An Entrepreneur’s
“Stop Doing” List
As Jim Collins says, what you stop
doing is as important as what's on your to-do list. Here's what you need to
stop doing, immediately.
It’s common for founders to feel
overwhelmed, and with good reason. When I started my first company, I spent way
too much time doing things that didn’t have a big payoff. But as Jim Collins
says, your “stop-doing” list is just as important as your to-do list.
If you’re doing any of these things,
or thinking about it, stop, pause for a moment, and think again.
Over-Designing Everything
Deep down we’re all perfectionists.
Everything must be in right place with the right color palette, the right font
and the right everything, right?
Wrong. This cannot be your focus,
whether we’re talking about a Powerpoint presentation, your website, your
Facebook page or marketing collateral. The content is what’s important: the
numbers, the plain facts, the winning factors. Beautification and fine-tuning
can come later, when you have the time and resources for something flashy. Just
get the important stuff done, and leave the glitz for later.
Trapped in Busy Work
Spending hours going through bank
statements or letting days pass while you relentlessly drive towards zero new
messages in your inbox? This will get you in trouble.
It is important to set aside time to
take care of administrative tasks. But, it’s more important to allocate time,
every day, for tasks that will drive your business forward. That’s what it
takes to generate a big boost in productivity.
Andy Maguire, founder of
Internmatch.com, can’t stress this enough. “Stop focusing on small wins that
give you the easy gratification. It’s most likely not going to get you any
closer to your real goal,” he says. “Start each day thinking about one strategic
priority that you can make progress on, and do not end that day until you've
worked on that item.”
Trying to Do it All
Early on, the entrepreneur wears
tons of hats. But this can keep your business from growing. Pia Celestino,
founder of branding firm Crea7ive.com, says, “When we were starting
Crea7ive.com, I was in charge of marketing, selling, accounting and delivering
on the work. My team was offshore, so when something came up, there usually
wasn't anybody available, or it just took too much time to get a simple thing
done. It wasn’t until years later when I realized I needed to take a risk and
begin recruiting local people with exceptional talent. Those people cost more,
but enabled the business to finally start growing and accelerating. If I could
go back, I would definitely have hired faster and delegated better!”
It can be tempting to try to do
everything yourself in order to save money. But if you’re working 16- hour days
and the business isn’t growing, you need to take a risk and find somebody to
whom you can delegate. Then you can focus on growth rather than just keeping
the business afloat.
Tweaking Your 5-Year Financial
Projections
When you’re out trying to raise
money, it can be very tempting to revise your pro forma financials every
time you solidify a detail that will impact your bottom line. While it’s
important to have “accurate” pro formas to show investors, don’t waste a lot of
time on them. Instead, focus on your cash plan.
Al Charbonneau, an early stage
investor, says, that accurate cash plans are what investors will want to see.
For the other financials, he recommends laying out a conservative case, a best
case, and lastly a most probable scenario. Three years is the maximum timeline
that makes any sense.
Investors know your profit
projections are going to be wrong, so don’t worry about fine-tuning them. But
you do need to know how much cash you need to get off the ground. Keeping your
weekly cash plan as up-to-date and accurate as possible is a much better use of
time.
Although it can be very tempting to
get things “just right,” too much fixation on details is probably just
self-soothing, rather than creating any real benefit. Those lost hours could
have gone toward other, more important activities, like selling and driving growth.
If you catch yourself nitpicking over small details, stop, take a breath, and
realize that you’ve got more important things to do.
Benjamin Waldhttp://www.inc.com/benjamin-wald/an-entrepreneurs-stop-doing-list.html?cid=em01019week09c
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