Business owners… feeling the time crunch? Please, for your own good, boldly seize control!

Read Time 2 Minutes Executive Brief #4, by Stephen Steckly

Part 1

If you believe the time trap that rules your work days is inescapable, let’s lay that myth to rest right now, shall we?

In your industry there are companies that are significantly larger than your company. Some of those companies earn more profit as a percentage of revenue than your company does. The owners of some of those companies work a lot fewer hours per year than you do.

Assuming that the foregoing three sentences are true, it’s certainly possible for you to escape your time trap because others have already done so, right? But just understanding this doesn’t help you unless you know how to fix your own situation. That’s what we’ll cover in this series of blogs.

And please know that I will NOT trot out a bunch of tired old ‘time management’ tips – we all know how well they work, don’t we?

Your lack of time is not the issue at all – it is merely a symptom of the real problem. Brutally stated, the real problem is your lack of knowledge and/or specific skillsets. You always have ALL the time there is and you will NEVER get any more time than that. What you need to learn is how to leverage the time you have so that you achieve more – make more things happen - in fewer hours.

Your first step to freedom from the time trap is to accept that the perceived lack of time in your life is YOUR challenge. Why? Because you simply cannot solve a problem you don’t own – EVER!

Now let’s look at some real problems and their solutions.

Get Clear About What Your Job Actually Is, Boss.

Most time-trapped business owners either spend precious time doing other peoples’ jobs or they simply do not know what their own job should entail.

If you want to succeed, you must have great clarity about what your job actually is – then actually DO YOUR JOB.

Try to write a detailed role description for yourself. If you struggle with what your job as the CEO of a larger small business should be, e-mail me. I will help you develop a job description for yourself that will assist you in your quest to become a better leader (this will be provided free of cost).

Once you clearly know what your job is, get other people to do everything that is not your job.

“But,” you say, “When I delegate, the person I assign the work to sometimes screws it up or fails to get it done on time”. If you’re saying that, you might have people on your team who lack the ability or the desire to produce the results you require.

Perhaps there are other problems as well. Our next blog in this series will address these issues.

Solving these problems is easier than you might imagine – at BaseCamp4 we do so every week, so stay tuned…

Download a printable PDF of this executive summary here.