Over the past few years, I have had to take inventory every year to look at the ways that I was not only spending my money but also my time, which I have learned IS money. What I have come across, more times than I care to remember, are the things that garnered income but were costing me way too much time.
Ideally, you want to be in a position where the effort is either less effort/greater income or equal effort/equal income at best but try to avoid greater effort/greater money. You may ask why that is.
Well, because as business owners, we have to consistently be on top of many things, including growth, and if we are stuck in consistently doing, what will become mundane tasks to stay afloat, it will come back to haunt us in the worst way in the near future.
We will miss opportunities, we will be frustrated in the process by repeatedly doing something we will eventually dislike, and we will feel trapped and held hostage by doing that one thing that, in our imaginations, is keeping the business alive. How will we ever know if we can increase our income if we never try anything new?
Reconsider the Thing that Requires the Most Work to Make the Most Money
I’d like to use myself for an example. My main site https://radiofacts.com is a news site on Facebook. So when we report news, and it goes viral, the income potential is great.
Now that may sound like a no-brainer, but there are many catylists to this job. The first one is I seem to be the only one who knows how to write titles that are (I’m not ashamed to say) “clickbait.”
I have tried endlessly to hire other writers to take over this job but to no avail. I have wasted a lot of time and a LOT of money hiring people who copied posts from other sites verbatim, even when they were told not to.
I’ve hired people who didn’t follow instructions and posted whenever they felt like it, which is a detriment to the news because it gets old fast. I had to hear excuses on a consistent basis, but the truth was they were working several other gigs. It is no wonder so many companies are having such a hard time hiring.
To that end, it was costing me more in time and effort and hiring and posting on job sites than I was making when I had a great day with a viral story. In addition, getting into the news space was outrageously competitive.
EVERYBODY posts news. Either I was going to do it and take 3 or 4 hours out of my day while RUNNING a company, or I needed to look for other ways where there was less work, stress, competition, and frustration. So I had to stop doing it because I constantly ended up doing it myself anyway.
Colleges don’t teach students how to use WordPress, so I found myself teaching people how to do that too. I was paying people to train them, and they would leave with their new skill set and make more money somewhere else. You can blame the people I hired, that is actually pretty smart, but I’m a business, not a school.
Finally, the GenZ’ers and Millenials know their (at times inflated) value, and they are not loyal to any one brand, so it became a great waste of my time and effort to train people who would end up leaving in a month or two or less. The entire process was just not worth the effort.
Find Other Ways to Garner Income
I had to look at ways where I could be unique in the process and do Less work/Earn More, and once you have been in business for a while, your experience (and equity) will afford you that opportunity. For me, it was finding holes in my industry and deciding if I wanted to fill them. An entrepreneur’s job is to fix a problem, not create a problem for himself.
As the last man standing doing a Black-Owned trade magazine in my industry, I had to ask myself, who is my target, and who is my client.
Many times they won’t be the same. Your job is to focus on the CLIENT and who THEY are targeting. Many times the scope is much wider than a single target. Hone in on that and ask them how you can provide a greater service to them.
Stop Wasting Time
I truly wish I had understood the value of TIME much sooner in my career. Then I would not have wasted so much of it. You can get a LOT accomplished when you use your time wisely, and you are surrounded by the right people.
MANY times those people will not look like you. One of the greatest mistakes we make as Black-Owned businesses is our extreme dedication to hiring other Black people.
We can certainly serve the Black community with our businesses. Still, unless you are in the food or hair business as a Black business owner, I will GUARANTEE that you will have an incredibly hard time finding qualified, hard-working, dedicated Black employees. Sad but true.
Mostly because we don’t respect Black-Owned businesses as a community. So why are you dedicated to hiring people who don’t care about you or your business? ALWAYS hire the BEST PERSON for the job. Be dedicated to hard workers FIRST. You will get the most out of them.
Meet New Contacts and Clients on Linkedin
I personally find Facebook depressing and I freely try to stay off of it. There are constant death announcements, gofundmes, people asking for prayers, people stuck ln who they used to be and people bitching nad griping about politics or news. It has become a portal for negativity and I try my best to stay off of it.
Linkedin on the other hand is MUCH better and much more enlightening. People who are about NOW and making corporate moves, starting their own businesses and making positive announcements. It took me a while but I realized Linkedin is much better than Facebook for entrepreneurs and business owners. I have also met several contacts om Linked in for business.
It’s Not What You Make; It’s What You Keep
This could literally be the entire story. I did an entire post here about this subject. Just once a month, take a look at all of your bank statements and look on PayPal for subscription charges and delete what you don’t use. You could literally be spending thousands of dollars a year on things you never use.
Writing Daily Goals Down at Night Before Bed and Why
This actually works because it’s the last thing that you see before you go to bed and the first think that you will see in the morning. As you accomplish each thing, cross it off. There are times when you will not be able to complete everything on your list, things consistently pop up during the day, that’s OK put it on tomorrow’s list.
Adhere to Those 3am Ideas
Many of the greatest hit songs and many of the best ideas came to people at 3am in the morning. It’s when you are in your deepest sleep and your most creative mind and there are times that an idea that is so great will hit you that you can’t go back to sleep. Keep a notepad on your nightstand or record the idea or thought into your phone. You will most certainly totally forget the idea when you wake up in the morning if you don’t.
Hiring OUTSIDE the US
Quite often, a Black business owner’s greatest pitfall is being dedicated to hiring Black people in the US, that may sound pretty horrible but the truth is, as a race, we do not respect Black-owned businesses outside of hair care and food businesses. Two businesses that cannot be altered, faked duplicated or stole by people outside the community.
Other than that we have a HUGE problem finding dedicated and supportive workers in the community for other businesses that we run. I have been there and I know many other black entrepreneurs who have been there too.
Its not only hard it’s almost impossible to find qualified, hard working other Black people to work in your business. The answer is to stop being dedicated and married to things that want to divorce you and your business. It will stifle your growth and desecrate your business by eating up all of your time training people who won’t last and you will waste money. It’s not impossible to find hard working Black people but don’t limited yourself or your business. Hire the BEST people possible.
Always Ask for MORE Than You Need (Pricing)
Sometimes we offer discounts to make our brands more appealing but the opposite happens, you look desperate and it actually HURTS your brand. In addition the people that you give discounts to will tell others. It is much better to have someone say you are not cheap than to say your desperate for business.
Set a price that is higher than you need and still with it. When I say higher. If you charge $1000 for a service and once you look at your time and operating costs, you are only profiting $150 of that, charge $1300.
There will be people who come to you and will want a discount but there will also be people who come to you and think you are not charging enough (believe it or not) depending on the perception and quality of your brand. Don’t sell yourself short. Remember the people that you give a discount to WILL tell other people.
Take Care of yourself FIRST.
If you can find a way to exercise first thing in the morning before you check one single email or look at your phone. There is a good chance that once you start to get into your day, you will not have time to work out later on. Get it done first thing in the morning to get it out of the way. Also, meditate first thing in the morning to set the tone for your day.
Approach New Clients
At some point you will need to expand your reach and target new clients. I always have the thought in my mind that my clients are being bombarded with work and other people who are asking for their limited budgets and for the longest time I didn’t want to be just another person bugging them.
That was until I realized that there were people who were offering less and did not have the value that I have with my brand getting some of these people to support them . The difference was not only their lack of value but it was that they were getting on the phone and actually reaschout out to the potential clients I was ignoring.
They were developing a relationship that I should have had nad in the music industry EVERYTHING is about relationships.
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