As an entrepreneur, the chances are that you’re always looking for ways to save yourself time and money. Indeed, it’s so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day running of your business and end up having to carry over elements of your responsibilities in your free time, such as evenings and weekends, leading to a poor work-life balance. The good news is that we’ve put together some simple streamlining exercises that could help you get things right…

Hire a virtual assistant

If you feel like you’re spending too much time looking at your calendar and emails, booking in meetings and appointments and worrying about administrative duties, you could benefit from hiring a virtual assistant who can take some of those tasks off your hands. They can serve as a personal assistant without the price tag, booking in appointments, answering your calls, and generally doing the day-to-day tasks that are easy to offload, but hard to ignore.

Outsource responsibilities

As well as outsourcing duties like email, consider outsourcing other elements of your business such as cleaning and security. You can work with a firm that specialises in facilities management services and benefit from their expertise, buying power, and accountability, giving you less to worry about in the day-to-day. For instance, if you’re the one currently responsible for locking up and monitoring your CCTV cameras, offloading the task to another could give you an extra hour a week to focus on other business tasks such as networking.

Just say no

Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been in the same role for a decade, it’s easy to become a people pleaser and try to take on any and every role that comes to you. But the truth is that you don’t have to – instead, set yourself some clear limits and learn to feel comfortable saying no to jobs you simply don’t want to do. Sure, it’ll be alien at first and you might even disappoint a couple of clients, but it’ll ultimately result in a streamlined business.

Use accounting software

If you’re not already automating large parts of your bookkeeping and accounting, now is the time to make the leap. The average entrepreneur spends four hours per week working on their accounts, but if you switch to software that does the bulk of the work for you, you won’t need to worry about it. Better yet, hiring a bookkeeper to do the rest of the work will free up your time and ensure you can access an up-to-the-minute look on your firm’s performance. 

Avoid unnecessary meetings and calls

One of the biggest time-sucks for busy entrepreneurs is unnecessary phone calls and meetings with clients. Of course, you need to maintain a good working relationship with those who pay your bills, but you could save yourself up to 20 hours a week if you conduct your business over email rather than a Zoom call. Keep meetings and calls brief when they’re needed, and schedule in an appointment giving clients a “slot” that you’ll stick to.

Did any of these strategies help you? Let us know and check back soon for some more.