I interviewed over 100 entrepreneurs with a simple question: “What’s the one thing you can do in five minutes or less that will most improve your small business?”  My series, Blistering Business, is the result.  Part one gives you five fast, effective tips to blow the top off your venture.

Entrepreneurs never have any time on their hands, but they always try to get a lot done.  The key to balancing these contradictory impulses: being as efficient as possible.  Use the following tips to boost your business without wasting any time:

1. Plan your day before you start it (3-10 minutes). This was, without exception, the most common response to my survey.  David Kaiser, time management coach at Dark Matter Consulting, had this to say:

“The best way to spend ten minutes is to take five minutes and consider what plans are on the horizon for the week, the month, the quarter, the year. Then, to take the next five minutes and write down what 3 – 5 things are going to get done today, no matter how crazy the day gets, so that I am actually moving the business forward, not just reacting and treading water.”

Amen to that.  An ounce of planning is worth a pound of execution.  Plan your days effectively so you’re not spinning your wheels.  If you spend 5 hours working on a useless project, you’re committing the greatest inefficiency sin of them all.

Dan Nainan, former senior engineer with Intel and succesful stand-up comedian, who describes his life as “George Clooney’s in “Up in the Air”, just without the sex,” (sorry Dan – I had to include this), says:

“The most important thing you can do to improve your business is to spend 10 minutes the night before planning your most important priorities for the next day.  It’s the key to success.”

Want to get more done in less time? Then start spending your time on the most effective activities possible.

Dan, whose website you can find at nainan.com, has performed at venues such as the Democratic National Convention and crowds of over 4,000 people – most comedians never approach this level of success.  Over 40 people sent me some variation of this response, and Dan seems to think it’s the key to his success.  Take it to heart.

2. Write a hand-written note to a current or past client (5 minutes). I can’t even tell you how powerful this is – every single time I do it, I wonder why I don’t do it more often.  I’d say that for every ten hand-written notes I send to my clients, I get:

2 referrals

1 instance of repeat business

10 more appreciative, long-term relationships.

Get in the habit of doing this.  Andrew Ramon of Ramon Law in San Antonio, Texas, had this to say:

“Hand write (not email) a thank you note to one person a day whom has helped you or your business …ie… Vendors, employees, prospects.. Whomever.”

He hits a key point – it’s not just clients that you can write to.  Write to EVERYONE.  Everyone appreciates being reached out to personally – stop being a robot and start writing letters.

3. Write one page of your book (or opus, or blog, or manual, or whatever) – (10 minutes). When people think of writing a book, they usually think of some insanely time-consuming task that they’ll never finish.  I say BS.  If you write 500 word a day for 100 days, you’re left with a product longer than the average published novel.  Think about that for a minute.  Progress in life and in business is all about taking small, incremental steps towards your goals.

Conna Craig, serial entrepreneur and philanthropist, founder of The Institute for Children, and publisher of a blog that helps people to support foster children all over the country, said:

“Write one page of your book–you know: that book you want to write but you dont feel like you have enough time. Set the egg timer for ten minutes and see what you can do.”

Do not EVER sit down with the goal of writing 10,000 words in a day.  Writing can be re-purposed in a million ways and it’s invaluable to your business.  I’ve been doing this with my soon-to-be-published book, How to Bullsh*t an Essay (more on that later), but I’m amazed – I’ve been working on it for 3 months and it’s almost done, but it’s been on my  projects list for years.

Get writing.  Now.

4. Delegate Your Tasks (1 minute). Why do so many entrepreneurs spend so much of their time on the tasks they’re least effective at completing when they can be so much more effective elsewhere?

Carol Reeve of Girl On the Roof Marketing had this to say:

“Consider your hourly wage and ask if the items on your to-do list truly require that level of attention. If not, delegate to  someone else in the company. Trust your staff to do the job you hired them to do.”

Delegation is king.  If you’re charging clients $100 an hour for your services, then why the HELL are you spending an hour a day stuffing your own envelopes? Get someone else to do it for $10 an hour and make an extra $90 somewhere else.

Of all the tips out there, delegating might be the most important.  I couldn’t recommend Elance.com more highly for this – you’ll find people all over the world who will do anything and everything for you.

Pass along the tasks you're not best at to get the most out of your day.

5. Email Your Clients and Contacts Frequently, and Automate the Process (10 minutes/day). People will only refer you if they remember you.  If you do an awesome job working for someone and then vanish into thin air, they’re not going to remember you when you need them to most: when they’re in the position to refer you.  If you love your accountant and someone starts talking about how much their taxes suck, you’re 100X more likely to refer if your accountant gets in touch every two weeks to say hi and offer you some good resources.  Maintain top-of-the-mind awareness and you’ll get more business.

Sonny Ahuha, America’s Ultimate Internet Marketer, has this to say:

“I have a retail and marketing business. The best way to get highest ROI in short period of time is by sending continuous emails in form of news letters to your clients using a paid email service like iContact. Its much easier to have present clients spend with you again and more than getting new ones and email marketing works like a charm for this strategy. Make sure send high value content to clients instead of plain offers – that way they look forward to receiving your emails.”

Sonny brings up two awesome points:

1. You need your contact efforts to be helpful.  Don’t sell them or they’ll resent it – just give them useful info!

2. It’s not just new business that you’ll get from keeping in touch – your current customer base will spend more with you, which is the easiest imaginable way to increase your revenue.

Take 25-5o minutes today and try rocking all of these strategies. You’ll be amazed at how quickly business starts booming.

Have your own helpful tip?  Any add-ons to the advice here?  Let us know in the comment section!  Also, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter and RSS feed to keep getting more great business-building tips in the Blistering Business series!