Now processes and systems are part of the answer to what we are going to talk about today. But actually getting more done is a dream of a lot of people.
Most of us that want to get more done, only want to get more done because we haven’t got time to do everything we’ve got on our lists, okay? So, follow me here.
So, if we are working, say 10 hours a day, we think, well, we can get some more in, and we can work 12 hours a day. And then we add some more work, we get some more sales, then we have to work 13 hours a day, and yeah, you see how this is going to go.
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So, the ideal thing is to do more but in half the time or with half the effort. Isn’t that cool? Do you ever hear about people, and you think how come they don’t appear to be working?
I mean, for instance, I’m not going to use me as an example, but I do spend every other month out of the U.K and my business, I only go once a week, and my main business; they do stuff that I don’t need to know about. And the beauty is, because of these little tricks and tips.
First of all, like I say, it’s not all systems and processes, but they help. If you don’t have them, you aren’t going to get far.
If you’ve ever heard yourself say, ‘By the time I’ve written this down or by the time I’ve shown them how to do it, by the time I’ve recorded a video of me doing it, I could have done it myself.’ That is one of the most popular answers to ‘Why don’t you get someone else to do it?’
And then what happens is you do it again and then you do it again and again and again and again, and yes by the time you had shown someone how to do it, you could have done it yourself but they do it the next time, the next time, the next time, you don’t do it again-again-again. Do you follow? And this occurs to everything.
Screen Recordings
So, I just challenge you this: when you do something, if you’re doing it on a computer, do a screen recording. Just go to Gin.com, it’s free or ScreenaMatic.com.
I think or there’s all sorts of things that are free to do screen recording. QuickTime on your Mac does it – that comes included.
Just record yourself doing it; you can even speak and then you can give someone the video and they can start and stop it, and copy the way you do it. That’s one thing.
But processes, the most popular things that you don’t want to do. Right down how to do it and get others to do it. Quite obviously, if you are not having to do it yourself, that’s freeing up your time.
Now the next one is, there’s, it’s kind of three types of work. There is busy-work, there is being busy, there is being productive and there’s being effective.
Now being busy is not great. Some people seem to thrive on being busy. They think it sounds impressive; it is not impressive. Do not ever tell anyone you are busy and look happy about it; busy is not good.
Be Productive
Being productive, now that is better. Being productive, you are producing. However, producing is not always a good thing.
If you look out the back of places where they have unsold piles of things – that company was productive – it produced a lot. They couldn’t sell it, no one wanted it.
Being effective is different. Being effective means you are more intentional; you are probably productive but in an intentional way, and that is different.
Remember a lot of this is all about mindset and just to let you know, by the way. This being February, new month, this month our theme is all about how. how are we doing this.
Remember, I talked about the 5 questions. The 5 questions every small business owner must answer to be truly successful.
The How
In January, we talked about the why. We talked a lot of about the why and getting there in company culture and all that kind of stuff. Next is the how.
How do we do this or how are we doing to do this, and yes there is systems and processes but it’s not just that.
You need to do effective work. So, what I want you to think about is of all the things that you do, every single day, some of them could be done by others.
Some of them have to be done by you, some of them you do but you don’t like doing.
At the end of the day, there is no way you are ever going to remember what you did all day. Especially, if you were busy.
Write it Down
So, what I challenge you is to write down. don’t worry about any fancy form, you can look for online but there’s no need for fancy form.
All you need is just a piece of lined paper with; down the left-hand side, a time, you can write the time, it’s not even that important to write the time but how long you spent on it.
So something like answer the phone call. But answer phone call to client, answer phone call from supplier. Open post. Made coffee, honestly, everything like that throughout the day. Lunch break. Had chat with colleague, 15 minutes. All these kinds of things.
Keep that running for a whole week. At the end of the week, go through and then start to categorize those tasks into sort of admin tasks, for one and then your tasks, and then things you don’t like to do.
And then start to see how much time they take up. Because you are probably thinking, ‘Well, I can’t afford to get an admin person.’ But if you actually find and quite often you will, that half your time or a huge chunk of your time is taken up doing just admin type stuff.
Imagine, imagine what you could achieve if you were being effective and gave that to someone else. You could outsource the phone calls to an organization like ‘Grasshopper’ or to ‘Money Penny’ or to many of the others.
I strongly recommend ‘Money Penny’ by the way, because I use it in one of my businesses, in the Owners’ Club and you can then be getting on with stuff.
Now, of course, when those people phone in, some of them, like a supplier, you may have to phone but they might just have a little query and a message can be passed to you, you don’t have to phone them. When you spoke to them, you might spend 10, 15 minutes on the phone chatting. What a waste of time. Okay.
So, all these things add up. You can then find, you can then suddenly think, ‘Wow! I can afford – I can offload this, it takes 10 hours a week of my time or it takes 15 hours a week.
I can employ someone 15 hours for 3 hours a day or for 3 days for 5 hours or can get them to do it from home or multiple ways.’
And then, you can also try and offload the work you don’t like doing and just leave yourself with the things that suit your unique ability and quite often that is sales and driving the business forward.
Then, that’s how you reduce to a lot less time, and so if you then get yourself more effective, you’ll be just doing the work that grows the business.
Or you could just choose to not do the extra work and generate the same, but in less time. It’s easy when you try it. Honestly, I spent years perfecting this and it’s an ongoing process and you cannot imagine the results.
Monday Book Recommendation
Okay, Monday, as we are talking the ‘how’, this is the Book for the Week and I’m going to recommend one I’ve mentioned it over and over because this book changed my life.
This is the most important book ever in business.
The E-Myth, in fact, its correct title is ‘The E-Myth Revisited’, that is the one you want.
If you have not read the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, just please do whatever you can, get it from the library, get it on Audible, get the CDs, get it on Amazon, just get it.
It is the book that will show you how to run a business in a way that makes sense to you. What more I can say?
If you want to know more about that, get a call with me www.marketingforowners.com/freetime and I can tell you exactly how the E-Myth impacted my life.
I can also share with you how you can use it for yours, I can help you with that. I can tell you all about it, that call is free. Okay, can’t get cheaper than that.
I’ll be back with another tip for you tomorrow.