You can expand virtually every aspect of your business. You can hire more people, increase your sales, buy more company vehicles, open additional locations, introduce new products and services and expand to new markets.
The one asset you can never expand is your time, so you have to invest it wisely. When you invest time doing one thing, you cannot invest the same time doing something else. Make sure you invest your time doing things that provide the greatest return.
Consider the hypothetical case of Pete the Plumber. Pete has a thriving business in Tucson. He is really good with his clients and they love him. He is respected in the industry and builds great referring relationships with home builders, remodelers and other strategic partners. He gets almost every job he bids. Marketing and sales come naturally to Pete, and it is what he does best.
Pete decides to save some money and personally handles other aspects in his business like website design, human resources, bookkeeping and accounting, blogging and a host of other tasks. Pete invests hours of his time learning these tasks. He is not proficient at any of them, so it takes a lot of his time to complete every month. Meanwhile, every hour Pete spends doing these things prevents him from building new referring relationships and generating new business for his company. Did Pete really save money by doing these services himself? Probably not. If Pete hired those services out, he could have spent that time doing what he does best, and grown his business exponentially.
Here are some tips to maximize the return on the time you invest in your business:
1. Do what you do well, and hire professionals to do the rest.
2. Have your entire staff take a class on time management.
3. Hire a professional to analyze your business and develop time saving systems and processes.
4. Investigate and invest in time saving tools and technology for your business.
