The biggest challenge that my clients consistently say deflects them from growing their businesses is lack of time. I’m guessing we can all resonate with that.
There are so many things that seem to fill our working days which are all legitimate business requirements such as returning phone calls, doing emails, writing quotes, going to meetings, marketing, bookkeeping, ordering supplies, managing staff/suppliers and so on, let alone actually delivering the work our clients pay for! So it’s no wonder that the hours we work seem to evaporate with sometimes little real progress being visible as a result.
The key to successfully (and consistently) growing your business is to make time in your working week to get those business growth “things to do” done! The best way of achieving this will vary from person to person and business to business. Generally the options split into 2 groups:
- How to free up my time so I can really focus on those areas of my business where I add the most value.
- How best to drive my behaviour to focus on those tasks that will grow my business.
For today I’ll focus on point 1. For most business owners the places where they add the most value are usually the sales and operational delivery parts of the business, so step one is to find ways to decrease the time you spend in the other areas. The key to freeing up as much of your time as possible is to systemise what you do (a great by-product of this is increased consistency and quality).
By systemising you not only free up your time but it also means it’s easy to outsource it when the time is right. This week’s task is to look at everything you do and find ways to make it quicker by putting in place a system to do it. A classic one for me is around the volume of emails I write. I’ll send emails to confirm meetings, and covering ones with proposals & invoices, and so on. Although there is an element of all of these that is bespoke to the person that will receive it, there is also a big chunk that is pretty standard, so creating a template for them is pretty straightforward. Invoicing is another area that can usually be improved. Do you have to look up what the descriptor was on your last invoice so you know what to write on the new one? Do you use invoicing software or are you doing it all manually?
So which tasks could you speed up by putting more of a system in place? Once you have systems in place it becomes far more straight forward to outsource them. I have a Virtual Assistant, Sara, who helps me plough through my things to do list in the areas I have systemised and Sara is definitely worth her weight in gold.
Just think how much more productive your time will be when you can spend even more of it on growing your business. Take action today to free up your time.