So you’re a business owner, your day is littered with administrative tasks, fires to put out and a daily workload that would make anyone shudder and gasp. Saving time is your utmost priority, but how on this green Earth can you save time when your day barely allows you an hour to eat and use the bathroom?

Here are some rather clever tips to save time whilst not losing control of your beloved business in the meantime:

1: Delegate

Delegate, easy right? Want something done, ask somebody capable to do it. But that’s where a lot of business owners fail, who is this mysterious “capable somebody”, are they going to do as good of a job as you would? Is it going to be as quick as you? Will they need help?

There are just so many if’s and but’s with delegation of tasks that many business owners take the “if it ain’t done right I’ll do it myself” – makes perfect sense but your work life balance at that point is going to be non existent. So how do you setup the proper processes to make delegation seamless?

Hire, hire the right people, with the right attitudes. Do they constantly need reassurance, motivational speeches from you just to get them through the day and the constant nagging of deadlines not being met? They’re the wrong people.

The right people need very little motivation, just leadership. They won’t need reassurance, just appraisal. They won’t need nagging of deadlines, just more work and more appraisals. Hire the right people, lead from the front, teach them properly and with hands on experience and watch your staff flourish whilst you become the coach, not the player. After all, every business owner’s goal is to hand it down to a capable ‘business manager’ whilst you move onto other projects or oversee rather than doing the hard yards, right?

2: Automate

Automation is a simple one – find your use case, find the software to match the use case, use the software, save time. Simple.

If you’re a web development agency currently using a blackboard and chalk, you might want to check out Trello, if you’re a marketing agency currently shouting at each other across the room as your ‘collaboration’, maybe Slack should be your new replacement for shouting. Doesn’t just work for tech, if you’re a tradesman looking to expedite the process of dealing with clients and employees in one place, FieldPulse have you, if you’re a small business looking to manage your accounts (and even integrate with the majority of the previously mentioned softwares), Quickbooks will look after you just fine.

As you can see, this is just a small group of businesses, but there’s a software for everyone. Accounting (or the basic bookkeeping part), legal, staff management, invoices, project management, all of these are easily manageable with a piece of software rather than constant paperwork or 3-5 hour long meetings per week. Automation will save you time!

3: Virtual Assistants

Now this is a very niche one, but Virtual Assistants are a great way to expedite tasks that you would normally class as boring, cumbersome or general time drains. Need to prospect 500 leads in a spreadsheet? Use a VA. Want to research a market by compiling a spreadsheet full of likely competitors, barriers to entry and size of businesses? Have a VA do it.

Virtual Assistants are not costly, they usually have vast experience in certain tasks so will need little-to-no guidance and are generally very easy to work with. Being an extremely niche tip, look into this one first before making any jumps, they suit some business types very, very well, some not so much. Find the right VA with the right skillset, if you’re a realtor and want somebody to resize 500 images a week or add a little text onto each image, a VA is going to be perfect for that.

These three time saving tips may be the saving grace of your business and sanity, after all, spending time with your family and friends should be just as high a priority as work, make sure it stays that way!