According to the Small Business Factsheet New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment published, $204,066 was the average revenue per enterprise for firms with zero employees in 2015.  This compares with an average revenue of $846,574 for firms with 1-19 employees (Annual Enterprise Survey, Aug 2016).

What this tells us is in order to increase your revenue (not your hours!) you need a team.  It’s not in your best interest spending over 60 hours each week answering emails, phone calls and performing administrative tasks.  You need the time and headspace to run your business and focus on strategic planning.  You also need to work smarter, not harder, and utilise the wealth of systems, tools and expertise that as business owners today we have available to us.

Another fun fact from the same source, only 37% of firms with zero employees born in 2010 survived in 2016.  Firms with 1-19 employees have similar survival rates to firms with 10-99 employees, but much lower than larger firms.  

So.  How to quickly grow your business, increase your revenue and maintain (or find!) a healthy work-life balance?

3 Ways to Grow Your Revenue Without Growing Your Hours

1. 1. Systems: Most of us struggle to find enough hours in the day, so you work more hours. There’s a better way … find systems that can help you work smarter not longer. For example, as a business coach, client x faced the frustration of not having enough hours in the day to grow his business. There are 24 hours in a day and he had a one-to-one coaching model, which meant that he was limited to a certain number of slots per day and an inherent income ceiling. To solve this problem, we created a coaching program where clients could enrol in an online membership site with access to on-demand training videos and workbooks. Clients are serviced in a group format, but they can still receive personalised services during live weekly group question-and-answer calls. They also have direct access to our client via email and can ask other members for support in a private Facebook group. In moving to this model, our client increased his monthly average income from $25,000 to $125,000 and reduced his coaching hours by 50%.  By incorporating the group support element he’s also adding value to his clients.
   2. Hire Slow, Fire Fast: Hiring people with the right skills, work ethic, and desire to support your business mission is vital not only to the success of your business, but also to helping you achieve a semblance of work-life balance. We’ve worked with a number of clients who originally hired either in-house or offshore people based on price which ended up with low quality work and, more often than not, they’ve had to re-do the projects. Team members who are not committed to the business can drop the ball, deliver projects late, fail to complete projects or simply do a low quality job, all of which means the you end up working longer hours or paying more elsewhere to fix the mess. Hire based on quality not price, and expect excellence from your team.  Your business and, just as important – YOU, deserve excellence, and by achieving that standard you truly have the freedom to start making headway on your goals.
   3. Priorities: Don’t prioritise your schedule, schedule your priorities.  Finding a healthy balance between work and life is important to the long-term success of your business and your health. Schedule family time and personal appointments with just as much attention as your client calls and team meetings.  You determine what’s important to you.

Manage Your Schedule:

• Delegate – it’s not smart use of your time to spend every waking hour on your phone checking emails and social media. An assistant can manage business emails so only the important ones come to you, make a conscious effort to only check social media notifications once per day. Because of this strategy, you will be 100% more present with tasks only you can do.  More importantly during family time and YOUR time you’re not feeling like your business is unattended.  If it’s not something you have to do yourself, delegate.  You should only be doing the tasks and projects only you can do.
• Automate – Many startup business owners use labour intensive marketing, such as cold calling, emailing, writing blog posts as well as traditional radio, print, or TV ads to promote their business. All of which can be very time consuming and expensive. Client x’s world changed when he discovered how to completely automate his lead generation by using online advertising tools including Google Adwords and Facebook Ads. It allowed him to streamline the lead generation process, so he can generate 200 to 300 new members per month without lifting a finger.  By planning, automating, measuring and tweaking your sales funnel it can work in the background (so you don’t have to).
• Eliminate – What tasks are you prioritising that aren’t essential to your business?  If there is no positive outcome to your business, consider eliminating the task.
• Batch – We holler this from the rooftops!  Have your assistant block time and follow through with the task on the day and time allotted. You can reserve time for email, social media, creating content and meetings. This strategy allows you to concentrate on only one task at a time and you’ll be amazing at the quality of your output and the time savings that can be achieved by batching.

If you’re worried about growing your revenue, and struggling to find a work-life balance that suits you, you’re not alone. But you can achieve the work-life balance you want by implementing these working smarter strategies that will help you grow your business and maximize profits without working extreme hours.  I promise!!

Don’t forget, talk to me about your business in a free discovery skype.  No obligation, I’d love for us to be your outsourcing partners but just as much I’d like to talk to you about your business.  Two heads are better than one.  Here’s the link to my calendar.