I’m stuck at home sick today. It got me to thinking about my customers. The thing that drives me to do what I do is to help small business owners put the tedious, boring but gotta-get-done stuff on autopilot. I know that by staying home sick, the building isn’t going to burn down and the business will continue to function just fine. What about you? Could you afford to stay home and not think about your business for the day?

How much does the day-to-day activity of your business relies on you?

It’s a great barometer of how mature your business model and processes are. If your business would crumble if you weren’t there for a day then something is wrong and you need to stop a figure out how to fix that. I suspect that most of you aren’t quite that much of a bottleneck. As a thought exercise, how long could you let go of the reigns?

2 days?

1 week?

1 month?

What if you could only afford 4 hours a week, ever? Could your business continue to operate without you constantly turning the wheels?

Think about it. If the answer is no, then you need more automation or you need to alter your business model a little.

How to identify processes that need to be tweaked

This is much easier than you think. Go look at everything you did yesterday, in gory detail. Now, categorize each task into two groups: value-added and non value-added. For example, talking to a perspective customer is value-added. Next, go through your value-added list and ask yourself one question: is it absolutely necessary for me to involved with this step? Get creative. Even if the answer looks like yes…brainstorm crazy ideas on what would have to happen to make it a no.

For Example…

My example above was talking to a perspective customer. What if you could have answered that prospects questions with an FAQ on your website? What if an auto-attendant on your phone could have answered their questions? I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t talk to customers and prospects. I am however telling you that there are ways to reduce the amount of time necessary for these tasks.

Oh, and those non-value added tasks?

Mercilessly find a way to make them go away. A couple of general tips I can give you here:

• Use your email program’s “rules” to help respond to, file or ignore certain emails. For example, I have an email rule that says if my email address is not in the TO field but only in the CC field that it gets filed out of my inbox into a CC folder. I’ll check that maybe once a day.
• Get caller ID and let calls from non-customers roll to voicemail. Most solicitors wont bother to leave a message. All other calls, you can make a judgement call as to whether you need to take it now or later.
• Fire bad suppliers. If you’re constantly dealing with product or delivery problems, then start searching for new suppliers. Even if other suppliers are a little more expensive, wouldn’t it be worth it not to have to deal with late shipments, missed shipments, wrong product, defective product, etc?
• Hire some help! A lot of small business owners take way to long to realize that they need employees. Make sure that you have automated payroll systems in place or you’ll just trade one headache for another.

Take-Aways

If you’re not familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but it basically says that as humans, we have a hard time growing psychologically, emotionally and spiritually if our physical or social needs aren’t being met. For businesses, this same concept applies and is the whole point of the book, The E-Myth Revisted: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What To Do About It. You can’t work on your business if you all you have time for is working in your business.

Obviously, my tips and examples above aren’t going to work in every situation. Each business is unique in it’s own way and each business owner is unique. If you’re tired of working 16 hour days and not getting anywhere with your business, contact me for a free consultation to see what Stage3 can do you for you to put your business on auto-pilot.

Welcome back again!