Most of us are busy all the time when we start a small business, and we often even end up working longer hours and earning less than if we worked for a corporation. No matter how hard we try, we never seem to get enough time.
Yet this sense of busyness is an illusion. You have more power over your time than you think.
Here are four ways to get your time back when running your business while earning more:
1. Plug the leaks
You will get more things done when you stop procrastinating at work.
Stop doing things that don’t need to be done—like surfing Facebook, watching YouTube videos, or doing anything else that pulls you away from your work.
While diversions may be stress-relieving, they are not goal-achieving.
2. Let someone else manage the business
Not all businesses need your time and attention to be profitable.
If, for instance, you own rental properties, here are five things you don’t need to do:
- Learn how to fix everything yourself
- Supervise a team of handymen
- Take care of the rent collection
- Advertise and interview new tenants
- Confront and evict tenants should the need arise
You can hire a property management company to do this work for you.
They will do a much better job than you because they have systems in place and trained staff to implement them. They also have a comprehensive understanding of the legal issues.
In the long run, you will probably earn more by hiring a property management firm rather than doing everything yourself and making expensive mistakes. So, get a property manager for the area where you own the rental property. If, for example, you own a rental property in Fort Myers, Florida, then find a company that takes care of property management in Fort Myers.
3. Use technology better
Technology can make it easier to work smarter and more efficiently. Many tasks can be automated for more efficiency. Leveraging tech will empower you to get things done quicker and better.
While you might feel more comfortable doing something manually, consider the many benefits of implementing an automated solution. Create an inventory of all the things that you are doing manually that can be automated and identify the best tech tools for the job.
4. Train your staff
As a small business owner, you probably started by doing almost everything yourself when you had a limited amount of capital. If the work required more time or skill than you had available, you outsourced it.
While this may have worked when you were just starting out, you may eventually have to hire employees when you have more work than you can manage. However, you may find it difficult to supervise employees. For one thing, you feel frustrated that they don’t work as hard as you do. For another, you feel irritated that they do such poor-quality work.
If this is the case, recognize that your employees are not the problem: you are the source of the dysfunction in your organization. If your employees feel disengaged, it’s because you don’t trust them to do the work.
Here are some ways to re-engage disengaged employees so that you stop doing their work for them because you know how to do it better and faster.
- Create a plan for what your employees need to learn to get better at their jobs.
- Include incentives for them to be rewarded for the quality and quantity of work that they do.
- Develop a training schedule. You could have training classes, get employees to train each other, and use computer-based training systems.
The whole purpose of running your own business is to earn more and to do things your own way. If you find yourself working long hours and underearning, then you need to look at how you can use your time better.