The Many Hats an LNC Wears
The many hats an LNC wears are part of owning and operating your service-based business. It’s inevitable. As a small business owner, you will wear many hats.
- Marketing manager
- Bookkeeper
- Customer Service
- Administrative
- Technical support staff
But while this type of multi-tasking is to be expected, you have to be aware that not all of your hats are created equal. Marketing outweighs administration-related tasks, for example, because without marketing, there will be no cash to manage.
Not only that, but you have to consider how much time you’re spending in each area as well. If you spend all day tweaking the content on your website and put off marketing, what have you gained?
Yes, you might have a prettier website, but you lost an opportunity to drive traffic to your LNC services.
In an ideal world, you would put on your CEO hat and delegate the rest, but as primarily small business owners, we don’t always have that option. Instead, we have to work smarter and pay attention to how we’re spending our time.
Prioritize Your Daily Tasks
We all have different skills and sweet spots when it comes to the tasks we want and need to do. You might love marketing on social media and hate bookkeeping, while someone else enjoys the numbers game and doesn’t like dealing with LinkedIn and Facebook.
But regardless of your personal preferences, one thing is true. All of the money-making tasks should be at the very top of your to-do list.
That might mean online networking, client outreach, business development, or something entirely different. Identify those money-making tasks in your business and be sure to prioritize them every single day.
Know the Difference Between Important and Urgent
In his classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey recommends prioritizing tasks based on a time-management grid. Every task is assigned to a quadrant of the grid, based on whether it is urgent, important, both, or neither.
Once you know where a task falls on the grid, you’ll discover what you should be working on. For example, marketing and planning are important but not urgent. A ringing phone is urgent, but not important. The sales page for your new program, which is launching tomorrow, is both urgent AND important.
So before you prioritize your daily to-do list, think about where each of your tasks falls in the quadrant, and schedule them accordingly.
Will you always be working on the best task for right now? Probably not. Nor will you always use your time as wisely as you could. But by making a conscious effort to organize and prioritize your days, you’ll find it’s a lot less stressful and overwhelming to manage your small business.
In summary, the many hats a business owner wears can be better managed with a few simple decisions. First, identify where tasks fall in the grid. Then, place them on your calendar. It’s important that you assign priorities to the tasks and execute them.
You may come to a point in your business when you need to hire support to help your business grow. By documenting and identifying priorities, it will be an easy transition for you to hire a person to wear one of your many hats so you don’t have to!
And here is one more thought: as more people are vaccinated and the pandemic subsides, you’ll have more freedom to meet people in person. How will your LNC business evolve when that happens? It is time to think about that turning point and be poised for the changes.
Pat Iyer is president of The Pat Iyer Group, which develops resources to assist LNCs to obtain more clients, make more money, and achieve their business goals and dreams.
Pat’s related websites include the LNC business coaching services she offers through the continuing education provided on LNCEU.com, the podcasts broadcast at podcast.legalnursebusiness.com, and writing tips supplied at patiyer.com.
Get all of Pat’s content in one place by downloading the mobile app, Biz Edu at www.legalnursebusiness.com/bizedu. Watch videos, listen to podcasts, read blogs, watch online courses and training, and more.