Time Management Expert, Event Speaker: Mark Lamendola
 

Time Tips: Small Business 001

Time Management Tips for Home Business Owners: How to Make More Money with Less Time & Energy

by Kevin Thompson, http://www.HomeBusinessShortcut.com

Many people equate hard work with success. They mistakenly believe if they work harder, they’ll eventually get everything they want in life. That’s only a myth. In fact, there’s absolutely NO correlation between how hard you work and how much money you put into your bank account. 

I’m living proof. 

I spent seven years of my life working as an Alaska Fisherman, one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. And let me tell you, it’s one heck of a grueling job considering the extreme weather conditions and the long hours. There’s no doubt I worked hard. 

Then in 1995 I was involved in a tragic accident on Alaska’s Bering Sea, and I almost lost my life. That’s when I decided I was done putting my life on the line for a measly paycheck. So, I returned home from Alaska, excited to start my own cleaning business. 

The excitement ended when I found myself spending the next year of my life working 16-hour days. And still barely make ends meet. 

I thought working as an Alaska Fisherman was hard, but it didn’t hold a candle to running a cleaning business. 

I invested over $80,000 of my own money just to open the doors to my new business. On a typical day, I’d work in people’s homes for 10-12 hours, then I’d have to come back home, get the equipment ready for the next day, do the paperwork for the day, and then return phone calls to people who wanted to schedule cleaning appointments. 

By the time the day was finished, I’d worked 15-16 hours, and I was doing this six to seven days a week. Only problem was, after a year of maintaining this grueling work schedule, I still wasn’t making any money. 

In fact, I was barely making ends meet. I was almost ready to throw in the towel on all my dreams and aspirations of owning a successful business. Then, I met a man who changed my business mindset forever. He showed me how to transform my cleaning business into one of the most successful by-referral-only companies in the Seattle area. This incredible transformation gave me the confidence to know that I could achieve ANYTHING I set my mind to. 

That’s when I decided to create an automated business at GetMoldSolutions.com. Within a short time, this new business was SO profitable that on April 19, 2004, I sold my cleaning company, and retired from manual labor… FOREVER! 

And now, it seems that the LESS I work – the MORE I make. 

Here are my top 5 strategies to help you manage your time & make more money with less time and energy:

 

1. Don’t worry about getting all your ducks in a row. In fact, most of the time as an aspiring entrepreneur you’re going to have a fair amount of chaos in your life. Don’t get scared. Chaos can be a GOOD thing, when you know how to manage it effectively. 

2. Make yourself a short to-do list each day. The key word here is “short.” Don’t overload yourself with a million things to do. Choose one to three key tasks. When you complete them, call it a day, even if you finish your tasks in record time. 

3. Ensure that one of your three tasks is a high income-producing task. Get one thing accomplished each day that will have a positive result on your cash flow once completed. 

4. Operate at your peak level and use this time to work on your “high income-producing” task. Don’t let anything distract you from accomplishing this one task. 

5. Understand that you’ll NEVER have the time to accomplish everything you want to do. As your business continues to flourish, more opportunities will become available. Only take advantage of the best opportunities that will help you make more money with little time and effort, while saying “no” to all the rest.

 

Over the last several years I’ve shared these strategies and my story with countless home business owners just like you. After hearing it, they too have catapulted their successes, and now have a similar story to share. I look forward to hearing your story.

 

About the Author:

 

Home Business Expert, Kevin Thompson sells real products and services from the comfort of his home to real people on a daily basis. Now you can get your copy of his FREE report, “The 3-Step System To Automatic Income Riches” and make more money than you ever dreamed of while spending more quality time with your family. For your free copy go to: http://www.HomeBusinessShortcut.com/report.html

 

 
A great way many businesses are managing time is using software. There are many forms of time and attendance software which allows managers to track and monitor employees time usage.
 

More thoughts on time management

The phrase "time management" is an unfortunate language quirk. You can't really manage time. It just is. You can't gain time, create time, or even lose time. Time is what it is, regardless of what we do.

It would be better to say "time allocation" or "activity management" "time usage" or some other phraseology to indicate that it's not time itself you're managing but how you use the time that exists. But we'll use the common terminology here to avoid confusion.

Some things time management is not:

  • Being more efficient. Suppose you become very efficient at making buggy whips. Does this fact mean you are managing your time well?
  • Getting more done in a given amount of time. Getting more done of what? And to what degree of quality? If you rake the leaves on a lawn from one side to the other all day long, does that mean you are a good time manager?
  • Being able to juggle multiple priorities. Instead of juggling priorities, assign priorities. First tend to the urgent things, then the most important things.
  • Mastering multi-tasking. This concept conflicts with what we know about the human brain. If you buy into this self-defeating, time-wasting, quality-killing ideology, you might also be interested in practicing solo flight by flapping your arms frantically.
  • Working faster. No, this mode is how you make mistakes that you subsequently have to spend more time fixing.

Some things good time management involves:

  • Deciding what to do. This is trickier than it sounds. Which is why there are time management experts.
  • Deciding what not to do. This is even trickier than deciding what to do. Which is why there are time managers and why discipline is a huge, huge factor in accomplishing this.
  • Deciding what to do when, and in what order. In essence, prioritization.
  • Determining the scope, goals, and metrics for each activity you undertake. In this area, we the find most room for improvement. Precision here allows you to avoid waste on the one hand, and falling short on the other.
  • Planning out the work, task, project, or activity such that you determine the necessary steps to quality completion. That is, what must you do to meet the intended goal and quality metrics?
  • Identifying unnecessary steps. Get this right, and you can cut your wasted hours significantly.
  • Figuring out what resources to use. Not all resources applicable to a task are equal. Picking the right tool for the job saves time, improves quality, and makes life less stressful.

We've highlighted only some of the factors involved in good time management. We actually teach extreme time management, which is a methodology that allows you to make effective use of your time almost second nature. You don't need a complicated system. Our system puts many of the variables on autopilot, so you have more time to do what you need to do. Our system goes way beyond most other systems in results, yet is far simpler.

Contact us for a presentation to your organization: comments @ mindconnection.com (remove the spaces after pasting into your e-mail client's "to" box.