Owning and operating a small business is difficult. There are constant time management distractions that can take away from the most important work that needs to be completed. Small business owners need to make sure they have a time management plan that works long term. Anyone who wants to have a successful contracting business needs to make sure they are spending their time on the most important things in their company. Here are several tips for general contractors finding it tough to manage your time.
Think Long Term
One of the best ways to improve time management is to think long term. Many pressing issues of the day are really not that important over the long term. For example, it may seem important for you to do a thorough cleanup of a job site at the end of the day, but is that really the task of the most important person in the company, the business owner? This is time you could be spending selling more jobs or finishing more quotes – things that are much more important to the long term success of your business. For more rudimentary low level tasks it often makes sense to hand them off to lower paid workers on your crew. A small business owner must have the ability to think both high level and long term. People who are able to do this will have much more success in business.
Eliminate Distractions
There are more distractions than ever before for people who own their own business. One of the best ways to have more time is to simply eliminate distractions that take away from doing the most important thing for the business. For example, many business owners constantly check their email throughout the day. While this may seem like an important task, it often leads to trying to handle too many things at once and accomplishing nothing. Mike Vardy at Lifehack suggests checking your email no more than two times per day. By doing so, he says you’ll spend more time doing things you really want to get done.
Over the long term, these small changes can make a huge difference in the overall effectiveness of a business. There are many people who discover they are spending several hours a day on non-value added work. The time of a small business owner is so important that they simply cannot waste this much time every day that could be spent on high value work.
Hire Help
Every small business owner wants to reduce their overhead costs as much as possible. However, one of the best ways to increase the amount of time that can be used in the business is to hire help. There are many different mundane tasks that can be outsourced for a low price. This is important for any small business owner who wants to spend their time doing things more strategically. Small business owners must get out of the mindset that they must do everything within their company.
In reality, they need to spend their time doing what they’re best at. As a contractor, your time may not be best spent managing the website, online marketing or even doing all of the paperwork. Finding a responsible, skilled intern can be a great option for marketing and tech needs. For bookkeeping and paperwork, it can be surprisingly easy to find inexpensive, experienced part time help with a free posting on Craigslist. By putting some capable people in place to tackle these tasks contractors are able to use their time much more productively over the long term.
Have The Right Tools
There are many tasks a contractor can hire out as their business grows, it’s also important to streamline operations by having the right tools. At JobFLEX, we know that keeping your paperwork and operations organized will save you time, and help grow your business. Our contractor estimating software allows you the ability to quickly and easily generate quotes, and keep your business organized. There are also a number of other tools that will streamline your day to day operations and allow you to more efficiently operate your business, you just need to identify the problems and research the solutions. A great example of this is if you find that you or your crews are taking too much time to get to a job, use GPS devices or smartphone app like Google Maps for directions.
The important thing is to be able to identify the least value added elements of your day or week and figure out how to either eliminate them altogether, or find a solution to greatly reduce the time you spend on that activity. It’s a cliché, but it’s as true as ever, time is money.
