My Blog

Top Tips for Time Management in a Small Business

This blog post is in response to a request from a few tweeters to blog about time management. I thought long and hard about whether to, as anyone who knows me knows I’m not always the queen of time management

Then I realised that’s the reality for us all, no matter how hard we try to be efficient and streamline our business, we’re going to have good periods and bad periods and we shouldn’t beat ourselves up when we’re not being 100% efficient. Strictly speaking, do you have time to read this blog?

So here’s 3 (of many) tips for you to ponder, and please add your own tips in the comments section, the more we can share the better:

1. Outsource your non-core skills
This is a scary one for a lot of small business owners. You cling on to every area of your business because it’s your business and nobody could possibly do any part of it better than you can right??

WRONG – if you are spending significant amounts of time on your business that is not your core skill, you could outsource some or all of this function (e.g. accounts, admin, seo, the list goes on and on) – yes it costs money but each hour you spend on these non-core functions, the more you are not doing fee-paying work. It’s taken me 6 months to get my head around hiring an accountant (and I’m an ex-accountant too!) but I’ve got there eventually. Next a VA!

2. Treat your diary like a school timetable
You remember at school you had your whole day split up into sessions, 1 hour Maths, 2 hours English. Start scheduling in time for a business review, an accounts catch up, a filing blitz etc. If it’s in your diary you’re more likely to do it, fact. I go through phases of doing this and I’m definitely more efficient when I do.

3. Say No, a lot
Hands up I’ve been too guilty this year of being too soft and meeting people to give free advice, have chats on the telephone, emails – you name it I’ve done it this year. Yes I very firmly believe if you give a little you get a lot back (as has been proved this year with Shropshire Jelly) but there is a limit! Every minute of time you’re giving to someone else to help them out, offer support etc you are not earning for your business so you have to learn to moderate it. I’m slowly getting stricter and it pains me but I am seeing the dividends with my time. Most people will understand, your time is precious so give it (and yourself) some respect.

That’s it, short and sweet, just to get you thinking – please add more below then I can do a mega-blog post with credit to all the contributors!

TTFN

Jan xx

Tags: home working, outsourcing, small business, time management