Eliminate Activities that cost you more time than they actually do!
I’ve had the opportunity to talk to a couple of small business owners this week. There was a theme apparent this week in a few of the conversations. The theme was TIME. Time is important to everyone, but to a small business owner, it is probably your scarcest resource. I want to spend a little bit of time on the topic of time.
I want us small business owners to look at time, not in the minutes and hours sense, but a little differently. I hate public speaking! In fact, back when I was running a pest control company a few years ago, we would have typical company meetings. Only we did not have them as frequently as we should have. And after a meeting I would go home and take a nap. Public speaking was physically draining for me.
So, we did not have meetings as often as we should have. And, they cost me productivity, more than just the length of the meeting, but the time spent recuperating from an activity that was so difficult for me that it made me physically tired.
What activities are you currently doing in your business that you find physically taxing? What activities cost more time than the minutes spent on them because they require time to decompress afterwards?
I could go on and say that life is too short. And that is true, but it is also just not profitable. I, my company, and my employees would have all been in better shape if I had delegated the responsibility of running the meeting to someone else. I had people that were capable of doing it.
What activities are not getting done because you dread them? Those were not the reasons that you got in business. All businesses have a list of activities, not central to the business’s purpose but are necessary for the success of the business. In a small business those activities usually fall to the owner to make sure they get done.
Sometimes we are bootstrapping, those activities are still taxing, but we do not have a choice. The business does not yet support the ability to delegate. If that is you, I would encourage you to think creatively to get those activities off your plate. Can you trade services with another small business?
Some of us used to be bootstrappers but our business is now on a level that can afford to outsource or delegate unpleasant tasks, but we do not because we got in the habit of doing them. Right now, think about what is your most unpleasant task that you do as a business owner. Commit to finding a way to offload that task today!
You get where I am going with this. We are a full-service accounting, payroll, and tax firm. We can make your life easier and remove those tasks off your plate that many small business owners find unpleasant. Are you getting a late start in the morning because you were up late doing your books? You are costing yourself money! What about payroll, or sitting on hold with your state’s tax authority? Maybe paying bills and chasing money is on the bottom of your list of things you want to do. Whatever it is, Remote Accounting Payroll & Tax is here to make your life easier (and more productive). We invite you to give us a call today to find out how!
