You Can’t Bank Sweat

You Can’t Bank Sweat

Time waits for no-one, as anyone rushing to the theatre, train station or airport will know (perhaps from bitter experience).

Although, strangely I have an uncanny knack of being able to be late (often too late, but overcome any difficulties with a smile, a confidence that it’ll all work out just fine, and these opening lines to somebody nearby  “I wonder if you can help me?”)

But, without going all scientific, time cannot be reversed, or drastically slowed down so we can fit more in, can it?

I will often hear people say that they simply do not have time to put in the amount of effort they need to really get their online endeavours off of the ground.

So why is it then that some people can? What I want to share with you today is a little process that could help you to get more done, a LOT more done.

Before we go any further, I’m not going to suggest you cancel your family holiday, ‘try harder’ or chop the plug off the television to prevent re-runs of soaps, quiz shows and gardening programmes (What the fascination is with Alan Titchmarsh I’ll never know, but anyway I’m digressing)

We all have 24 hours in the day, so what can you do to turn that same amount of time you already have, in to something that provides you with ‘results’.

You see, making money online can be very much a ‘results’ business. Ultimately your efforts will stand or fall on what you’ve got done, not on how busy you’ve been, or to put it more bluntly, as my old boss Mr Peacock used to say “You Can’t Bank Sweat”

(And I’m sure we can all think of a number of other ‘organisations’ that would benefits from this reminder too).

But don’t worry,  I’m not going go all ‘corporate’ on you and start talking about the ’80/20′ rule or ‘picking the low hanging fruit’ – I’ll quite happily leave that kind of nonsense to the various ‘apprentices’ that try Lord Sugar’s patience on a weekly basis. However, you do need to have some idea of how long you are spending over the various elements of your online dealings.

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Now, “She Who Must…” will tell you I used to find it very easy to get ‘into’ one task or another, and not always achieve exactly what I planned to do – apparently it’s ‘Fault #723′ on her ‘scroll’ of my shortcomings, but, if like me, you can then identify which particular one of your online endeavours are taking up a disproportionate amount of your time, you could maybe ‘run’ it against the following checklist.

Do you need to do this task at all, is it essential to your progress?   for instance, doing research into your niche or keywords, is absolutely key when setting up a campaign perhaps, and time should be invested in this, however, if your website is completely ready to go but not yet online because you spent 2 weeks looking for the ‘perfect’ background image, then that is “lost time” your website you can’t claw back that time that it wasn’t online. (Likewise it is important to ensure your site are professional, and of a high quality. But completing, finishing and getting each of your projects working and earning money for you, is critical.

If the task is essential, is there another, easier, way of doing it? If you want to build your own website but are still struggling with HTML, php or with getting to grips with Dreamweaver – perhaps it’d be easier to install something like WordPress instead? (It’s free and quite basic but also pretty user-friendly, even to someone like me, with the most sparse of techie skills!). And if you’re still sending emails to your ‘list’ from your own mail account, maybe you could think about using autoresponder software instead?

If you’re still struggling, can you get somebody else to do it? Yes, I know I go on about this a lot, but it’s for a very good reason . My own efforts really compounded when I started getting other people to do the things I found boring, or was particularly useless at. (Once again I refer you to “She Who Must’s Scroll” which has the up-to-date list of my short comings.. 

And before going down what is perhaps the ‘well trodden’ route of ‘I can’t afford to outsource anything’, it may benefit you to actually tot up the real cost to you, it may well be far more reasonable than you thought  , remember the alternative needs to factor in your time and the potential loss of online earnings whilst waiting too.

And you’ll find that once you adopt these approaches the resulting momentum and confidence you gain will really do wonders for your productivity, and will spur you on, and on, and on,

Of course, it’s up to you what you choose to discard, what you can change, what you will outsource and what you choose to spend time on (and enjoy) yourself,  but remember all the extra time you create for yourself by making these decisions can be spent moving your business forward, or doing something completely different, maybe involving a good book, a hammock and a glass of red wine.

So next time you feel like you’ve got far too much on your plate, take a step back and assess whether you need to be doing it at all.  With a bit of research maybe you can find an easier way of doing it, or maybe get somebody else to do it entirely.

Tagged with: Bank • Can't • Sweat

Filed under: Lord Alan Sugar

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