Time. Often even more than money, entrepreneurs want more time. So, let’s find you some more time with technology designed just for that purpose. Below are a few ways you can use technology to hack your profits, your time, and your success.
Here are our favorite digital hacks for small business owners:
The To-Do List
The Hack: Entrepreneurs are constantly being reminded, “Work ON your business, not IN your business.” The best way to accomplish that is through delegation. And the best things to delegate away are those pesky tasks that keep following your calendar around.
The Solution: Upwork, Fiverr. These sites/apps are the way to outsource just about anything you need done, from data entry to cold calls to programming.
The Benefit: When you first start outsourcing some of the busy work, you’ll be amazed at how much time you save yourself. That’s more time to work ON the business.
Payments Everywhere
The Hack: Cash flow is often the biggest challenge for small business owners. Maintaining a healthy flow of cash through the business is paramount. Getting your cash now, rather than waiting for a check, is a great relief to your finances. You started accepting credit cards. Now, process them wherever you are! This is great for on-site workers (think HVAC, Electricians, etc.), freelancers, and Events (workshops, seminars).
The Solution: PayPal, Square. Both of these mobile and tablet apps allow you to take payments anywhere. Also, check out our own Back Office Accounting System.
The Benefit: You’ll save time tracking down payments, and you’ll see a healthy balance on your business bank account.
Project Management
The Hack: We’re all about reducing time in meetings that could be handled more efficiently with a technology hack. Keep your projects going and meet your deadlines, all the while sharing progress and other communication real time for all to see, update, and contribute.
The Solution: Asana, Trello. Your projects appear to complete themselves, as you watch the progress in these apps. True collaboration, real time.
The Benefit: Spend more time working on projects and less time talking about them in meetings. Loop in collaborators from anywhere and watch your projects excel.
Team Docs
The Hack: How many times have you emailed a Word Doc or Excel Spreadsheet to your team, only to have the versions and updates get out of control and create total confusion? You can hack your way out of that situation with tools that allow your team to make real time edits, suggestions, and comments, for all to see. No more versions!
The Solution: Google Docs, Microsoft Office 365. Both of these offer real time editing and collaboration in word docs, spreadsheets, presentations, and more.
The Benefit: You’ll prepare shared documents much faster with real time collaboration. Plus, this puts your documents in the cloud, so they’re backed up automatically, with older versions always accessible. You’ll save time, headaches, and confusion.
No More Meetings About Meetings!
The Hack: We’ve already killed a few unnecessary meetings with online project management and document sharing. Let’s keep that going with communication. People communicate asynchronously these days with messaging and email. Provide your team with the tools to take advantage of this trend. And when a live meeting is the only way to go, no need to make people get in cars or airplanes. Do the meetings virtually.
The Solution: Zoom, Phone.com, Slack. Zoom handles your meetings. Phone.com works across all devices for voice communications. And Slack will handle your messaging.
The Benefit: Reduce time spent in meetings, waiting on emails, or lengthy phone calls. Use the right method of communication, and you’ll free up your team to work on what they do best.
Get Hacking
Those are just a few suggestions on using technology to hack more time, cash, and profits into your business. Do you have other technology solutions that have helped your business grow? We’d love to hear about it. Shoot us an email or leave a comment below.
Schedule a free consultation to discuss your business!