The Best Business Position

From the 'Drop the Monkey Business' column in The Galway Advertiser 21/3/2013 P.96

How do you use your time in your business? Are you trying to grow your business, but spending too much time in the business as appose to on the business? How can you free up some time to do the real work you need to do to make your business the dream it was meant to be? Business can be a very lonely and slow paced venture. It can be very different to where it all started when you had an enthusiastic quest to be king of your own empire. The reality is that it can feel like you will end up being a Jack-of-all-trades, and everything that you never thought you would be. Yes, you become a superhero to countless customers; yet everyday you lock the doors and walk home alone only to repeat the same storyboard again and again wondering why nothing is moving or growing. To grow your business you need to put yourself in the best place for you, where you work at your best and your best skills are used the most. You need to be continuously planning your future, changing your game and moving the pieces. And when there is something that you can’t manage or that gives you a sense of overload, there is no shame in asking for some support or assistance. No shame in change. Financially, it maybe impossible to give a second thought to taken on extra staff and understandably so, however, there maybe one or two small changes that can be delegated that could free up time for you to do the things that you are really super at and who knows, maybe because of a change in your actions and habits you will eventually be in a better position to hire more staff and grow your business. So many business people are stressed to the hill not because they are doing too much, but because they are doing too much of the wrong thing. They are doing too many tasks that they dislike. When you do a task that you don’t like to do, the likelihood of it taking you longer to do and making a mess of it is quiet high. You won’t give the task your full attention. You’ll put it off until the last minute and you won’t do a great job because it’s not your field of expertise. I’m talking about the jobs that you hate to face such as your annual accounts, marketing, stock control or social media. I’m talking about the area of your business that you can’t stand and that take up too much of your time. The job that takes you a day, may take a trained expert one-hour. When you delegate or outsource these small jobs to trained professionals or others, you immediately free up valuable time for you to channel your skills where you know you have a high degree of self-confidence and where you will work to your full potential. You will become more relaxed and less stressed in the knowledge that the work that you hated to do is done professionally and quicker. You may have to pay a small fee, but nothing in comparison to the money you will save and the time you will gain. A business is only as good as the people behind it, meaning you need to change the focus to where your skills are strong and delegate or outsource the jobs that you long not to do where possible.  When you keep doing the same things over and over, you will get the same results. To change the results, change the game. A wise man once said ‘If you don’t change nothing, nothing changes’. Change position. Get into the best business position for you. There's only a limited amount of work you can do in a day, therefore you must up your game, position yourself in the best spot on the playing field, so that you will be the best player on your team, so that others will follow.