Work Smarter, Not Harder!

Phil

There’s a common myth that when you start out in business (be it full time or part time working around another job) that you have to work long hours, work extremely hard, and suffer from unbelievable levels of stress.

Well in some instances this may be true, but not all the time, and to be honest working longer and harder probably won’t make any more of a difference.

In actual fact, there are plenty of ways in this day and age that you can actually work less and earn more. Sure, every new venture will require a good amount of work to be put into it to get it off the ground, but don’t forget that one of the reasons most people choose to go into business for themselves is to have a bit of flexibility in their life.

To be successful in business it is very much about working smarter, and not so much about working harder.

Probably a good example is my blog – Major-Business.net

I decided that rather than spend a huge chunk of my time coaching on a 1-2-1 basis that I would put together a resource that could reach a wider audience. I opted for a blog, and decided to go with offering the content free of charge, monetising it with advertising once it became established.

I did my research, set up the blog, and started posting content.

I found that even though I was able to reach more people I was working twice as long and twice as hard! I was posting once a day, sometimes twice, and spending the rest of the day promoting the site and working on more material.

The idea behind the blog was a step towards working smarter and not harder, but as a result of being “smart” I ended up working extremely hard… not quite what I had in mind.

So, I analysed what I was doing, what it was achieving, and what I could do to change the situation. And I ran a few tests in order to gauge the effect it would have on the results I was achieving working all hours god send.

I dropped from posting on average once a day to just once a week, and I stopped the mass promotion of the site and instead concentrated my efforts on a few key online places – Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Stumble and Delicious. This immediately cut my online promotion hours from around 4 a day to just 30 minutes. My traffic grew by 300% in less than two weeks as a result.

I then thought about the time I was spending every day on the promotion, and how those now just 30 minutes added up over the course of a week. And so I decided to give some online services a go that allowed me to schedule posts, tweets, status updates etc in advance. Now, I spend just one hour a week, on a Monday, scheduling for the rest of the week.

When I made this further change my traffic continued to grow, yet I was doing less!?

I then decided to take the plunge and monetise the site. I made no attempt to hide the fact from my readership, and added two sidebars reserved specifically for “Sponsored Ads”. There is no other advertising anywhere else on the site… just those two designated spaces.

The first week saw absolutely no response from the advertising, but just as I thought all hope was lost, my visitors started to get used to seeing the Ads and then the pennies started to add up. Now, in a very short space of time, I am earning the same as I did working 8 hours a day through face-to-face coaching, except I now spend just a few hours a week working from the comfort of my own home!

I guess the moral of today’s story is that there is ALWAYS an easier or more effective way of achieving your goals. It’s all about analysing what you have and what you want to achieve, then creating an action plan that will allow you to reach your goals in the quickest time frame, with the least amount of effort.

No one gets it right straight away. It’s all about understanding what you have done and the effect your actions have had, and fine tuning what you do until you achieve your goals.

Look at me, Major-Business.net became a full time job on top of a full time job! But with a bit of analysis and trial and error I was able to reduce my blog hours to just a few each week, yet still achieve the same end results.

This post was never intended to tell you how to work smarter and not harder. It was intended to give you a little “food for thought”.

How could you adjust what you do to free up some time but still achieve the same results? And think of what you could be doing with that time!

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Phil has had many other businesses including Coaching, Marketing and PR, Graphic and Website Design, and Online Learning. His current venture is Phil Johnson Business Services, providing low-cost essential services to the newly self-employed and small and medium enterprises. Aside from this Phil runs Major-Business.net, a free source of quality help, advice, tips and tricks on many business and personal development subjects, catch Phil on Twitter

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