It’s inevitable. As a small business owner, you will wear
many, many hats.
Marketing manager.
Bookkeeper.
Human Resource Manager.
Customer Service Manager
Service Provider.
Sales Manager.
Technical support staff.
But while this type of task juggling is to be expected, you
have to be aware that not all of your hats are created equal. Marketing
outweighs bookkeeping, for example, because without marketing, there will be no
cash to manage.
Not only that, but you have to consider how much time you’re
spending in each area as well. If you spend all day tweaking the design on your
website and put off sending an email to your list, what have you gained?
Sure, you might have a prettier website, but you lost an
opportunity to drive traffic to your offer.
In an ideal world, you’d simply put on your CEO hat and
delegate the rest, but here in the real world, we don’t always have that
option. Instead, we have to work smarter, and take care how we’re spending our
time.
Prioritize Your Daily
Tasks
We all have different skills and sweet spots when it comes
to the tasks we want and need to do. You might love customer support and hate
bookkeeping, while someone else enjoys the numbers game and doesn’t like
dealing with the help desk. But regardless of your personal preferences, one
thing is certain: money-making tasks should be at the very top of your to-do
list.
That might mean product creation, email marketing, client
outreach, webinar development, or something entirely different. Identify those
money-making tasks in your business and be sure to prioritize them every single
day.
Know the Difference
Between Important and Urgent
In his classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey recommends prioritizing tasks based on a time-management grid. Every task is assigned to a quadrant of the grid, based on whether it is urgent, important, both, or neither.
Once you know where a task falls on the grid, you’ll
immediately know what you should be working on. For example, marketing and
planning are important but not urgent. A ringing phone is urgent, but not
important. The sales page for your new program, which is launching tomorrow, is
both urgent AND important.
So before you prioritize your daily to-do list, think about
where each of your tasks falls in the quadrant, and schedule them accordingly.
Will you always be working on the best task for right now? Probably not. Nor will you always use your time as wisely as you could. But by making a conscious effort to organize and prioritize your days, you’ll find it’s a lot less stressful and overwhelming to manage your small business.
To your success!
Laura
P.S. If you are a small business owner (or want to be one), whether you are just starting out, or have been in business for awhile, I hope you will become part of the Next Level family. Visit our Facebook page (www.Facebook.com/NextLevelAd) for tips, tools, and resources to help grow your business. We now have a Facebook Group, Next Level U, for those who are interested in joining a private community of small business owners and marketers.
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Laura Olson-Oxley is an entrepreneur, coach, speaker, marketing and business consultant, and sales professional. She has over 25 years experience working with small businesses in a variety of industries, focusing on strategic business growth through effective marketing and advertising. Also a strategist, numbers nut, project manager, and life-long learner, Laura looks at the big picture to analyze and recommend the most effective tools to take businesses to the Next Level.
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