Do we have the right to free up time when we are a business owner?
By: Fabrice Catan
Tags: Business, Entrepreneurship, Time Management, Balanced Life

I ask you the question, dear reader. Do you think you have the right to free yourself up time? Or do you feel guilty when you give yourself a break?

Most CEOs that I meet have a very strong sense of responsibility and I’m sure you are one of them. It is a great quality, essential for a contractor. But this one can become your worst enemy. For example when she whispers in your ear that, to manage your business well, you have to devote it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Imagine yourself as the Alice in Wonderland rabbit, running nonstop, your eyes riveted on your watch (or your diary). Do you already have the impression of being in this situation? So it’s time to take a freeze frame!

How to better manage your business… Without giving it all its time, health and social and family balance? In this article, I give you the three fundamentals. Let’s go !

1. Define a business strategy

Do you think Alice’s bunny knows where it’s going? Not me. In any case, he does not seem to know which path to take to get to his destination on time. A little planning wouldn’t hurt, what do you think?

The commercial strategy is essential for very small businesses as with larger companies. How to manage your business well when we haven’t set a course? If you’re not sure where you’re going, stop and check it out. You may have let yourself be so overwhelmed by the day-to-day management of your business that you have lost sight of your flight plan.

I have already spoken in an article about commercial strategy of steps to follow for this procedure. First the objectives, then the actions, and finally the measurement indicators which allow the results to be evaluated. This is the purpose of the commercial strategy of a business plan : it gets you back on track.

Come back to this fundamental if you feel lost. The business plan is not reserved for starting a business, it can be used at any time to redefine and develop your projects.

Yes, this work of reflection and overhaul is essential. When your B to B or B to C business strategy will once again be very clear in your head, you will be able to gain height, your eyes riveted on your objectives.

Provided of course that you have also checked the organization of your company!

2. Optimize your business organization or how to better manage your business on a daily basis

Your objectives set, your actions programmed and your indicators set, you are on track! There is no question of relapsing into this confusion and exhaustion that I so often encounter among business leaders. For this, you must ensure to build an organization and operation of a company concrete!

According to your level of business organization current, this requires some alterations or a major reorganization of your habits and those of your employees. My essential advice for manage your business better daily :

constantly keep your accounts up to date ;

keep an eye on your cash flow and in particular on the time lag between payment to suppliers and partners and payment to customers;

write down all your fixed deadlines and integrate them into your calendar (tax declarations, preparation of payslips, employee DADS, etc.);

do a rigorous follow-up of your quotes and invoices.

The goal is not to create a type of business organization rigid but rather a solid administrative structure. Thus, you will have a free spirit for more creative and intellectual tasks, such as marketing, the project development future or simply the tasks of your core business.

My goal is also to make sure that you never find yourself having to spend a Sunday at your desk doing paperwork when you are planning on going out to town for a waffle with your kids!

If the white rabbit had noted his date with the Queen of Hearts in his diary, he wouldn’t have had to run all day to avoid being late. 😉

3. Knowing how to delegate and automate your business

An automated business, that doesn’t mean you lose your hand. It means that you keep the control of the whole… and not of the most anecdotal details.

Many entrepreneurs wonder how to better manage your business if you don’t have an eye everywhere. They are temperaments that like to keep control at all times (which I respect fundamentally). But I still want to ask you how to run a small business well when we try to fit in the same day:

studying and responding to all quote requests ;

the billing ;

the employee monitoring ;

the business development ;

the website and social media management ;

the administrative tasks ;

etc.

You don’t have four arms. And then, that means you don’t trust anyone around you to do it for you, which is a bit of a shame. How long will you last like this?

Manage your business on a daily basis is knowing how to better manage your time and better prioritize tasks. It is really a central question, the relevance of which I see constantly in my activity of support for business leaders. I say “entrepreneur”, and not simply “entrepreneur”. You don’t just have to know how to better manage a business, you must know how to run a business, collaborators, a whole team. You are not alone.

At first, it is true that it is better to touch everything. This way you will know roughly how your business operates in all its aspects and you will be able to supervise knowingly.

But then I highly recommend you to learn how to automate and to delegate tasks to your team members. I tell you more about it in this article on automation in the company. You keep an eye on the different facets of your business thanks to management tools, to the monitoring indicators, to the feedback from your employees… But without running around at the slightest minor event, like Alice’s bunny.

What can we delegate? The question is important… and the answer varied! It depends on your temperament and your own expertise. Maybe you have a taste for marketing … or not at all. Maybe you want to manage customer follow-up because you have few and want to keep a personalized relationship with them. Or maybe you want to keep your area of expertise and delegate and automate everything else. All this requires in any case to review the organization of your company, to establish an organizational chart, perhaps to recruit or seek partners.

How to better manage your business? I hope this article will have answered this essential question with these three fundamentals:

entrepreneurial strategy ;

business organization;

business automation and ability to delegate and operate good management.

Do you have the impression that the site is too big for you? Can’t see where you might find the time to take care of all this when you’re already overwhelmed?

I suggest you review these fundamentals together. I have a great deal of experience in management and organization of companies and I suggest that you benefit from it during personalized support. Let’s talk about it during a first interview completely free !

Image credits 1: Aline Dassel

Image credits 2: truthseeker08