3 Ways To Use Leverage In Your Business

I have two favorite words in my business vocabulary:  consistency and leverage.  Today it’s all about leverage.

To make the most of out of pretty much any area in your business, you must learn how to use leverage immediately.  You are a business owner.  Your days are filled with the constant battle of the three roles described in Michael Gerber’s book “The E-Myth Revisted”.  If you don’t know these three roles, then stop reading this blog post and get this book.  Then read it.  Then read it again.  And again.  ‘Nuff said.

The only way you will truly begin to grow is to find ways every day, in every way, to leverage your time, your tasks, and your money.  My personal definition of leverage is knowing how to do more with less.  Here’s some tips on how to do this today:

Time

Leveraging your time means you must actually be aware of how you use your time. Self-managing your use of time will provide you the intel needed to know how and when you can leverage it.  With the rising cost of gas prices, leveraging my drive time is key to keeping my expenses down.  If I know at the beginning of the month or week that I am driving across town for a business meeting I will do my darndest to set up another meeting in the same area on the same day.  Leverage of time and resources.  To be able to do this means I know what’s going on in my calendar every day, every week, every month.  Review your calendar every Sunday night.  Know what you are doing and treat your use of time with the importance it deserves.

Tasks

If you want somethin’ done right, you gotta do it yourself.  My guess is you’ve said this yourself a few times.  Here’s the deal.  For a business to grow, you need others to take on the tasks no longer best served by your time.  Outsourcing and hiring the right people is key, but prepping for your hire is even more key.  Systems in your business are the ultimate time and task leverage.  You must get in the habit of documenting processes now while you are creating and implementing them.  Two things happen:  You actually know if your system is working and what may be missing or can be deleted from the process and training in your new staff person on the technical skills are all laid out for you.  Now you can hire to the person vs. the skill.  Systems are the ultimate in time leverage!

Marketing

I’m not going to dive into the topic of how to leverage your money.  I will leave that discussion for the financial experts.  However, your marketing is directly linked to your money.  And I can definitely talk about that.  Do something once and find a way to get it out to your audience in multiple ways.  Do you write articles? Great!  Write one for your monthly newsletter.  Find an association/organization that also reaches your Target Market or an industry of strategic partners that also has a newsletter and become a frequent contributor for them.  Set up an account on www.EzineArticles.com and post your article there.  Build a relationship with a business associate targeting the same market in a different industry and guest write for their newsletter.  Write it once, share it multiple ways.  Leverage.  Of course, to successfully implement this strategy, you will need a system.  Go figure.

Take a step back today.  How can you do more with less?  What is one process you can begin to document?  How can you better control how you use your time this week?  What marketing are you already doing that you can broaden without more effort?  Do it.  Then do it again.  Still need help?  Contact me. And read the E-Myth.

Tagged as: content marketing, leverage, marketing systems, Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited