Upcoming events calendar –
QuickBooks workshop – 2 glorious fun-filled days with Marie. Laugh your way through this financial software and find reports that help you manage your business so much better! No debits and credits as Marie leads the business owner and accountant, alike, through the perilous pitfalls and come out unscathed. You’ll learn to love the program and love Marie for the way she leads the group. Click here for more details and registration information.
Musings by Marie
Lots of life! Lots of special events! Lots of opportunities!
You see it every day—just like me—and how do you do all of it??! Can you have your cake and eat it too?! Yes—you can! For the past five years I’ve been working with and coached by some of the top leaders in success! The first is our favorite, Meggin McIntosh, with her Emphasis on Excellence. She shows you how to stop ‘the overwhelm’ and become more strategic, optimize your productivity, and make changes that will allow you to consistently keep your “emphasis on excellence.” Love her!!
Then I coached for two years with Kendall Summerhawk, whose work confirms that business owners don’t have issues just with their QuickBooks and their internal systems, but also with their money mindsets. She brought me a long way in understanding how deeper issues can affect my clients in their efforts to create successful businesses. Now I’m listening to Ali Brown who helps owners use technology to reach more clients than you might ever think possible. Over 7,500 participants were listening to one of her teleseminars.
Overworked and Underpaid?
Each of these women is running their multi-million dollar business from their home and loving it! So, what secret have I seen implemented over and over—it’s no secret. It’s the word “Delegate.” Keep going…you will want to know how.
Are you a business owner that’s overworked and underpaid?
Just about everyone suffers from a lack of time to do all the things they want, or even need, to do in their business. One of the solutions to freeing up your time is to delegate. The question is: what are the most effective tasks to delegate? Here are ten ideas for you to consider (or reconsider) to free up your valuable time for more important things.
1. Social Media
We didn’t even have social media ten years ago, but now that we do, it can be a major investment in time. Some companies ignore it completely, not wanting to open that can of worms, but done well, social media can have a great payback.
Rather than ignore it or take up your important time, turn it over to an intern or recent college grad who probably knows more about it anyway!
2. Grocery shopping
You might think this is only for rich people, but it’s simply not true and very cost-effective.
Grocery shopping is a personal task, but time doesn’t distinguish between work and personal; it keeps marching on. Set up a grocery list and find someone who wants to work part-time (your housekeeper might know someone). You’ll be able to free up several hours per week, plus you’ll likely be helping someone who needs the money.
The money you pay to your shopper is not a business expense. Instead, they may be a Schedule H employee, so you’ll need to keep your books separate or alert your accountant. Also check on any liability issues with your insurance company if they will be driving on your behalf. Once you get past a few small setup issues, you’ll love this.
By the way, I’m a member of a local CSA basket group (Community Supported Agriculture). I receive a box of fresh, locally grown vegetables and fruit every week. Scrumptious!! Click here for their contact information .
3. Your email
How much of your email could be handled by one of your employees, an assistant or intern? Set up separate emails by function and not by people so that your employees can take over more of this ever-growing task. Anything that you respond to the same way over and over again can be drafted in a procedure. Employees or a virtual administrative assistant can be trained on what to send to whom.
4. Training employees
Once you get one employee trained, that employee may be able to train additional hires, freeing you up from having to do so. Well-written procedures will go a long way to reduce training time, and even writing procedures can be delegated to the right person.
5. Vendor research and purchase
Need to find a hotel to host an event? Or a webinar company? Or a project management system? All of these items require research to find good vendors, and as business owners, we may tend to do these ourselves when we can write up a few guidelines and give the task to a capable employee who would enjoy researching the topic and writing up some options for you to review.
6. Hiring
Hiring can be one of the most time-consuming tasks of all. I’m definitely not suggesting delegating the final decision on hiring, just the search process. I’ve heard of business owners who delayed hiring because they froze at the sight of a 6-inch tall stack of resumes they had to go through.
It might pay to hire an agency to do the screening for you so that you are presented with only the finalists.
7. Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping is also one of those time-consuming tasks, with two added challenges: everywhere you turn, there are deadlines and regulations, plus it requires special skills that need updating frequently. All of this screams to be delegated when possible. I’ve added another affiliate member to my team so that we can help you…it was very sad when I was referring people away.
8. Sales
When you first start your business, you are generally the only one selling. To get it off the ground, you eventually need a team of people to help you sell your goods and services. As your sales team gets better and better, you can delegate larger and larger sales opportunities to them. Who knows, if you’re not natural at sales, you may have employees who are better at this than you.
9. Writing
Writing can be extremely time-consuming for some people. Great writing requires a long learning curve, so if writing is not a core skill for you, you may want to look around for someone you can delegate or outsource this task to. This includes things like writing procedures, web sites, job descriptions, marketing copy, proposals, and even something as small as thank you notes.
10. Calendar scheduling
All that back and forth phone tag, email tag, postponements, cancellations, and other scheduling challenges can be delegated to free you up for making even more appointments. Or implement an automatic scheduler tool—some of my colleagues use them regularly.
In summary, your time is incredibly valuable, and the only way to make it more valuable is to accomplish increasingly valuable tasks that only you can do while delegating the tasks that other people can do. As a general rule, anything that is not in your core skill set or core business is fair game for delegation. If someone else can do it faster, then it’s fair game for delegation.
Think about what you’re spending a lot of time on (and possibly spinning your wheels at the same time). This is a task that can possibly be delegated, so you can free up your time for more important things.
We’d love to help you delegate part of your back-office work, so please contact us today for your personal assessment.
