Since when is your time worth nothing? Your time is money.

Time is money - your money

Often as women business owners, we will treat our time as if it is free. In fact our time is not free, it is one of the most precious resources of any business. [Tweet "Time is money. Our money."]

Because we think we aren’t paying for our time, we attribute no value to it. This misguided thinking leads to long hours and hard work. Business owners with this view realize that instead of creating a business to liberate them and give them the flexibility they desire, they have created another demanding and exhausting job and often for less pay.

Feeling overwhelmed by the variety and volume of tasks to be tackled when running a business can stall success. Often we can feel as if we are barely coping now with the workload, so if we were anymore successful then we would be even busier. And who would want that? This simple assessment can lead us to subconsciously put the brakes on our growth as we just don’t know how we would cope with more business.

Read: How to avoid a pay cut when you start your own business

Step change

Avoiding falling into this trap is essential if you want to have a successful business and feel as if you are thriving. You want to feel as if you are loving what you do, feel in control and know that you can easily grow as your business becomes more successful.

A step change in how you run your business is when you start to value your time and leverage it better for growth. [Tweet "You will start understanding that your time is money and has an economic value."]

Accept that you are not expert in everything. Accept that bringing on staff or outsourcing specific work to someone who is an expert will save you time, money and frustration.

The person you employ or outsource to may take an hour to do that job it may have taken you six hours to

Having the right team can relieve a lot of pressure

do. Often tasks we need to do to keep the business functioning and legal can sap our energy and motivation. If there are tasks like this for you (mine is book-keeping) then outsource it and use that time on activities for business growth.

Karen Silk, who now employs 26 staff, recalls how she started taking on employees in her first year of trading; “When I was totally on my own I was probably doing twelve-hour days and weekends. I employed someone to do all the administration so I could just get rid of all that donkeywork. If I hadn’t had her I don’t know if I would have made it.  I would have probably ended up exhausted. The next person I took on was in finance. They did contracts, invoicing, debt collecting, agreeing contracts and all that which then just left me free to do the selling. I kept the selling to myself because I knew that’s what I could do and I was good at it.”

Read: 5 signs it's time to leave your job

Hiring support

Many business owners fear taking on employees. They may be concerned that the business revenue isn’t large or consistent enough to support paid employees, or that they do not want to deal with the perceived red tape involved in employing staff.

A Corporate Crossover comments; “My biggest concern was dealing with hiring, training and retaining my own staff.  Too many people have no work ethic and it’s frustrating. I was most worried about setting up the business, taxes, payroll etc… since my background was technical not business school but at the end of the day it’s like everything else in life – you learn what you need when you need to.  I hired a lawyer and accountant and have never looked back!”

Consider creating a team for your business that is virtual and outsourced. This means that you can have the right skills and experience in your business without the financial and legal commitment of employing permanent staff.  The cost of this support has decreased significantly over the years. With the growth of the Virtual Assistant industry and job bidding sites, it is now much easier than ever to get low-cost, just in time support in bite size chunks. Having this level of flexibility around staff resourcing is beneficial, especially in the early stages where you are still establishing your sales pipeline.

Read: Lifestyle management for the time poor 

Getting the right support at the right time will enable you to focus on those activities where you add real value to enable your business to grow.

Originally posted on Corporate Crossovers on 7th Feb 2013

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