Guest post by licensed Right-Brain Business Plan® Facilitator Cass Mullane
We’re competent, capable businesswomen. We have a myriad of skills and we know we can tackle most anything that’s put in front of us. We can research and learn about whatever we need to, and we know we can put that knowledge to use. However, just because we are capable of doing so many things does not mean we have to actually do everything! In fact, our competence often gets in our way. Instead of properly weighing the value of our time and our talents, we often choose to take the “quick and easy” route and decide to just whip things out ourselves. Probably not an optimal use of our time.
If you’re trying to do it all yourself, STOP IT!
Even if you’re fully capable of updating your own website, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best use of your time. Think about it… if you hired someone to upload changes and manage your site, then you would have a chunk of extra time to spend on tasks that only you can do, like meeting with clients, selling your products and services, or creating quality content.
Sounds pretty obvious, but getting some outside assistance with the tasks that other people can do makes good sense financially, mentally and in terms of growth. If there are tasks you dread (perhaps bookkeeping or adding business cards to your CRM), then take a look at finding someone who loves to do those jobs and give them the work. Then, make a point of focusing your energies on the tasks that you are best at. Ideally most of these tasks will be revenue generating so you can pay for your assistants and you can pay yourself!
If you immediately start to play the tape in your head that says you cannot afford someone to help, or you cannot pay someone to do what you can do yourself, here’s an exercise you can do right now that will make it crystal clear why you can and should pay someone else:
1. Write down every single task that you do in the next few days and how much time it takes.
2. Separate those tasks into two piles, one for tasks that only you can do and one for tasks that someone else can do.
3. Now review them. Let’s say you find that you spend a total of 15 minutes uploading content to your site or your blog in the morning and another 15 minutes in the afternoon. That’s 30 minutes each day, which adds up to 2.5 hours each week and 10 hours each month.
4. Now let’s say you took that 10 hours each month and focused the time exclusively on revenue generating activities that you’re really good at. Could be coaching your clients, marketing your products and services, creating content that only you can create, meeting people face to face, whatever it is, focus on doing that.
5. Figure out how much money could you bring in each month by spending those 10 hours on revenue generating activities. An extra few hundred? An extra few thousand?
6. Imagine how much better would you feel about doing your business without those tasks hanging over your head and keeping you from doing what you’re good at?
Now, here’s the kicker: let’s say you have five tasks like that each day. That totals up to 50 hours each month! What could you be doing with an extra 50 hours each month to generate revenue and to take better care of yourself and grow your business?
* Note: My brilliant friend Liz came up with this title. After we laughed our brains out, she gave me permission to use it. I have great creative cohorts!
________________________
Cass Mullane’s calm, comfortable approach consistently yields positive results for clients. Her business and personal coaching practice, www.ProsperCreatively.com, specializes in delivering solid left brain business skills to right brainers and creatives in a fun, visual way. She’s the author of Cool Stuff Jar which is slated for publication in Spring 2014. You can also visit Cass on Facebook. Cass is one of our licensed Right-Brain Business Plan® Facilitators.”
