In my observation of and work with the numerous business owners around the world, there's one thing that differentiates the wildly successful and wealthy ones from the struggling and broke.
Struggling business owners will spend time to save money, whereas successful business owners will spend money to save time. Because you can always get more money - you cannot get more time. So you need to ensure the stuff you spend your time on makes the biggest impact.
This is called leverage and leverage is the best kept secret of the rich.
By far, the biggest leverage point in any business is marketing. If you get 10% better at marketing, this can have an exponential or multiplying effect on your bottom line.
You should spend more time on planning and executing on your marketing than on any other activity until you are completely referral based.
My first few years in business I spent too much time and money on building my business and not enough time on marketing. If I could back in time (and get some of my money back) I would spend 50% of my days on marketing rather than the paltry 10-20% I did (on a good day).
Busy feels better so I stayed busy. But not much money came in.
That is all about to change. Stay tuned ...