Leading your first business? You'll need to manage your time first

Michael Tucker

Your time is the only thing you truly own when you’re starting out. How you spend that time matters greatly to the success of your business. 

Whether you're leading your own business or you're running an aspect of someone else's organization, your ability to prioritize your time and the efforts of those around you towards impactful projects is key in determining your success in your role. As a business owner at one point or another for over 15 years now, I’ve learned a few important lessons. For one, your time is the only thing you own when you’re starting out. If you're spending large amounts of time doing work that won't help the business generate revenue, then how can you establish long term success to continue to grow and operate?


Indeed, how you spend that time matters greatly to the success of your business. So here are a few things that I would strongly consider you doing right now to ensure that you have success here:

1. Set a firm schedule of working hours and commit to it.

I’m always at my desk by 9am and I keep a committed space to work within. I take breaks at noon and at 4pm for my dogs. I know several parents who have a similar schedule picking up their kids from school. Since I took an hour out of my business day, I’m usually back in the evening for about an hour or two to create more content and work on long-term projects for my business

2. Write a Job Description for yourself
3. Track your time and effort

Your time is the most valuable thing that you own and can’t be replaced once you spend it. So you need to keep your efforts into a calendar to keep yourself accountable. It’s easy to see when you’ve wasted your time if you have nothing related to the business on your calendar:

Set Daily and Weekly Plans:

At the beginning of every week AND every day, write down a list of things that you want to accomplish in that period of time. Then review the list at the end of the day to ensure that you’ve completed that.

Use a Project Management tool

Get in the habit of using a Project Management tool to track every initiative that you’re working on and organize all of your notes, questions and answers with others who are working on this with you. Share that information with someone to help hold you accountable to complete those tasks. 

Track Your Time

Create a calendar specifically for your work. Block out time chunks of 3-4 hours for each thing that you’re working to accomplish in a week… Every 30 mins of that calendar MUST have something on it (even if that means that you went to lunch or went to the coffee shop). Please share that with others as well to keep you honest and accountable to your efforts. 

4. Multiply your time by automating your work

You can’t be in two places at once, but you can set up systems to handle multiple tasks for you. In your personal life, you probably use a washing machine to clean your clothes while you handle other household chores.

In your business life, using tools like Marketing Automation or Salesforce Automation helps you complete tasks that would otherwise take up your time. This frees you up to work on other areas of your business that deliver direct revenue and results. 

Get Started Now

Michael Tucker