As small business owners, we tend to do everything in our business ourselves, like ALL THE THINGS.
We do marketing to get clients; we work with clients; we perform work for those clients; we do our own admin work, our own social media…we are the jack (or jackies 🙂 ) of all trades.
Some of you may have started your own business and didn’t even realize what that takes. It takes a lot of grit and effort! Maybe you thought when you were just starting your business, especially if you were formally an employee, “I can have better use of my time if I did this on my own”.
Right? Isn’t this what you thought?
But, as new business owners, you just don’t know all the aspects of what it takes to become a real business owner and to run a profitable business.
Having been there, done that…and now having a successful and profitable business for over eight years, I’d like to walk you through three (3) things that can create freedom in your business, and how to stop feeling afraid to engage certain people who have the expertise to help you.
First, trust your instincts. You see your business is running, you’re making a profit or consistent income. But there’s a lot of things that go into making that consistent income. Some of those things may not be in your area of expertise.
I’ve had this same problem. I’ve been in business for eight years now and for the most part, I’ve done it all on my own. And I’m just at the point now where I can’t. I can no longer scale my business to the level that I want without engaging help. I’ve had this instinct for a while now, but something had been holding me back from taking the leap forward. Because once you do that, once you let the cat out of the bag as they say, it’s not that easy to put it back in the bag unless you want to tank your business. And that’s definitely not what I want to do and I’m sure it’s not what you want either. I want to GROW my business.
So…the three (3) things you need to help you free up your time in your business:
- If you are not a numbers person, get someone in your business to help you with the numbers
- Get an assistant, a virtual assistant or an executive virtual assistant to help you with the administration of your business, and
- Create systems in your business on how you want your business to work and grow.
Step 1 – The Numbers Person
One of the things to create freedom in your business is to actually have someone help you where you’re weakest. My business is accounting and bookkeeping and such. But for a lot of people, that’s not what they love to do and they put it off because they don’t like doing it!
One of the first and most important things you should do is engage someone to help you with your finances and your numbers. It’s so much easier to do it from the start of your business than to wait three or four years after you have developed patterns of indiscipline in your business. Waiting will make it hard to change those bad habits.
Step 2 – The Assistant
A second thing to add to your business is a virtual assistant. I have been going through the process of finding a virtual assistant for my business because I’m doing a lot of the administrative work and the social work that I really don’t love or even like doing. I love setting up systems and processes to make my business run easier. But keeping up with the details after I created this process is something that I don’t love to do. So I’ve been on a search to find someone to help me in my business.
I had to look inside of myself to see what is it that I could give someone else to do that will free me up to do more things that I love to do and to strategize about growing my business. I’m in that final process, and I sent out my letter yesterday welcoming her on board! And I am just so excited about what she’s going to be able to do to help me grow my business while I help her grow her business as well.
And while looking for your numbers person and your VA, go with your gut and find someone who fits your business. If the fit is not good and they don’t mesh well with your personality, then it’s not going to help you in your business. Once you find the right fit, you can train for competency.
Training for competency is the way YOU want someone to help you in your business; the way YOU want to work. You are designing the system for your business to build on so that you can scale and grow your business. So hire someone for how they fit, how they mesh well with you, the business owner, and then you can train them on how you want them to do things within your business.
While it can be tedious and detailed, I’m in the process of trying to document all the things that I want someone else to do so that it can free me up to go do the other things that I actually love to do.
Step 3 – The Systems
The final step is to create systems in your business for your team to follow.
The systems you want to create are things like when you get a new lead into your business, what happens next? How do you want your clients to request work to be done? What is that process? Create the process on how you want it to work within your business.
Because once you create it, it’s on repeat and it can be done over and over and over again and not necessarily always by you because you’re trying to create the freedom! That system and the business now runs on its own, and you can go off and do other things that you love to do.
There are a lot of platforms and software out there that will help you create processes and systems. There are the “tried and true” paper and pencil – you know, write it down on paper.
If you’re looking for free or inexpensive options, create a Google sheet. Create checklists for what you want to have done and when you want it complete. Then you can pass that information on to someone who is helping you in your business.
Often, if you hire someone who has expertise in an area, they will already have systems in place. So not only are you hiring them to help you in your business, they already have the systems set up and can just be copied into your business. Which frees you up to do even more of the things that you love to do.
“Being a business owner is gritty, it’s hard, and it’s rewarding. “
One of the biggest things that holds business owners back is we keep trying to do ALL THE THINGS ourselves, and we don’t engage a community, a team around us to help us build that business that we’re going to love. Let’s face it, we didn’t start our business to work 50, 60 hours a week. And some of you, that’s what you’re doing.
The people that you connect with help you run your business and it helps them in businesses.
So whatever your expertise is, you want to do that thing to the fullest capacity. And then you want to surround yourself with people that are going to help you in your business to create the systems, process, and workflows that will free you up so that you can actually go out into the world and talk to the people to whom your gift is exactly what they need. And they’re waiting for you to show up.
But if you’re sitting around trying to do your own bookkeeping or creating and scheduling your social media posts or emails (and it takes you 15 or 20 hours a week) when you can hire someone with that expertise whose willing to do that work for you, you’re missing out on that freedom you created your business for.
