10 Things Every Entrepreneur Should Do

How are you spending your day as an owner, operator, or advisor to businesses?

Here’s a quick and easy daily task checklist I use to manage my portfolio of companies:

1. Review your key metrics
2. Check your cash balances (from your daily cash report)
3. Prioritize tasks and delegate where you can (rule of 3)
4. Connect with your team (phone, chat, in person)
5. Respond to email and put out fires (ideally no more than 3-4x)
6. Learn something (article, few pages in a book, etc.)
7. Take a break (usually a walk for me)
8. Send a message to at least 1 customer or prospect
9. Promote or market your company
10. Move a project forward (a step toward those big rocks)

Most of these are easy habits to work into a normal routine without much effort and many can be finished in the first 30 minutes of the day (cash, metrics, prioritize).

Focus on building good habits instead of obsessing over the exact to-do’s on your list.

My list has peace of mind tasks (i.e. I always look at cash so I know whether I can afford that next big inventory purchase or upcoming payroll) and some that keep my big ticket projects moving along. It works for me but your combination could look a bit different.