The One Habit That Separates Busy Entrepreneurs from Strategic CEOs

Create time to work on your business and not just in it.

We've heard this line before—maybe too many times. It's one of those pieces of wisdom that hits us over the head so often that it just slips through our consciousness unnoticed.

This simple concept is a game-changer for any small business owner.

There's a long to-do list that needs to be done, and it probably keeps growing, but not all tasks are created equally. Setting aside time to work on your business is the leverage you need to create a competitive advantage. Prioritize it. Schedule it. Protect it.

Busyness vs. Productivity vs. Optimised Productivity

We're all operating our small businesses on this continuum. Are you creating value in your business or just spinning wheels? What does progress look like? Are your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and daily activity targets where you can see them daily? Are you using them as a litmus test for what is the highest priority for everyday?

Basic tools like the Eisenhower Matrix make it very simple to organize the chaos of overwhelm:

• important & urgent: tasks requiring immediate attention (e.g., client crises, pressing deadlines).

• Important & not urgent: strategic activities that contribute to long-term goals (e.g., business planning, relationship building).

• not important & urgent: tasks that can be delegated (e.g., routine emails, scheduling meetings).

• not important & not urgent: activities that are distractions and can be eliminated (e.g., excessive social media browsing -- we are all guity as charged! ).

  
  

Stop trying to do everything all at once, and suddenly there's time to strategically think about the business as an owner whose main goal is to create a valuable business asset.

Solve The Problems In Your Small Business Machine

The same way we step over the mess in our homes (or just push it aside) to get out the front door and rationalise that "we'll do it later" when we have time -- we do the same in business.

We must create time to do some maintenance work on our business machine.

Common areas of opportunity for small business owners:

Operations

These are things we have put a temporary band-aid on for way too long that are now inefficiencies in our processes. Duplication of efforts because we don't have a simple but clear process of: why? how? who? or what? (We're in the age of AI)

Marketing

We're doing a lot of different activities without a clear long-term plan at the core of our brand building. The immediate need for clients often leads us to do scrambled DIY marketing. However if we don't track our efforts and results we lose out on the opportunity to learn how the market is reacting to our messages.

Sales

We often don't have a proactive sales process. So we wait (and wait) for someone to book a call when we should actively seek out opportunities to sell our offer by pitching our services or products to new clients and old clients that we may serve another way.

Finance

How do we know if our pricing is optimum? It's not uncommon to base our prices on what other people are charging or even worse on what we think we would pay as opposed to understanding the value of our offer to the prospective client. Then there's taxes, cashflow, and budgets.

The list could go on, but we only need to tackle one thing at a time. That's why we schedule this time into our weekly calendars. #ProblemSolvingTime

Visionary Leadership

Entrepreneurs are dreamers by nature—we must be! We see the potential of things before they exist. This creativity that sparks innovative actions has to be guarded from the extinguishing winds of overwhelm, frustration, lack of rest, and burnout.

Create white space. Step outside of business mode.

Draw ideas and inspiration from different places: going out to eat, taking a walk, travelling, speaking to strangers, reading books, and studying new technologies at leisure. Fuel your interests and curiosities.

Although these may seem like frivolous activities, they possess the hidden agents that allow us to see our businesses with new eyes and possibilities.

The most powerful breakthroughs can come from non-business moments.

Lead your business into the future.

• What changes are happening in your niche or that will disrupt your business? Rather than being disrupted, how can you elevate your business from being irrelevant?

  For the coaches in our community, what does the "rise of the guide" mean for your business? What does the creation of personal coaching AI bots mean? How can you get ahead of change and provide the outcomes these changes create for your current clients?

• How can you create simpler, better, faster and more convenient results for your clients?

• What are you doing to incorporate AI into how you serve your customers?

• What matters to your ideal client TODAY? Not last year or 6 months ago. Are you speaking to their current pains and motivations in the language they use to think through the problem that you solve?

Change is constant. How can we adapt our offers to create more value for our clients. **This is the work that will move your business forward more than any other thing you can do. Test each idea on a small segment of your business before doing a complete overhaul.

Take smaller calculated risks

Step back and ask if everything you are doing is:

1. Does this add value my client can feel?

2. Am I capturing the real worth of my offer?

3. Is what I’m doing still relevant?

   As solo-business owners, we can be tempted to settle into routine, and we must resist sunken cost fallacy: We've put so much time, effort, and money into doing things this way.Change is inevitable—irrelevance is too high a cost to pay.

Innovation is your competitive edge.

Change is happening everywhere. Pick and choose things that have the potential to catapult your business into "rare air status". The best at something.

In the words of Oprah Winfrey, "Be so fantastic at what you do, that you can't be ignored."

Do it differently.

Do it scared.

Do it because your clients need it.

Do it because your future self will thank you.

“By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures." Proverbs 24: 3-4

I hope this article helps spark something that improves your small business.

Blessings!

Business Communications Strategist

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P.S. If you love what we're serving here at the Faith & Biz Blog, please subscribe for more gems to transform your entrepreneurship journey by sparking more Kingdom Entrepreneur thoughts. 

P.S.S If you're in the "I'm doing WAYYY too much, my head hurts🤕" phase, here's a quick video to walk you through some practical tips.