Here are a couple of hard truths about being an entrepreneur:

You will always be busy, you will always want to do more, you will always be stretched for time.

You are your own boss and for most of the time you will have to set up your meetings, strategize your marketing, run and oversee your sales, plan your budget, do networking, hire freelancers, create content etc. It’s a hard but beautiful, a challenging but rewarding life that of an entrepreneur.

Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs will burnout and fail to achieve their goals because of one detail that is overlooked: lack of or poor time management skills.

Time management is not an optional skill if you are an entrepreneur

It’s a story as old as the time. You love your business. You pour all your hopes and dreams (and money) in it. Regardless of where you are in your business journey, you will want to achieve your goals as fast as possible.

Overnight success is one of the most popular phrases (and desired) but it is also complete BS. That still doesn’t stop entrepreneurs to put themselves through hell to get more done in business. Unfortunately, without proper time management strategies you are set to A. become a slave to your own business and B. burnout without hitting your goals.

If you are determined to build a business that not only hits the revenue goals, but also the sweet spot of a lifestyle business, check out the following time management tips and tricks.

Some of them, I’ve put to the test myself and I make them an essential part of my coaching practice. Others are things that I’ve seen other entrepreneurs implement with success. In both cases, you are welcomed to try and implement whatever appeals to you, in your own pace.

Time Management Tips & Tricks for Entrepreneurs

• Plan your calendar ahead of time

  • for the upcoming week on Monday morning

  • plan your goals for the upcoming month on the 1st day

  • Plan your milestones for the upcoming quarter on the 1st day

  • Reserve days in your week when you only focus on one category in your business, like on Tuesday morning you work on marketing, that’s when you get shit done for the entire week

  • Break down your work day into a couple of categories, such as 1hr every morning is for planning, 3 hours is for handling a massive task, 1 hr is for answering and sending emails, then 1 or 2 hours could be calls

  • If during your Monday morning planning you realize you need to stretch your goal for the week, figure out what needs to be re prioritized and learn how to say No to things that are not important at this moment

  • Schedule your weekends, holidays, date nights, dinner outs ahead of time and put them in your calendar

• Use your time wisely

  • Figure out what you do (essential items that move your business forward that only YOU can do)

  • Figure out what you hate doing, suck at or simply not do (hire a VA, a freelancer or a specialist to do these things, thus freeing a lot of your time) = DELEGATE & OUTSOURCE

  • Figure out what are the 80/20 activities that you should be focusing your time and skills (Pareto principle says that 20 percent of actions is responsible for 80 percent of results)

• If you have a team

  • Delegate what you suck at or don’t like doing to members of your time who are better at that than you

  • Develop systems and processes that reflect how you like to do things (assuming it’s the best way to do it) and train your team on how to best use those

  • Inform your team about your availability for the week and share your calendar with them

  • Jump on call with team members only when it is urgent – some meetings can be emails or slack messages

  • Schedule in a recurring time every week (or day) with your team to see where everyone is at

  • Give your team the expertise, authority and tools to help them save you time

  • Do not micro manage your team – trust them they are capable of achieving their task

  • Let your VA handle the emails, call scheduling and follow up, social media etc

• Use time management tools

  • Google Calendar (totally free and easy to integrate)

  • Calendly or Acuity (great for meetings, interviews, consultations)

  • Todoist (great for planning your goals, implementing processes, accountability)

  • Alternatives are Monday.com, Asana, Basecamp, Trello

  • Ideally, you should look into an accreditation management software system too to help you out when it comes to paperwork (such as trying to keep track of certain accreditations like certifications)

• Figure out your time availability

  • How many hours are you putting in right now?

  • How many hours would you like to put in? (more or less)

  • What needs to change to get to that sweet spot? (better organization of your schedule, delegating, hiring etc)

• Figure out what is a priority and what isn’t

  • Set clear expectations for the week (you are not superman or superwoman and you have only 24 hours in a day, and that’s ok)

  • Either drop out of meetings that are not important, postpone them to a better time or reserve a time in the year or month when all you do is meetings

  • Set boundaries: you never work more than X hours in a week

• Automate what you can

  • Recurring business and personal payments and bills (PayPal, Stripe, your bank etc)

  • Invoice reminders (Freshbooks, PayPal)

  • Sales funnels (Active Campaign, ClickFunnels, evergreen webinars)

  • Follow up emails for different stages of a lead (set it up once, and forget about it for a long time)

  • Reserve a time for sales calls in your Calendar and share the link with your leads (they book it, you don’t have to worry about the nitty gritty

  • KPIs (use Google Analytics to customize and schedule a report to be sent to a specific email address every week, month etc)

  • Abandoned cart emails (do it ASAP)

  • Automated testimonial/reviews/UGC requests (most online selling platforms have this feature built in, make sure to turn it on)

• eliminate distractions

  • Schedule time for social media

  • Pause your notifications during the time you need to focus and get shit done

  • Redirect calls to your assistant or let people know you have a schedule when you take and make calls

  • Clean up your workspace, phone and desktop (Marie Kondo your way to what doesn’t spark joy to your focus)

“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” – Jim Rohn

Tell me your thoughts. What works for you and what doesn’t? Drop a comment below.