Ways to manage your time as a business owner
If you are a business owner, imagine that you were in fact still employed. Would you tolerate working more than the standard 30-40 hours per week for a below market salary? You may tolerate it for a little while, but certainly not very long!
Yet this is precisely the position business owners find themselves in. When starting up a business, there is a reasonable expectation that the above is the case for a time being as you are responsible for every part of your business and figuring out the basics at the same time, but it cannot and should not go on forever!
With the combination of a lack of work-life balance, a negative impact on your relationships, and the financial insecurity this situation brings – it is a hugely stressful position to be in.
To turn the situation around from time being your enemy into your friend it require a pro-active approach and self-discipline to maintain it.
Time management is one of the perennial challenges for business owners, so we thought we’d share some key techniques that we use with our clients, that can help all small and medium-sized business owners.
- The Eisenhower Matrix – mapping the relative urgency and importance of tasks. If it is urgent and important, they sit with you to do. If it is urgent but not important – delegate. If it is important but not urgent – schedule for the future.
- Automation – what tasks are repetitive and low value? What tasks take a disproportionate amount of your time away from other things? Then it’s time to look at how to automate these!
- Outsourcing – it is unlikely you were trained in every aspects of business – legal, HR, financial, sales, marketing etc. Where you don’t have the expertise, invest in outsourcing because if you find the right partners you’ll make back time and money to progress your business.
- What is your meeting rhythm? – meetings are an important way of cascading information through your business, so having regular and well-structured meetings will help with productivity, motivation, efficiency and effectiveness. So what meetings should you have daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly?
- Submarine reporting – getting your team to report the information you want, in your preferred format at predictable times will help everyone’s workload and enable you to more efficiently and effectively make decisions, make improvements and progress your business.
For more information on each of these and other time management techniques, download the free guide for business owners, here: https://tr.growthcoach.co.uk/business-resources-guides/ or contact me directly as I’d be happy to have a 121 with anyone to discuss. jo@growthcoach.co.uk