I’ve been meeting recently with a variety of talented people, incredibly eager to succeed as entrepreneurs.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting with an entrepreneur who I have great admiration for. We talked about what made the difference between those who make a success of the entrepreneurial journey, and those who don’t.
With the opportunities available to us today, we both find it ridiculous that so many people don’t succeed.
One of the main reasons we identified behind this is because they don’t do the things that are important that they need to do to be successful.
In every area of business, there are about a half-dozen things that make all the difference.
It’s simple, they don’t do the things they need to do to be successful.
“Stuff” gets in the way, doesn’t it?
One key is to establish what one step can be taken to move a business forward.
As a business coach I invest a lot of time determining my clients highest value activities.
Highest value activities are the activities that either generate revenue directly or indirectly.
You can’t get away from the fact that a business stays alive by generating revenue. A wise step therefore would be to do something that would increase revenue.
One of the best things you can do for your business is to replace the activities that aren’t high-yield with those that are. Think about your activities as you would a financial investment. You want to get the best possible return. The more of your time you invest in your highest value activities, the more return you get for your investment.
I don’t advocate that anyone sits around praying for money or entering the lottery every week hoping for a windfall.
You have to do something which will improve your business every day, you have to take action, as one of my favourite expressions describes, you need to take the bull by the horns. So get busy doing the right things.
The objective here is to isolate the activities in your week which propel you forwards.
No matter what time you have at work it is always filled with endless tasks, meetings, emails, phone calls and to do lists. This is fine up to a point but is this effective use of your time?
Creating time isn’t about cramming more things into your day or allowing yourself you complete more things on your to do list. It is about realizing what steps will move you forward.
Many of my lower payoff activities will be delegated to others. Those I have to do myself, I take all of these non high pay off activities and create my housekeeping day, one day where I do all of these jobs. For me I choose a Monday as it frees up the rest of my week, where I can do the jobs which will propel my business forward.
The more you focus on your highest value activities, the better your results will be. There are a surprising amount of peripheral activities that can eat up your resources without any significant payoff and spending too much of your precious time on these can prove very costly.
What activities can you do to propel your business forward?
