Optimal use of your time as a business owner is key

 

 

Optimal use of your time

When you are a business owner or an entrepreneur one of the key things to manage is your time. You might think you have all this time on your hands and suddenly you might ask; so what happened to all the time?

As an entrepreneur / business owner you need to manage your time optimally or else you might end up not doing the important and key things needed for your business. Or you might end up working all day and all night without stop! Which is not healthy

Remember if you don't do it, it would mean no one else will do it!

I would like to share a couple of key tips from my experience:

1.    Get a routine as soon as possible

ü  If you are a morning person - schedule important and high involvement things to do in the morning and the more routine things for the afternoon and vice versa

ü  Try and get into some kind of habit – Monday mornings:  you will check stock / check what needs to be done for week and refine your plan for the week, Tuesday mornings you will spend time on checking all social media in a bit more detail etc.

ü  Use your smart phone diary – add in planner details and reminders on things to do

2.    Make a list of all the important things you have to do

ü  Make a list of essential things that will drive your business

ü  Make a list of how often in the month / week this needs to be done

3.    Put a planner together

ü  Start by putting a plan together for the month – slot in things from the  important list

ü  Then refine it to weekly and fill in the gaps

ü  Be specific – and vary your mornings and afternoons – or else it might get a bit boring and most of the time you will end up not as productive as you could have been

4.    Check regularly that you have in fact done what is needed

ü  Do a regular check in as to whether you have done what was on your list and planned

ü  Remember most of the time as an entrepreneur in a small business … if you don’t do it … it will not happen

Please share your experience, tips and guides on what you do as an entrepreneur to use your time optimally

 



5 Key Personality Traits of a successful entrepreneur

Thinking of starting your own business?

So what is the key personality traits of an entrepreneur?

Below 5 Key Personality traits I believe is crucial to have to be a successful entrepreneur

1.    You need to be Tenacious & Tolerant

Be prepared that you will get a lot more No’s than Yes’s

Know that not everything is going to work, what then can you handle it?

If and when things go wrong will you get up and try again?

 

2.    You must have Passion & Vision

Believe in what you do

Love what you do

Make sure you build your business on the following recipe:

 Skill, Experience and Passion make sure you have all three of these

3.    You must have Self-Discipline and Drive

If you need some-one to tell you what to do or to give you structure and direction – this is not for you

You need to be a self-starter and have the self-discipline and drive to do all things - not only things you like to do

4.    Be flexible and open to try something different

Be open to try and try again. Sometimes the tried and tested might not work and you will have to try something different. Open-mindedness is key

5.    You need to believe in yourself and be confident

Believe in yourself and know yourself – what you are good at and what you are not good at

Be bold and be honest with yourself

A high level of self-awareness is key

 

Please send me your thoughts what personality traits to you believe makes a successful entrepreneur?

Impact of good self awareness on teams, companies and leadership

Today I would like to share and highlight the impact of Good Self-awareness on teams, companies and leadership

1.     Teams filled with Self-aware people are more effective

2.     Organisations with poor results usually have people with lower self-awareness

3.     High Self-awareness = a good predictor for Leadership success

See info below from Insights Discovery

So it starts at home … how are you doing?

This time of year with all the performance appraisals and reviews …

Self-awareness comes to the foreground like no other time of year

 your colleagues, peers and your manager gives you their feedback and input

 

One of the best tools to improve your own self-awareness is the Insights Discovery Personal profile

If you have invested in this great tool … my question when last did you read through it?

Do yourself a favour take it out from your cupboard or draw … find it

And take some time to read through it again

Do a quick check in with yourself

You will be amazed …

If you have any questions regarding your profile or just would like to have a quick chat and share session

Please pop me a quick email on madtrainingsolutions@gmail.com   or share your thoughts

on MAD Guru blog http://themadguru.blogspot.com

If you have not invested in your Insights Discovery Personal profile …

No problem please pop me an email and I can send you a quote

 

 

Sharing more from my learnings in the first 3 months as these were the make or break months. This section focusses on staff management as a huge part of my learning & development was and is still today in this area. Effective staff management comes through hard work, it is difficult at times as it is a huge adjustment and a lot of learning … a lot of trying and check what works and what doesn’t work and not taking things personal

 From Corporate to Entrepreneur – sharing my story & learnings

3)    Getting down to business - Quarter 1 – key learnings (Part 2)

So what was the learnings for the first 3 months? Continued

6)   Staff management: One of my greatest and most valuable learnings in the first 3 months and in the following months were around staff management. Remember, previous to this I managed and lead 7 Sales Managers who was responsible for 72 representatives. Now I was responsible to lead and manage the 5 ladies at the shop. Three ladies working in the kitchen and 2 ladies working in the front shop. The best way I could describe this … it was a huge challenge and it developed me to another level!

I found that there are a lot of similarities in staff management between my previous role in Corporate and my new role in my small coffee shop: Here is a list of those;  Setting clear expectations and ensuring every-one is well skilled on what to do and how to do the job. Agreeing on acceptable behaviour within the work place and towards each other = treating each other as adults, with respect, honesty and transparency. As always it is important to understanding that the majority of people want to take pride in what they do and they want to be successful and then … only a few people don’t really want to be there and is not a fit to the environment / the job and would / need to eventually leave

I also found a couple of differences in staff management between my previous role and my new role own business (coffee shop):

A) Staff circumstances was different as people were reliant on public transport (taxis), which in its own is not reliant. This resulted in staff being late on some days with no pre-warning. Resulting in an impact on the business as some days the shop had to open later, close earlier and putting unnecessarily added stress on colleagues. Initially I would have staff not pitching at all for a day or come in hours later, without any notice of where or what happened, just to pitch next day or later to say transport issues. This was a major uncontrollable stress factor in my day to day working life in the first couple of months

Key Learning: For me it was important to focus on what was in my sphere of influence … what I could control and what was important to me. So what I did to manage this and my stress levels was to decide what was important … for me to know what was going on and whether some-one was in fact late or not. Then I could decide on action for the shop around moving staff and adjusting times if needed. Agree with staff that if they had issues with transport or any other that they need to let me know and discuss it … if they don’t have airtime send me a call me back. This was something for the staff to get used to as some of them just did not want to adhere to this … to big a change, and some abusing the system … not always the transport that was an issue. In the end all my staff bought into this, this worked well in the almost 3 years I had the shop resulting on less stress on me as well as the staff and less impact on the business

 B) Staff levels of expertize and exposure different: Coming from a background of working in Corporate I realised every day we do take so many things for granted. I found that amongst these ladies sometimes unsatisfactory work was due to lack of knowing better, or just not knowing and not having experience/ exposure to something. I had to go back to basics and often introduce basics as there was no reference.

Key Learning: Invest a lot of time in training, up skilling and understanding your staff, their individual personalities, their circumstances and experience is it always pays off and is worth it. This taught me a lot of patience … if you think you have a lot of patience … this experience will show you, you still need a lot more. For me it was important when something happened in the shop to Breathe take a walk and then come back and address it when I have cooled off. Remember you just cannot react and talk to people when you are upset within your business … remember this is your bread and butter so it is personal and you will react accordingly … resulting in no way forward, no learning and cultural & interpersonal misunderstandings.

Important you should always be flexible and treat every-one according to their personality type and experience, but when it comes to what needs to be done and the requirements here you need to be inflexible and consistent

 

For more tips and guides on staff management go to http://www.madtrainingsolutions.co.za/business_basics_staff.html

 See info from MAD Training solutions website below

Share your experience with staff management ... start the conversation!

 

 

Can you believe it ...

 

it is November … wow time is running out for 2016!

Few days before year end, so what will it take for you and your team to stay engaged?

Take a look at the guide below as this will assist you to lead your team and yourself

to the next level of engagement based on your leading Insights Discovery colour energy

 

 

Reminder if you have an individual who can benefit from an Insights Discovery Personal Profile and you need someone to assist and give a feedback discussion …

Please do not hesitate to contact me for a quote. As the MAD Guru I am also available to assist with coaching around application of Insights Discovery

Visit www.madtrainingsolutions.co.za for more info on Insights Discovery - Discover Yourself section.

Please share with me some of the strategies you are using in these last days of 2016 to keep yourself and your team engaged!