Being a small business owner is a careful balancing act of monitoring operations, growing your business (and profits), and trying to maintain some semblance of a personal life. If you’re searching for a little respite managing all of your daily responsibilities, it may be time to start looking for ways to run your business more efficiently. In this post, we’re giving you four tips to do just that.
1. Learn to delegate
One of the most crucial yet challenging concepts for business owners to grasp is learning how to delegate tasks. If you’re like most business owners, you treat your business like your baby, so you want to have a say in how things get done and sometimes, you only trust yourself to handle certain (arguably too many) tasks.
However, every business owner also knows that it’s just not possible to get to everything all in a day’s work if you try and do it all yourself. That’s where delegation comes in. Here are a few tips to help you learn how to delegate to-do’s to your team more effectively and efficiently:
- Rank your tasks by priority and notate which ones you will take on your own.
- Start assigning tasks to other individuals thinking about their skills and the skills needed to get the job done right.
- Be clear about instructions and explain why you’re delegating tasks.
- Assess the job done and provide constructive feedback.
To help you and your team stay organized and on top of competing task priorities, consider using a project management system.
2. Hand-off handling finances
One of the biggest challenges small business owners face is the financial aspect of their organization. From managing budgets to boosting profit margins, it’s enough to make your head spin, especially if math is not your forte. However, proper accounting is essential to bulletproof business management. After all, your budget dictates growth opportunities, ensures paychecks, and more.
To make sure you’re following best budgeting practices, consider leveraging professional resources like ProConnect’s accounting practice management tool which helps streamline accounts in a user-friendly way. Besides honing your budget and giving you financial insight, enlisting the help of a professional accountant or using accounting software buys you back time to do the things that you’re most passionate about as a small business owner.
3. Hire high-quality staff
Whether you’re delegating important tasks or allowing your team to run totally autonomously, you’ll want to make sure you hire the best people for the job. From interacting with customers and important partners to completing big projects, your team is the collective that keeps your small business up and running. However, hiring high-quality staff isn’t always as easy as it looks.
As you begin to build your best team yet, consider these helpful takeaways:
- Always write accurate and thorough job descriptions — set your expectations outright and let job seekers know what they’re getting into. Check out BetterTeam’s job description template for some inspiration!
- Before bringing candidates in for in-person interviews, do a phone screening to quickly assess if it’s a good fit.
- On the topic of “good fits,” make sure to assess an applicant’s cultural fit within your organization in addition to having the skills and qualifications to get the job done.
- Run a background check that’s appropriate for the type of role you’re filling — if you’re hiring an accountant, for example, you may want to run a credit check whereas a delivery driver may need a driving record check.
4. Automate processes
Saving time is worth every penny when you own your own small business. Any time you can automate processes in a way that still meets your quality and performance standards, you should. Luckily, there are plenty of tools out there to help you make this happen.
- If you want to shed some time from your marketing efforts, try out automated marketing with HubSpot where you can schedule out social media posts, emails, and sales tactics.
- Or, if managing your utilities has been dragging you down, think about investing in smart home tools that allow you to create custom settings and automate things like lighting, security, and thermostats.
Running a business is no small venture, so use these tips to help you save time and improve results!
