10 Time Savings Hacks for the Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurs need to remember there are only 24 hours in a day. You must be protective of your time as much as you are protective of your business. Patrick Bet-David has got 10 time-saving hacks for you. In reality, they should be call life-saving hacks as well because these hacks are going to allow your business to grow. 

10 Time Saving Hacks for the Entrepreneur

1. What’s the Outcome of This Meeting?

   1. The best way to avoid time-wasting meetings is to ask everyone involved at the outset, “What’s the outcome of this meeting?” Do this no matter how many people are involved in the meeting, one-on-one or 100 people. If the group has an outcome ready, then the meeting is a go. If they don’t, then there doesn’t need to be a meeting until there is a clear outcome.

2. 5 Minutes or 15 Minutes

   1. The best way to save time when someone important like an executive or VIP calls you out of the blue is to politely ask, “Is this a five-minute call or a fifteen-minute call?” If it’s fifteen, schedule a time when you are both available later. That way you won’t get sucked into unscheduled calls that eat up your entire afternoon. When they call back, they are going to respect that fifteen-minute window because you made it very clear you value your time.

3. Be Direct When Communicating

   1. Now for the opposite side of the last point. When you call someone, be direct and say, “I know you are busy. I just have one thing to go over it will take five minutes.” They feel respected because you are not wasting their time and you get to the point and on with your day.

4. Let Me Get Back to You

   1. It is okay to take a beat and think over a request or problem you are presented. It is better to schedule a time to talk after you have thought more about a situation than spend twenty to forty minutes on a call figuring it out as you go along. You will be more direct in your communication and you will save time. But you do actually have to get back to them.

5. Prioritize Attendance

   1. A quick way to save time is to ask the meeting organizer, “Am I needed at this meeting?” It will make the organizer think about the purpose of the meeting and the outcome. They could discover that actually they don’t need you but will follow up with the outcome afterward. Prioritizing your attendance will help you avoid wasting time in hours of meetings.

6. Ask the Expert

   1. When your team is faced with a question that no one can find a solution to, don’t spend forty-five minutes brainstorming. That’s when you need to ask, “Who do we know that has the right answer to this?” Reaching out to experts saves you a lot of time and energy trying to solve something that is not in your wheelhouse

7. Who’s on it?

   1. Coming up with a game plan and assigning responsibility to projects, builds accountability and trust. Having someone take the lead on projects gives you someone to rely on to accomplish the project. It also tells the rest of the team that the lead is going to be responsible, so everybody else can cover more ground and tackle more projects.  

8. “Are We Done Processing the Issue?”

   1. When you are in a strategy session and your team is working on an issue and it feels like you processed the issue enough, but people keep talking about it. The best way to end the conversation and move on is to ask, “Are done as a team processing this issue?” Everyone will stop and think either yes or no. If yes, the meeting is done, and you move on. If no, you can use the hacks above to solve it. Maybe you need an expert, or you need someone to be lead on the issue.  

9. Leverage Communication Technology

   1. Your business needs systems and technology that provide your teams, across all departments, constant updates at any given moment. Whether that’s a CRM or another piece of software, leveraging communication technology to keep everyone up to date saves time. Creating communication groups for each department, within that technology, will allow your teams to work more efficiently.

10. Systemize Employee Education

    1. You can’t train a new employee from videos alone, but you also can’t spend all day repeating the same message to fifty people. You need to strike a balance where you meet with them to get them acclimated, but you save time on the details by directing them to an educational platform. Maybe the platform is several videos or interactive quizzes to engage them. That way you stop answering the same questions and they feel welcomed and informed. You will get hundreds if not thousands of hours back.

Next Steps: Tweet me whatever topic you want to see as a how-to episode on Valuetainment @patrickbetdavid

 

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