Lauren Burke There’s no doubt: Getting your business off the ground involves a lot of hard work and long hours. In the early days of starting a business, most small business owners manage every aspect of their burgeoning business, from accounting and calendar management to customer management and marketing.
But, even years later, many business owners like you still find themselves managing back-end tasks every day. Even with employees and more resources available, only 30% of business owners claim they spend more time working on high valued tasks within their business than administrative work.
Still, experts don’t believe them. In reality, almost every small business owner wastes some time putting out fires and taking actions that don’t benefit the bottom line—leading 63% of business owners to work over 50 hours a week. To spend more time working in your business instead of on your business, it’s time to look critically at how you spend your working hours.
Where is your time really going?
Business owners know strategic actions are essential to get measurable results and drive the company’s bottom line—that’s why 73% of them want to spend more time on strategy work. But, with so many emergency tasks popping up each week, most business owners leave little time for strategy when they struggle to delegate the things that occupy most of their working hours, including:
- Manual processes
- Day-to-day tasks (taking care of customers, organizing, filing, marketing, etc)
- Putting out fires
- Accounting, bookkeeping, and taxes
- Calendar/scheduling management
Many of these manual tasks seem unavoidable or unpredictable, which makes them difficult to delegate to other employees. But, considering business owners spend on average 120 working days solely managing tasks like bookkeeping, it’s clear that something needs to change. Often, businesses falsely view sales and marketing tasks as their biggest problems, with only 10% of business owners recognizing that inefficient back-end processes need the most attention for their business to thrive.
Before business owners can delegate, they need a realistic view of how they’re spending their time. To discover where your time is really going, begin tracking your tasks each day to gain a more accurate perspective. Note which tasks you take on each day—including unexpected distractions—and how long each task takes you. Many business owners are amazed to see how much time they spend on things like administrative tasks, email, and manual processes.
Once you have a list of your tasks, consider who on your team could handle that task. If you notice after a week that a large amount of your time goes to specific tasks like schedule management or taxes, now may be the time to outsource that part of your business. Automation can also help you manage some timely manual processes.
Spend time on profitable tasks to grow your business
Rather than wasting your valuable work hours on low-value tasks, business owners like you are better off focusing on:
- Growing your business through sales and high-level customer service
- Strategizing to leverage business opportunities
- Hiring employees and services to delegate back-end tasks
- Marketing your business to attract more leads
- Engaging with your staff and training them to support your business goals
- And most importantly—doing what you love
You started building your business to focus on doing what you love. However, when you’re drowning in manual processes and administrative work, it’s easy to lose track of your business goals and forget why you started in the first place.
Outsourcing and delegating tasks like payroll allows business owners to focus on growing the business and providing exceptional service to customers. With more room to strategize, small business owners can dedicate time and resources to marketing and sales campaigns that bring in new opportunities and business.
Business owners need to shift their perspective to start working in their business instead of on their business. For many, that starts with hiring employees or services to take on the low-value tasks that occupy most of their time. Once you’re clear on what tasks occupy most of your time, it’s easier to hire people with the right skills and justify the hours you pay them to finish the job more efficiently.
Instead of taking on daily tasks yourself, start focusing more of your attention on training and engaging with your staff. Trust that they’re capable of managing fires and allow them to streamline or automate tasks so you can spend more time focusing on building more business with profit-focused tasks. Ultimately, empowering your staff allows them to grow and become even more valuable to you and your business over time.
Get Back to Doing What You Love
Focusing on the right business tasks is the easiest way to grow your bottom line and restore your love for your business. As an experienced business owner, there’s no reason you should still spend hours each week on administrative work.
Now is the time to outsource and delegate low-value tasks so you can get back to building the business of your dreams. Start with PrimePay to simplify HR tasks.
PrimePay can partner with you to offer support throughout the entire employee lifecycle. Learn more about how PrimePay can help you streamline HR processes.
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