Much like many entrepreneurs, I labeled my busy-ness as a kind of badge of honor. Here's my story about how I changed that.
If the business operations are carried out in the same way as they were carried out when the business first started, then definitely there will be some processes and operations that need to be enhanced and automated. As a business owner for more than 2 years, I am thinking about the things that I had to change about myself when I first started my business. I had to think about new ways to solve my challenges. Most of my challenges were related to getting more time. I wanted more time in my life. I like my kids. I like hanging out with them. And that's my primary motivation to spend more time with my kids and less time working in my business. It doesn’t mean I don’t like working on my business, but working in my business is sometimes tedious.
My Awful Business Routine
When I first started working in my business, I had a mindset that business was like some sort of badge of honor. I used to get up at 5:00 AM, start working and keep working all the way until dinner time. After feeding the kids, I go back to work and consider this as my life. I believed that was cool. I was living with a false belief that I had to be involved in everything and busyness was cool. But sooner I realized that it was awful and a horrible way to live. With this daily routine, I was not moving forward and not much forward momentum happening in my business. Sooner I found out how to free myself from the equation. It wasn't until I figured out that I was the problem and I needed to not be involved in many things in order for the business to grow.
How did I start to change my Business Routine?
As soon as I realized that I did not need to be involved in everything and busyness was not cool, that's when I was able to start growing things. I started asking what can I get rid of today? So, I started solving what should not be part of my life. This is when I realized that I can earn time by implementing a new system that runs without me.
When my mindset and the sole focus shifted from doing everything by myself to finding new methods to run the business without me, then I started thinking and questioning what can I earn? What can I do to run my business without me? I started looking into how to write standard operating procedures (SOPs). I also bought a book that says how to write standard operating procedures. I read it and started to implement it, but the big issue was that I hated writing. It takes me an immense amount of time to write. In this stage, I realized that as I am horrible at writing, so I don’t have to write standard operating procedures myself. So, instead of writing, I started filming what I was doing. After that, I sent those recordings to my technical writer friend who turns them into step-by-step written PDF documents, and then I just edit those documents. With this approach, I created my SOPs. Now I could easily send those training documents to anyone who needs them. This way, I have performed the work efficiently, eventually saving a lot of time.
I have also started spending time listening to the mentors and letting other people listen to what I really liked. One of the guys that I started listening to is an online marketer named Russell Brunson. He is fabulous and brilliant. He said one thing out loud that our job is to come up with the big ideas and to find someone to do it. That is just what you have to do. You don’t have to do all the little stuff. This is the moral of today’s story that we have to start thinking and questioning our way of doing business and then find the time-efficient solutions and the right persons who can do those tasks efficiently. I hope this approach helps you too.
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