Bonus Episode: Eliminating Time Bandits and Energy Empires for Ecommerce Growth

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Hey, it's Claus here with another quick tip episode of the E-Commerce Coffee Break podcast. Today I want to talk with you about time bandits and energy empires. So you might ask yourself, what has that to do with e-commerce now? Quite easy and quite straightforward. A lot. So as an entrepreneur, as a solopreneur, as a owner, business owner of a small, medium enterprise, the most valuable asset that you have in your business is your own time.

Most of my coaching clients are all over the place. They have a thousand different things on their plate all the time, and the biggest issue they have is time and clarity. So we wanna look. Time bandits and find out what energy empires are. Let's start with time Bandits. This was a tip that I got from my own business angel about 20 years ago, and it came out that that was a really, really good tip that he gave us back in the time.

So a time Bandit is either a person or a task in your business that is just a stealing your time. Now you wanna find out. Are the time bands in your [00:01:00] life, in your business, maybe even in your private life. And the easiest way there is to find out, okay, what are the tasks that take the most away from you?

And what are tasks that are not crucial that you do them, but you can outsource them? The easiest way to find out what kind of time bands you have in your business is going in and do a time audit. So you basically, you do an assessment of what you spent your time with and with whom you spent your time with, and then, Basically write it down, make a list, and be very accurate with that.

Every task you do, do this for a week or two, so you need to do it for a bit that, to make sure that the recurring tasks that you have in your business are covered with that as well. You really, you don't have to do it by the minute, but write down just on a notepad or on, um, I don't know, there's some apps as well there, what the task is and how much time it takes during the day.

You might know that there's also. Which record your screen time on what you do on your, on your phone, and how long you're on your browser, and then WhatsApp and so on and so forth. So it's basically the [00:02:00] same concept. So you just wanna note down what tasks you are doing, how much of these tasks are actually then important that you do them.

So once you have. Written everything down for a week or two. You go there and do the assessment, the audit, and then you basically take over on a new piece of paper, old, the ones that are important and you are the only person who can do it and everything else. There's a secondary B level, C level, whatever you put on a different plate, on a different sheet of paper, and then you think about what kinds of these.

Tasks that you're dealing with are really time balances. So either they are low level tasks, tasks that you can outsource, things that you don't necessarily need to do, and so on and so forth. And then you start restructuring your day by focusing only on the things that make you money. So you always wanna work on the things that are the closest to the money to bring you money into the business, and everything else should be outsourced and might be cheaper than your.

Is there also on the other level, time benefits can be people. So are you dealing with people in your business [00:03:00] that taking away time from you, either by just talking stuff and nothing is happening, they're just stealing your time in one or the other way. So you wanna make sure that these kind of people are out of your life, out of your business, and focus on the ones that are the most valuable people that you can surround yourself with and was.

Your valuable time will be much better invested in the tasks that matter in the people that matter. Now when it comes to energy empires, um, they're slightly different. So, um, I looked it up on the inter webs to give you a definition there. So it says, what is an energy empire? And energy empires are people who sometimes intentionally drain your emotional energy.

They feet on your willingness to listen and care for them, leaving you exhausted and over. So now we're talking not on a pragmatic business level where time is money. We're talking about an emotional level. You only we'll be a happy entrepreneur if you're motivated to work on your business and with people that motivate you to push in the right [00:04:00] direction.

So if you have people on your team or in your environment, There might be a partner that might be a business partner, um, your private partner, I don't know, anywhere in your day-to-day life might, might on the private or on the business side, who sucks your energy by their own attitude or by day doing, then this is a energy empire.

And again, they're the same with like the time balance. You want to get rid of them. So a energy empire can somebody who doesn't take accountability or responsibility, um, people who are a lot of bitching and gossiping, um, they're always involved in some kind of drama. They try to out augment you. They always try to be the better than you.

They want to make their problems, your problems, and, um, they just have a bad attitude in, in general. But they criticize you, they bully you, they intimidate you, and so on, so forth. If these people are not crucial to their business, get rid of them. So you want to get all of these energy vampires out of your life.

It might be easier said than done, but it's [00:05:00] definitely worth it. You will end up being a happier person, a a happier entrepreneur. So if there's anyone there that's dealing with you or dealing with them and that drain your energy, get rid of them. If you can't get rid of them, then find a structure in your company that someone else within your organization has to deal with them and basically act as a filter, um, through you and, um, then you don't have to deal with them personally.

So all of that hopefully makes sense to you. I live by that and again, I got this tip many, many, many years ago, was the time bandits and has paid out very well for me. So make sure that you look around in your environment now for time bandits and energy vapi. Write them down, make a plan, and relatively quickly you will see positive results not only for your time management, but also for your mental wellbeing.

I hope that makes sense. I will see you in the next interview of the e-Commerce Coffee Break podcast. I have lined up, um, quite a number of very interesting guests with very interesting topics coming up, so [00:06:00] please make sure to subscribe to get notified when the next episode is coming up and, um, I see you there.

Have a good one.