“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”
Mark Twain
It can be an interesting dilemma. Your business is growing, but not to the extent you need to take on additional personnel. However, without them you may feel as though you’re going to be working long hours and potentially missing opportunities.
Before you go to the trouble and expense of advertising, interviewing potential candidates and training the new employee, you have a perfect opportunity to discover if your current practices and processes are working in your businesses best interests, or whether any changes can be made.
Streamline your business processes
Look at your daily routine – do you have scheduled time to:
- Check and respond to emails and phone calls?
- Check and respond to social media enquiries?
- Send out quotes, invoices and proposals?
Do you start out with good intentions but find yourself distracted by the next shiny object?
There are many reasons why this can happen – the first is perhaps the easiest to recognise.
If you use social media to share relevant content, wish your clients a happy birthday and send out congratulatory messages for milestones reached; but find yourself an hour or so later after being distracted by the newsfeed on Facebook, you still haven’t achieved what you set out to do.
Yes, social media is important, but you should not let it get in the way of sending out business proposals or your invoices. Nor should social media sites get in the way of answering emails or returning phone calls, but it can and does happen if you’re not careful.
The other reason we allow ourselves to become distracted is because we don’t want to do the other tasks we have to do. We procrastinate until such time when we know we can’t get out of it – and with usually some reluctance and teeth gnashing on our part we get on and do the job.
If you find yourself doing this on a regular basis, there are some ways around this particular issue
One of the ways is to use a default calendar and stick rigidly to the allocated tasks and times. It is a good way to ensure that certain jobs are completed and within a strict time allocation. But if that is not working for you, the next suggestion is to do the job you don’t want to do – first. We call it eating the frog. It might be distasteful, but once it’s done you can do the rest of the jobs and tasks knowing that particular one is no longer hanging over your head. It is a great way to get a quick win.
Growing your business is important, but so is checking to ensure the foundations of your own business are sound.
- Check your business processes
- Streamline those that need streamlining
Then think about whether you still need additional help and if so, which particular aspect(s) do you need assistance with.
Sign up for our monthly newsletter – Yabber Natter it covers Lifestyle Changes, Business Support and Personal Concierge stories and topics
Click the the connect link at http://nesolutions.com.au/ to go to the form.