5 Business Time-Wasters You’re Probably Doing (By Mistake)
It’s always surprising to me when someone says proudly, “I’m doing ____ to grow my business!” and “I know that _____ is a huge waste of time.”
I’m guessing you don’t have hours and days to waste in building your business. 🙂
I put together a video about this.
Some of these time-wasters require a little explanation – that’s what makes them so dangerous!
On the surface, they seem like good things to do. But they’re not moving you forward, and given that your time is precious, they’re actually holding you back.
Here are some of the biggest time-wasters!
Time-Waster #1: Spending time on details that won’t attract clients.
As I mentioned in the video, “prettying up” an email using a template seems like a good idea at first. Prettier is better, right?
Wrong. When making something more attractive makes it feel less personal, you’re hurting yourself and your interaction with potential clients. Stick to simple, direct emails, but spend your time on making a free offer look professional.
Hint: That might mean outsourcing to a designer!
Time-Waster #2: Getting lost on social media.
Getting clients on social media is all the rage now, and it IS a viable strategy. However, there’s a difference between the strategic approach that brings you clients and trolling on your Facebook feed for hours.
Hint: I’ll be talking about this at my 3-day event, EMPOWER. So, you’ll want to register your seat to get this proven system!
Time-Waster #3: Building an offer without defining your target market.
Someone described a transformational offer to me the other day in a way that left me confused.
I asked, “Who’s the target market for this offer?”
Their answer was, “I haven’t nailed that down yet…”
Honestly, that’s like saying, “I’ve started building my house, but I haven’t laid a foundation.”
All that you’ve done on your offer may not be useful because you haven’t identified the person who wants to spend money on it. Don’t do work that you might later have to throw out.
Time-Waster #4: Not clarifying your customer journey.
The ‘customer journey’ is the series of events, emails, videos, and other communications you design for your ideal client to get to know you.
It’s common, in my experience, for people to say, “I heard I should have a video like this…” or “I heard about these great emails and tried to write some like that…”
All without having the customer journey defined! That means more work that might:
- Be wasted and thrown out, or
- Give your potential client a confusing experience that turns them off on working with you!
Either way, it’s a no-go.
Hint: We’ll be talking about the customer journey at EMPOWER too! Reserve your seat here.
Time-Waster #5: Not delegating admin and tech tasks.
Usually, the first thing people want to delegate is marketing and sales. Nope, sorry – you need to do that at least at first in your business. If you don’t understand marketing and sales, you’ll end up delegating poorly in these areas.
However, admin and tech are different. It’s not going to make you a better business owner if you know the inner workings of setting up a landing page or a calendar link. You need to understand the strategy of these, but not the nitty-gritty details. Sometimes a $20/hour VA (or Virtual Assistant) will save you 5 hours that you might have spent. It’s a good thing to do.
Hint: There are more time-wasters out there lurking.
If you want to avoid wasting time in your business, grab a ticket to my 3-day event, EMPOWER, now!
Because really, when you’re trying to make an impact and be well-paid, who has time to waste?