A few days back I wrote about not having time to think and how I wanted to work towards cultivating more thinking about business. I started analyzing my daily routine to identify the holes in my workflow that led to the lack of quality thinking. I realized that I was not focusing much on activities that counted towards business growth. I was too busy with mind numbing drone like tasks day in and day out.
This meant that I did not have the time to take a step back and contemplate on the business issues at hand. Like every entrepreneur out there my primary focus should be business growth. I should delegate everything else to some one who can do it better and with in my financial contraints and budget. Instead I saw that I was trying to do too much myself to save what I though was money.
But like the old adage “save now, pay later”, I was saving little but losing a lot. I was saving a few bucks on the mundane tasks but losing big in the long run because I was not focusing on business development. I was paying with opportunity cost and business stagnation. I was saving now but will be paying later as the business starts to stagnate and lose it’s momentum and ultimately suffer big time.
When I started looking at what I was focusing, I realized I was focusing on a lot of little things. I know that the best thing I can do it not focus on what I do but what I don’t do. I need to eliminate as many tasks as I can from my workflow. What ever I can delegate I should and ensure I focus on what I don’t do.
Things that every entrepreneur can delegate are customer communication, project management, SEO work, social media management (ex: Facebook page or Twitter account), web design and any number of other admin tasks. It is important to think of the opportunity cost of you spending your time on a particular task instead of working on new ideas and angles for your business.
I used think that social media management or SEO work was business development. I now realize that I was wrong. Business development is not marketing or SEO. It is more about strategic thinking and understanding where your business is, your customers and where you need to be. It is about understanding your market segment, the trends and the eventualities. It is making moves that keep your business ahead of the curve or bucking down trends. It is about building partnerships and relations – both with your customers and potential business partners.
I will now create a list of all the tasks that I can delegate and then find the resources to help me take them off my plate. Hopefully it will then give me the time to step back and engage in strategic thinking. Of course, this means in the short term that I would have to invest or reduce my profit margins. But in the long terms I think it will pay for itself multi-fold!
What are your thoughts about this? What are you focusing on that you shouldn’t be? Please share in the comments below.
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