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How To Reduce Your Workload As A Business Owner

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Reduce your Workload|How To Reduce Your Workload As A Business OwnerBusiness owners are, necessarily, very busy people. This is even more true if they are the only ones working in their business (and therefore are doing everything), or if their team is a small one. Although you might think this is simply par for the course, the truth is that working non-stop, starting early and finishing late, is both unproductive and bad for your health since it can quickly lead to burnout.

It might seem impossible to reduce your workload if you want to continue to grow your business and get everything done even if you know it’s the right thing to do. However, there are ways it can be done; read on to find out more.

Make A Plan

If you know what needs to be done (and if you don’t know, it’s wise to look into exactly what tasks you do each day and find out) then you can plan it all out and become much more productive and, ideally, free up some of your time as well.

The best way to start with this plan is to look at prioritizing your tasks and determining which are the ones that have to be done first, and which can wait until later. In other words, anything that is urgent and important goes to the top of the list, anything that is not important and not urgent goes to the bottom, and those that are urgent but not important and important but not urgent can go in the middle.

As well as this, it’s a good idea to start each day with a goal in mind. When you are working towards something, whether it’s completing your to-do list or finishing work at a certain time, for example, you’ll be much more focused. It’s easy to waste time when you don’t have something to work towards.

Delegate

The idea of delegating any of your work might be a concerning one; after all, if someone else is taking on the task, how will you be able to maintain control? How will you know it’s done in the way you want it to be done?

The answer is simple; before you delegate, you train. If you carry out training with your staff members, they will understand exactly what it is you want from them. They will like the fact that you’re trusting them with more responsibility, so they’re going to be more productive. Although this training might take a little time, once it’s done you can cross another task off your life forever. Just check on the end result once in a while to ensure the quality is there and that’s it.

If you don’t have any staff members to delegate to, you can look into how to hire personal assistants. This can be done virtually, and these highly trained helpers will be able to do many different admin tasks from making phone calls to answering emails that would otherwise have taken up a lot of your time.

Take A Lot Of Breaks

It probably sounds completely counter-intuitive, but stepping away from your work and doing something else, whether that something is having a nap, going for a walk, watching TV, exercising, making some art, or anything else that is non-work related, will actually make you more productive when you return.

This break will give your brain a chance to relax and refocus. If you continue to work without taking a break, you’ll just become more and more tired and the work you do will be of a lower quality, plus it will take you longer to do overall. Take plenty of breaks and the work will be done to a higher standard in a shorter space of time.

The 6 Biggest Time Wasters in Every Business: What’s Holding You Back From Reaching Success?

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Biggest Time Wasters|The 6 Biggest Time Wasters in Every Business: What's Holding You Back From Reaching Success?Entrepreneurs have to make every moment count if they hope to succeed in the world of business. Building a new company from the ground up can be exciting, but it also frequently proves to be an all-consuming task.

Waste even a bit too much time while leading a young company and crucial duties can end up being neglected. Find ways of addressing the following six common issues and you will have more time to focus on the business-related details that matter the most.

1. Bookkeeping and Accounting

Every business needs to maintain accurate books and have access to informative accounting reports and insightful analysis. Unfortunately, many small-business owners end up wasting time trying to stay on top of related duties that they are not well-equipped to handle.

Accounting Firms are inevitably better-positioned than entrepreneurs to take charge of these all-important financial activities. Because they are much more efficient than part-timers, professional bookkeepers and accountants tend to offer highly cost-effective services.

Not needing to worry about issues like payroll, accounts payable, and tax preparation will allow a business owner to adopt a more commanding, supportive style of leadership. Even when hiring full-time accounting help cannot be justified, on-demand assistance is always available.

2. Email

Hundreds of billions of emails are sent every day, but many of them have relatively little to say. Many a modern entrepreneur starts each working day by spending an hour or even more filtering through a packed inbox.

While there will always some emails that need to be read carefully, thought about, and acknowledged, these tend to be fairly rare. Small-business owners who learn to quickly assess whether given messages merit much attention will free up time for more important activities.

3. Overly Demanding Customers

Many entrepreneurs subscribe, at least superficially, to the idea that the “customer is always right.” A focus on customer satisfaction, in fact, is a valuable asset for almost every kind of business.

Some customers, though, are simply too demanding and unreasonable to be worth devoting time to at all. Entrepreneurs who learn to identify and deal with difficult customers effectively will spare themselves many headaches in addition to saving time.

4. Micromanagement

Hiring a first employee or even adding to a growing team is often a sign that a business is on the right track. Becoming an effective, efficient manager, though, does not always come naturally to entrepreneurs.

One problem many small-business owners face is a compelling need to exert too much control. Try to specify and direct employees’ activities too precisely and time will inevitably be wasted.

In fact, workers who struggle under the burden of micromanagement tend to be less productive, creating a twofold cost. Entrepreneurs who learn to give their employees some breathing room will have more time to spare and become better leaders, as well.

5. Vendor Churn

It always takes time and effort to find a new supplier or other type of partner. Become too quick to switch to a new vendor at the slightest sign of trouble and the wasted time will add up. Business owners should never feel that their vendors are holding them hostage, but accepting an occasional, honest mistake is normally the best policy.

6. Meetings

Some large companies have become infamous for making unproductive meetings central parts of the workweek. Unfortunately, even a fair number of relatively small businesses fall into this trap, often with ostensibly good intentions. Meetings can be useful but should always be designed to repay the investment of time required to hold them.

A Proven Way to Build a More Successful Business

Many small companies end up being held back because of time being wasted by the owner. Avoid the six especially common time-wasters above and you will have a better chance of leading your own business to success.

Recovering from an Illness or Injury? How to Keep a Business Running in Your Absence

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Running a Business|Recovering from an Illness or Injury? How to Keep a Business Running in Your AbsenceBeing a business owner entails a lot of responsibility: looking after employees, pushing the company forward, and being the head individual for people to answer to. This can all change if you are suddenly ill or have an accident. Maintaining the same equilibrium and productivity can be hard if you’re not yet feeling up to it, and you don’t think you are fully on the mend. Here are a few ways of approaching your day-to-day management while you recuperate.

Take it slow

Don’t rush back into the hot seat as soon as is possible. Being in a hurry to assume control of day-to-day proceedings could cause you to miss vital signals your body is sending out. Hopefully, if a client or employee was keen to come into work regardless of how ill or unfit they were, you would send them back home.

Delegate responsibly

If you are bad at delegating, now is the time to learn how to do it effectively. You can’t always micromanage every aspect of your business – particularly when you’re incredibly unwell. Ensuring that you hand out jobs to the appropriate people will give you some peace of mind that the work is being done in your absence. Staying in touch to see how everything is going will help you feel calmer about being out-of-action.

Get the legal side sorted

If your injury or sickness is due to a major accident, such as a car crash, then you will need to take time off to fix the legal side of proceedings. As well as taking time off to recuperate, you will need to ensure that you get the compensation and justice that is deserved, so you don’t keep mentally re-visiting it after you go back to work. If your business is based in Florida, for instance, finding a car accident lawyer in Fort Lauderdale would help you get local legal help.

Drop in for visits

If you’re worried about being completely absent from your business, dropping in for the occasional visit could be valuable to you. Skype and conference calls could be a temporary solution when it comes to maintaining order and understanding the day-to-day processes. When it comes to showing face, you may just need to pop in every now and then to say hi and tell them how you’re doing – only if you feel up to it, of course.

Be realistic

As a result of having to delegate and give other employees responsibility, you will have to be realistic about what you personally can achieve. You have to acknowledge that it won’t really be possible for you to get everything done yourself. Being realistic also means acknowledging what your employees can realistically take on, and that it may be a bumpy ride for them initially in your absence.

Running a business while you’re recovering from an injury or illness can come loaded with guilt. Worrying about how your employees are getting on and whether you’re a good boss are inevitable. However, in order to maintain a good relationship, it’s a matter of keeping contact when you can and being pragmatic.

The Qualities Of A Good Team

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Team Management|The Qualities Of A Good TeamAny business is going to be made up of teams, and the quality of those teams is going to determine to a large degree the success of the business. If you are hoping for the many myriad teams in your business to operate and function as you would hope them to, then there are many things you can focus on to be sure that they are as good as you would hope. One way to begin is to start thinking about what kinds of positive qualities you are likely to want or need in a good team. As long as you are aware of these, you can try to instill them a little more, and you should find that your teams are much more likely to do well and so improve your business performance in no time too. Let’s take a look.

Skilled Individuals

Any team is only as good as the people within it. That is a simple enough thing to realize, but it is something nonetheless which you are going to have to think about if you are to make sure that your teams are going to be as strong as you would hope. The matter of finding the best individuals you can for a team is complex and varied. First of all there is the initial recruitment process, whereby you need to make sure that you are filtering out those who are less than ideal for your team. Professional help from the likes of DSC Personnel could be the way to go here, as could having a clear image of what kind of individuals you are hoping to hire. Then it’s just a matter of ensuring that everyone is in the right team within the business, so that their skills are going to be put to the best possible use.

Shared Values

The more that these individuals have values in common, the easier they will find it to work towards a common goal. For that reason, you need to try and put people together who seem to want the same kind of result or output, as that is going to be a much more successful team on the whole. If you can encourage them to share their values and to discover their similarities here, you will find that it makes a huge difference to how well they work together, and the kind of results they produce as a team.

Delegation

Finally, any good team needs to know who is going to do what and why. As long as there is someone in charge who can divy out the tasks and delegate where necessary, you will find that the teams are going to work out much more successfully on the whole as a result of that. Delegation is an indication that the team is working well, and that everyone is in the right place, which is absolutely something you are going to want to aim towards if you want teams that work well.

3 Simple Ways to Improve Your Small Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Managing a Small Business|3 Simple Ways to Improve Your Small BusinessNot everything about business has to be complicated, you know. Sometimes, even the simplest courses of action can result in the biggest turns of profit. You should, then, stop making everything so difficult, and instead resolve to go down the easy route from time to time. If you do, you will be sure to grow and scale your small business in no time.

To find three simple ways you can improve your small business, make sure to read on.

Learn how to delegate effectively

Effective delegation is a simple yet surefire way to improve your business. By getting your workforce on board and releasing each employee’s potential, you will quickly find your business moving in the right direction.

In this instance, you need to know how to get the best out of your individual members of staff — different employees will have different strengths and weaknesses, and it’s down to you to release their potential by delegating them jobs that suit their expertise. Also, you have to learn how to delegate fairly. The last thing that you want in your bid to scale and grow your business is low morale around the workplace. Make sure, then, that nobody receives special treatment for no apparent reason, and ensure that everybody is pulling their weight in their own way.

Use high-impact marketing

In this instance, you have not the time nor the money to be embarking on marketing campaigns that are anything other than high-impact. Quite simply, every campaign that you run, even those considered to be low-budget, needs to do the job that you ask of it.

When you go down the digital marketing campaigns, above all else, this means ensuring that your advertisements land on the screens of your target audience. Anything other than that, and you will make the task of driving sales online to be far more complicated than it needs to be. In this instance, it is good practice to align yourself with an expert in the field of Internet advertisement, such as Caffeine Marketing. The skills and expertise of such a company will no doubt help you to build an online presence for your business and ultimately generate more leads for yourself.

Sharpen your selling skills

If you learn how to close sales, you will find it ten times easier to make a profit and improve your business.

To sharpen your selling skills, you should:

  • Adopt a ‘people-first’ way of thinking
  • Always take timing into consideration
  • Know who, how, when, and why to reward
  • Never forget the power of the value-add
  • Always be engaging
  • Treat the first 7 seconds of any meeting seriously (this is where the money is won and lost)
  • Be willing to adapt depending on the customers you encounter
  • Treat everybody like an individual
  • Always make it clear that you opt for value over price
  • Above all else, show yourself to be genuine

Improving your business is always going to be difficult, as nothing worth having ever comes easy. You don’t have to make this all-important tasks overly complicated, though. Take the above advice, and make things simple.