Learn to Leverage Your Time And You Can Make a Fortune!
Are you the owner of a thriving business? Do you find yourself working flat out just to keep up with demand? Are you determined to work as many hours as needed in order to make your business a success?
If this sounds familiar, then congratulations on your achievement – It takes a lot of hard work and dedication in order to create a livable income from your business venture. Many people do not even get this far.
With that being said, what are your plans for future expansion? If you’re currently running as an owner/operator, your income is completely dependent on one person: and that’s you. What kind of hours are you currently working? If you’re like most single person businesses, you are most certainly working more than 40 hours per week. While the money may be good, you’ve hit a ceiling as far as business growth and revenue is concerned.
Of course, the problem is that there are only so many hours in a day and there is a limit as to how many hours you can work. Unless you are able to create leverage, you’ve just succeeded in creating a job for yourself – a job where you’re working a lot harder than you would as an employee.
Do you dream of becoming a millionaire? Do you think you’ve got what it takes?
While you may be exceptionally talented and hard-working, without leverage you are unlikely to ever see that million dollars. In fact, some of the highest paid professionals (doctor, lawyer) may never get to that level because, although exceptionally talented, they too have to work for each dollar made. Even if they’re making $200 per hour, the fact remains that they have no leverage, and thus, there is a limit to how much they can physically earn.
Are you the chief cook and bottle washer of your company? Do you divide your time between servicing customers, marketing, and administration?
While it may be tempting to wear all the hats in your fledgling business, you’re not doing yourself any favors. No one can be proficient at everything. Even though it may feel as though you’re the only one that can get the job done properly, you can use leverage by hiring trained staff to handle those tasks in a fraction of the time it would take you.
Ideally, you should outsource as much work as possible, either through hiring employees or contracting out, in order to free up your time to do more important things such as running the business. By the way, there is a big difference between working in your business and working on your business.
Most of the world’s millionaires and billionaires got that way by understanding this critical strategy. They realized that attempting to do everything themselves was an exercise in futility. Instead, they used their profits to hire employees that could do the job much more efficiently. They wasted no time in surrounding themselves with the best employees that money could buy (or that they could afford at the time). By delegating these menial tasks, they could spend their time building systems that would contribute to a prosperous, self-sustaining business.
How long would your business last if you weren’t there to work in it?
It’s been said that the true test of a business is how long it could survive on its own without any input from the owner/founder. If you build your business properly, you should eventually be able to leave for a period of time without affecting the bottom line.
Most certainly, you’re not going to achieve that unless you have leverage and you’ve built a strong network of systems within the business.
So what is leverage?
Leverage is the ability to use your resources in the most efficient and effective manner possible. Quite often, it means delegating tasks and moving up a level in your business pyramid. Remember, there are only so many hours in a day – you’ve got to figure out how to make the most effective use of them.
If you are working in your business at the moment, stop for a minute and think about how you can leverage your time. Think about how much money your hard work is actually creating.
How much is your time worth? Are you satisfied making $20 per hour doing menial work that could be delegated to an employee? Are you struggling to perform tasks that you’re not trained for? If you spend two hours doing something that could be done in one hour by an experienced employee, doesn’t it make sense to hire someone and free up your time to concentrate on what you are really good at – and that is growing your business?
One of the first steps in creating leverage is to start delegating responsibilities to others. This is critical to the health of your business in the long term. Although you may find it difficult to relinquish power, it gets easier with time. Eventually, you’ll wonder how you ran things by yourself.
Over time, as you gain experience in managing people, and your business starts creating more profit, you can reinvest more money and create more leverage for yourself. You may want to hire more staff, invest in equipment, buy some real estate – the possibilities are endless once you get the ball rolling.
So get out of the trenches as soon as possible and start creating leverage for your business. From there, the possibilities are endless.
Leave a Comment