Four Strategies For More Time Freedom
How do I build a business that’s not dependent on me? Where I don’t have team members constantly asking me questions, where I don’t have to show up at my best every single day, and where I can maintain irregular hours and take some time off?
This is one of the most important questions I get from the women I work with – and that’s because time freedom specifically is a common top priority among women entrepreneurs.
Our businesses can give us the ability to manage our own schedules – if we need to plan our days around our kids’ school schedules or stop work early to take care of an elderly parent, we can do that.
Today I want to talk through four strategies that can help you build a business that isn’t dependent on your constant availability.
Strategy #1: Batch Processing
When I say batch processing, I mean doing 10-12 newsletter articles, videos, or social media posts at once. This way, you can take one or two days out of each quarter to finish all of your marketing.
This method allows you to knock out some of your weekly work ahead of time so that you can have more time freedom week to week for the rest of the quarter.
Strategy #2: Writing Processes
At Revenue Breakthrough, we have written processes for everything! For example, our process on booking travel for me includes our frequent flyer numbers, the fact that I prefer an aisle seat over a window seat, my preferred airlines, what kind of hotels I like, and so on.
All of that information is written down and kept in one place so that my team members can accomplish tasks according to my preferences.
Processes are a pain in the ass. Nobody likes writing them, so I recommend that you start with writing one process a week. If writing a process down is too overwhelming, you might record yourself talking it out, put it through a transcription service, and then hire someone to clean it up and type it out.
You might also want to use a software that allows you to collect all your processes in one place – we like SweetProcess.
Even if you’re a one-person team at the moment, this practice is key, because you’re paving the way for someone else to complete your tasks effectively as soon as you have the cash flow to hire them.
Strategy #3: Don’t Do Anything Twice
In that same line of thinking, when you start anything, operate under the assumption that someone else will be doing that task for you somewhere down the line. This might look like creating a filing system for various types of work.
For instance, if you’re sitting down to write an introduction for a talk that you’re doing next week, think about adding it to a document entitled Talk Introductions and keeping that document in a folder called Speaker Information.
In the future, either you or your assistant can easily find and reuse that talk introduction, which will ultimately help to make your business less dependent on you.
Strategy #4: Use a Customer Relationship Management System
Make sure you’re using a Customer Relationship Management System. We suggest two to our clients: Less Annoying CRM and Pipedrive.
CRMs allow you to keep notes about your clients, from logging basic contact information to the tracking status of leads and conversations.
Again, if you’re looking to create a business that is eventually not dependent on you, the time may come to hire either an assistant or a salesperson to work for you. Using a CRM is one more step towards making delegation go smoothly.
This week, I invite you to start thinking about building a business that can function without you – even if that’s not feasible right now.
Use these four strategies as you grow your business and work towards the time freedom of your dreams.
If you’re looking for some support around batch-processing and improving your marketing, I’d love to see you at our next 30 Days of Social Media webinar (Wednesday, Sept. 25 at 11 a.m. ET).
This is a (free!) 90-minute masterclass where you’ll actually write social media posts as I’m teaching. You’ll walk out having created social media posts for the next 30 days and feeling excited to get visible in your business.
