Buy Back Precious Time

February 27th, 2010

In any typical working day, most people have only two to three really productive hours. So, why not just cut out the other four to five hours and focus on the two to three that are really getting results?

You may be thinking that you need to work all the hours you do to get everything done. It may seem impossible for you to cut your working hours down. But it is possible!

Understand that the way you work comes from years of habit. It comes from having once been an employee, where you might have been able to get the work done quickly, but you still had to be present at the office because the boss would be upset if you went home at 10:30 am.

Well, you’re the boss now, and you can alter your business hours to suit yourself. You will be just as, if not more productive than you are right now, and you will buy back precious time for yourself.  Time is the one thing you cannot create more of, but in this case, you can.  Here are some questions to consider in your quest to buy back more time by being more productive ….

Are you over-servicing your clients?  Start by becoming really aware of the things you’re doing that keep you working harder and longer than necessary. Then take control, rein yourself in, and stop doing them.

If you’ve set what you think is a commanding daily rate for your services, are you subconsciously working more hours to justify that rate? Do you end up essentially doing three days’ work just to rationalize the higher rate that you charge?

Take a closer look here because, you’re still not making the money you think you’re worth. You are over-servicing the client. It’s not just about the rate. It’s about how much time you put into the service you offer.

Are you offering all sorts of extras that involve a lot more follow-up and that you aren’t being paid for? If your clients are perfectly happy and satisfied with what you’ve provided, your work there is done. Your clients aren’t going to turn away your free services, particularly if they were already willing to pay for your expertise. If you think you have more to offer your client, create an upgraded package and sell it to them. Continued access to your services should not be available for free.

Are you striving for perfection?  Do you continually work on a product or presentation that is already fine because you think it could be better? This is your own need for perfectionism coming into play, particularly if you are creating products or programs.

Perfectionism stops you from moving forward. You will be more productive by creating a product that satisfies your client’s needs and getting it into their hands, rather than tweaking it over and over.

Start to take notice of where are you creating extra, unnecessary work for yourself. It’s a habit that you have to break.   Change your habits to maximize those productive hours. Then spend the time you’ve bought back however you choose.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Buy Back Precious Time

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Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Home Based Business, Marketing, Motivation, Personal Productivity, Small Business Ideas | No Comments »

3 Tips to Successfully Balance Work and Play

January 27th, 2010

Are the edges getting blurred between your work life and home life? If you work from home, it’s really easy for those edges to get blurred. You might, for example, find yourself checking for responses to your tweets when you should be spending time with your family. Or maybe you feel the pull of work because your office is right there at the top of the stairs. Whatever your situation, you must set some “hard edges” between work and personal time if you’re going to work from home successfully. Here are three rules for defining hard edges between work and play.

I. Set Firm Work Days: Working seven days a week is a common mistake of work-at-home entrepreneurs. That’s a real mistake, because no one can maintain that level of intensity long-term.

Decide how many days per week you’re going to work, and stick to it. Here’s why this is important: the work you have to do will fill the time you spend doing it. In other words, if you allow yourself to be sucked into working late nights and weekends, you’ll adjust your workload because you know you’ve got lots of time to do it.

On the other hand, if you say you’re going to work just three days each week, you have to adjust your focus to get things done in less time. If you want to have time for something besides work in your life, create a hard edge between business and personal time by setting firm work days.

II. Reserve Time for Yourself: It may not seem logical that setting aside time for yourself each week actually improves your productivity, but it does help. An important aspect of setting hard edges between work and play is allowing time when no one requires anything from you.

You should especially pay attention if you’re a work-at-home parent. By setting a time when someone else is minding the children and you’re not working in your business, you allow yourself to refocus. It also gives you time to do those things you never seem to get scheduled in your personal life.

Whether you take a whole “You Day” each week, or just a few hours, decide now to set firm time that’s all yours. It will make you a happier and more productive person.

III. Stick to the Schedule! It’s all well and good to say you’re only going to work four days each week and take Wednesdays for yourself, but sticking with that schedule takes resolve. It’s so easy when working from home to read “just one more email” or let a project stretch into family time.

There’s no amount of money that can replace time with your family. Allowing your business to encroach on that time probably won’t even improve the strength of your business.

For your own health, and the health of your business, delineate a hard edge between work and play, and then stick with the schedule you set. You’ll be amazed how much you’re able to get done when you have less time to complete it. And your family will benefit from the time you set aside just for them.

When you work from home, you have the freedom to call the shots, to decide when and how you’re going to work. That is, after all, one of the reasons you own your own business, isn’t it?

Rather than allowing your business to control your life, decide what work schedule suits your situation. Let hard edges, not blurred edges, define how your business and personal lives blend. Doing so is a big step toward being truly successful.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com

3 Tips to Successfully Balance Work and Play

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Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Home Based Business, Home Business, Personal Productivity, Small Business Ideas, Success Secrets, Systems, Words Of Inspiration | 4 Comments »

How Do I Start Outsourcing?

January 23rd, 2010

So you’ve made the decision to start outsourcing. Congratulations!

You’ll soon notice the positive impact this will have on your business, and you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it. Outsourcing is so important, because if you want to grow a profitable online business, you’ll need more than one person!

It’s time to build up a network of people around you that you can outsource routine tasks to.

But where do you start outsourcing? For some people, deciding which aspects of their business they could or should outsource is really simple. To them, it just makes sense which routine activities to outsource.

But for other people, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious answer to the question of where to start outsourcing. No part of the business stands out as being more easily outsourced than any other.

Something that will help you to identify what to outsource is to keep a log of your day. Try to keep a track of all your work activities on a daily basis, ideally for a week. It may seem very labour-intensive to start with, but this will help you to save time in the long run.

Once you’ve done this, sit back and look at this time log. Start to identify any activities that you would like to hand over, things that could be done by someone else. Highlight any tasks that, in an ideal world, you would handover.

Say, for example, you really dislike doing the accounts, or you wish you could get someone else to do your monthly newsletter mail out. Highlight every time during that week you spent on accounts or on organising the month’s newsletter. You’ll probably be amazed at how much time you’ve spent on tasks that aren’t part of your core business.  Tasks that you could hand over to someone else to deal with.

This is where you should be starting to outsource. The routine jobs that immediately jump off the page at you are where you should concentrate, as these are the tasks that you have readily identified as not being part of your core business.

When you start doing this, maybe you’ll only highlight a few tasks on your log. While you might want to hand over other things on your list, at the moment it might seem like too much of an impossible dream.

But I promise, once you start this process you’ll be hooked. And the longer you do it and the more things you’ll start to observe, you’ll begin noticing all that you’re doing that you could be delegating.

The great thing about doing this is that once you’ve got your list of tasks and activities that you would like to handover, you can start to group them together. Ask yourself if there are skill sets that go together, and if you can outsource a group of tasks to one person or team.

For example, your list might contain several activities relating to editing and publishing, or website maintenance, or data entry. These groupings might not occur to you if you just thought about a regular business day. But actually going through each minute of your day clarifies exactly what you do to keep your business going.

I still find myself monitoring my daily routine, because it’s so easy to fall into the trap of doing things that I could be delegating. Whenever I sit down to look at exactly where I’m spending my time, I immediately experience a boost to my efficiency and productivity.

So, your challenge is to keep a log of your activities next week. For those who aren’t outsourcing, you’ll be amazed at how much of your day you will be able to delegate to someone else. And while you may already be outsourcing, think of it as a ‘tune up’ for your business.

Get ready to feel that boost of productivity!

How Do I Start Outsourcing?

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Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Home Based Business, Marketing, Online Marketing, Personal Productivity, Success Secrets, outsourcing | 5 Comments »

Role Models Help Develop Your Business Model

September 8th, 2009

When you turn to someone for help or advice, you more or less expect that person to make your situation, whatever it may be, better. They may not be able to fix the “problem” completely, but asking for help from a particular person because they have knowledge or experience in the area in which you’re having trouble is a wise decision.  Your ultimate goal is to come out of the situation with more clarity and knowledge than you had when you went in.

That’s what a good role model does – or should do. Set a good example for you to follow and provide you with the basic knowledge and guidelines you need to follow in their footsteps.

It’s the same for your business. One of the most important things you can do in order to make your business successful is to model the people and businesses that are already producing the results that you want.

The odds are that these successful people and businesses have stumbled upon the same road blocks you have, asked the same questions, made the same mistakes. So, whatever you think your limitations are, whatever you think has been stopping you from growing your business, they can help you to blast every one of your excuses right out of the water.

Do you need to get your message out to a bigger audience? Then model someone who knows the most effective way to network. My friend, Carrie Wilkerson, for example, whom you may or may not already know, is very well known with social media. By that, I mean things like Twitter and Facebook.

And she is big into relationships, with about 65,000 followers on Twitter.  She uses social media to be herself, but to be herself in a much bigger way. And so if you wondered about how you could share your message with a larger audience, then Carrie, or someone like her, is a great person to show you how to do it.  (Carrie is a guest speaker at my upcoming More Leads, More Clients, More Sales event)

The key thing is to look for a role model who not only excels at what you need, but can give you practical steps and advice to follow. Another thing about modeling people and businesses that are already successful, is to choose those that are coming from the same place as you. By that, I mean model businesses and people that share your values and your attitude, and your lifestyle.

If you are a single parent with four children, trying to manage your own business, emulating the successful business model of someone who is married with no children is not likely to result in the same success for your business. The great thing is that you’re always going to have plenty of different role models to learn from.

When you find the ones that have the same attitude and values that you do, they are generally more than happy about sharing what they’ve learned with you.

I guarantee there is somebody out there that is going to be able to show you a roadmap that’s right for you.

Role Models Help Develop Your Business Model

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Posted in Business Plans, Business Success, Home Based Business, Home Business, Internet Business, Marketing, Money Making Ideas, Motivation, Words Of Inspiration | 1 Comment »