but requires you to dedicate a good percentage of your time (and I recommend at least 20%), in a strategic orbit above the day to day minutiae of your business. I refer to this as the “Sacred” time, and yes, it’s often the first item in the calendar to be cast aside when the going gets tough, as it requires escaping from the detail for a period of time. 

Creating Sacred Time 

The key to being proactive is scheduling in Sacred Time to analyse your business information and KPIs. These should be developed from the business objectives mentioned above. The information provided through the business management systems should give you a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not. You can then identify and implement actionable changes in the business to continually improve. If this is repeated on a regular basis, then the business gradually becomes more profitable. 

It’s this part of managing the business that many owners find difficult to schedule time to do, but I can provide you with a solution. Alluxi offers occasional productivity taster workshops, and this month I’m running a session specifically designed to work through the steps of how to free up more time in your working life to work on the projects that will make your business more profitable.