Have you ever wished you could work less hours in your business or perhaps found yourself wondering where the hours have gone ?  Well, it will come as no surprise when I tell you that you are not alone.

How can you create more time in your business, leaving you to focus on the key jobs that will generate the most profit for you and your business and more time for doing things you enjoy outside of work?

Let me introduce you to a tool that will help you find that time – It’s our ‘Skill Fun Matrix’ .  This will be a gold mine for you in terms of profitability within your business.  Get your Pen & Paper ready!

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 Skill Fun Matrix

 

 

Low, Med, High SKILL

Assesses the level of skill set required for you to carry out a task

Low, Med, High FUN/INTEREST

Assesses how much fun/interest you are having when carrying out a task.

Start by writing down all the tasks that you currently perform in your business and then add them to the relevant boxes.  Example, if it is a low skill job such as filing documents or ordering stationery, put it in the bottom left corner box.

Now we get to the exciting part.  Once you have filled in your boxes, step back and take a look at the cost associated with each of these areas and you will begin to see where you are adding value to your time, your business, your bottom line, and where you are not.

 

LOW TO MEDIUM SKILL-SETS

Tasks that are low skill- low fun would probably cost you £10  per hour in labour costs. So, if your time is taken up with these kinds of tasks, ask yourself, could these be delegated to somebody else, freeing up your time.

Tasks that are medium skill/medium fun, where the skill level is increasing, the cost associated with these types of tasks is probably £15 – £20 + per hour.

In an average working year, a member of staff will work around 2,000 hours per annum, or 2,080 hours per annum based on a 40 hour week.  For arguments sake, let’s call it 2,000 hours worked per annum.

Based on this, you can see that tasks that fall in the low skill low fun categories represent a £20,000 employee and those tasks that fall in the medium skill-medium fun categories represent a £30,000 – £40,000 employee.

HIGH SKILL-SETS

Let’s now take a look at the High Skill – High Fun category.  This represents a high skilled individual who enjoys what they are doing and gets real value from it.

If this is you then you are a business owner, or a high skilled employee, whose worth is £50 + per hour.  This is where you are generating a huge level of value, you are leveraging your current customers, building new relationships and creating profitable partnerships. In this box you are generating a higher level of profitability for you and your business.    Your customers will probably buy more products from you and more often, because you are paying them more attention. In addition, your time is freed up to carry out this work as you have delegated the work in the other boxes to existing or new team members – and you can afford to do so.

So, which box should you be spending your time in ?   

Well, if you find that you have quite a few tasks in the bottom low area, these are the first tasks that you should delegate.  They will cost you £10 p/h to hire someone to do these tasks.  Think about how much of your time will now be freed up to generate a higher level of profitability.  By delegating down, the higher you will progress up the matrix.

IMPORTANT :  This applies not only to you the business owner but to career progression within your Team also.

 

Spending time lower down the Skill/Fun matrix is not profitable and sucks the life out of you.   You need to place yourself higher up the skill fun matrix.

Focusing on higher value tasks is key to generating a higher level of profitability in your business.

GUILTY PLEASURES

Now we can take a closer look at that bottom, right-hand corner box, now labelled ‘G.P’.  I like to call this the Guilty Pleasures box.

Think about all those tasks that you really enjoy performing but are actually low in skill set, or you carry them out because you think that you will get the job done faster.  Here’s the thing, you can spend time in that box if you choose to, after all, you are the business owner, but just be warned, the more time you spend in that box, the longer you :

  • will have to stay in your business

  • the more hours you will have to work

  • the lower your profits and business valuation will be over a period of time.

As I have said, as a business owner, you should be spending your time in the Top Right side box – what do you think?

 

WORKING ON YOUR BUSINESS NOT IN YOUR BUSINESS

Imagine taking yourself outside of the Skill Fun Matrix all together so that you are working ON YOUR BUSINESS, rather than In your business.   What figure would you put in this SKILL BOX  to evaluate your worth as a true business owner ?

So, if you are struggling for time in your business and you get to the end of your business day/week thinking :

  • I didn’t get that major project completed

  • Never got around to making that phone call to that key client,

  • Couldn’t follow up on all the quotes I submitted to prospective customers

  • No time to call back and speak to my existing customers to generate more business

  • I didn’t have time to Plan

If you answer yes to any of the above, it is typically because you are too low down in the Skill Fun Matrix.

Start to push yourself up the Skill Fun Matrix by delegating downwards.

Your time is valuable so use it to generate more profit within your business.

If you were to go away and just change one thing over the course of the next three months, just one thing, what impact would it have on your business ? I will leave you to answer that question.

Remember….

 

If you missed my previous Blog on how SYSTEMS can also save you Time, click HERE to read now.

If you would like to learn more, simply get in touch with Jeff Williams, Business Coach and BOOK your complimentary call HERE.

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