The One Nursing Skill That Can Increase Your Business Success

[Elizabeth Hanes, BSN, RN]

As nurses, we bring a lot of skills to the table that help us succeed as entrepreneurs. We’re disciplined. We’re focused. We’re detail-oriented.

But there’s one particular nursing skill you can harness to drive business success, no matter what business you’re in: your ability to prioritize with great proficiency.

The Key to Maximizing Your Revenue as a Nurse Entrepreneur

In a nutshell, the key to increasing your business revenue is efficiency. The more efficient your operations, the more clients you can serve – and the more money you can bring in.

And the key to efficiency is the ability to prioritize your workload. As nurses, we’re masters of that.

When I started out as a nurse, for example, I learned to review each patient’s meds, care needs, etc., and then mentally organize these tasks into a prioritized list, starting with the most urgent item and working downward to the task that least required my immediate attention.

You can apply these same principles of prioritization to your business life to achieve greater success this year – and in years to come.

Focus on This One Nursing Skill to Achieve Business Success

You can find a million resources online about time management (prioritization) for small business owners. The secret is to find the system that works for you and then to use it consistently.

Fortunately, prioritization doesn’t have to be complicated. In my business as a freelance writer, I prioritize based on three broad categories:

• Client work
• Marketing
• Administration

Within each of these categories lie multiple projects that also need to be prioritized. For instance, the next scheduled deadline always holds the top priority on my list, because I never want to fail my clients by not delivering on time. This means if I have an assignment due tomorrow, you can bet I’m working on it today.

And sometimes these projects include a number of sub-tasks that also need to be prioritized. If I’m writing a white paper with a deadline three weeks from now, I need to backward-schedule the intermediate deadlines, such as performing the research, writing the draft, and so on.

As another example, the marketing bucket holds multiple, ongoing projects, such as researching prospective clients and sending a Letter of Introduction to each one. Your marketing bucket likely includes ongoing initiatives, too, with many moving parts and intermediate tasks. By learning to prioritize all of these tasks on a routine basis, you can become much more efficient and generate more revenue as a result.

Low Priority Doesn’t Mean No Priority

If you write out a list of all the business tasks that require your attention, you might quickly become overwhelmed, which makes it easy to ignore all those low-priority projects (hello, filing!) you don’t really want to work on, anyway. Don’t fall into that trap. Instead, develop a system that ensures even your low-priority tasks get accomplished regularly. For example, I spend up to half an hour every Friday afternoon clearing out my digital inbox. It’s a tedious task that I loathe performing, but it helps me ensure I never fail to respond to an important email. By regularly scheduling this low-priority administrative task, I keep my business on track for success.

So, how can you begin learning to apply your nursing prioritization skills to your business? Try these resources, for a start:

• 7 Practical Methods for How to Prioritize Work
• How to Prioritize Work When Everything is #1
• Time Crunch: An Entrepreneur's Guide to Prioritizing Your Tasks

As master prioritizers, nurses start their entrepreneurial careers leaps and bounds ahead of folks from other occupations that don’t demand the high level of efficiency required of nurses. When you transfer your deep understanding of prioritization from nursing to your business, you’ve set yourself up for quicker, greater business success.

What strategies do you use to prioritize your business life? Please post your best tips in the comments!

[NurseLizabeeRN, BSN, MSN, RN]

Thanks for these tips! I think nurses make excellent entrepreneurs, especially since we have some innate abilities that most don't. Prioritization is one of them!