When you are running a business, and it’s all on you, it can pay to have a decent streamlining process implemented. Simplifying your business will give you extra time, extra time means new products and services. And, you know what that means? More income.

Photo by Johnson Wang on Unsplash

If you find that every time you plan to build new strategies, or onboard new clients that time is taken up with small ‘stuff,’ then this applies to you.

If you want your tomorrow to be different, you have to be proactive. Stop dowsing fires, know what’s coming.

Often people will opt to use the processes that they know rather than something new that will save time. In the beginning, technology doesn’t always run smoothly, and of course, there is a learning curve that you have to get to grips with. After that? It’s pretty smooth sailing. Areas you can look to speed up your process:

Online – booking and ordering systems that send notifications directly to your phone calendar are perfect. You can set your own times and dates of availability and let people book (and pay) immediately. Of course, you’ll need reliable hosted solutions to have your website ‘uptime’ as high as possible, and access to details anywhere.

Storage – putting your files safely in cloud storage will mean you can access them anywhere and share them with the people that need them. Simple, practical, and puts paid to you hunting for paper files, or through your computer documents.

Social Media – it cannot be stressed enough how much faster, and how much more control you have if you set up your social media campaigns a month (or more) in advance. Of course, you’ll need to find what works for you (Biffer, Planoly, Tweetdeck, Sprout…) and remember to respond to engagement personally when possible.

Hire – Freelancers. Virtual assistants, bookkeepers, data analysts, social media managers, copywriters. Small jobs that eat into your time working in your business (as a posed to on it) should be fielded out.

Planning – at the start of every month set your goals. What do you need to achieve and by when? Keep track of this weekly, so you know what needs work and when. You should also have a day-by-day planning system. Create space each morning to make a note of your essentials.

Time Management – Employ a time management system like Pomodoro. Pomodoro time segments will give you forced work periods and breaks. You can designate the time however you like, 20 minutes is usually a good starting point, with 5-minute breaks in between. The one longer break after 4 segments. It might sound like you waste a lot of time, but actually, you work more productively in set times. Parkinson’s Law is on your side for a change.

Of course, every business will have areas that could do with improvement. It pays to take the time out of your day to look at what processes take you the most time and how you can improve them.