Two weeks ago, I kept a simple journal to track how I was using every minute of my time throughout the space of one workweek, and I was able to identify over five hours of time spent doing something I could be easily delegating to someone else!
This may not sound like a big deal, but consider this:
- Five hours is a lot of time-especially if you only have 10-15 hours per week to run your business part-time. Or if you're full-time, it adds up to 20 hours per month...and 260 hours per year!
- What would you give for an extra MONTH of productive, money-generating 8-hour days each year? Or, if you prefer, a month off each year to spend golfing, taking a vacation, time off with family, or whatever it is you love to do?
- I thought I was delegating everything I should be. But here, even the Master of Management has been caught red-handed. This goes to show that EVERYONE could stand to analyze their time every so often.
- What is your time per hour worth? If your time is worth $50 per hour, then it's hard to justify continuing to do something that someone else could do for $10/hr. Or, as many virtual assistants charge overseas, $4-5 per hour.
The things I caught myself doing were repetitive business items that have to be done every week-but those types of tasks don't move my business forward.
I kind of rationalized for a while, but then I realized I had a few projects on the shelf that I could knock out myself in about 10-20 hours that could start generating more income immediately.
Remember: Your time is best spent starting and managing new projects that will generate more cash. Hire people to help you carry those out and get there faster. And by all means hire an assistant or someone to carry out the Operations and repetitive tasks that must go on every week and month.
Let someone else hold down the fort while you're out pioneering. Your job is to discover and create new ways to advertise, make sales, and add products and services to your lineup.
So let's say you set out to find a virtual assistant abroad that you could outsource these tasks to every week and thereby free up 5 more hours of precious time.
Total cost: $20/week
Time Savings: $250 (saving you 5 hours of your time, valued at $50/hour)
This ROI would be several times what you invested, as long as you spend the new time you save doing something that generates $50 per hour or more, like your new projects (new sales team, creating a new product, testing new advertising methods-anything to create or increase revenue).
So take me up on this...Find out how you could "trim the fat" next week by cutting off 5 more hours of your work week and assigning it to someone else.
Then ask yourself what new project you could start, using your newly-saved time, and do the math. See for yourself how much more you could make by investing a little in others!
Suggested Resource: Now that you've freed up an extra MONTH of working time per year, you need to leverage this time. How? By doing exactly what the top 1% of entrepreneurs do (those who now have a net worth of $5,000,000 or more). Learn more by watching this Growthink's Insider Circle video [1].