To grow a business, you need to spend time working on and not simply working in the business. The majority of small businesses are run by owner-managers who have to juggle many daily activities and yet find time to reflect and make critical strategic business decisions.

For instance, you might start your day with a good plan and a list of what you would like to accomplish. You may have a project or business proposal you’d finally like to dust off or you’d like to review last month’s figures to see if the financial performance are hitting their targets which is important, if you are considering expanding in a few months.

But, then you open your inbox to find an email telling you that a top client is upset because their current project missed a milestone. You have a telephone message from a supplier telling you their services to you have been suspended because you have outstanding bills. This means a customer’s order will be delayed, again! The customer needs to be informed. Meanwhile, your bank says there’ll be a delay on your bank loan because of an issue with underwriting.

Sounds familiar?  If so then your business may be running you. This may all sound like a dilemma but it doesn’t have to be. The key to changing this state of affairs is to recognise that a business need to be run, it needs to be managed and as your business grows, you’ll need help and support. You can’t do it all on your own.

The central issue here is that you can spend your time only once.  Every hour you spend working in your business, is an hour that you are not spending working on it. The trade-off is that you either work on today’s business or you work on tomorrow’s business. Too much time on tomorrow’s business and you have no income – too much time on today’s business and you will fail to plan for tomorrow.

You can regain the control you need by being proactive rather than reactive. You can put yourself in a position of improved productivity by adopting our tips below:

1.    Automate – make use of technology. The manual processes you are used to following to perform tasks may be draining you and your team’s productivity. Manual processes are also time-consuming.

2.    Outsource - save yourself time and stress and outsource things that you can’t do, don’t want to do or should be done by someone else with better expertise.

3.    Delegate – we all fall into the trap of “am better of just doing it myself”! We think it would be quicker or we don’t trust that others will do it to the standard we want. The opposite is true. When leaders delegates certain tasks to others, they become free to focus on higher-value activities and use their time more productively.

Lenio Office is a trusted resource you can delegate to. We can come in and take the weight off your shoulders. Click HERE to contact us for your free consultation. We’d love to partner with you.