How to manage your time in your business

How to manage your time in your business

As we look at setting up your business to create more freedom and flexibility in your life, one of the most important areas to consider is how you best make use of your TIME. The reality is that there are only so many hours in the day – in fact, did you know that we all have the same number of hours available?? – and unless (or even if!) you want to work 24/7, 365 days a year, you’ll need to make each hour that you do work count. So, this week, we’re looking and how you can start leveraging your time to create that freedom and flexibility in your business.

What do I mean by ‘leveraging’?

This is one of those awful jargon words that we used to make fun of (and yet use all the time) back in my corporate days. It comes from the idea of using a lever, where you put in a small amount of effort that gets amplified at the other end. When it comes to your business, and to the topic of time, I’m talking about using the time that you have – that we all have – to create a bigger impact in your business.

Before you get to that, you actually can create ‘more time’, up to a point: by automating and creating systems to handle repetitive tasks, by outsourcing or delegating tasks that take up a lot of your time and that someone else can do faster and more cheaply (and, often, also better), and by deleting tasks that don’t add any real value to the business. Once you’ve done this, however, you want to turn your attention to the time that you do now have available and how you can best leverage that time to create better results.

How to start leveraging your time

1.   Review your current client and project list

Having a full client roster is a very good problem to have. However, the fact that you’re busy all the time with clients doesn’t mean that you’re being effective with your time or that you’ll achieve your goals with the business.

When you’re first starting out on your own, you may be tempted to say “yes” to each and every client – and there’s definitely a time for this, as you begin to explore and work out exactly who your ideal clients are, as well as getting more experience and testimonials to build your credibility. However, you must avoid getting caught up with the ‘wrong’ clients in the long term if you’re going to achieve your vision for the business.

Take a look at your current clients and projects, and ask yourself:

  • Which of these are driving the most value in the business? (You may have heard of Pareto’s 80:20 principle, where 20% of your customers will represent 80% of your sales.)
  • Which types of clients do you most enjoy working with? Where is the best fit with the mission of your business and your personal values?
  • On the other hand, which of your clients are contributing the least to your sales and profits? Which types of clients are the most painful to work with, the ones who make unreasonable demands, who require a lot of ‘hand holding’, or are always late with their payments?

Armed with this knowledge, you will want to ‘fire’ some of your ‘bad’ clients – or, at least, say “no” to any new ones of that same kind of profile – to make space for more of your ‘good’ clients. Working with self-motivated clients who respect you and value your work, who collaborate effectively and pay their invoices on time, will ensure that you’re making a bigger impact with less effort on your side.

2.   Raise your prices

If you’re finding that your calendar is full, that you can’t take on more clients, and yet you’re not reaching your income goals, then the obvious solution is to raise your prices. While pricing your products and services at the ‘right’ level can be tricky, the truth is that you’re almost definitely undercharging at the moment.

Again, if you have a full roster of clients, then you can afford to raise your prices. You may well lose a few clients – the ones, presumably, that didn’t see the real value in your work – but the higher pricing will make up for the lower quantity of clients.

Pricing is a whole other topic that needs more detail but, for now, consider the following:

  • What is your overall target income? This may be based on your current / previous full-time salary, on a bottom-up approach (i.e. how much you need to cover your living costs and business expenses), or on a top-down approach where you identify a dream target income.
  • How many billable hours do you have available in your week? How many clients can you take on during this time?
  • How much do you need to charge in order to reach your target income with that number of hours and clients? And what would you need to offer in terms of your products and services in order to justify that price?

3.   Re-evaluate your business model

Finally, and perhaps most crucially, you want to look at your business model and consider whether or not you’ve designed it to really give you what you want and need. As much as you can play around with optimising the type of clients you work with and what you charge, there’s still a limit to the amount of work you can take on, and therefore the amount of money you can earn, with the limited hours you have in your day.

There are a number of different aspects of your business model that you can tweak and evolve in order to better leverage the time and effort that you’re putting in:

  • If you’re working with individuals right now, can you consider instead/also working with companies and organisations? This allows you both to go from one-on-one work to one-to-many, reaching more people with the same amount of time, and to charge higher prices as generally companies are able to pay much more than regular consumers.
  • If you’re working one on one with your clients, can you think about launching a group programme where you are able to deliver the same kind of support and results but in a group setting rather than on an individual basis? This has the added benefit of creating a second tier of services that you can offer to the clients who can’t afford your bespoke, one-on-one packages.
  • If you’re focusing on ‘active’ service delivery and one-off projects, can you find a way to creative more ‘passive’ streams of income? In reality, no income is completely passive, but how can you better leverage your time to produce evergreen content that you create once but can distribute and sell again and again? This might be in the format of a book, for example, or a self-directed course.

Whether you’re a coach or consultant, or a freelance writer or designer, there are ways in which you can redesign your business model to serve a different kind of client, and to help a greater number of clients, and so have a bigger impact with the same amount of time and effort. It does require a bit of time and energy to take a step back from the day-to-day running of your business and consider your big picture strategy, but it will be worth it in the long run as you shift your business in a more profitable and sustainable direction.

Have a look at your own business, whether you’re a complete newbie or you’re a few years in, and think about which of these strategies you can implement and which tweaks you can make to your business model in order to better leverage your time.

Next week, we’ll dig into the financial aspects of setting up your business to give you that oh-so-appealing freedom and flexibility.

If your calendar is full but you’re not reaching your income targets (or you don’t know what your income targets are!), then get in touch to book a free consultation with me. We’ll look at where you are today in your business, where you might be able to make some tweaks, and how I can support you in creating more freedom and flexibility.

Apply for your session here >>

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

You might also be interested in these articles

“Everything you’ve ever
wanted is one step outside
your comfort zone.”

Book a free consultation

Get on the phone with Anna to discuss your unique goals and situation to determine the best programme for you, so you can start taking action towards creating the business and lifestyle you desire.

Get a free assessment of your business

Download this scorecard to review where you are on each of the 5 pillars of building a life outside of the 9 to 5, and get clear action steps to help you fill the gaps.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Looking to grow your expert business?

Download this FREE Business Assessment to identify the gaps that are preventing your growth so that you can take actionable steps towards building a more successful and sustainable business.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Outside of the 9 to 5

Anna continues the journey in her new book, where she details what’s needed to sustain your initial escape from the 9 to 5 in a guide to designing and building a profitable business that gives you more freedom, flexibility and fulfilment.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Privacy Policy

This privacy policy sets out how One Step Outside uses and protects any information that you give One Step Outside when you use this website (https://onestepoutside.com/).

One Step Outside is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.

One Step Outside may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes.

What information we collect and why

We only ever collect the information that we need in order to serve you.

Generally, this just means collecting your first name and email address that you enter, for example, when you request a resource, register for a webinar, or submit a message via a contact form.

If you are a paying customer, we also collect your billing information including your last name and your postal address.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Contact forms

We use Gravity Forms to allow you to contact us via the website. We will use the information you submit for the sole purpose of that specific form and will explicitly ask you to provide your consent to allow us to do so.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Advertising and Analytics

Google

We use Google Analytics to track and optimise performance on this site as well as embedding video content from YouTube, and this means that your web browser automatically sends certain information to Google. This includes the URL of the page that you’re visiting and your IP address. Google may also set cookies on your browser or read cookies that are already there. Apps that use Google advertising services also share information with Google, such as the name of the app and a unique identifier for advertising.

Google uses the information shared by sites and apps to deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse and personalise content and ads that you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps. See their Privacy Policy to learn more about how they process data for each of these purposes, and their Advertising page for more about Google ads, how your information is used in the context of advertising and how long Google stores this information.

Facebook

We use the conversion tracking and custom audiences via the Facebook pixel on our website. This allows user behaviour to be tracked after they have been redirected to our website by clicking on a Facebook ad and enables us to measure the effectiveness of our Facebook ads. The data collected in this way is anonymous to us, i.e. we do not see the personal data of individual users. However, this data is stored and processed by Facebook, who may link this information to your Facebook account and also use it for its own promotional purposes, in accordance with Facebook’s Data Usage Policy https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/.

You can allow Facebook and its partners to place ads on and off Facebook. A cookie may also be stored on your computer for these purposes. You can revoke your permission directly on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_settings_screen. For more guidance on opting out you can also consult http://www.aboutads.info/choices.

Who we share your data with

We use a number of third parties to provide us with services which are necessary to run our business or to assist us with running our business and who process your information for us on our behalf. These include a hosting and email provider (Siteground), mailing list provider (GetResponse), and a payment provider (Stripe).

Your information will be shared with these service providers only where necessary to enable us to run our business.

How long we maintain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

The main reason for collecting this information is to be able to send you resources, updates and, sometimes, information and products and services, as well as for internal record keeping.

The rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

How we protect your data

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure.

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password that lets you access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential and we ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Links to other websites

Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website so once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Changes to our privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. Initially created on 18th November 2016, it was last updated on 23rd May 2018 to be compliant with GDPR.

Contact information

If you have any questions or concerns related to your privacy, you can get in touch here >>