Running a business takes a significant time commitment. These tips help narrow your focus to key things you can do to master time and grow your side business.
Maybe you’ve just started a side business or maybe you’ve been plugging away for awhile. Having a side business means making a significant time commitment above and beyond your regular “9 to 5.” It typically means working nights and weekends and dedicating time usually spent with family or relaxing.
The struggle is real.
There are way to maximize your time and grow your side hustle without losing your mind. We’ll walk through some of the best tips to help you get organized, master your time and grow your side business online.
Streamline Web Presence Setup
Having a side hustle means you have to create a whole new identify: your business. The best place to start in 2017 is with a viable website so that people can find you online or verify your business if they hear about it elsewhere. Getting your website set up can be a time-consuming process, but there are some time-saving tricks you can employ to save time.
You’ll also need to consider how you’ll handle hosting. If your side business involves selling items online, you can save time by utilizing one of the many pre-built eCommerce platforms available (see: Magento or WooCommerce). If you are more focused on consulting or professional services, you’ll need to find a hosting provider like that can manage your website hosting for you.
Tying it all together: Do what research you can during the week. Dedicate a lunch hour to researching domain names and one hour after work to research the best hosting options. When you have all the information you need, set aside a few hours on a weekend to get your site setup from start to finish. Getting research done in chunks can help you accumulate the information you need at times that are convenient for you. Making sure you have enough time to actually execute on your ideas can help you avoid the “cost” of multitasking aka trying to squeeze it in between other projects during the week. Studies show that shifting between tasks can cause mental blocks that may cost up to 40% of someone’s productive time.
Change the Way You Look at Time
Since extreme multi-tasking can ultimately cut into your “productive” time, sometimes it’s best to just wait on big projects. That doesn’t mean that you have to put everything off until you have a large block of time to dedicate. Re-frame your time by organizing to-do lists into “small”, “medium”, and “large”. The first should include a list of small to-do items that you can knock out in 10-30 minutes. The “medium” list should include tasks that will take slightly longer, perhaps at least an hour. The “large” tasks will include items that will take you two or more hours to complete.
By organizing your tasks in this way, you have a bird’s eye view into a relative total time commitment of everything that needs to get done as well as what’s possible in smaller increments. Use lunch hours and breaks at work to tackle the small and medium items and save the large items for weekends where you have bigger chunks of time to dedicate.
Tying it all together: Sometimes just looking at a to-do list can cause stress. By organizing your to-dos in a way that makes it easier to allocate time, you can alleviate some of that stress and become more efficient about achieving each item on the list. There are plenty of online tools that you can use to build your lists, including Toodledo and SmartSheet. Find one that works for you and start getting organized. Sometimes, the biggest challenge is remembering everything we have to do. By getting all your tasks organized in one place, you can be more efficient in scheduling your time to complete them.
Plan Ahead
Confucius is known to have said, “A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door.” Not only does planning stave off trouble, but it can have significant benefits to growing your side business online. It helps you act as a leader and get organized, execute projects, reach goals and fulfill your vision. It’s statistically proven to be beneficial: Companies run by leaders who are committed to strategic planning report a 12 percent increase in sales volume over those with a low commitment.
Tying it all together: Planning ahead means assessing your side business as a whole and being proactive on what could happen. In other words, assess potential risks as well as opportunities. By coming to terms with the different potential risks, you prepare for them and open yourself up to be able to jump on opportunities as they arise. It also frees you up to be more proactive.
When you are prepared for contingencies, you have more room to make mistakes. This opens the door to take new leaps you may not have taken with the assurance that, even if things don’t work out, you’ve planned for the worst – and the best. Planning ahead – while consuming time in the short term – ultimately frees up more time in the long-term to be spent on chasing down great opportunities.
