I am often asked what I wish I would have done differently in the beginning as an entrepreneur, and my answer has always remained the same.
I would have prioritized my time.
As an entrepreneur, it is easy to lose yourself to the idea that you have to do it all and you have to do it all alone. And building a business is not for the faint of heart!
It takes time and energy to bring your dreams into reality. It’s an investment you won’t regret… But what if it doesn’t need to be as difficult as you are making it?
If I’m being honest, I hustle, and I hustle hard.
>>But I’ve also come to learn that time is the most finite resource in the world. No matter what you do, you can never make more of it.<<
That’s a reality that’s hard to accept, but you must.
And then the question becomes, “How will you choose to spend your time?”
There are no right or wrong answers, simply the one that speaks to your soul and lights it on fire (after all, we only have one life to live).
But, if you want to spend time on more important matters than you currently are, here are my 4 best tips to maximize time. These 4 tips are the things I wish I had implemented in my business from the beginning.
Let’s dive in!
#1. Consolidation
You don’t have to spend a dime to begin freeing up some of your time.
It’s scientifically proven that every time you change tasks or get distracted from the one at hand, you lose significant amounts of time to get back on track and in the groove.
When you can consolidate similar tasks, you save yourself the mental bandwidth of “getting in the zone” and produce better results in less time.
This may look like:
- Writing all of your social media captions for the week on a Sunday afternoon.
- Batching your Reels creation once a week on Fridays.
- Reserving Monday mornings for meetings each week.
This can also easily extend beyond business and into your personal life as well:
- Meal prepping lunches for the week on Sundays.
- Running all of your errands on a Thursday.
- Setting aside a certain hour of the day to make and return all phone calls.
The possibilities are endless once you start looking for them!
#2. Automation
Next, utilize tools that have been specifically created to make your life easier. We live in a phenomenal digital age where we don’t need to use our brainpower on things that software or machines can do for us.
This may look like:
- Using a project management system to house all of the things you need to do.
- Setting calendar appointments for reminders (don’t forget recurring ones too!).
- Scheduling blog posts, newsletters, or text messages to post at a certain time.
#3. Mentorship
Once you’ve started consolidating and automating, you can consider investing money (a renewable resource) to save time (a finite one). This might include hiring a mentor who has done what you hope to do. This investment saves you the time it takes to learn something new.
As the saying goes, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” But someone who is an expert certainly will know what you should or shouldn’t do to get the results you want. Mentorship may just be the number one thing I wish I had invested in sooner.
#4. Outsourcing
Finally, remember that you are ultimately only one person and you only have so many hours in a day. You will likely reach a point where it is humanly impossible to continue to do it all single-handedly. In which case, congratulations on having a business that has expanded and will continue to do so!
When you reach that point, it’s time to hire your first team member. But, it doesn’t need to be as intimidating as you think. In fact, I created a resource to help you do just that. Learn How to Hire Your First Team Member and gain back some of your valuable time! Simply click >>HERE<< to download it now.
