How to Run a More Efficient Business in 2023

Running a business from home is as rewarding and exciting as it is challenging, especially if you’re a parent. On one hand, you get to raise your children as you grow a business you’re passionate about. On the other hand, that same business can completely take over your life and your home and make it really hard for you to be fully present with your children when it’s not time for work. 

 

On top of that, our schedules can also be quite unpredictable with school schedules and everything else our children have going on – we need to have ways to account for this as well. The good news about running your own business is that you can truly design it around your life so you can have the lifestyle you want while being an efficient business owner at the same time. 

 

Hire Help 

 

If you want your business to not take over your life and to truly function as a company, it can’t just be you doing all the work. One of the most powerful steps you can take is to hire people who will share the load of the work, give you time freedom and allow you to also work on the business, not just in it. As a parent, sometimes our schedules are unpredictable – from doctor’s appointments to school events, and proactively having help in place means that you can be away from the business during that time and things won’t completely crumble. Sometimes what actually stagnates your business is you reaching the ceiling of what you can do on your own, so bringing people into your business could actually be the key to making more money. 

 

The greatest thing about the era we live in today is just how easy it is to find help for your business across the whole world. There are many ways people can step in to give your business some leverage – from a part-time virtual assistant who can help you with emails and scheduling, to a full-time remote operations person who can help with overseeing the day-to-day tasks. Building these into your business will take a huge load off you as the business owner. You can also hire people who fill in the gaps of areas you might not be the strongest in, like a part-time copywriter or social media manager so that you also strengthen your operation. 

 

Leverage Technology 

 

Getting help isn’t always about people. You can use a combination of people and technology to make things a lot easier, but if you can’t afford people you can start out with tech tools and then bring people on as you get more revenue. For example, if your business requires you to do a lot of consultative calls, use scheduling platforms to set up your meeting times and have potential clients set up a call with you. Instead of having to go back and forth deciding a meeting time, having set meeting times makes getting something on the books a lot easier. You can also make use of project management tools to stay on task and keep things moving smoothly. If you run your own social media, you can create content in bulk and use scheduling tools so that you don’t have to post all the time. These seemingly small changes will help you buy your time back and you can pour that back into you and your family. 

 

Create Operating Procedures 

 

In order to bring someone in to help you run your business, you need to set them up for success, and that’s hard to do if you don’t have operating procedures, training and systems in place. It’s really important to take all the operating procedures and templates you have in your head and get them down onto paper or better yet, into some sort of digital portal where it’s easy for someone to access. In every business, there are things that can be systematized so that it’s a lot simpler to deliver them over and over again. Investing in skills management software means you can easily bring new staff on and have an evergreen training system so you don’t have to do the heavy lifting of getting them set up to do the job at the highest level. What holds a lot of people back from scaling their businesses and keeps them from having any freedom is the overwhelm of transferring the knowledge of running the business so someone else can learn it. You can take on this project slowly by simply recording videos of you doing what you do in the business and explaining the procedures to tackle different areas of the business. What’s great about this is that it’s painful and time intensive in the short term, but once that content is created it lives forever and you are free to bring people on and train new people without worrying about the training aspect. 

 

Duplicate Yourself 

 

If your business happens to be based on selling your expertise, there are things you can do to make money passively, which means you can spend less time in the business during certain seasons. For example, if you coach people on productivity, you could potentially create group coaching and lean into Facebook groups so that you coach more people at once, and give people room to support one another. You could also sell books or an on-demand webinar so that it delivers content for you while you sleep. These steps mean you don’t always have to be on at work without sacrificing your business’ standards. 

 

Set Up Your Schedule With Your Life in Mind

 

Everyone’s life looks different, so why should our days look exactly the same? The greatest gift of not being a corporate worker is you can set your working hours up the way you want them. If you want your schedule to take your children’s activities into account, you can choose to work a four-day week. If you want to intensify work during school hours, you can work in the morning and take afternoons off. If you want to take summer off to spend with your children, you can also work in month-long sprints and then take time away when you need it. Instead of following a more conventional work schedule, you can align your day according to how you work best and what suits your family. Once you have that schedule in place, commit to it so that you can work during those hours, putting your all into work and then being able to fully disengage from your business. Having a separation between work and life has a lot to do with the systems you put in place, and making sure you have a dialed-in schedule makes a huge impact. 

 

Running your own business allows you to live life on your own terms, and when you have kids, that’s amazing because you can earn money while still getting to see them grow. You can create a product or service that really helps people without sacrificing hours away from home at the office or commuting to and from work. The challenge many home-based business owners experience though is a struggle to have balance, and it can be really difficult to be present with your family when you’re worried about what needs to be done to move things forward. There are measures you can put in place to make sure your business runs efficiently so your time with your children is fully dedicated to them mentally and emotionally. The more you treat it like a true business, the better off you’re going to be, so don’t be afraid to leverage a combination of people, tech tools and efficiency tactics to give you the support to be the best CEO you can be. Remember, starting your own business offers you the freedom to design your work around what matters in your life. Take advantage of this and let what you do for a living make the rest of your life better. 

 

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