I hear from clients all the time that they don’t have enough hours in the day to do everything their business requires. I know the feeling, as I have it too!
I don’t think there is any business owner out there who ever consistently feels like they always have plenty of time to get it all done.
The good news is, there are straightforward and immediate things you can do to help with that IF you really want to actually improve the situation.
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I know that sounds weird to say, but there are some people who, even after you show them exactly what steps to take to make their lives and businesses less chaotic and more successful, still don’t act. I’m not a therapist so I can’t tell you why not, I can just tell you I’ve seen it much more often than you’d think!
If you are someone who complains they don’t have enough time in the day to do everything but you don’t have any plans to change anything to fix it, then this is where you can stop reading. 🙂
If you do want to know what it takes to free yourself up to do the things that matter the most with plenty of time to do them right and really devote yourself to being successful then keep right on reading.
The first thing to do is recognize that you can’t do everything. Sounds simple, but there are a lot of people running around under the false assumption that only they can do things in their business.
Not true. And very often, a lot of the stuff they are holding onto is pretty trivial, admin stuff, in addition to whatever key business functions they are also hoarding for themselves.
So in order to free up time, you must be willing to effectively delegate. That means trusting someone else to do things you would normally do. Not blindly of course, but with training and oversight- more at the beginning and then less as time goes on.
Now I can already hear the objections. The first might be, I don’t have time to hire and train someone, never mind the budget. To which I would respond, if you don’t have time to do that how are you ever going to have time to grow and scale?
Hiring the right person (or delegating a task to an existing person) is just about writing a thorough and detailed job description so you get the right person and they know what’s expected. Lean on ChatGPT for that and Scribehow.com for creating the procedures. Neither takes nearly as long as you think at all.
Then think about who you need for this. Does it have to be a full-time local person? Or can it be part-time? Can it be someone who isn’t local, or maybe not even in the US? There are tens of thousands of people using virtual assistants these days, at a cost of as little as $3-$5/hour, to help with tasks that free up immense amounts of time.
Suppose you have some general admin tasks you do every week that take 3-5 hours per week and are repetitive and time consuming but important for the business. Write the job description, document the procedures, and then go to an online job board like OnlineJobs.ph.
Find a few good candidates, try one out, and within a couple of cycles, you might have 5 hours a week back in your life for the cost of $20. Can you use those five hours to then make more than $20 in your business? I hope so!
What else are you doing each week or each month you can delegate to someone else who either already works for you but is underutilized and fully capable or which you can replace with a virtual assistant or maybe some well programmed agentic AI? I suspect there is a good amount of this because every business requires a certain amount of admin work and reporting and recording but a lot of it does NOT have to be done by the owner.
The requirement here again is that you be open to the idea of using help and trusting (but verifying) that things are still getting done even if you aren’t doing them. If you can get over this hump you can delegate more and more functions as your team grows and save yourself for the things only you can truly do- like decide on the strategic direction of the firm or a new product or service line or when is the right time to exit!
As an additional benefit you can take more time off and the business itself becomes worth more when the owner isn’t a critical or required cog in the machine.
There is enough time in the day to do it all but you have to decide to shape your world that way.
This isn’t a new idea- Tim Ferris’ book the 4 Hour Work Week turned 18 years old this year and it covers a lot of the same ground. If anything, things are even easier to offload now than they were back then.
It just comes down to deciding to do it. I definitely suggest you do!