Five tips to get back at least 5 hours per week.

There are loads of things that are vying for our attention every day. Some of those things are of great benefit to us and our business. However, there are many things that waste our time energy and money. In this short article, I will share the major 5 time drains that I have experienced personally and have helped many of my clients overcome in the Hospitality industry.

These are simple things that without being aware of them can seem not to be important at all. However, what we do with our time will determine what we get from our lives and business.

The hard reality of being a business owner is there is only one person who can grow your business and that’s you. Of course there are many people who can help you, guide you, teach you, coach you, give you excellent information and learnings. But all of this is fruitless if you can’t make the time to implement it.

We all want to find more time but the reality of life is we will always have more to do than time to do it. We need to learn what to say yes to, and what is not the best use of our time. How we deploy our time will always have an impact on the results we achieve.

There are 4 ways time can be deployed:

• Use it.
• Spend it.
• Invest it.
• Waste it.

Using it, is when we are doing things that need to be done, usually work activities.

Spend it, is when we are doing the things we like to do.

Investing it, is where we put time into things that will improve our situation to deliver better results long-term, rarely a quick fix.

And wasting it. Doing things that have no or low value and don’t move us forward in anyway. This is where far too many of us loose out. We end up having, fair to good results, instead of great and excellent results. When we finally realise time is not a renewable resource, we start to pay attention to what we need to change to better our lives and our business.

Let me share with you from my 25 plus years in the hospitality industry the common key areas that time is deployed ineffectively.

1. UPWARD DELEGATION

This can and is a huge time killer. Most business owners are the best at everything in their operation. This can be your biggest problem! It becomes a time killer though when team members keep coming with small business problems that the senior people FEEL they need to fix for them. There are a couple of problems here.

The person coming with the problem won’t be able to fix it next time it happens as they won’t have the confidence to deal with it. Even worse than that, we are taking away an opportunity for the person to learn and for us to teach, empower and help them grow.

The next time someone comes with a challenge, ask them ‘What do you think you should do about that?’ This will cause a bit of a stir as it has never been asked before. It will put and give some responsibility on to the person and this alone can help grow their confidence.

I have found from experience that when you ask this usually the team member is well able to deal with the challenge and may even have a better solution than the one you would give them.

Give them the opportunity to learn and grow and empower them. When you do this, you will save loads of time. You move away from dealing with small matters. You free up more of your time to deal with the more valuable things like growing your customer base, your revenue and profits.

ACTION: Take a step back, always give the team member an opportunity to tell you what they would do to solve the challenge. Many times it will be better than what you would have thought of. If it is, give them permission to carry it out. If it is not explain to them what they should do. Ask “what do you understand by what I have said to you” (avoid asking do you understand as this leads to the nodding dog of yes when really inside it’s a no)

Then ask this final question, “what you will do now to improve this or to deal with this matter “Once the action is in line with your standards get out their way and let them at it. Before they leave ask them to let you know how they got on so you can encourage them and help them overcome any errors. This will promote responsibility and will help your team grow as people it will also remove many time draining little fires that you usually have to put out all too often only to see them flair up again a few weeks later. Estimated time back 1 -3 hours per week.

 

2. REP MEETINGS

This can be a huge waste of time. 80% of rep meetings are only to secure the week’s order which can be done over the phone, online, email, fax, text etc. What can and does happen regularly, reps come in have a coffee shoot the breeze. It’s nice and these people are usually really nice and friendly.

They are however, taking time away from more valuable activates. Refuse to meet with reps unless they have something new to bring to the table that can help you make more sales, be more profitable or open a new revenue centre. Protect your time, they will be ok once you’re still buying from them.

ACTION:

Schedule a sit down with reps periodically to discuss prices and new offers. Ensure you keep the channels of communication open on your terms. Remove the ones that just pop in every week for a chat as the chat always takes up more time than anticipated. It takes you away from what you were doing and it takes a bit of time to get back into what you were doing if at all. Ask them to keep you posted of new products of interest and pricing via email and then you can decide if it’s worth it to you and your business to meet them to discuss the options. Estimated time back 1-3 Hours

3. TRYING TO DO EVERYTHING YOURSELF

This is where your to do list seems like an ever-growing mountain of things to do. Even after a great days work you can sometimes feel you still have too much to do and you probably have. There are many things that don’t need the level of thinking of owners and senior managers . Yet owner’s and managers still do way too much when they could teach team members and delegate many activities to lighten the load.

When you spend time with your crew teaching them, they feel more valued. They take on more responsibility. Releasing you to get back to the higher value work of getting more customers and growing your business. Not everyone wants extra responsibility but the ones that do usually develop into leading team members.

ACTION: Review any given week and write out all you have been doing yourself. What time it took. The value to the business when done. Could someone else on the team do it? Are the tools ready for someone else to do? This is where you can start to remove some activities from your over flowing desk and get your team doing more for you to release you to do higher value activities. If you would like our time value calculator worksheet where to help you go to our resources page on our website and download it. Estimated time back 1-5 hours

 

4. SOCIAL MEDIA

Is a great tool when used for social interaction with your customers? This is where you post things of relevance to your audience and build better relationships. However, many of us spend hours looking through feeds that have no benefit or at our competitors and others just wasting time.  Social media I believe can also have a damaging effect. People only put up the best of what they want the world to see. This can lead us to believe that everyone but is having a great time all the time while we are not. Don’t be fooled by this and avoid trying to keep up with the Jones’s keep up instead with your own growth and development.

ACTION: Schedule the time you will market on your social media platforms. Learn how to do bulk actions. When you get used to Facebook you can schedule your week of posts ahead of time saving you having to look every day. Estimated time back 1-3 hours

5. PROCRASTINATION / Putting off what is valuable.

This is when we keep putting things off. This can be very dangerous as at some point the chickens comes home to roost. Always try your best to do things as fast as possible so that you are always moving forward. Write your list of things to do, then work on what is the most important thing.

You will never get everything done but we can always do the most important thing. Stephen Covey said when it come to be being effective “The Main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing” In other words work on what is most important to you not the trivial things that have no value.

The reality for us all is we have the same 24 hours a day as everyone else usually 16 waking hours. How we deploy them will determine what are results are.

ACTION: Write it, plan it, Schedule it, Prioritise it and Just do it. If we always wait to when we feel like doing something we will be waiting a very long time. Equally learn what you will say no to. The word no might be the best time saving tool of them all.

Estimated time back 1-5 hours

If you want to learn more on how to deploy your time more effectively and you want to get more done book complimentary kick start session with us.

On this call, we will take roughly 15-20 minutes where you will leave a solid clear plan around the 12 month results you want to achieve and 3 key action items you need to complete to kick start control back into your life and business within the next 90 days.

Click here to schedule your Kick Start Session.