Three common time wasters in your biz (and how to stop them FAST!)
As a business owner, do you feel like you are working all the time, but you somehow never seem to get anywhere?
Does it feel impossible to get your business to where you want it to be and to achieve your goals?
Do you feel like you are spending all your time just putting out fires and trying to keep up?
Today we're going to talk about three of the most common ways that business owners waste time day-to-day in their business and how you can change them fast.
As a business owner, your time is valuable.
Putting your time and attention on the right things could be the difference between growing and scaling your business and staying stuck and overworking forever.
You want to make sure that you are not wasting time on the wrong things and never able to get ahead in your business.
Let's dive into this today.
1. Manual, repetitive tasks
The first area where business owners commonly waste a lot of time is on manual, repetitive tasks.
This means things like:
Answering all of the emails in your inbox manually
Copying and pasting answers to common questions rather than using templates or automated emails
Sending invoices and contracts manually
Creating a new custom invoice for each new client
Tracking all of your client information in a messy spreadsheet
These are inefficient ways to be doing these common, repetitive tasks.
It's very easy to get sucked in and spend a lot of your day-to-day time on these types of activities in your business, but these are typically not tasks that directly make money. Because of this, you'll want to make sure that you are being as efficient as possible with these types of activities in your business.
One great way to do this is through automation. I recommend using some sort of CRM (client relations management) software, such as 17hats, Dubsado, or Honeybook.
These allow you to automate emails to leads and clients, automate invoicing and contracts, and some of them also allow you to do online scheduling for appointments.
These platforms also offer a centralized database for all of your client information so you don't lose track of anybody ever again.
2. Overcomplicated systems
The second common way that business owners waste time in their day-to-day operations is with overcomplicated systems.
This might mean:
Using too many tools or platforms
Using platforms that have a whole bunch of features that you don't need and just make things way more complicated
You have files here, there, and everywhere, and you waste a lot of time searching for things and trying to stay organized
If your tech is overly complicated, if you don't have good clear systems, this means you are wasting a lot of time trying to find things.
You might miss things like messages, reminders, and notifications if you forget to check a specific platform regularly.
You might feel overwhelmed by the tech, so you aren't using it properly.
Maybe you are spending money on platforms that you don't even use regularly and you may not need.
If this is you, I highly recommend that you simplify your systems and the tools that you're using and you streamline things down to what you actually need and what you're actually going to use regularly to run your business efficiently.
The first thing to do in this situation is to do a tech audit of all of the tools that you have. This way you can find out what you're actually using and what is actually helping your business, and what you could maybe let go and stop paying for every month.
3. Indecision and perfectionism
The final common time waster that I see for business owners is getting caught up with indecision and perfectionism.
This might look like spending three hours writing one Instagram post or one newsletter.
This might mean waiting until everything is "perfect" until you launch that new program or course.
Nothing is ever going to be perfect. This type of thinking keeps you stuck. It prevents you from being able to actually move forward and achieve your goals in your business, because you spend all of your time overthinking and worrying that things aren't ready yet.
At the end of the day, this way of thinking is not going to help you make things better in your business. It's going to keep you from taking action, which means your business is not going to grow as well as it could if you were moving forward with things without worrying about whether or not they're perfect.
If this is you, I encourage you to embrace the idea that done is better than perfect.
One way to do this when you are making decisions or creating a piece of content or anything like that is to set a time limit for yourself.
So, especially with things like blog posts, newsletters, social media posts - things that may not directly make you money - you don't want to be spending hours and hours on those tasks. Done is better than perfect.
Set yourself a time limit. If this is not something that is going to matter six months from now, try to spend 10 minutes or less on that task.
I know if you're used to spending an hour on an Instagram post, 10 minutes is not going to seem like enough time. Try lowering it in increments. Maybe try going from an hour to half an hour, and then lower it more over time and see how efficient you can get on these time-sucking tasks.
It's more important to put those things out into the world than to fine-tune them until they are "perfect".
Ready to ditch time wasters in your business?
I hope that you have learned how to identify and mitigate these three common time-wasting areas in your business.
As the owner, the CEO of your business, your time is valuable. You don't want to be wasting your time on all of these things that are not directly bringing money and growth into your business.
If you want to get more done, if you want to achieve your goals, if you want to grow your business, you don't have to work harder. You just need to make sure that you are focusing on the right things.
Reducing some of these common time wasters in your business is going to give you more time and energy that you can focus on those things that you really want to do to move your business forward, to grow your business, and accomplish those goals faster.
So, what's the biggest time waster that you see in your business? Let me know down in the comments or feel free to reach out.
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