Are You Working

Too Many Hours

In Your Business?

Many Business Owners Feel Like They Have Bought A Job...

TIME

One of the 4 frustrations of Business Owners ‘

Where are you spending your time in your Business?

There are three key areas where you can spend time in a business.

Technician... doing the stuff
Manager... doing the management stuff
Entrepreneur/Strategist... the business owner doing the strategic stuff

Most business owners spend the majority of their time as the Technician, maybe a brief moment or two in the Manager zone and very little if any in the Strategic zone. The tasks most focus on could and should be done by staff at a relatively low hourly rate.

So every time you do these tasks you cant be valued higher than your staff because you're doing the same things as them. You need to develop ‘some pain’ around this so you can concentrate on the tasks that have a higher dollar value.

Are you focusing on the important areas of your business or trapped in the day to day challenges?

Addressing the frustration of Time will impact all areas of your life. More time to grow the Business, Leisure Time, Family Time, Hobbies, Travel, the list goes on.

Call To Action

The Two Ingredients To Time Mastery. Urgent and Important

Learning from my late mentor Steven Covey the author of "The 7 secrets of highly effective people", everything you do will be either Urgent or Important.

A business owner needs to be in the ZONE, focusing on Not Urgent but Important.

But here is the problem.... because it's not urgent it gets put off until tomorrow or the next day or maybe the day after that....

Not Urgent and Important

These tasks don’t have any urgency but they are important. This is the easiest category to avoid simply because it doesn’t have any urgency. This is where the Entrepreneur/Strategist needs to live! Here is where all those things that you know you need to do are, but you just haven’t got around to doing them yet; Documenting a Business Plan, Marketing Plan, Systemising the Business, Training the Team, Family Time, Fitness Time, Planning, Learning, Attending Seminars, Reading Business Books. These get put off until tomorrow, next week, next month.

This is the category known as the ‘Z’ Zone.

Understanding the Time Target

This changed everything for me, both personally and in my business. I quickly discovered that I was spending NO TIME in the ZONE..... 'Not Urgent but Important.' The guys taught me that everything that is important is in the ZONE but because it has no urgency it gets put off. Business planning, tracking financials, setting budgets and targets, training the team, health and fitness, time with family.... the list goes on.

I started by blocking 5 hours a week of ZONE time in my calendar and every week I keep increasing it. I now have the time to implement everything I'm being taught by Bruce and Steve plus I'm back at the gym which I'd been putting off for years.

Anita, Home Decor Retail, Adelaide

I'd bought a low paying job...

You can imagine my reaction as a hot headed Electrician when Bruce said to me, "your biggest problem is you know how to do the electrical work, you would have been better buying a plumbing business." Initially, I thought he was joking until he explained that if I had a plumbing business I'd have to recruit plumbers to do the jobs and my focus would be running the business. Because I'd bought and electrical business, instead of running the business I was crawling around under houses or up in roof cavities doing the work. The business was been neglected and all I'd done was buy myself a low paying job.

Growing a team and putting the systems in place so we delivered consistently became the key focus. Now, 12 months down the track the business employs 3 full time sparkies and 1 apprentice. I'm still on the tools around 50% of the time but this is reducing month on month.

It's a pity you don't get taught how to run a business as part of your apprenticeship. My business now has a strategic plan to move forward and grow and the future now looks great!

Ben, Electrical Contracting, Elizabeth SA

Long hours and low profits

I had 3-4 employees, a home office and projects worth $15-250K. I also worked a lot of long hours!

Orton Building has been with Steve for nearly 4 years and he has been a great Coach, now Mentor.

He has helped my wife and I with all aspects of our business from mindset, problem solving, recruiting the right people and developing our systems and processes to allow us to forecast, goal set and take the business where we want it to be.

Jason Builder, Qld

Let's Look At Bruce's Food Businesses Days...

"I was spending in excess of one hundred hours a week as the ‘Technician’ in my business.

Let me explain. There are three key areas where you can spend time in a business.

Technician...doing the stuff
Manager...doing the management stuff Entrepreneur/Strategist...the business owner doing the strategic stuff.

Almost all my time was as the Technician, maybe a brief moment or two in the Manager zone and zero in the Strategic zone. The tasks I was focusing on could and should have been done by my staff at a relatively low hourly rate.

The big learning for me was that every time I did these tasks I could be valued no higher than my staff because I was doing the same things as them. I needed to develop ‘some plan’ around this so that I could concentrate on the tasks that had a higher dollar value.

I had to snap myself out of my state of DENIAL and start focussing on the important stuff, the areas of my business that generated real returns.

So my time was made up of 95% Technician time and maybe 5% Management time and zero Entrepreneur/Strategist time working on my business doing the critical things. I’d heard that business owners should spend some time working on their business but didn’t understand what was meant by that. Given what I know now, I firmly believe working on your business should account for 95% of the business owner’s time. My time then, was completely the wrong way around as would be the case with a very high percentage of business owners.

Can you fix this instantly?

In some cases, maybe. My recommendation is to do it gradually. If you could get it to 50% working ‘in’ the business and 50% working ‘on’ the business say, within the next six to twelve months, then I can almost guarantee you two things will occur

You’ll have a better work/life balance.
Your Business will be running better and more profitably.

When you get it to 95% ‘on’ and little to no time ‘in’, then you have a business that works without you! I bet you just asked yourself, “Is that really possible, to have a business that works predictably and profitably without me?”

You can imagine my reaction when I was told that my businesses could eventually get to that stage. Yeah the “I KNOW” was working overtime plus a whole lot of emotions such as “MY BUSINESS IS DIFFERENT”, “THAT WON’T WORK HERE”, “I AM MY BUSINESS”, “WHO WOULD SERVE THE CUSTOMERS?”, “THEY WOULDN’T NEED ME ANYMORE”, “WHAT WOULD I DO?” and a whole lot more.