As
self-employed professionals, were in business to make money doing what
we love. And that means we need enough billable hours to cover our expenses,
our salary, upgrades in our skills and technology, and our profit. But
if you're self-employed for any length of time, you eventually reach
the point where you just don't have more hours in the day to give to
your business. After all, you have a personal life too. (If you don't
have a personal life, you really need to work on that with your business
coach — but I digress.) So, if you've maxed out on the hours you
have available to build your business, how can you get more billable
hours?
You have
to get those billable hours from time you are currently spending doing
other activities in your business. Here are some ways to do that: Delegate
out anything you hate to do or aren't good at doing in the running of
your business. For example, I hate filing and organizing all my reference
materials. So I hire a professional organizer to come in once a quarter
to file all the papers I've stacked up, to set up any new files I'll
need, to pack up old files on inactive clients and projects, and to
reorganize my 10 bookcases. She can do all that for me in 3 hours. When
I was doing it myself it took me forever and it was never completed
because I'd let anything else distract me from it. So, finding just
the right reference book or file was not only hit-or-miss at best, it
again took too much of my time. How much time can you recover by delegating
out activities and tasks you don't want to do, but that have to get
done to keep your business running smoothly?
Automate or computerize administrative tasks, including making regular
backups of your computer disk drives. (I learned to get my backups automated
after I'd lost my entire contacts database, including my appointment
schedule — sometimes I'm hardheaded about these basic business
maintenance things!) In addition to now having automated backups of
my computer disks, here's a sample of what else I've automated:
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Rose Hill is a Certified Business Coach who works exclusively
with independent professionals who desire to create a solid foundation
for their continued business success. I do this by means of a comprehensive
4-pronged, 6-month High-Impact Business-Building program. Rose can be
reached at (503) 629-4804 or via e-mail to rose@coachrose.com
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