The 'Core 4' Roles For An Entrepreneur

I know that you are doing too much in your business.

Trust me, I know :-)

If you have a leadership role, especially in an SME, there are just 4 tasks that you should be focusing on.

1. Ideas

Increasingly the currency of 21st century business, it’s a key skill which feeds into all commercial areas.

Keep abreast of markets AND marketing - it is your key job to know your customer and the market in terms of market sophistication stage, tech developments, competitor NPD etc.

You need to know what sells and why.

You must embrace ‘Thought Leadership’ in your market, especially as content is one of the big outputs from your ideas

2. Key communications

Largely come from your Ideas role - training, reading, consuming the right media and monitoring your market

Comms are important as they are needed for two reasons - 1. to give instructions to your team and to motivate them 2. In some markets you may be the voice of your business and send out the regular marketing comms yourself.

Email is still the most potent selling weapon online so it may be something that is worth your time spent on

Don’t forget to multi-purpose that content and turn e.g. emails into FB posts, blog posts, Medium posts, as Tweets etc

3. Your Core Offers & Funnels

The key to automation and sales, good funnels are predictable business systems.

Funnel metrics are key – how much is the average value of every visitor going through the funnel? Funnels can - and should - be evergreen as much as possible but can also wear out and need updating.

Funnels can be simple and on cold traffic should be very simple.

Get complex later once trust is built and remember data capture should always be an objective.

4. Finance

Nobody else should get involved in this unless you appoint an FD or accountant. Core business metrics are best kept to the core team.

Also guard your valuable assets such as mailing lists, and be careful with access to web sites and marketing properties.

You also need to know the ‘marketing money numbers’ from your funnels.

In summary…

Basically you ‘Decide and Delegate’.

You strategize and create concepts, offers and business models

You must not DO too much.

Just focus on the 4 key strategic tasks outlined here.

This “Two Hours A Week Test" Could Really Change Your Working Life

We've all seen stories about shorter working hours and a number of companies worldwide have been making the news by adopting a 4 day week on the same salary and conditions.

I was recently asked a very interesting question, as per the scenario below:

"If I was bed-bound in hospital, could only think and speak, and I was only able to communicate for 2 hours a week, how would I maintain and grow my business, or continue in my current role?"

So what would you do if you could only work 2 hours a week?

I’m sure the initial reaction is that its impossible, but it actually makes you think about where you REALLY ADD VALUE.

What can ONLY you do?

What could you delegate? What standard operating procedures do you need to add to add to your business? What software could you buy to automate things better? Where could you add an additional employee?

The interesting things is that the question becomes what SHOULD only you do?

So ask yourself the question. Spend a few minutes on the answer.

Your brain will start working and I think you will be surprised immediately how you think of things that you could and should stop doing.