Monthly Archives: August 2015

Leverage Technology to Grow Your Business

I meet many business owners whose businesses are growing but are stuck because there’s not enough time in their schedule to work with clients and take care of the administrative side of things. There are a couple ways to get beyond this challenge.

One way to serve more clients is to outsource. What do you outsource? Your weaknesses. You know, those tasks you dread doing. Phone calls, cleaning, marketing, accounting, copywriting, etc. Outsourcing tasks to an expert not only frees up your time to work with more clients, that expert will get the job done faster and better than you because they are the expert. How to find those experts? Ask at networking events. Ask in your online groups. Look at Upwork.com. Post something on Craig’s List. Look at Fiverr.com.

Streamline and automate to grow your businessAnother way to free up time in your schedule is to streamline your business processes with technology. In the not too distant past, technology was something only affordable to big corporations with big budgets. Those days are gone. A great example of technology you can put to use right now is scheduling and booking software. How many sales have you lost because you didn’t follow up fast enough (or not at all) with a client to get an appointment scheduled? Online scheduling software such as TimeTrade, Acuity, and Booking Bug allow you to set appointment times for your clients to choose. Some of this software even allows your client to pay when they book the appointment. This type of software costs between $10 and $30 per month. If you make even one sale of at least $30 during the month, the software will pay for itself. Think of it. No more phone tag. No more lost opportunity. And since you are spending less time on the phone, you have more time to work with clients and grow your business. And that’s what you want, right? If you’d like some help putting technology to work for your business, please get in touch.

It’s Too Expensive

I don’t usually write about books I read. However, reading This Book is About Travel by Andrew Hyde got me thinking.

In spite of the title, the book is about much more than travel. It’s about getting out of your comfort zone. The author gave away everything he owned and traveled the world for 16 months. He traveled with one backpack and purposely didn’t plan every detail to take advantage of random adventures whether those adventures were conversations with locals, tours, or just experiencing a new community. While I’m not sure I could live out of a backpack and either couch surf or stay in hostels for an undetermined about of time, I appreciated reading his insights. Hyde traveled for the experiences, not just to check locations off his bucket list. He found creative ways to get to know the locals and refused to buy guidebooks.

Rather than a historical accounting of his trip, Hyde shares his experience about a different place he visited in each chapter of the book. The chapter about New York City struck a cord with me. He was visiting a friend, and they had the opportunity to see a Broadway play at over 60% off the regular price that would have cost them $40 each. The response of his friend? It’s too expensive. (The issue wasn’t a lack of money.) Notice the response of his friend wasn’t that he didn’t want to see the play. That got me to thinking about how many experiences I missed out on because I thought something was too expensive. Yes, the value is in the eye of the beholder, and there is the economic reality of simply not having $40. After reading this chapter of the book, missing out on something I wanted to do because I wasn’t willing to spend $40 seems foolish. And I’m determined to stop and think before declaring something is too expensive.

34HBeing a business owner, I also related Hyde’s New York City experience to running my business. We business owners work too many hours, think we can accomplish more than is realistic, and miss out on too many other experiences. Is it too expensive to invest $30 per month in software to streamline and automate a business process that will also give back two hours of your time each month? What could you do with that two hours? Go for a walk? Spend time with family or friends? Accept a new client?

What about the cost of outsourcing areas of our business where we have little experience, dread doing, get stressed out over, and mostly avoid? Is it too expensive to outsource those things that keep us awake at night and freak us out? What’s that worth to you? Think about the result of that investment. Who among us doesn’t complain about not having enough time to accomplish all we want? We all get 24 hours in a day and the only way to get more done in a day is to eliminate things from our to-do list or outsource. Outsourcing could mean automating with software or hiring someone to help us get more done. In the future, before I say something is too expensive, I’m going to stop and ask myself what it’s worth in the way of enjoying a new experience or giving me more time to accomplish more on my to-do list. How are you going to open yourself to new experiences?