How to Spark Business Growth – and Avoid Growing Pains
Why do only 33% of businesses make it to the 10 year mark? Most of us know the typical reasons companies fail – insufficient capital, poor cash flow, and lack of a solid business plan. There are also two subtle, yet highly significant challenges usually not visible to people outside the company – burnout and business uncertainty.
According to Middle Georgia CEO, a survey of 700 small business owners across the US found that over half cited “the uncertainty that comes with owning a business” as the biggest challenge of being an entrepreneur. The next two challenges were “long hours and always being on the job” at 43% and “avoiding burnout” at 40%.
These survey answers point to a primary concern of entrepreneurs: how to optimize the business so you work smarter, not harder, to spark business revenue growth. The degree of optimization lies in how much of your business is systemized. When you let systems do the work, your company becomes more efficient so you can gradually reduce your hours, starve off burnout, and feel less uneasy about the future.
For almost every task in your company, there’s probably a way to automate it. Don’t think you can automate it? Then delegate or outsource it to someone else.
How many $15/hour tasks are you doing in your business?
When you focus your efforts on the inexpensive actions that should be delegated or outsourced to someone, you are taking time away from important tasks that can grow your company. Many people immediately think, “I don’t have the money to hire someone.” You probably can find the money, but may be hesitant to invest when sales are low.
Ask yourself, how much is it costing you NOT to outsource?
How much revenue can you be generating if you focused on the right actions and let someone else do the lower cost tasks? When you focus the highest and best use of your time on the right activities, you will seamlessly expand the business.
Not sure where to start to add systems? For one full day, pay attention to activities you are doing that could be done by someone else. Anytime you find yourself doing an activity that should be outsourced or delegated to someone else, log it on a tracking sheet. Once you have a starter list, hire a virtual assistant to do those tasks. Continue to add to the list every day and delegate those additional tasks. Eventually, you will only be doing tasks that YOU should do.
At first, setting up systems will take some effort. You will quickly find that systems save you lots of time in the long run. It’s worth the energy to put simple procedures in place now that can then be outsourced or delegated to someone else.
Fortunately, there are lots of ways to accelerate documenting procedures so that someone else can follow your footsteps. The easiest way is to record a short video that describes each process. Just turn on your camera phone the next time you do a task that can be delegated, and create a simple video. If a procedure must be in writing, outsource the video to a transcription service like Transcription Puppy which completes work quickly and affordably. In a short time, your company will have a library of easy to follow procedures.
You will be so excited to see how implementing business systems provides more structure and saves you time, money, and resources! You will also reduce your work hours, lower burnout, and most importantly, put more certainty in your business by focusing your effort on the right actions for revenue growth.
Please share this with a friend who feels overwhelmed with their business so he or she can experience more ease and higher revenue, too.
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Do you want to systematize your business to save time and increase revenue? At Gain Advantages, we maximize business productivity and bottom-line revenues by implementing the most effective systems and processes. Learn more.
