Here’s what we’ll cover
Which area of your business should you be putting your energy towards first?
Which comes first when building a profitable, elegant, lifestyle friendly business? Which should come first? Efficiency or Effectiveness?
There’s a lot of talk in business about being efficient. I talk about it a lot with my clients. And it won’t be news to you that efficiencies in business are key to reclaiming your time and making more money with less effort.
But if you’re adding efficiencies to areas of your business that are not effective – aren’t you wasting your time, your money and your headspace?
So the question is – which part of your business should you prioritise your efforts for efficiency?
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Here’s the shownotes
Which area of your business should you be putting your energy towards first?
Which comes first when building a profitable, elegant, lifestyle friendly business? Which should come first? Efficiency or Effectiveness?
There’s a lot of talk in business about being efficient. I talk about it a lot with my clients. And it won’t be news to you that efficiencies in business are key to reclaiming your time and making more money with less effort.
But if you’re adding efficiencies to areas of your business that are not effective – aren’t you wasting your time, your money and your headspace?
So the question is – which part of your business should you prioritise your efforts for efficiency?
You can start by knowing which service or product offer is making you the most profit?
Which service or product offer is moving you in the direction of your overall goals?
Which service offer is moving you towards having a profitable, elegant, lifestyle friendly business?
Think about your fitness goals.
It might be efficient to walk to your lounge room, jump on the treadmill, multi-task, flick through some emails on your phone, catch up on the news on TV, get off the treadmill and go straight to your home office for your next meeting. That is an efficient way to work on your fitness goals.
But is it effective? Are you reaching your fitness goals with this quite efficient activity? Or are you wasting your money on a treadmill, wasting important family space in your lounge-room and blowing some headspace everytime you berate yourself for not getting on the tread-mill that is always sitting in the lounge staring at you?
Is it simply more effective to go to the gym? Are you more likely to reach your fitness goals by going to the gym? And if the gym is the more effective approach how then, can you make that gym experience more efficient? Is it investing in a PT at specific times? Are you more likely to reach your goals in a group class where you’re spurred on by the others in the room?
There is no point having the efficiency of a home treadmill if it isn’t effective.
So in the context of business, what does efficiency actually look like?
Consider an interior design business that is adding a new arm of furniture & decor sales.
Efficiencies could be gained by building an online store to streamline their furniture and decor sales, perhaps outsourcing logistics could make things more efficient.
Efficiencies could be gained by investing in a stock control program or CRM software for their beautiful furniture and decor showroom.
But which offer is more effective for our interior design business? Is the online store or the beautiful showroom more profitable? Is your online store effective? Is it really creating you the profit you want? Is it chewing up too much of your time? Is it taking you closer to your ultimate goals?
Are you putting your time, money and headspace towards creating efficiencies in the right area of your business?
Efficiency is the checklist that your VA follows to organise the group workshops you hold. Your checklist covers everything from chasing up rsvp’s, to room setup, to catering expectations. Your VA and your group workshops are running super efficiently.
But are the group workshops effective? Is it creating you the profit you want? Is it chewing up too much of your time? Is it taking you closer to your ultimate goals?
Or are they wasting your time, money and headspace? Should you be focusing on creating efficiencies in a different area of your business?
Efficiency is asking your clients to complete pre-work via a questionnaire or survey before you start work on their rebranding project. But is the rebranding service offer where you should be playing your time, money and headspace? Or should you be focusing on creating efficiencies in a different area of your business?
We spend time, we spend money and we spend headspace trying to make things more efficient in our business. But what if these things are not effective?
Too often I hear people say, I just need to spend some time getting more efficient at doing x and then I’ll have the time to review my business as a whole. Then I’ll have the time to re-evaluate and work out what’s really working and then grow a more profitable, less time consuming business.
BUT. Why spend all the time, money and headspace creating efficiencies in something that may never really make you the profit you want or give you the time you want to do the things you love to do.
Why spend all the time, money and headspace creating efficiencies with service offerings that may not be effective.
So. Which comes first? Efficiency or Effectiveness?
I say find out what’s effective first. What is working, like really working in your business? Which of your product and services offerings have the highest chance of giving you the money and the time you want. And are going to get you moving towards your overall lifestyle goals?
If a part of your lifestyle goals is fitness – stop messing around with the treadmill and work on getting to the PT sessions.
The same goes for business. Find out which service offer you need to stop messing around with and find out which service offer you need to focus on.
THEN go all in on creating the efficiencies around that service offer.
Don’t spend 6 months (I say with air quotes) ‘getting efficient’ by building systems, processes and streamlining your business services only to find out that you really should have been focusing on phasing out the Service A and instead you should have been ramping up Service B and now you need to create a whole bunch of new and different efficiencies to get back on track to reaching your goals.
Not only is that annoying and exhausting, it can also be costly. If a couple of tweaks to Service B might make you an extra $5k a month then the 6 months you’ve spent working on the wrong thing has cost you $30k.
Yes. $5k per month for the 6 months you messed around working on the wrong thing equals $30k. And it happens – a lot. A massive lost opportunity.
So first, Find out what’s effective in your business. What’s got the best chance of making you the profit you want and giving you the time you want.
What do you need to tweak?
What should you consider phasing out?
What should you be ramping up?
THEN you’re in the awesome position of going all in. You’ll be clear on what you need to tweak, change, create, market, sell and of course become more efficient with.
Find out what’s working then become better with it.
