Do You Ever Feel……

...like there are more things to get done in the day than there are hours in the day to do them?

If you do, welcome to the reality of managing your own business. The biggest challenge for entrepreneurs in achieving their financial aspirations is the single element of effective time and event management.

Similar to an Emergency Room in which the nurses and doctors have to triage their case load, focusing on the most critical patients who walk or are carried into the Emergency Room, entrepreneurs need to triage their daily activities, as well. ER doctors handle the cut fingers, stomachaches or bee stings in a prioritized manner, with these issues being addressed in due course, while the life critical situations such as heart attacks, broken bones and identifiable symptomatic pain are handled first.

As each franchisee’s day begins to unfold, issues and items that cry out - me, me, me ... handle me now - demand your attention. Soon you disappear into the Black Hole of Operations and Administration, with the metaphorical cuts and bruises being addressed before mission critical activities such as sales, presentations, networking, and opportunities for customer services. As the day draws to a close, you reflect back on what was accomplished during the day; the realization settles in that a lot of cuts and bruises were treated, but very few heart attacks were focused on.

The more seasoned entrepreneur realizes that some of the critical and non-critical functions of the business can successfully be outsourced or delegated to others. The trick is determining what to outsource or delegate, and how to effectively allocate precious financial resources when there are limited resources.

Here is a rule of thumb – if a task generates money or can free you up to generate money – prioritize this at the top of the triage queue, then either you do it yourself, or delegate or outsource it, and apply money to generate money.

An observation your AdWord and SEO Specialists have noted is that the postings on classified websites have abated over time and are not current. This is directly impacting our SEO rankings and quality of our website ranking on Google.

Solution: Outsource this function…allocate some CAMPA funds to make money.

Check out my next blog posting to review a proposal to solve this problem which will provide more time for other triage sales-oriented items.