9 Business tips to make running your business easier. No matter how big or small your business is, you can adapt one or more of these things to your business.
The trick here is to work more efficiently, not to work more. When you can make your business run as smoothly as possible, being the most efficient version of itself, you can lift a lot of weight off your back. Let’s get to the tips to make your business run easiers.
1. Get a good accountant
The first tip to make your business life easier is to have a good accountant. Having a good accountant will make your life easier in a lot of ways.
First, when your accountant knows what they are doing, they don’t have to bother you so often. Second, they can save you a lot of money via tax planning and such.
I have said this one before. It is what my accountant says: “a good accountant is worth its weight in gold”. That may be a bit exaggerating, but you get the point. A good accountant is a very important and crucial part of your company and will make running your business easier.
2. Take care of your employees and they will take care of your customers
Next up is taking care of your employees. Happy employees make happy customers. The easiest way to take care of your customers and make them happy is to guarantee a good working environment for your employees.
When people are happy, they will be in a better mood and do a better job. No matter what their position is in the company, how they view their job and your business can affect how they do their job.
Customer service is a very important part of your business. It is sometimes the only thing your customers see, and they judge your company by that. When your customer service is on point, your business will run much smoother. I have a post about how important customer service really is. You can read it here.
3. Keep a good balance between your personal and business life
Keeping a good balance between your personal and business life can help you out in several ways. You won’t burn out so easily when your life is not all about your business.
Having your thoughts somewhere else than your business daily will reduce the stress your business may cause you and let you sleep and perform better.
When you take care of yourself, you have more energy to take care of your business. It will improve your work efficiency and you can really get more done in a shorter period of time, when you don’t work all the time.
4. Outsource less important tasks
Outsourcing tasks is the next thing you can do to make your business run more smoothly. When deciding what to outsource, you could use the 80/20 rule.
The 80/20 rule, in short, means that 80% of the results come from 20% of the work. the rest 20% of the results come from 80% of the work. I have a post explaining how your business can benefit from this rule. You can read it here.
When you outsource some of the tasks that are included in the 80% of the work, you are lifting a weight off your back, that doesn’t have so big of an impact. Tasks that are necessary but are not so important can be outsourced and you have more time to focus on the tasks that really matter the most. This will make your business more efficient.
A post about how outsourcing overall can make your business more efficient can be found here.
5. Make decisions based on long term goals
When you make decisions, keep an eye on your long-term goals. Sacrifice short term profits to win in the long-term.
This might mean accepting a return from one of your main customers, even if it’s against your policies. This way your customer will be happy and continue to do business with you.
Even if you take a loss now, that could benefit you for years to come. This of course, doesn’t apply in every case. When you make decisions like this, think about what kind of an impact they might have on your business long-term.
6. Keep an eye on your financials
Even if you have a great accountant, it is important to know some of the numbers yourself. It is much easier to manage a business when you know exactly where your money is coming from and where it is going to.
When you know your financials, that will help you cut off costs, that are either completely useless or they don’t bring in that much value. Every penny you can save without having an impact on your overall business performance can over the long-term build up to be a lot of money.
7. World changes, change with it
The world has been changing a lot over the past century. Even in the past decade there has been some major changes and inventions in the world. Keep your eyes open and adapt new technologies to your business to make it more efficient.
That might be a new IT system or an automated manufacturing line. Keeping an eye out for new things that can help you out can pay itself back multiple times over the coming years.
Some industries are dying and being replaced by others. If your business is in a dying industry, you might want to start looking at options on how to change with the world and stay alive. Do this annually, and see what could be changed.
8. Less rules are often better
The less rules your company has, it is usually the better. Giving your employees the freedom to do things the best way they see fit can be a lot better option than deciding everything yourself.
This way your employees, who do the work everyday can have ideas on how to do things better, more effectively.
Another way to give freedom to your employees and make your business run more smoothly, is to give your customer service staff freedom to make decisions that cost less than 50 dollars to solve, for example.
When they don’t have to run every decision by you, it will save you a lot of time and energy. To do this, you need staff that you can trust will make decisions based on the best interests of the company. This is why you need to have reliable employees as well. Cutting off unnecessary rules can have a huge impact and make your business as efficient as possible.
9. If you can’t do something, find someone who can
You don’t need to learn to do everything yourself. Your business probably will ever need one website, or at least you can use the same website for years to come with just a few modifications.
This is why you don’t need to learn to do a whole website yourself. Even if you on paper could save a few dollars, chances are, you couldn’t do a website what a professional can do even if you trained for years.
You can easily find people to do these kinds of one-time projects from Fiverr and Upwork, for example. This way, you will only pay for the work they do; you don’t have to employ them full time. This will save you a lot of time and you will end up with better results, when the project is done by a professional. Websites are just one example; you can apply this to other things as well.
Final words
These things are very doable for every business owner. Simple things that can make a significant change in your business performance. They will not only make your business run smoother, but also save you a lot of time and energy when done right.
The sooner you start to focus on making your business more efficient, the easier things can be adapted. Small businesses can make changes easier than larger ones. No matter how big or small your business is, these things can be done.
You don’t have to do things “like they are always done”. The world is changing. There are new ways you can make your business life easier. Adapt to those changes and new systems and save yourself time and money.
That’s about it, have a nice day.