When I first started a company at 12, as a DJ, or as friends called me, baby DJ Matt Mandell, I did everything. Wrote what was a wholly inadequate contract, fixed any sound or lighting equipment that was broken, designed and made marketing materials and the list goes on and on.

That was largely how I operated until shamefully recently when I have done all I can to focus on as few things as possible.

This first lesson wasn’t learned but was observed when I licensed my storage company to a moving franchise in Virginia. The contract was an earn out which meant if I grew the business, I made tons of money but if it didn’t grow, my ‘sale’ price would be very little. It was a no risk deal for the buyer, but it was a first deal.

As soon as the deal closed, I started working only on sales and marketing. All of the time I had spent putting gas in the trucks, worrying about the warehouse, and all the other sundry things that were taking time disappeared from my life and I never heard about them.

With me focusing on sales we grew 300% in 2 years and beat our 5 year goal by year 2. The only way that was possible was with the space and time to focus on one aspect of the company.

When the buyer returned the company to me at year 3, I was determined to not get bogged down in details and the way I accomplished that was outsourcing the storage and moving aspect of the business to a third party logistics company (3PL).

There are tons of ways to focus time, the first thing to figure out, is…

• Where are you wasting time?
• What is not a good use of your time?