Yesterday I discussed with a close friend about what it takes to make oneself financially free.  This friend has been undergoing a lot of personal development over the years and has a very clear view of what he wants to achieve in a short period of time.

My argument was that to become financially free via the traditional methods (not winning lotto or getting an inheritance), you need to work really hard.  His response was “it’s not about working hard – it’s about working smart”.

Upon reflection, I realised that it comes down to interpretation. Perhaps ‘hard work’ need not be difficult – I see it as persevering to achieve an outcome, and doing what it takes to reach it.

So let’s explore whether working hard is enough to make your business successful these days.

Well, are you currently letting your business run you? Are you reacting to clients, staff and suppliers instead of being proactive… do you often find yourself in a state of disorganised chaos?

OR… Are you in control of your processes, functions, and have systems in place to manage things in a calm and consistent manner?

People who run around busily each day without a clear goal or purpose are creating a lot of noise and flying papers, but they aren’t getting anywhere.

While those who link their daily activities to their strategic goals are creating less waste and inefficiencies, are finished sooner, and could be defined as working ‘smart’.

What Does it Take to Get Ahead?

The key to working smarter is to be really clear about what direction you are heading in.

-       What are your business goals and objectives?
-       What are the timeframes you want to achieve these within?

THEN, look at your daily activities and ask:

-       Are these activities linked directly to my strategic goals?
-       Or am I doing lots of ‘stuff’ without really achieving anything?

You’ll realise fairly quickly from your business results what the answers are.  You’ll also know from your internal sense of achievement.

The key to working smarter (and not harder) is to align your daily tasks and activities with your larger strategic goals. Then to use systems, technology and processes to make it more efficient and take the load off you.

That’s where a highly automated Email Marketing and CRM system comes into it, just like Infusionsoft.

When we think of automation, many different things come to mind.  Some people imagine computers, whilst others picture factory lines and robotic machinery.  Automation occurs everywhere. It’s in our alarm clocks, our ovens… our computer calendar reminders and even our wristwatches.  Automation is a part of modern life, working away without our noticing.

What about in business – do micro and small business owners need automation?

In any business, automation can easily be set up in a number of ways:

• Scheduling daily tasks in the computer calendar, with timers to remind you when a task is due.
• Using software programs that automatically run a program every month.
• Operating system is set to check for updates on a regular basis.

These are all examples of automation.

So how does a Small Business Owner utilise automation more to save time and make life easy?

Firstly, look at the tools you have available.  A calendar is a great way to set things up so that you’re keeping on track.  If you’ve created a schedule of your day and allocated time to do certain things, then set it up in Calendar (inside Outlook or Entourage), with alerts to remind you when to finish and start the next one.

Let’s face it – emails often distract us from our task at hand. If you don’t want to be distracted by emails, turn off the automatic downloading of emails or set it to download only twice a day.

You can also create different views or types of calendars for the different activities you have – very handy for those of us leading double lives!  Some calendars – such as Google Calendar – allow you to colour code your different calendars and activities, so that you have a visual representation of the different activities you’re doing.

Taking It One Step Further – Complete Business Automation

You can take things to another level in your business by actually automating processes, so that tasks normally done manually are done using technology.  This is where a system like Infusionsoft can put your business on Steroids (good ones) with marketing, sales, and billing automation – to name a few.

The best part about automation is that you control the set up – so it can be customised to your business and personal needs. Before setting it up, my advice is to find some smart tools and ensure you’ve identified all the processes that can be automated.  The benefits are well worth it.  And if you’d like some help with this, just give me a call.

Let’s face it: we all have days when things just don’t go our way. If we feel strong, we can manage how that affects us emotionally, and what we choose to do about it. But what about when something you’ve set up perfectly suddenly doesn’t work? Even automated technology can fail sometimes, causing us time and effort.

I don’t like to admit it – but it happened to me recently. A few days ago one of my websites failed – for no apparent reason. It also affected my emails attached to that domain name and caused me to lose about 3 days worth of emails, perhaps very important emails. After spending an hour on the phone to my web hosting company, I learnt that ‘someone’ had changed my name servers. It was a manual error, but we have no idea who did it – and as a result my website and emails had crashed, costing me potential business, some stress, and a couple of hours of my day to get it fixed.

The one thing about technology is that it works brilliantly to make our lives better, however it requires human input and intervention to make it work.

How can I avoid this happening again? I honestly don’t know. It’s one of those spanners that stopped the wheels… but it doesn’t have a clear answer, with nobody officially to blame.

This kind of thing happens rarely, and when it does – we just have to get it sorted quickly and with the least amount of fuss. There’s no point investigating who was at fault because the problem has now been solved. And there’s no process I can put in place to save it happening again.

So in my ‘outsourced’ world built on automation and efficient systems, even I succumb to problems that cause the wheels to stop.

When a spanner is thrown in your works, do you feel safe in the knowledge that the providers you’re using are doing the best they can? I believe that having trust in your providers and keeping calm is the fastest way to get on with the business of making money and having a life.

I know, you don’t really want to outsource your whole life, just the tedious and difficult bits, right? I’ve been re-reading Tim Ferris’s book, “The Four-Hour Work Week”. Compared to the average small business owner’s week of 45 to 80 hours – just FOUR does seem fanciful, even ridiculous. It all comes down to how to make more money with less time in the business, freeing you up to do a variety of things you enjoy. (The book has been updated/expanded in December 2009).

When following the steps outlined in Ferris’s Dreamline worksheet, the cost for those things that we put off every year (a great holiday, a car upgrade, a gardener, etc) are typically not that much in total monthly income — remembering that figure is on top of the usual household costs. In fact, some of my “costs” also could provide an income, if using a low-cost virtual assistant. (Part of the outsourcer’s work could be billed to clients, or at least free me up to do more billable projects.) Tim Ferris blog – Ideal Lifestyle Costing has all the necessary calculators to work out costs of your own ideal lifestyle.

Also, qualified remote support staff can be outsourced for as little as US$300 per month (around $2 an hour) and they can do a variety of things like follow up calls, invoice creation/reminders, link building for your SEO, etc… all those things that eek away your daylight hours. Because they are working specifically for you on the projects you need, there won’t be any staff time wastage or double-instructing. See www.remotestaff.com.au for ongoing administrative tasks, or ask about the specialists at Infusionoz.com.au for higher level tasks like web design, e-marketing, CRM implementation, and content writing (also offering good value/prompt attention services and located in Australia).

Of course, remote outsourcing goes hand-in-hand with automated technology and streamlined systems. Great systems means higher productivity. Higher productivity for the average small business owner might mean more billable hours, with less stress and chaos in their lives. For a Mumpreneur it might mean more time to spend with family because her income doesn’t drop with periods away from the business.

So many business people are still stuck in the paradigm of exchanging time for money – what is my hourly rate, how many hours can I bill?

But when we see our business as a marketable entity – with products (passive income), Intellectual Property to record and protect, and a brand to promote – we start to see it as an Asset. We may even have a saleable asset, if someone else could take over the systems and product sales down the track and continue the revenue streams. Does that sound worthwhile?

“I know I put that number somewhere here… I have to call that guy back, where is that bit of paper?”
“Where did I put that Project Alpha file? It’s somewhere in this computer!”
“Seriously, would those spammers stop sending emails about their Indian SEO service?”

If these types of comments or thoughts sound familiar, it might be time to look at your work style efficiency. We’re not all natural-born brilliant organisers, and the time we lose on these little things does add up. It’s time that is not billable, and it’s moments like these that distract you from your core tasks.

With a little bit of forethought these inefficient habits can be replaced by new habits and new software rules. Let the software do the work, not you.

5 Work Efficiency Tips

1. While on the phone with a client, bring up your CRM system and find the client’s name. You can still jot notes if you prefer, but ensure you enter the notes and date while the conversation is fresh in mind. Walah – already in the system, never to be lost.
2. Each project should have a folder in your main documents. Never save working files haphazardly and try not to have more than four tiers of folders.
3. For emails that come in, spam filters can only catch so much. Set up some Rules so that those with certain words will get deleted or sent to junk. (In Entourage, select Tools-Rules, usually select email (POP), then specify the words commonly found in the message of these spam emails; in Outlook select Tools-Create New Rule).  If you have new rules set up, I suggest you check your deleted items/junk folder every two days to ensure that those you want to see are not going there (then adjust rules if it’s catching the good emails).
4. All e-newsletters which you subscribe to can be set up to go to a Newsletters inbox folder, with a new folder and a rule (Entourage: Add criteria: subject contains: newsletters; Add action: move messages – select newsletters folder). Any new newsletters that come in can then be added with a right-click, Apply Rules (Newsletters).  Then you only see these low priority newsletters when you want to ‘research’ or ‘play’.
5. All your bulk emails should be handled by an automated Email Marketing system, thus freeing you up from sending and receiving various emails, dealing with subscribes, unsubscribes or bouncebacks, etc. This system is held “off-site”, but you can easily upload any existing contacts.

I hope these few tips have given you a good start on making your work time more efficient. Please speak to Aveline for further personalised advice and systems consultation.

I used to work long hours each and every day in the corporate world. After long hours in the office, I picked up my daughter from after school care and crawled through all the traffic to home. Then, under stress, I used to pull out the laptop again and keep working.  Was I mad?  Probably.  But I thought at the time that it was the only way I could ‘get ahead’.

Since being in business for myself I’ve learnt how important it is to have good time management skills and prioritise everything, both business and personal. I’ve learnt that switching off the work by dinnertime each day is paramount to my sanity, health and happiness! So regardless of what’s going on, I don’t work at night… the work will always be there in the morning.

The Paradigm of Busy-ness
Have you noticed that everyone in your network is too busy? “I just don’t have time to relax” you hear people say, or “I wish I had more time in the day”.

It’s easy to just blame lack of time… but time ticks by regardless of our excuses. It’s more important to focus on whether you are doing what’s really important to you and your family… and for the growth and success of your business.

Ask yourself, “how do I want to spend my time today?”

Ask yourself, “is there anything that I’m spending much time on which could actually be done by someone else far cheaper or far easier? (e.g. cleaning the house, raking the leaves, filing, bookkeeping, SEO, typing letters – anything at all). This “letting go” process frees you up to spend more time on your core activity (your talent) and your relationships.

And lastly, ask “what business systems can I use to streamline & automate my regular tasks?” (e.g. software tools, macros, email autoresponders)

No more Excuses! Jack Canfield, with Mark Victor Hansen, found the time to do 5 actions towards promoting their books every workday for at least two years (e.g. call 5 radio stations for interviews), leading to the most successful personal development book series ever – 200 titles and 112 million copies in print in over 40 languages. Jack also found time to write a quality 500-page book, “The Success Principles” in 2005. Within these 64 principles is the foundation for anyone’s success.

If you want success and sanity, will you make the time for important things?

As I come across a lot of different business types in the small business sector, I often notice similar problems crop up within the very heart of the business: sales & marketing.

SME owners without adequate systems often struggle to keep up with different enquiries from different sources, trying to remember who gets what and when. Prospects are at different stages of the sales cycle, and it usually falls on the SME owner to keep track of each prospect and send them the right information, to keep building trust one step at a time. Utilising a great sales & marketing process can mean the difference between having a successful business, or a busy job.

If this sounds familiar, it might be time to seek some assistance. As Greg Chapman says on Business Builders:

“By systematising your business, you make your business more efficient, reduce your costs, and ultimately, make your business run without you.”

If you are too busy, you dread opening your email, or your work style is haphazard at best… an integrated system like Infusionsoft that combines Automated Email Marketing, a powerful CRM that keeps all sales activities on track, and a helpful person to set it all up… could sound like business nirvana to you. After all, if you can make part of your business run without you, you get that most precious commodity of all back: TIME.