5 Ways to Maximize Profit, Time, and Productivity of Your Service-based Business

Time and energy is one of the biggest assets. Women entrepreneurs discover this the hard way when they quit their regular jobs and start their own businesses, or when they juggle both. Either ways, the constant attempt to juggle things and balance personal, familial, and professional commitments and aspects of one’s life begins to take a toll on them. I come across many women entrepreneurs who suffer from burnout. It impacts their health and their motivation level. That’s why, I recently invited Sandi Evans to my Wealthy Wednesday Show to help us understand how we can boost our productivity and time and ultimately increase our profits.  Sandi Evans was in the real estate and paralegal industry but after 10 years, she decided to pursue her entrepreneurial passion through launching Carter Evans Services, which is a virtual administrative and document preparation company. She uses her expertise to help entrepreneurs with a service-base to increase their profit and productivity and regain control over their time by building a dream team and smartly delegating and automating their business processes. Therefore, she has solid advice to offer our audience as to how they can increase their productivity and profit:

Go for Collaboration Instead of Competition

When women entrepreneurs start out in their business, striking a balance is the thing furthest from their minds, as they are worried about survival, sustainability and profits. As a result, they quickly lose their balance which impacts their personal and professional lives. Sandi Evans stresses that a woman entrepreneur cannot have balance in her life without freedom, be it financial or of time. She reminds us that if you are out of balance and out of sync and trying to “fly by the seats of your pants”; ultimately, the chaos would reflect everywhere in your life: be it professional or personal. Your team and even your clients can feel that. That’s why women entrepreneurs need to seek and implement ways they can get achieve more balance in their lives, be it asking for help, automating certain processes, or cutting back on certain things. I personally feel that the old school business environment and values that brink on rivalry and competition has created a rat race and has put so much more pressure on women. However, the values of collaboration and mutual nurturing ease the pressure on you and others, eliminate unnecessary competition and friction, and create a win-win for everyone.

Communicate Intelligently

Emailing is a prime medium of communication for most entrepreneurs, but it’s hard to keep on top of it all the time. Emailing and scheduling appointments with clients eat up so much of time and productivity. Sandi Evans feels that flagging important emails with the aim to get back to them later doesn’t work because at the end of the day, you end up with a lot of flagged emails, and also lots of pressure and guilt. Worse off, due to your lack of any kind of acknowledgment of the email, your client may feel that you are deliberately ignoring him or her or not giving any value. She recommends instead that you should send an acknowledgment of an email right away either personally or through an auto-responder and let your client know tentatively when you would respond to him or her. Likewise, she recommends that instead of wasting time in emails about setting a meeting time, share your online calendar with your clients instead and let them choose a convenient slot and time. This scheduling method eliminates the need of emailing back and forth and gives both the parties more freedom and space.

Delegate Whatever You Can

One way to create more freedom, time and space is to delegate those aspects and tasks of your business that are not making you money. The attempt to do everything yourself due to the fear of having more control leads to depletion of your time, attention, and energies. Sandi Evans recommends that when you are running a solo operation or a small scale business, you don’t have adequate staff to delegate, that’s where the concept of hiring a virtual assistant or getting hold of virtual assistance services become handy. She corrects the notion that VA services is not about hiring someone to do administrative services but VA services include everything, designing, generating, answering emails, book keeping, and much more. Getting someone to take care of these tasks helps you focus on other important aspects of your business.

Save Resources

Being organized and productive help you free up a lot of your resources. An intelligent and smart outsourcing and delegation of tasks frees up your time and allows you to focus your attention and energies on what you do best and that no one else can do for you i.e., improving the offerings of your service, adding newer dimensions, and services to your portfolio. Successfully managing your business would also help you scale it successfully at a later stage. This also helps you have a dependable team in place which is available on need basis. Hiring a VA team saves money by assembling your “dream team” on shoestring budget. Sandi Evans recommends that delegating any tasks that you absolutely hate, because if you hate doing something, you would keep on procrastinating on it and delaying other important things. She also recommends starting one’s day a bit early so as to use one’s time productively. Ultimately, increasing productivity increases your profit, Sandi reminds us.

Let Go of Fear

Fear is crippling and wastes our time, energies and thinking space. Most importantly, it robs us from grabbing opportunities. Fear also stops us from reaching our full potential. Sandi Evans transitioned from a full time job in the corporate world to full time entrepreneurship, so she offers our audience a realistic approach of coping with fear when deciding to let go of your job for the sake of starting your own business. She reminds us that one needs to transition into a business with a plan, with a household budget and some savings (at least for three months), and a straightening out your priorities. You need to have some faith in place of fear to help your business thrive. Furthermore, the fear of losing control on aspects of our business also stops us from delegating tasks or hiring additional help. That’s why, women entrepreneurs become overwhelmed eventually and even end up making costly mistakes. That’s why Sandi reminds us women bosses that they should “work in your business and on it” instead of burying themselves with paperwork.

Following these practical tips can ultimately help women entrepreneurs create a sustainable and profitable six figure income, while staying sane as well as passionate in the process. If there are any aspects of your business that are giving you a hard time, such as productivity, profit, communicating with clients, fear, doubts and timidity, a lack of boundaries, my book Magical Money Manifestation would help you with all these aspects and more. You can order it from Amazon today and start your own wealth consciousness journey.