SYLVIANE NUCCIO

As a micro-business owner employing 1- 3 people while scheduling clients’ appointments, time management is key to run your business smoothly and efficiently.

Efficient time management and scheduling can mean more productivity, less stress for you and your team, more satisfied clients, and last but not least, more revenue at the end of the month. All of this because you will be using your time to its utmost profitability on all ends.

In this article, we are going to consider 3 life-saving time Management tips for micro-businesses like yours.

1- Create a Smart Employees Work Schedule

As a micro-business owner with only 1 to 3 employees, you can afford to experiment with some cool scheduling tricks that you wouldn’t be able to experiment if you had a large business with dozens of employees. In your case, however, you can figure out what you need to be done, by whom, and when and try the following.

An interesting useful thing you could try to implement is figuring out which one of your employees is a morning person and which one is night awl. As you know, morning people are more efficient in the morning while night people start being more productive when morning people start to slow down.

Why not schedule your most morning person employee early in the morning while scheduling your night person employee in the afternoon until later in the day? This way everyone is happy, working at a time they are most alert and efficient, and you can cover a longer business day which is truly a plus when you have your own business working with clients all over the place.

You could even open a part-time position for someone to cover gap sections during the week an Saturdays, for example. All in all, you could have a 15 hour day covered easily and effortlessly during the week, and even be open for a few hours on Saturdays with as little as two (maybe three) employees.

2- Get a Reliable Scheduling Software

If like me you work with clients the world over it means that you’re working within all the different time zones of the planet. In my case, for example, scheduling a client in Dubai and another in Colorado would be pretty much impossible if I didn’t have an appointment scheduler that automatically shows up on their end in their own time zone.

The lifesaving trick that such scheduler provides it’s that it won’t show them any available time that would be totally out of my working time frame. For example, if it’s 3:00 am for me while it’s 6:00 pm for them, my scheduler won’t show them any available time after 1:00 pm. And it’s the same thing in the case of the reverse situation, if it is business hours on my end while it’s night time for them, those hours won’t show either.

This type of calculation would be very difficult to pretty much impossible to do without the use of good scheduling software that will automate all the time zone hiccups once you enter your own time zone and availability. However, even if you do not deal with different time zones, the same process will still apply as you don’t want to schedule clients when you are out to lunch or when you are conducting a meeting, traveling, servicing other clients and so forth.

3- Avoid Multi-Tasking

Many people believe that they will accomplish more by multitasking, but this is one of the biggest myths among business people. Because you see, multi-tasking doesn’t exist. The brain cannot concentrate on two things at the same time. We just like to have the illusion that it does.

The reason why micro-business owners believe that they and their employees should be multi-tasking it’s that they believe that they’ll have more work done, but the reality is that when you are multi-tasking, you are not getting more done, you are getting less done, because you are unable to focus on any of the tasks as you have to go back and forth from one thing to another. Each time to switch from one task to another there is a gap, a waste of time, that is created and which amounts to wasted hours at the end of each year.

Stay away from multi-tasking and encourage your team to do the same. Focus on one task at the time and you and your team will work more efficiently.

4- Focus Only of What you do Best and Delegate

As a small business owner, you probably wear many hats such as the manager, the sales rep, the secretary, the webmaster, and so on. The more hats you’re wearing the less efficient you are going to be at what you are doing best. So, focus on just a couple of things that you do best as the business owner, and delegate the other tasks that you shouldn’t be doing in the first place to someone else that is an expert on.

Personally, as a small business owner (a coach), I’ve known too many entrepreneurs who couldn’t bring themselves to hire someone to do anything, for one reason or another, but sad to say, many of them are no longer in business today. Don’t let that happen to you.

5- Rely on Your Calendar Diligently

As a small business owner, your calendar is your friend. As a time management coach that I know says it best, “you pay interest on overspent time as you pay interest on overspent money” so time management is vital to save you both time and money in your business.

Keep in mind that If you get into the bad habit of adding things to do throughout the day that were not clearly scheduled on your calendar, the rest of your day could be thrown off and your time wasted.

So, by putting all your tasks for the day in your work calendar for the upcoming weeks and maybe months, you won’t be tempted to cheat time and yourself in the process. Your business will run more smoothly, your stress level will go down, there will be no room for confusion, and even your wallet will be thanking you.

Time Management Conclusion

By implementing these 5 life-saving time management tips for your micro-business, your business life will be transformed for the best and your revenue will improve because of it.

Time management means more focus, productivity and success for your business, which in turn means more money.