3 Top Tips For Saving Time In Your Business

As we all know time is a precious commodity – one to be cherished. When you’re running your own business it’s really important that you manage your time effectively. How much time are you wasting? Today I’m going to share with you 3 top tips for saving time in your business.

I thought I was super efficient, and mostly I am. There is always room for improvement though. As my word of the year is ‘Simplicity’ (read more here) I knew that there were a lot of areas I wanted to tighten up. When you’re a business owner it’s very easy to fall into bad habits. When you’re a coach you know all of the things you help your clients with around planning and time management, yet you might default back to losing pockets of time here and there.

1. Stop writing up copious notes after each session

I was talking with a group of people yesterday about how I was spending so much time following up with clients with notes and actions. As coaches we like to help and support, right? Well, yes, that’s true, nevertheless we also know that empowering people to help themselves rather than doing it for them is much more beneficial.

There is a note here though – if you are using this extra support as a way to provide added value to your client through your packages/services then that might be OK. Just remember there is only one of you! Leverage your time wherever you can.

How could you do it differently?

• Set up templates – I now have templates written for follow up emails around my VIP Days, Strategy Sessions etc. All I need to do after a session is call up the email, tailor it to my client’s needs and hit send.
• Get clients to keep a note of their own actions – this  creates a sense of ownership and they are more likely to complete their actions. I then ask them how they’d like to be held accountable – they send me their updates rather than me chasing them. I will nudge them if need be though – that’s where diary notes come in very handy! You don’t get off that lightly when you work with me!
• Take more succinct notes in your session – I write notes in my sessions as I coach. What has helped me is a super sophisticated state-of-the-art system – highlighting key action points with a highlighter pen, adding in deadline dates. I highlight a-ha moments and anything that I might want to follow up with, either in the session or in a future session where relevant. I would look at my notes after a coaching session and feel overwhelmed about where to start. Now it’s quick and easy to set a date in my diary to follow up, note down the key areas and get on with the rest of my day, knowing I have all of the key information down for when I next work with my client.

2. Automate where you can

One thing I’ve been working on this year is automating my business – putting systems in place to make things easier and also to be able to work smarter.

How could you make it work for you?

• Schedule your social media – Allow yourself some freedom around social media. Schedule what you can and then you have time to engage in conversations rather than panicking about not having posts ready. A fabulous resource that I shared in my newsletter is the Social Media Planner by The Brand Kitchen. (Please note – this is an affiliate link, however I only share what I believe to be amazing!)
• Automate your emails - When someone signs up for your newsletter keep in touch with a series of emails relevant to your work, or if offering an eBook relevant to that.

All the time keep thinking to yourself how can I make this process quicker, easier and smarter?

3. Set up an Operations Manual** How useful would it be to know all of the ins and outs of what you do in one place? You know those little tasks and repeat processes that you need to do again and again. Don’t make it a massive task, simply set up a Word document and start noting down all of those little tasks/processes that you do.

This is something I planned to do from day one but never got started. I’m still building mine but so far I’ve got everything ranging from email template wording for a press release, to how to set up a menu bar in my WordPress to the order my autoresponders come out. It is literally building over time into a comprehensive manual, so instead of rummaging around trying to find the note I wrote about it I simply open up my file and ta-da it’s all there.

Have you just got little snippets that don’t really work as a process or procedure as such? Use Evernote or some other online system to capture the info and then you can search on what you need. Failing that a notebook can be really helpful for capturing those little nuggets – just remember to put in an index of some kind so that you can find them quickly when you need them.

** Ps I need a much nicer name for my Operations Manual – so leave a comment below to give me some fun names instead and then share with me what you’re doing to save time in your business.

Remember to sign up to my fabulous free Rock Your Biz Telesummit. We’ve been having some brilliant conversations in the Facebook group, from what music we like to learning about membership clubs, mindset and more. The speakers are each taking the hotspot to do a 30 minute Q & A around their specific areas. Come and join us.