I have an important question for you: How much time do you spend handling technology issues, answering phone calls, placing product orders, and doing other relatively menial work?
Do you find yourself losing hours each week trying to figure out why your email isn’t working or talking to a lonely homeowner interested in sharing with you every moment of his day?
Most of you started out in your businesses being do-it-yourselfers. Maybe you still are. Cash is tight in the beginning. The last thing you want to do is spend money. That’s the right move when getting an operation going. In the beginning, you have more time than money—so protect those cash reserves…
But it’s absolutely a mistake to stay in the do-it-yourself mode too long. As your business grows, you need to see it happening, and you need to understand that you must grow with it. When you grow, your daily duties need to shift. Spending your energy on anything less than the best and highest use of your time is not a good use of your most scarce resource… which is YOU!
What’s the best use of your time? At the heart of the SGI program, we preach that you should be spending 33% of your time recruiting, 33% of your time managing, and 33% of your time training. At no point in that matrix is there time allotted for backing up files, stuffing envelopes, or even dispatching technicians.
Here’s an interesting stat: According to a study done by Microsoft, small business owners lose six hours of productivity per week on IT-related tasks. That’s more than 300 hours a year or 7½ weeks! What could have accomplished in 7½ weeks?!?!?! How many other hours are you wasting on other nagging tasks? How much opportunity are you losing as a result?
You need to look at your numbers, see how you’re growing, and realize that at some point it’s time to hire additional office staff to support you and your business. To know when you’re ready for such additions, simply look at the 10 Commandments and Vital Statistics that we provide—or just give us a call, and we’ll walk through it together.
You’ve often heard us use the phrase, “work on your business, not in it.” Well, it’s more than just some catchy words we enjoy using—they’re the truth.
What does working ON your business, not IN it mean? Well, you wouldn’t have to be the first one in and the last one out of the office. You wouldn’t even need to be in the office every day. Instead, you could circulate throughout the community, making contacts with other small business people through networking groups. You could be going to other trainings and conventions to strengthen your own abilities as a leader. There are a number of things you can do to enhance yourself in order to enhance your company.
As the business owner, the president of your company, you should have higher priorities. You have that responsibility not only to you and your business—you owe it to the people working for you, who are hoping to work for a growing, healthy, future-oriented organization.
So, take a look at the numbers. Take a hard look at your organizational chart and the status of your business. And if both look good, get out of your own way. Fire yourself from the day-to-day tasks that you’re wasting your time with, find some good people to surround you, and work on growing your company!