We’ve all heard this phrase before, and it is a good one to live by. Really, it’s the way that you get ahead as an entrepreneur and business owner.Hard work is an essential to growing your business, but working smarter will get you ahead. Here’s a real easy way to figure out how to work smarter if you’re having a hard time recognizing the opportunities. Don’t worry, it’s like riding a bike. You’ll start to recognize opportunity after opportunity, it just takes a little bit of practice.
Figure out your hourly rate. Then, when a task comes along, see if it is valuable for you to do. Let me give you a real world example: If I have an unlimited supply of work that I can bill out at $100, but I also need to mow the lawn I have a choice to make. I can A) mow the lawn and not bill for the hour or B) have someone else mow the lawn for $50. If I choose A and do it myself, that is great, I saved $50. But if you really think about it, I lost $50 because of my lost billing time.
A) $0 (billing time) – $0 (amount it cost to mow the lawn myself) = $0 in my pocket
B) $100 (billing time) – $50 (pay someone else to mow) = $50 in my pocket.
Make sense? It’s Opportunity Cost (which we will talk about in a later article). Always think about what is more valuable.
Here’s another example: If you can bill something at $100/hour, and then something else that you can bill at $75/hour at the same time, but you can hire another person for $12/hour to do the other task, you just became a small business.
It’s working smarter by focusing on what you are most valuable at, that makes you a good business person and a successful entrepreneur. In later articles we will also talk about outsourcing options.
