Be More Efficient in Your Business With These 4 Tips Here's how to stay ahead of your competition.
By Jonathan Long •
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Jeff Bezos is worth billions of dollars, yet he has the same 24 hours available to him every single day that we all have. Ironically, time is essentially the only thing Amazon doesn't sell -- for now, at least.
So, how does Bezos or any successful entrepreneur accomplish more than the average person? Many entrepreneurs make mistakes in the beginning, don't have laser-sharp focus and simply get beaten by their competition. It happens, and honestly, you should be prepared to take a few losses before you taste victory.
In order to help you stay ahead of your competition, use these four simple tips. They are beginner friendly, yet can also benefit the seasoned entrepreneur.
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1. Understand that you can't do everything.
There is no way you are going to reach all of your goals if you attempt to do everything yourself. First, it's impossible, and second, you will waste so much time juggling tasks and patching holes that your competition will blow right past you, as if you were standing still.
Coming to grips with this can be difficult -- I had trouble with it myself in the beginning. It was very hard for me to accept the fact that I wasn't good at everything and couldn't tackle a never-ending to-do list alone.
I'll circle back to Bezos. Amazon is a massive success because they have the right people in place, all whom are experts in their respective fields. Amazon would have had a zero percent chance of finding success if Bezos tried to do everything himself.
Leave the ego at the door. As you mature as an entrepreneur you shift in terms of mindset, going from wanting to be the best individually, to wanting to work alongside the best.
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2. Find the best team members to delegate specific tasks to.
As mentioned in the tip above, you can't do everything, so you need to gather the best people for each task and then delegate that workload to them. A successful business requires the best team members in their respective departments, just like a successful sports team needs the best players at their respective positions.
A lot of entrepreneurs focus on the wrong things in the beginning, when the majority of the focus should be on building a rock star team. The right team in place enables you to create a solid foundation that you can scale.
If you try to scale growth and expand with a poorly built team, you will see your business come crashing down. Sales and growth are important metrics to focus on, but make sure you have the right people in place to support it.
The modern era of entrepreneurship gives us unlimited possibilities when it comes to building a team. Before, you had to find the best available local talent. Now, you can assemble the best talent for the position, regardless of location. Many successful teams operate remotely and have team members scattered all over the globe.
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3. Network with a diverse group of entrepreneurs.
When I started out, I thought, How could networking with them possibly help me and my business? We are in completely different industries.
My reasoning couldn't have been more wrong. Successful entrepreneurs all have something to bring to the table -- experiences. It's the experiences we go through that provide value to other entrepreneurs.
I have an online marketing consulting agency and an influencer marketing agency, and all of my other ventures involve online communities and brands, but do you know where some of the best advice I have received in a while came from? A criminal defense lawyer, Nima Haddadi, who is a partner at The H Law Group.
An online marketer and a criminal defense lawyer might not have the same day-to-day job responsibilities, but the experiences we have gone through in terms of building a business and brand, were very similar.
Haddadi was one of the first entrepreneurs outside of the online marketing circle that I began to network with, and that experience is what ultimately led me to create an online community for entrepreneurs from all over the world.
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4. Invest time training a personal virtual assistant.
In order to stay ahead of the competition, you need to be organized and knock out your tasks, allowing you to devote a lot of your time to working on your business, rather than in it.
Virtual assistants are popular for tasks like social media management, customer service and content research, but one of the most beneficial positions is a personal assistant for yourself -- a right-hand helper, there to help you with little personal and business tasks, from paying bills and booking travel, to scheduling and managing your phone calls and meetings.
It's important to understand that no virtual assistant is 100 percent effective out of the box, no matter how much experience they have. Your needs and tasks will be different in some capacity compared to what they did in the past. Many entrepreneurs get frustrated and ditch the idea rather than spending time training their VA.
When you properly train your virtual assistant, you then realize how much time it frees up by passing on those little tasks to someone else, giving you more precious time to work on growing your business.
