Focus on Your Top Priorities

Every small business owner knows that it takes never-ending effort and constant work to build a successful company. There are so many things to do, and only so many hours in a day! But you can’t allow yourself to become too busy to focus on the most important tasks.

Many entrepreneurs find themselves in a situation where they feel swamped with stuff. If someone asks you what you do to market your business and get more customers, and you find yourself answering, “I’m just too busy to worry about that right now,” then it’s time to reevaluate your priorities.

Each task associated with your business is important. But nothing is more important than generating sales by finding new customers and getting your existing customers to come back to buy more. You can have everything else right, but if you don’t have customers then you don’t have a business!

You have a lot you need done, but as the business owner, you need to focus on your top priorities. Spend your day on the things that only you can do. You’ll need to get the rest done, too, but you can never be too busy to spend time getting more customers.

Jamillah Warner of Nobuko Solutions made the same point. “I’ve seen small business owners with creative and effective solutions doing the wrong job and running potential clients away,” she wrote. “What about the distracted owner at the front desk who tries to do so many things, too many things at once, and they end up leaving potential clients on the phone a little too long?”

So how do you balance all the jobs you need to do to run your business? How do you spend your day focusing on sales and customers without losing track of all the other tasks? It’s not easy—but nobody ever said building a business was easy! There are many possible solutions.

One is to make time early in the morning or late at night for those important tasks, getting them done before 9 a.m. or after you end the day. Then you spend your regular hours focusing on sales. Another option is to look for trustworthy partners who will take care of those tasks for you. While you will have to pay for these services, the savings you get by freeing up your schedule to focus more on the most important things are likely well worth it.