Take Back Your Time: 3 Ways to Gain Time Freedom

Life isn’t fun when all your time is taken up by your business.

It’s easy to get into that trap.

In the beginning, you put tremendous time and energy into your business to get it off the ground – expecting that you’ll be able to reclaim your life once you get things rolling.

Then once things start moving, you find your time taken up with serving customers, attending to administrative tasks, hiring and training a team – all while continuing to keep the sales and marketing engine going.

My clients often come to me exhausted and burned out. Sometimes it’s a partner who prompts them to get help.

In one case I’ll never forget, my client’s wife told him: “Your business is your mistress. If you don’t do something about it, I will.”

If you find yourself working late days, working on the weekends, never taking a decent vacation – here are 3 things you need to do to gain time freedom.

1. Recover some time immediately

One of the first things I do with my clients is help them free up 5-7 hours each week – so that they have the time to work towards freeing up more time!

This might mean hiring a VA.

Then delegating some tasks based on the skill/fun box.

Then once there’s some breathing room, we can work on the next 2 items.

2. Make better use of your time

This means working proactively instead of reactively.

Creating a default diary to take active control of your calendar – scheduling what needs to be done – then working the schedule.

Putting out fires, then developing systems so they don’t start burning again.

Making plans and sticking to them by prioritizing what’s truly important.

3. Empower your team to run things without you – so that you can take time away from your business

This is often the toughest step for owners to take – but once they do it, they wonder why they waited so long!

Key actions in this step include:

• Moving away from the hub-and-spoke model
• Becoming a master of delegation
• Developing a team meeting rhythm that includes a daily huddle

And if you didn’t hire that VA in step 1 – you’ll do it now!

The dream of small business ownership isn’t to work all the time

The owners I work with want freedom.

• Freedom from a 9-5 and a boss
• Freedom to run things their way
• Freedom to make as much money as they want
• Freedom to pick and choose their customers
• Freedom to spend their life the way they want

Yet so often, they find themselves trapped by their own success – held captive by a successful business that gives them everything BUT freedom.

If that sounds like you, I can help. Book 15 minutes on my calendar to discuss coaching. I promise it will be time well spent 😉