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3 SECRETS TO MORE BILLABLE TIME FOR FREELANCERS & SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS
By
Rose Hill
As
self-employed professionals, were in business to make money doing what
we love.
And that means we need enough billable hours to cover our expenses,
our salary, upgrades in our skills and technology, and our profit. But
if you're self-employed for any length of time, you eventually reach
the point where you just don't have more hours in the day to give to
your business. After all, you have a personal life too. (If you don't
have a personal life, you really need to work on that with your business
coach — but I digress.)
So, if you've maxed out on the hours you
have available to build your business, how can you get more billable
hours?
You have
to get those billable hours from time you are currently spending doing
other activities in your business. Here are some ways to do that:
Delegate
out anything you hate to do or aren't good at doing in the running of
your business. For example, I hate filing and organizing all my reference
materials. So I hire a professional organizer to come in once a quarter
to file all the papers I've stacked up, to set up any new files I'll
need, to pack up old files on inactive clients and projects, and to
reorganize my 10 bookcases. She can do all that for me in 3 hours. When
I was doing it myself it took me forever and it was never completed
because I'd let anything else distract me from it. So, finding just
the right reference book or file was not only hit-or-miss at best, it
again took too much of my time.
How much time can you recover by delegating
out activities and tasks you don't want to do, but that have to get
done to keep your business running smoothly?
Automate or computerize administrative tasks, including making regular
backups of your computer disk drives. (I learned to get my backups automated
after I'd lost my entire contacts database, including my appointment
schedule — sometimes I'm hardheaded about these basic business
maintenance things!) In addition to now having automated backups of
my computer disks, here's a sample of what else I've automated:
Contact
management and scheduling
Taking class registration and payment
Distributing class notes and materials
Taking coaching payments via the Web
Notification to follow-up with clients
Subscribing and unsubscribing to this eZine
Broadcasting of this eZine
Payment and delivery of digital products
Creating eClasses from templates
Subscriptions, payment, and delivery of eClasses
Tracking of billable time
Creating time reports
Invoicing
Expense and revenue tracking
Gracefully get out from under your most time-consuming and energy-draining
clients and projects. I know it's difficult to say "No" to
a client or a project in today's economic climate. But you can give
these Clients and Projects from Hell referrals to competitors in your
network who are better suited to serve them, retain the good will from
the clients you are referring on, and free up all that time and energy
to work with people and projects you love. Just by relieving all the
stress you're under from your Clients and Projects from Hell, you make
yourself open and available to more of your Ideal Clients and Projects.
And, have you noticed, you're more productive and efficient when you're
working with your Ideal Clients and Projects? Increased productivity
= increased billable hours available.
Put these 3 secrets to work in your business and get back valuable and
billable time for doing more of what you love for your Ideal Clients!
Rose Hill is a Certified Business Coach who works exclusively
with independent professionals who desire to create a solid foundation
for their continued business success. I do this by means of a comprehensive
4-pronged, 6-month High-Impact Business-Building program. Rose can be
reached at (503) 629-4804 or via e-mail to rose@coachrose.com
Rose
Hill may be contacted at http://www.coachrose.comrose@coachrose.com.
Rose Hill is a Certified Business Coach who works exclusively with independent
professionals who desire to create a solid foundation for their continued
business success. I do this by means of a comprehensive 4-pronged, 6-month
High-Impact Business-Building program. Rose can be reached at (503)
629-4804 or via e-mail to rose@coachrose.com
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