Need more time? How systemising your business can win you back one day per week back to spend how you choose.

Need more time? How systemising your business can win you back one day per week back to spend how you choose.

As business owners’, there are two things that we all need more of… Time and Money. By focusing on getting time back first, we can then focus on how to get more cash into the business. It sounds easy enough, but how do you actually make it happen?

To free up your time, the solution is to ‘Systemise Your Business’ and get yourself out of the way of your own success. Nearly every small business owner you meet will say they have systems, but they’re all in their head. This is the number one reason why business owners do not have enough time. It is impossible to keep track of every client, every sale, every staff member and every task within your head. You want your system to run the business and you monitor the system. So how do we do this?

1. Define the key pipeline stages of your business
2. Map out the sequence of your business
3. Allocate responsibility and conduct for each step
4. Identify metrics based on the performance of each step
5. Build a procedure or ‘how-to-guide for each critical step. 

Once this is completed, it is very simple to incorporate this model into a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. You can then program the CRM to automatically generate tasks for all your team relative to the progress of the client’s journey with you. The best bit of news here is that you are now well on the way to removing yourself from the day to day operations of the business. 

If it sounds like hard work, it’s actually rather simple if you approach it in a concise, logical manner. Focus first on the activities which will free the most of your time first. These will nearly always be administrative in nature or revolve around solving a persistent staff or customer relations problem. 

Work hard, once.. Instead of being consumed day after day in the spot fires of the daily business, work hard once to develop your standard operating procedures (or how-to-guides) then delegate them. Keep challenging yourself with the mantra ‘Why I am doing this?’ and ‘Is this really the most important thing I need to do?’.

If nothing changes, nothing changes. There is light at the end of the tunnel. 

A simple way to start is to conduct an audit of how you spend your time. Diarise your daily activities and score these against three categories;

• How important was this task to the strategic direction of the business?
• Are you the only person who can do this task?
• How much do you love doing this task?

If the answer to any of the above is low or negative, then prepare to delegate it. If cash flow is constraining you from hiring another staff member, consider the alternative of integrating a cost-effective Virtual Assistant into your business. 

Now you have been able to provide a structure to improve your internal operations, you are on your way to regain control of your time. This time is now yours… to spend, however you see fit.