Small-business owners waste their time on what I
call $10 an hour work, like running to get office
supplies. Meanwhile, they forgo the activities that
earn $1,000 an hour, such as sending the right
email to the right person, or negotiating a lucrative
contract, or convincing a client to do more
business with you.
Entrepreneurs don't realize the same 80/20
principle -- the adage that 20 percent of customers
equal 80 percent of sales -- applies to every
dimension of business. And that includes time
management .
We entrepreneurs are extremely prone to
rationalize, "I can do it myself." Then we spend six
hours trying to extract a virus from our computer
or fix a leaky faucet.
Sure, we may be competent to do that little job.
And sure, sometimes you have to do everything
when you start out. But now you're doing a $10 or
$20 per hour fix-the-faucet job and you're not
doing your No. 1 job, which is getting and keeping
customers. That job pays $100 to $1000 per hour.
Many a promising business has been killed by
those little jobs. When someone says "time
management," you probably think of time logs,
goal lists, and "Getting Things Done." But getting
busy is not what makes you rich.
We're tempted to hire out the toughest jobs, like
sales and marketing and public relations. These
are extremely high-skill tasks. It's almost
impossible to delegate those tasks to someone
else. How about hiring someone to do your
laundry, or sort through your email?
Five things you should do immediately in order to
stop wasting time and start earning the real dinero:
1.Hire a maid.
If you have a significant other, he or
she will thank you. It is easy to find someone who
knows how to cook. Easy to find people who know
how to clean. They will love you for paying them
$10 to $13 an hour to do those jobs. Somebody's
praying for that job now.
As a go-getter, your core entrepreneurial skills can
earn you hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
So there's no reason why you should be scrubbing
your own toilets. In fact, I argue that it is your
moral obligation to hire someone to do that.
Downton Abbey fans will recall that the aristocratic
Crawley family thought it was their duty to have
servants and provide them employment. Same
goes for business owners. The United States
would be back down to 5 percent unemployment if
entrepreneurs stopped taking out their own trash.
Just get over yourself and….
Get rid of your $10 an hour stuff. Let's assume
you are no longer wasting time vacuuming your
own carpets or listening to your own voicemails.
You are still hurting yourself if you are obsessed
with being "efficient." That is not an 80/20
approach to time. Instead, ask: "What else am I
doing that is so menial, it could be cheaply
outsourced? What am I doing that I should stop
doing altogether?"
2.Hire a personal assistant.
With some effort you
can hire a perfectly competent person at $8 to $15
per hour and they'll be happy because it is more
interesting work than flipping burgers. I don't care
where they are. Virtual is fine. In my case, I hired a
friend of a friend, Lorena, whom I heard was
looking for work. I started her out changing
furnace filters and taking my car to the mechanic.
Within six months, she was managing my email
box, doing triage to ensure that I only read what
really matters. The time she saves me is worth its
weight in gold.
3.Don't feel guilty about relaxing.
The most
productive people are a little lazy. If there are
really only a few hours a day in which you do
$1,000-an-hour work, does it really matter if you
screw around for the rest of the day? Downtime
gives you the mental space you need to think. You
can't be a great strategist when you're hustling
from morning 'til night. Feed your brain instead, so
you're sharp when you're negotiating the next
sales contract.
4.Focus on your most productive time slot.
Everybody has a timeslot in their day when they
do their finest work. Ernest Hemingway wrote first
thing in the morning. Barack Obama is a night owl.
(He reportedly even outsources decisions on what
to eat and wear.) I do my best work between 7
a.m. and 10 a.m. I don't do email before 10 or 11
a.m. I keep that space open. It's reserved for
writing or doing really strategic jobs. That's the
part of my day when I'm most productive.
Make these changes and you'll hit consistent
stretches of $1,000 an hour many days of your
week. Then and only then will you reap the true
rewards of being an entrepreneur.
