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Small Business Blog

Build a Business, Not a Job

6 Time Mastery
Strategies to Free Up a
Full Day Each Week to
Build Your Business

David Finkel
We recently did a survey of business owners of companies
with under $50 million per year in sales. One of the questions
we asked them was what was the single biggest reason why
you haven’t been able to grow your company as fast as you
would have liked. One of the biggest limiting factors holding
these business owners and their companies back was the lack
of time mastery. (35% of the respondents).

“I don’t have enough

time.”
Too many business owners point to their overly full days and
say, “See, I’m so busy doing the job of my business that I
don’t have time to step back and build my business.”
That makes about as much sense as running full speed on an
exercise treadmill and thinking if you run faster, you’ll make
it off the treadmill.
The solution isn’t to work harder; it’s to get off the treadmill
by working smarter.
Can I be frank? There’s no such thing as having more
time. We all have all the time there is.

While we can change where

we invest our time, we can’t
make more of it.
The most successful entrepreneurs have learned to invest
their time for the best and highest return for their businesses.
I want to share with you six powerful time mastery strategies
to upgrade the time you previously spent doing low-value
activities to build the business you really want. I’ve been
honing these strategies over the past several years and they
are largely responsible for why our average Business
Coaching client has grown 7-times faster than the average
privately held company in the United States. At the end I’ll
point you to brand new free webtraining I just developed that
will help you scale your company – without working nights or
weekends.
Let me start by sharing a quick story.
Mark Huha first came to us several years ago as a burnt out
middle-stage level two business owner. For over a decade he’d
grown his contracting business at a steady 4%, supporting
him and his family. At the time we met his company was
doing $750,000 per year in sales, but Mark was getting
burned out from the 70 hour work weeks to run the company.
By applying the 6 time mastery strategies I’m about to share
he increased his sales to over $1.5 million, and reduced his
working hours down to less than 35 hours a week. Not a bad
result for 36 months.
The bottom line is that you don’t have to work nights and
weekends to scale your business. Working longer hours is
never the answer. Making better choices with how you
structure your use of time is the best way to gain more time.
Okay, on to the 6 time mastery strategies…

Time Mastery Strategy #1

To upgrade your use of time, first identify what you
do that truly creates value for your business.
As a business owner, you don’t get paid for time and effort;
you get paid for creating value. So the first step to upgrading
your use of time is to concretely identify what you do that
actually creates the most value (and what you do that takes up
most of your time but produces very little value to your
company.)
If you’ve read anything on time management, you’ve come
across Pareto’s Principle, commonly called the 80-20 Rule.
Pareto’s Principle says that 20 percent of your actions
generate 80 percent of your results (high value) and 80
percent of your actions generate the other 20 percent of your
results (low value).
This useful distinction becomes the basis of a refined model
for using your time to create massive value, independent of
the hours you put in.
If you take the 20 percent of your actions that generate 80
percent of your results and apply the same distinction a
second time, then 20 percent of that 20 percent produces 80
percent of 80 percent of your results. That means 4 percent of
your effort (the 20 percent of 20 percent) generates 64
percent of your results.
And if you can bear with us for one more math moment,
apply this distinction one final time. This means that only 1
percent (20 percent of 20 percent of 20 percent) generates 50
percent of your results! That’s right; only a fraction of your
highest-leverage work produces half of all your results!
We used this idea to create something called the Time Value
Matrix™—an actual formula to quickly and accurately
quantify the “per hour value” of four distinct types of time: A
Time, B Time, C Time, and D Time.

Get the Time Value Matrix Tool!

Did you know that most business owners have no clue which
of their activities fall into these four categories? So how in the
world can you create more A and B time if you don’t know
what activities constitute A and B time for you?
Before we share with you some examples of our A-B-C-D level
activities, understand that one person’s D activity may be
another person’s A or B level activity—it’s all relative.
Take action and examine what creates the highest value
for your business at this moment in time.
D Time: The 80 percent mass of unleveraged, wasteful time
that only produces 20 percent of your total return.
Examples of my D activities:
 Sorting mail

 Paying bills
 Low level email

 Scanning documents into my electronic filing system

 Setting up phone meetings

What are five of your D activities?

C Time: The leveraged 20 percent that produces 80 percent

of your results.
Examples of my C activities:
 Delegating to my assistant

 Doing actual one-to-one coaching work

 Holding a group meeting versus talking with several

people one at a time

 Updating my master to-do list

 Sending out an email update to my exec team

What are five of your C activities?

B Time: The highly focused 4 percent “sweet spot” that

generates 64 percent of your results.
Examples of my B activities:
 Meeting with key clients to solidify the relationship

 Coaching my management team to be better leaders

 Reviewing your company’s quarterly progress

 Instituting a systemic solution to a recurring problem

What are five of your B activities?

A Time: The magic 1 percent that generates more than 50

percent of your total results.
Examples of my A activities:
 Making executive level hiring decisions

 Decision meetings with key joint venture partners to

secure a high-value, win-win strategic partnerships

 Making strategic decisions that set the direction of the

business
What are five of your A activities?
It’s okay if you don’t know if a certain activity is A or B level.
The key is that you recognize that both A and B level activities
are qualitatively higher value than a C activity and
magnitudes more valuable than a D level activity.
Remember, it’s limited thinking to believe that the solution is
to work harder and longer. Instead, it’s imperative to upgrade
your use of time. For example, if you were an attorney who
charges $300 an hour, what would your D time activities be?
Things like fixing a computer glitch, making copies, sorting
mail, or little things you can’t bill a client for! And what would
your C time activities be? Any time that’s billable, like
working on a legal brief, reviewing a contract, or updating a
client on legal considerations.
Understand this:
C time can provide you with a great income, but you’ll always
have to work exceptionally hard to earn it. This is the trap
that catches most high-income professionals. They seek to
increase their earnings by cranking out more hours.
MISTAKE! Working more hours will only take you so far; it’s
just not scalable past a certain point (not to mention that
when you get there, you’ll be exhausted from so much work
and a stranger to your family, too!).
The answer lies in A and B time. For this attorney, B time
might include building relationships with other professionals
who can refer valuable business, or putting systems in place
so staff can get better results without tapping too much into
the attorney’s time.
What would A time look like?
This could be speaking at a large conference where this
attorney is able to generate new client relationships worth
hundreds of thousands of dollars in billable services. Or it
might be creating an accounts receivable system that
increases the collection on all the firm’s billings by 10 percent.
See the difference? You want to get D level activities off your
plate; C time is needed to do your work more effectively. A
and B time, however, are when you step out of the “job” of the
work and do something that improves your capacity to create
results, or significantly push back your biggest limiting factor
(e.g., generating new clients, improving a critical system,
etc.).
In fact, by upgrading your use of time instead of increasing
your hours worked, you can often create huge business
breakthroughs while still working fewer hours. Trading time
for dollars is a Level Two reaction. Upgrading your use of
time to create more with less is the Level Three solution!
So here’s the big question: How can you have more
A and B time?
You won’t get it by “trying harder” or by sitting down and
saying, “Okay, let’s have an A moment right now.” Sorry, it
just doesn’t work that way. That would be like a parent saying
to a three year old, “Let’s have an hour of quality time right
now, Junior.”How well do you think that would work?
To get more A and B time, you have to fundamentally alter
the way you structure your day and your week, which is
exactly what the next four time mastery strategies will help
you do.

Time Mastery Strategy #2

To “find” the time, focus first on your D level
activities.
This one may seem counter-intuitive, but the best place to
look first to upgrade your use of time isn’t your A, B, or C
level activities. It’s looking at your D level activities. Not only
by definition do you spend a lot more time at this level, but
it’s the easiest place to make changes because consequences
of dropping them are small.
So list all the D level activities you do on a weekly basis. Once
you’ve identified them, you can apply the following “four Ds”
to get them off your plate.

The Four Ds
Delete it.
Some D activities just plain shouldn’t be done by anyone.
Look at the action item and ask yourself what’s the
consequences if no one did it. If it’s small, then consider just
crossing it off of your list altogether.

Delegate it.
Maybe it’s a task that needs to get done, but not necessarily
by you. Hand it off to your assistant, or a staff member, or a
vendor. Anytime you can hand off a D level activity to
someone, you free up both your time and your focus to do
more valuable work for your business.
Defer it.
Maybe this task needs to be done and done by you, but should
it happen right now? Sometimes delaying the action is the
smartest choice.
Design it out.
If you find yourself handling a recurring D activity over and
over, instead of doing it, improve the process or system to
keep the task from coming up in the first place. For example,
if you get the same seven customer questions repeatedly, post
a FAQ page with the answers on your website. Or perhaps you
can preempt questions by giving new clients a “quick start”
booklet that proactively answers these seven questions. Or
maybe create an instructional video on your website that
gives new clients your best presentation while answering
these common questions. You get the idea. Designing out a
recurring activity is the very essence of building a systems-
reliant Level Three business. It simplifies processes and
empowers your team to get consistently great results with less
and less reliance on you, the business owner.

Time Mastery Strategy #3

Structure your week to reinvest your “saved” D time
in A and B activities.
It’s not enough to free up 8 to 10 hours each week by clearing
the clutter of your D activities; you have to fill your freed-up
time with A and B activities. Nature abhors a vacuum, and if
you don’t fundamentally change how you structure your
week, you’ll find yourself squandering the time you
supposedly saved on more D level “junk.”
Set aside one Focus Day every week. On your Focus
Day, get outside of your normal environment and work on the
highest-leverage, highest-value, highest-return part of your
business. Do the A and B level activities that add real value.
This could mean building out a baseline operational process
to use with new clients. Or you could spend the day creating a
hiring system to consistently supply you with quality team
members for your sales team. Or you might call on your two
most important prospective customers or joint venture
partners to deepen the relationship or close the sale.
The key is to set aside a full day a week for this and make sure
your team supports you in keeping this time clear so you can
invest in these high-leverage activities.
If you can’t spare a while day, you can set aside a HALF day
(make it the first half of the day so you don’t get sidetracked
before you get to the high value time.)

Time Mastery Strategy #4

Work first “above the line” and live by the Results
Rule™.
Most business owners start each day with high hopes. They
take a moment to write down the list of tasks for that day—a
list that often grows to 15 or 20 items. But then the day hits
and they find themselves pulled off track to deal with
customer challenges, operational fires, or sales emergencies.
Here is a different way to organize each day.
When you sit down in the morning (or the night before, if you
prefer), choose three bottom lines for that day and write them
at the top of your to-do list. Draw a line under them to
visually mark them as different and special. Make two of
them business related and one of them personal.
Your bottom lines are the action steps you’ll take that day that
will create the most value for your business. Almost always
these are A and B level activities.
Live by the Results Rule which says that by 10:30 a.m., you
should have either completed each of your three bottom lines
or have scheduled a definite appointment time to complete
them. This technique is powerful because it pushes you to do
what matters most first.

Time Mastery Strategy #5:

Every “Push Day,” schedule “Prime Time” to work on
A or B activities.
Everyone has a certain time in the day when they’re at their
best. A Prime Time block is a 60 to 90 minute appointment
that you set for yourself for your peak effectiveness time.
That’s when you work only on your highest-value items
(usually your “bottom lines” for the day).
By blocking out this time as an actual appointment on your
calendar, you guarantee yourself at least one hour each Push
Day to have a focused block of time to create real value for
your business.

Time Mastery Strategy #6

Create a “Stop Doing” List and add to it weekly.
Too many people live their lives based on a to-do list to which
they keep adding more and more tasks. But they rarely make
the hard choices of what to let go of, what to delay, what to
delegate, what to delete altogether.
Look at your to-do lists from the past 60 days. Which
activities can you add to your “stop doing” list and how much
time will that save you? Each week, pick a few more activities
you deliberately choose to add to your “stop doing” list. You’ll
find that the items you put on it tend to be tasks you find
draining—maybe ones you put on your to-do list out of
obligation or inertia.
When you get rid of them, you’ll enjoy a sense of elation and
energy plus have a much higher performance level in your
other time.
I hope you found these ideas on upgrading your personal use
of time so that you could grow your business and work less
helpful.
Ready to learn more ideas on how to grow your business? Join me for a business training
webinar: 5 Simple Steps to Grow Your Business and Get Your Life Back

In this free web training I’ll share with you our S.C.A.L.E.
Formula™ for growing your business and getting your life
back. Essentially what the training will do is show you – step-
by-step – how to grow your company by reducing its reliance
on you. It’s the best 90-minute reformulation of what I
shared in 288 pages of my last bestseller, SCALE, which I
wrote with Priceline.com co-founder, Jeff Hoffman.
Click here to learn more about this free web training. I hope
you register and join me for the session.
Good luck to you in growing your company.
Summary

Article Name
6 Time Mastery Strategies to Free Up a Full Day Each Week to Build Your Business
Description
We recently did a survey of business owners of companies with under $50 million per year in
sales. One of the questions we asked them was what was the single biggest reason why you
haven’t been able to grow your company as fast as you would have liked. One of the biggest
limiting factors holding these business owners and their companies back was the lack of time
mastery. (35% of the respondents).
Author
David Finkel
Publisher Name
Maui Mastermind Business Coaching

Business Owner
6 Time Mastery Strategies to Free Up a Full
Day Each Week to Build Your Business
1. Identify what you do that truly creates value for your business.
2. Focus first on your D level activites.
3. Structure your week to reinvest your “saved” D time in A and B
activities.
4. Work first “above the line” and live by the Results Rule™.
5. Every “Push Day,” schedule “Prime Time” to work on A or B
activites.
6. Creat a “Stop Doing List” and add to it weekly.
Get the Time Value Matrix Tool
Summary

Article Name
6 Time Mastery Strategies to Free Up a Full Day Each Week to Build Your Business
Description
We recently did a survey of business owners of companies with under $50 million per year in
sales. One of the questions we asked them was what was the single biggest reason why you
haven’t been able to grow your company as fast as you would have liked. One of the biggest
limiting factors holding these business owners and their companies back was the lack of time
mastery. (35% of the respondents).
Author
David Finkel
Publisher Name
Maui Mastermind Business Coaching

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