What's the Most Important thing for Entrepreneurs to do with their Time?

byTDenise

5.7K followers

Updated 5 years ago

If you've ever asked, "What's the most important things for me to do with my time?", then this post and the correlating training will probably shed alot of light for you, and help out alot.

Over the course of transitioning from employee to entrepreneur, one major thing you have to learn is time management. Money as an employee is produced by the time you show up and the time you leave.

On the other hand, the entrepreneur earns money for the # of people they solve problems for, and the # of people who pay for the solution--these are two drastically different schools of thought.

If you get the scheduling wrong, you could wind up with beautiful products and no one buying them, or years of education to provide a service, but no one hiring you to perform. An unbalanced schedule can mean lots of financial turmoil, which isn't the way you want to live.

You've Seen it

I'm sure you've seen it before. You've seen the very skilled and intelligent person (maybe a doctor, lawyer, accountant, coach, or affiliate marketer) who struggles financially despite their skill level. They may even have a great work ethic, but the genius in their trade, and the amount of time they spend working, doesn't add up to equal optimal results.

I've been that person and often times, I still find myself going back to the drawing board as my life distractions go up and my productivity gets compromised as a result. Then, on the other hand, sometimes, I'll simply spend too much time on design, tweaking graphics, or messing with other components that don't directly drive revenue.

In this post, I want to really point out that it is possible to spend lots of time on the WRONG things and not get optimal results, but I also want to inform you of a healthy distribution of your time. Getting the schedule right is a discipline that will need revisiting from time to time.

Time Management in a Job vs. In Your Business

In terms of time management, you're typically given tasks to do in a job, but in a business, you have to decide which tasks are most mission-critical to your income. Starting out, creating a schedule was a challenge for me, and I would guess I'm not the only one that gets confused and asks, "Which tasks are most important to move the needle in my business?".

In fact, one of the most common questions I'm asked by referrals and those considering starting businesses is "What's the most important thing to do with my time?". Today, I decided to publish a training that answers the question "What are the most important things I should be doing with my time?", and today I wanted to share some of my ideas on the topic, gain wisdom from you, and see your thoughts on this, so let's get started...

The 4 Ways to Divide Your Time | My Recommendation

I always advise entrepreneurs to divide their time into four ways: acquiring work, doing work, managing the work and strategizing about the work. In the beginning, I literally would put time slots into my Google calendar, so I would get a feel for which tasks fall into which categories and what I should be doing.

Once I had a general idea of how my days should go, then I didn't need the firm schedule as much. We both know balance is a really difficult thing to do, but it's still nice to have a general idea of what a day should look like. Most often, there will be one area that gets more attention than others, but at least you'll get the gist.

Struggling in Business often Goes Back to Time Management

From my observation, the people who struggle with money most are the people who focus most on doing the work than on acquiring the work, managing the work, or strategizing about the work. Alternatively, the people who focus most on acquiring the work can drum up lots of business and end with lots of negative comments and reviews because they didn't spend enough time doing the work to build quality in their client fulfullment and operations areas.

Then, you have the people who start out with the "executive mindset" and they strategize all the time, but they don't acquire customers, do the work, or manage others doing the work--that doesn't work either. Lastly, there are people who start out trying to outsource before they have customers or work to do, so putting the most emphasis on managing the work isn't a good option either.

Having too much emphasis on any of the four areas is bad.

My #1 Recommended Task Category for Entrepreneurs + My Latest Training

Each area needs attention, but I've chosen one as supreme to all of them because it starts the whole process of having customers, having work to do, managing work to do, and strategizing about growth. Can you guess which it is?

In my opinion, the most important tasks for entrepreneurs to ensure are in their schedules is sales prospecting which can be done a multitude of ways. Wealthy Affiliate teaches us how to use several sales prospecting tools. If you're interested in my full take on which tasks are most important to move the needle in your business, check out the training I published today on Sales Prospecting Online. It answers:

• What is Sales prospecting?
• What tasks are defined as Sales Prospecting?
• Why it's so important?
• and, More...

Like with all of my training, I'm hoping this training is very helpful for growing your business, and I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Join the conversation on Sales Prospecting here.

My Question for You

• Which tasks do you think are most important in business?
• Which tasks should gain the majority of our schedules as entrepreneurs?

Leave your comments and answers to these questions below, then pop over to the Sales prospecting training here.