Five Time Management Secrets for Service Businesses
There’s so much to do and so little time. That’s what it feels like at least.
With CEO Warrior, you’ll learn how to better manage your time.
Let me paint a picture for you.
You come into work in the morning and BOOM!
Everybody’s throwing stuff at you left, right and center. You’ve got no idea where to turn and you just start tackling tasks as they come.
By the end of the day, you’re exhausted.
Then you take a look at the tasks that you wanted to complete today. You’ve done none of them.
Time is such a valuable resource for any business. And it can feel like you don’t have any of it if you’ve got the wrong processes in place.
That’s where I’m going to help.
In this article, I’m going to show you how to better manage your time.
You want to know how to improve your plumbing business? These time management tips will show you how.
Got an HVAC business that’s struggling because you don’t have enough time? I’m going to help.
Do you never seem to spend time with family because you’re always focused on the business?
That’s the big one.
You need these five time management secrets for service businesses so you can take control of your time.
Time Management Secret #1 – Set Some Decision Making Criteria
You’re making decisions all day long.
Should you invest in that new piece of equipment? Do you need to hire a new employee? Is the person you’re thinking about hiring really an A-player?
Every one of those decisions takes time. But those decisions are your primary responsibility. You can’t avoid them.
Service business owners can freeze up under the weight of those decisions. That just wastes even more time. You end up so stuck on the decision-making process that you’re not taking action.
And all of those tasks you need to complete will still be waiting for you when you finally make a choice.
So, how do you make decisions faster?
I have a seven-question framework that helps you get to the “yes” or “no” faster. Asking these questions when you face a key decision is one of the best time management tips I can give you:
- What does this do for my customers?
- What does this do for my people?
- What does this do for my business?
- Does this new thing overcome a weakness?
- Will this provide a return on my investment?
- How much time does it take to implement?
- What will it do for me?
Figuring out the answers to those questions will help you make key decisions faster and more confidently.
You can find more detail about how to put this framework into practice in my book
The CEO Warrior Decision Making Criteria.
Time Management Secret #2 – Get the Right Info
Let’s turn things over to Warrior Herman Sykes to discuss this tip.
- Herman Sykes runs Sykes Plumbing Services. He’d been in the plumbing sector for about three years when he came to CEO Warrior.
- Herman points out that he’d read tons of books and was always trying to learn how to improve a plumbing business. But he’d wasted so much time on the wrong information.
- With CEO Warrior, Herman started working with a community of people who actually work in his industry. That’s crucial. He says Mike and the community understand the challenges he faces better than a generic business consultant.
- Now, he’s got the information he needs to take his business forward.
The information you’re working from is going to play a huge role in how much time you spend in your business. You could waste months of your life following a strategy that’s never going to work.
Think of it like this.
Say you want to be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. That means you’re going to need to know what to eat and how to work out to put on all of that bulk.
But you’re getting information from a normal fitness coach.
They know the general stuff when it comes to fitness. But they can’t give you the exact information that you need to achieve your goal.
You’re never going to bulk up by doing cardio.
It’s the same with a service business. A business “expert” can only provide so much. They don’t know the specific challenges you face in your industry.
With CEO Warrior, Herman has access to the right people and resources. That means he’s going to save tons of time when creating his strategy.
Time Management Secret #3 – It’s Time Mastery, Not Time Management
I’m going to let you in on a little secret.
Time management isn’t what you should aim for.
It’s time mastery that you want to achieve in your business. So I want you to shift your mindset from wanting to manage your time to wanting to master your time.
Here’s what’s wrong with the traditional time management mindset:
- It places your schedule as your top priority. When that happens, your schedule starts to dictate everything that you do in your day. A time master dictates their schedule, rather than letting it dictate them.
- Attempting to manage time will always fail. We’re all working with the same number of hours every day. It’s about managing yourself rather than managing your time.
- Finally, time management is usually about trying to squeeze as much as possible into limited time. With time mastery, you’re creating the freedom that will eventually allow you to fill your time with things that you want to do.
So here’s one of the top time management secrets for service businesses.
It’s about mastery over management. Stop trying to find the time to do all of these different tasks. You’re just going to take on too much and end up burning out.
Instead, think about the changes you have to make to free up more time. Usually, this means putting systems in place so that you’ve got a team handling all the stuff that used to take so much time.
Time Management Secret #4 – Categorize Your Business
Getting organized is one of the keys to taking control of your time.
That’s what Earl Donaldson learned when he became a Warrior.
Earl Donaldson heads Arrow Plumbing. When he first came to a CEO Warrior event, he wasn’t really sure what to expect.
Our team helped him to go through his entire business plan. From top to bottom, we identified issues and created a roadmap for success.
Earl says the key to this process came from breaking the business down into different categories. He created a plan for every aspect of the business, from management to tech. This helped him to really get a handle on things so he could start taking action.
That’s a key point right there.
If you’re running a chaotic business, you’re going to struggle to get a handle on things. You have so many fires to put out and you can’t figure out what’s causing them.
Take a step back and start figuring out your business. What departments does it have? What problems does each of those departments face? How can you categorize it all?
That gives you a blueprint to work from. You’re not shooting blind anymore. You know exactly where the problems are, which means you can focus your energy on solving them.
That’s going to free up so much of your time later on.
Time Management Secret #5 – Eliminate the Trial and Error
A lot of service business owners start out as service providers.
That’s awesome. It means you have tons of expertise to bring to the table. However, it also means that you don’t have any experience in running a business.
That’s key here. It’s so hard to make that mindset shift from service provider to business owner.
Jeff Street is a Warrior who had that exact problem:
- Jeff Street heads BOSS Services, which offered HVAC services when he came to CEO Warrior in 2017. At the time, Jeff had a slowly-growing business and an annual revenue of $1 million.
- He pointed to all of the guesswork he had to do as a key reason for why the business wasn’t growing. The constant experiments wasted so much time.
- With CEO Warrior, Jeff got access to tons of useful resources. He also has coaches on speed dial who’ll provide advice as soon as he needs it.
- There’s no more guesswork. And Jeff’s benefited from it. He’s added trades to the business and doubled the revenue.
Because you don’t really know what you’re doing, you end up going the trial and error route. You’ll give something a go and if it works, you stick with it.
If it doesn’t then you’ve just blown hours and hours of your time on something that sucks.
You master your time the moment you stop the guessing and start using systems that work.
The Final Word
Don’t look to manage your time.
Look to master it.
That’s the biggest time management secret for service businesses.
You master your time when you take control and start putting the right systems in place. Get your information from the right people who’ve been there and done it. Use my decision making criteria to speed up your critical business choices. And get rid of the trial and error mindset by creating a business roadmap.
CEO Warrior can help you do all of this and so much more.
