Small Business Talk

The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster

Cure the Cancer of the 2-Minute Tasks with Pieter de Villiers

Show Notes

Background

Pieter is CEO and co-founder of Macanta Software Ltd and a small business systems & automation expert.

He is also a 2 x Amazon Best Selling Author, ‘Barefoot Business: 3 Key Systems to Attract More Leads, Win More Sales and Delight More Customers Without Your Business Killing You’ and one of the co-authors and organisers responsible for bringing together expert contributors on three continents, to produce another Amazon #1 international bestseller, ‘Franchising Freedom!’

Are Small Tasks Harming Your Business?

Running a business, you likely have a lot of things to do today. Being busy is a part of business! Take a moment to make a record of all the things you are doing throughout your day, and how long these things take to get done. Some of these tasks will be very important tasks that take a significant amount of time to complete.

Others will not be.

Once a week has passed, you will have a solid list of data to look at. Then you can begin asking yourself about these 2-minute tasks:

Do I need to do them?
Can they be delegated?
Should they be on the to-do list at all?

Finding Solutions for 2-Minute Tasks

These tasks can be removed from the equation if they are causing harm to your business.

Automation is one solution – why waste the valuable time of your employees and your own when you could have the task taken over by a tool or technology to do it for you? With automation, you can either streamline, speed up or eliminate the task entirely.

Putting effort into removing a task that may only take 2 minutes seems like a lot, but these minutes add up. Even taking away a single 2-minute task for one person every working day in the year would save you well over 8 hours of time!

Do Your Tasks Suit You?

If you have a particular set of skills that make a certain task unavoidable, that’s okay. But if the task can be completed by another person – someone with the same skills and expertise, maybe it is a good idea to delegate. Moving around tasks so they remain with the best person for the job makes sure that they are finished when they need to be and can save time too.

Trial and Error

Testing different kinds of fixes is the key to a successful strategy. Many programs optimised for automation of businesses will offer a free trial period that you can use to experiment with and figure out if this particular idea is the right one for you. Remember: you have to get started somewhere, and this is a great way to begin your journey on getting rid of those pesky 2-minute tasks.

Once you start looking at the basic concepts, you start to see where the opportunities lie.