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Small business owners waste time on what I call R10-an-hour work, such as running to fetch office supplies.
Meanwhile, they forgo the activities that earn R1 000 an hour, such as sending the right email to the right person, negotiating a lucrative contract or convincing a client to do more business with you.
Entrepreneurs don’t realise that the same 80-20 principle – the rule that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients – applies to every dimension of business. And that includes time management.
We entrepreneurs are prone to rationalise that “I can do it myself”. Then we spend six hours trying to delete a virus on our computer or fix a leaky tap.
Sure, we may be competent to do that little job. And sure, sometimes you have to do everything when you start out. But you’re doing a R10- or R20-per-hour fix-a-tap job and not doing your No 1 job, which is getting and keeping customers.
That job pays R100 to R1 000 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 being busy is not what makes you rich.
We’re tempted to hire out the toughest jobs, such as sales and marketing, and public relations. These are extremely high-skill tasks. It’s almost impossible to delegate these duties to someone else. How about rather hiring someone to do your laundry, or sort through your email?
Five things you should do immediately to stop wasting time and start earning the real dinero
1Hire a domestic worker. 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 R30 to R40 an hour to do those jobs. Somebody’s praying for that job right now.
As a go-getter, your core entrepreneurial skills can earn you hundreds of thousands of rands a year. So there’s no reason 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 with employment.
The same goes for business owners.
2Just get over yourself and … Get rid of your R10-an-hour stuff. Let’s assume you are no longer wasting time vacuuming your own carpets or listening to your 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?”
3Hire a personal assistant. With some effort, you can hire a perfectly competent person at R60 to R80 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, who I heard was looking for work.
Within six months, she was managing my emails, doing triage to ensure I only read what really mattered. The time she has saved me has been worth its weight in gold.
4Don’t feel guilty about relaxing. The most productive people are a little lazy. If there are only a few hours a day in which you do R1 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 until night. Feed your brain instead, so you’re sharp when you’re negotiating the next sales contract.
5Focus on your most productive time slot. Everybody has a time slot 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 7am and 10am. I don’t do emails before 10am. I keep that space open. It’s reserved for writing or doing strategic jobs. That’s the part of my day when I’m at my most productive.
Make these changes and you’ll hit consistent stretches of R1 000 an hour on many days of your week. Then and only then will you reap the true rewards of being an entrepreneur.
