hi I’m Evan Carmichael and welcome to a
special video edition of ask Evan today
we’re going to look at one of the most
common questions that I get asked by
entrepreneurs how can I be more
productive so we’re going to look at how
you can eliminate automate and delegate
your way to success here we go getting
started the first thing you need to do
is make a list of all the tasks that you
do on a regular basis this means
everything from selling to customers
work with suppliers in visayan managing
your cash flow and so on the second step
is to bundle all your tasks into common
themes for exempt making cold calls
attending networking events and doing
your email campaigns can all be on their
sales and marketing pain your staff
building your clients and keeping track
of your expenses can all be called admin
continue classifying all your tasks
until you have five to seven main
categories the third step is to figure
out how much time you’re spending in
each category for example you might
spend 20 hours a week on sales marketing
10 hours a week on admin and so on it’s
easy to improve your performance once
you start measuring it so make sure you
go through this exercise to determine
where your time is currently being spent
once you know how your week is broken up
we can work on freeing up your time for
the CEO tasks from doing this exercise
with many entrepreneurs I usually find
that the one area we find that we spend
too much time on is admit I’ve never met
an entrepreneur who loves doing the
admin side of their business we tend to
want to focus on the tasks that we like
we find interesting and that make us
money who wants to spend time figuring
out your tax calculations I’m going to
show you how you can eliminate automate
and delegate to reduce your time or in
the admin’s you can focus on your
business growth you can use these same
steps for any of your business areas but
I’m going to focus on admin because it
seems to be the biggest area of concern
for most entrepreneurs
step one eliminate as business owners we
never seem to have enough time in the
day to get everything done and in other
entrepreneurs in the rocket the super
started how does that happen we all have
the same 24 hours in a day the answer
starts with illumination illumination is
at the core of every successful business
you have to focus on what you’re really
good at what drives your business
forward and what you’re legally required
to do in order to stay in business
everything else should be eliminated
spending too much time on admin look at
the tasks that you do on a regular basis
do you actually need to do them yes we
need to pay our staff balance our books
invoice customers etc but are there
other tasks that you’re doing that
aren’t absolutely necessary we tend to
do things because it’s supposed to be
done that way or because someone showed
us how they do it but that’s not that
was the best way sometimes the best
option is to do nothing here’s an
example I used to take detailed notes at
all my meetings and then send a nicely
formatted summary of the meeting minutes
to everyone it took me almost as much
time to create the minutes as it did to
actually be in the meeting but I thought
it was a high value add thing to do
after a particularly long meeting I
decided not to send the minutes you know
what happened nothing nobody asked about
them after swallowing my pride I realize
that most people didn’t even open my
minutes and if they did they only took a
quick glance at them they kept their own
notes wrote down what was important to
them how many hours did I waste on these
minutes thinking I was providing a
high-value service when nobody really
cared too many to count but I don’t do
it anymore I instantly had less admin
work and I could spend more time growing
my business take a look at your list and
see what you can eliminate just because
everyone else does it or because you’ve
always done it that way it doesn’t mean
you have to continue doing it
step 2 oughta me if you want to squeeze
more hours out of your day without
coming into the office in the earlier
the answer lies in automation we’ve
already eliminated the non essential
tasks but if you’re like most
entrepreneurs there are still a lot of
tasks left on your administ have to get
done what we’ve got to do now is find
you the tools that can get the same
quality results or better in far less
time a great example is accounting
software depending on what study you
believe between 65 and eighty percent of
entrepreneurs don’t use accounting
software that number blows my mind
instead entrepreneurs to all their
accounting on a spreadsheet or by hand
want a quick way to boost your
productivity and save you hours of
frustration by an accounting software
package for starters check out simply
accounting using this software you can
prepare bill payments and invoices track
your cash flow revenue and expenses
track customers and suppliers
automatically calculate government sales
tax write checks genet reports it even
supports multi lingual functions how
much time do you waste doing any of
those tasks when it can all be done
easily for you my favorite feature is
that my bank allows me to download my
bank and visa statements directly into
the software from their website no more
manually typing in each expense into an
Excel spreadsheet it downloads
everything in categorizes everything for
me and I’m done less time spent on admin
and
my business I know what everything I
possibly can on my visa is set a pain
cash just so that the accounting process
is so much easier simply counting starts
at six nine dollars and it’s one of the
best investments you can make into your
business you can even get a free trial
that’s risk-free for 30 days if you want
to test it out and that’s just one
example look through all your admin
tasks and see what software and tools
you can use to make the tasks more
automated we need to raise your
standards and value your time properly
if you want to be a successful
entrepreneur making a $69 purchase isn’t
an expense it’s an investment into your
business to give you better results and
free up your time step 3 delegate the
last step the successful time management
for entrepreneurs is to delegate even
after you’ve eliminated the non
essential tasks and automated the other
tasks through software tools you still
got those final nagging tasks that have
to get done what you need to ask
yourself is am I the best person to do
this for admin tasks the answer is
usually no but something takes five
hours away from your month every month
then why not delegate that function so
you can focus on your business growth
yes it’s an expense but now you’re a CEO
and you need to be doing CEO tasks not
admin tasks if you only focus on the
cost and try to do everything yourself
you’ll always be limited in how much you
can grow because you only have so many
hours in the day you can gain more hours
by leveraging a time of other people
that’s the secret you don’t have to do
everything yourself look at your admin
tasks list and see what’s left some of
them might be things that require a
specific skill set for example you might
hire an accountant or bookkeeper for
some of your financial tasks other tasks
you might be able to hire a part-time
worker to help you the first person I
hired in my first software company
worked for one hour per day for me on
admin tasks who’s boring work that I
didn’t enjoy
importantly and took up an hour off my
time so I can focus on other projects I
didn’t have the budget to hire someone
full-time but I could afford one hour
per day that freedom gave me the extra
hour to spend growing my business which
is exactly what I did and then I could
afford to hire him for more hours to
take even more admin tasks on my plate
you don’t have to start with full-time
staff I’ve had great success by using
interns from various colleges and even
high schools I’ve also used odesk calm
and alliance com for work that can be
done by someone who doesn’t physically
have to be in my office both are
excellent resources and you can hire
skilled labor for highly competitive
wages on an hourly or contract basis
effective delegation is a final set
deferring of your time the focus on the
opportunities that are ahead of you and
help you reach your full potential as an
entrepreneur the order of eliminate
automate delegate is really important
eliminate is first you don’t want to
automate or delegate something that can
be eliminated because it’s a
non-productive task automate is next you
don’t want to delegate something that
can be automated because it’s more
expensive and more prone to error follow
the steps I laid out to put your regular
tasks into groups and then eliminate
automate and delegate everything away
until you working only on the top
priority CEO tasks it all starts with a
first little step
thank you for joining me for this
special video edition of ask Evan if you
like the video please give it a thumbs
up I’d also love to hear your thoughts
and comments if you want to leave a
comment below and stay tuned to the next
episode
special video edition of ask Evan today
we’re going to look at one of the most
common questions that I get asked by
entrepreneurs how can I be more
productive so we’re going to look at how
you can eliminate automate and delegate
your way to success here we go getting
started the first thing you need to do
is make a list of all the tasks that you
do on a regular basis this means
everything from selling to customers
work with suppliers in visayan managing
your cash flow and so on the second step
is to bundle all your tasks into common
themes for exempt making cold calls
attending networking events and doing
your email campaigns can all be on their
sales and marketing pain your staff
building your clients and keeping track
of your expenses can all be called admin
continue classifying all your tasks
until you have five to seven main
categories the third step is to figure
out how much time you’re spending in
each category for example you might
spend 20 hours a week on sales marketing
10 hours a week on admin and so on it’s
easy to improve your performance once
you start measuring it so make sure you
go through this exercise to determine
where your time is currently being spent
once you know how your week is broken up
we can work on freeing up your time for
the CEO tasks from doing this exercise
with many entrepreneurs I usually find
that the one area we find that we spend
too much time on is admit I’ve never met
an entrepreneur who loves doing the
admin side of their business we tend to
want to focus on the tasks that we like
we find interesting and that make us
money who wants to spend time figuring
out your tax calculations I’m going to
show you how you can eliminate automate
and delegate to reduce your time or in
the admin’s you can focus on your
business growth you can use these same
steps for any of your business areas but
I’m going to focus on admin because it
seems to be the biggest area of concern
for most entrepreneurs
step one eliminate as business owners we
never seem to have enough time in the
day to get everything done and in other
entrepreneurs in the rocket the super
started how does that happen we all have
the same 24 hours in a day the answer
starts with illumination illumination is
at the core of every successful business
you have to focus on what you’re really
good at what drives your business
forward and what you’re legally required
to do in order to stay in business
everything else should be eliminated
spending too much time on admin look at
the tasks that you do on a regular basis
do you actually need to do them yes we
need to pay our staff balance our books
invoice customers etc but are there
other tasks that you’re doing that
aren’t absolutely necessary we tend to
do things because it’s supposed to be
done that way or because someone showed
us how they do it but that’s not that
was the best way sometimes the best
option is to do nothing here’s an
example I used to take detailed notes at
all my meetings and then send a nicely
formatted summary of the meeting minutes
to everyone it took me almost as much
time to create the minutes as it did to
actually be in the meeting but I thought
it was a high value add thing to do
after a particularly long meeting I
decided not to send the minutes you know
what happened nothing nobody asked about
them after swallowing my pride I realize
that most people didn’t even open my
minutes and if they did they only took a
quick glance at them they kept their own
notes wrote down what was important to
them how many hours did I waste on these
minutes thinking I was providing a
high-value service when nobody really
cared too many to count but I don’t do
it anymore I instantly had less admin
work and I could spend more time growing
my business take a look at your list and
see what you can eliminate just because
everyone else does it or because you’ve
always done it that way it doesn’t mean
you have to continue doing it
step 2 oughta me if you want to squeeze
more hours out of your day without
coming into the office in the earlier
the answer lies in automation we’ve
already eliminated the non essential
tasks but if you’re like most
entrepreneurs there are still a lot of
tasks left on your administ have to get
done what we’ve got to do now is find
you the tools that can get the same
quality results or better in far less
time a great example is accounting
software depending on what study you
believe between 65 and eighty percent of
entrepreneurs don’t use accounting
software that number blows my mind
instead entrepreneurs to all their
accounting on a spreadsheet or by hand
want a quick way to boost your
productivity and save you hours of
frustration by an accounting software
package for starters check out simply
accounting using this software you can
prepare bill payments and invoices track
your cash flow revenue and expenses
track customers and suppliers
automatically calculate government sales
tax write checks genet reports it even
supports multi lingual functions how
much time do you waste doing any of
those tasks when it can all be done
easily for you my favorite feature is
that my bank allows me to download my
bank and visa statements directly into
the software from their website no more
manually typing in each expense into an
Excel spreadsheet it downloads
everything in categorizes everything for
me and I’m done less time spent on admin
and
my business I know what everything I
possibly can on my visa is set a pain
cash just so that the accounting process
is so much easier simply counting starts
at six nine dollars and it’s one of the
best investments you can make into your
business you can even get a free trial
that’s risk-free for 30 days if you want
to test it out and that’s just one
example look through all your admin
tasks and see what software and tools
you can use to make the tasks more
automated we need to raise your
standards and value your time properly
if you want to be a successful
entrepreneur making a $69 purchase isn’t
an expense it’s an investment into your
business to give you better results and
free up your time step 3 delegate the
last step the successful time management
for entrepreneurs is to delegate even
after you’ve eliminated the non
essential tasks and automated the other
tasks through software tools you still
got those final nagging tasks that have
to get done what you need to ask
yourself is am I the best person to do
this for admin tasks the answer is
usually no but something takes five
hours away from your month every month
then why not delegate that function so
you can focus on your business growth
yes it’s an expense but now you’re a CEO
and you need to be doing CEO tasks not
admin tasks if you only focus on the
cost and try to do everything yourself
you’ll always be limited in how much you
can grow because you only have so many
hours in the day you can gain more hours
by leveraging a time of other people
that’s the secret you don’t have to do
everything yourself look at your admin
tasks list and see what’s left some of
them might be things that require a
specific skill set for example you might
hire an accountant or bookkeeper for
some of your financial tasks other tasks
you might be able to hire a part-time
worker to help you the first person I
hired in my first software company
worked for one hour per day for me on
admin tasks who’s boring work that I
didn’t enjoy
importantly and took up an hour off my
time so I can focus on other projects I
didn’t have the budget to hire someone
full-time but I could afford one hour
per day that freedom gave me the extra
hour to spend growing my business which
is exactly what I did and then I could
afford to hire him for more hours to
take even more admin tasks on my plate
you don’t have to start with full-time
staff I’ve had great success by using
interns from various colleges and even
high schools I’ve also used odesk calm
and alliance com for work that can be
done by someone who doesn’t physically
have to be in my office both are
excellent resources and you can hire
skilled labor for highly competitive
wages on an hourly or contract basis
effective delegation is a final set
deferring of your time the focus on the
opportunities that are ahead of you and
help you reach your full potential as an
entrepreneur the order of eliminate
automate delegate is really important
eliminate is first you don’t want to
automate or delegate something that can
be eliminated because it’s a
non-productive task automate is next you
don’t want to delegate something that
can be automated because it’s more
expensive and more prone to error follow
the steps I laid out to put your regular
tasks into groups and then eliminate
automate and delegate everything away
until you working only on the top
priority CEO tasks it all starts with a
first little step
thank you for joining me for this
special video edition of ask Evan if you
like the video please give it a thumbs
up I’d also love to hear your thoughts
and comments if you want to leave a
comment below and stay tuned to the next
episode
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