I am not talking about procrastination. In that sense, buying time for decision-making or for actions on important things is always the worst choice.
I am talking about actually ‘purchasing’ more time. If you realize, all other resources are limitless… money, people, methods, ideas and so on. The only limited resource is time. (Or probably not !)
Can you purchase time?
You have a choice of buying Other People’s Time. That is the only way to grow and make the business run without you. But before that you must ensure that your time is effectively utilized. Where to invest your time is the most crucial choice a business owner can make and that decides the fate of business. As a business coach our biggest value add probably is to make the business owners aware of their priorities, the sequence of actions and actually dedicating time for these tasks to achieve Time Mastery.
Imagine if you have to buy time everyday to live (just like you recharge a prepaid card) as in this Hollywood thriller In Time. If you are in such situation, would you spend your time the way you are spending now?
Understanding the 4 quadrants of Covey’s Time Matrix (Demand, Distraction, Delusion and Direction) will help you focus on the right priorities. To be able to buy other people’s time (or in simple words.. to hire good team), you must first invest your time in generating a good cash flow that will allow you to hire and pay great employees. And once you have hired great employees, then doing the work yourself is an awful choice. Here you must invest time to work with and through the team, or develop a system which they can use so that you don’t have to teach, instruct or monitor them every time.
Which area of your business you must invest your time presently? There are so many things to do, so many ideas, so many opportunities, so many challenges. How do you make that important decision? If you don’t make that decision and if you don’t make your default diary around it, you are more likely to react to situation than creating the desired one.
Are you ready to buy other people’s time?
Hiring team to delegate your work and create your second line is essential for growth and that’s no-brainer. What is important to know is ‘Have you completed 3 essential steps before hiring them? If not, you could be in the same boat as every other business owner who has developed a belief that ‘Good people are hard to find’ and end up burning out themselves.
The tips we share are a small part of what we do at our coaching sessions.
If you’d like to take the whole framework and install in your business, then do drop an email at sameer.waghode@expandusbusinesscoaching.com with subject line as “Scale Session” and we’ll reach out to you with all the details quickly.
