5 Business New Year’s Resolutions for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship was supposed to be freedom. You threw off the yolk of the corporate world; you exchanged 9-to-5 for whenever-to-whenever; you built a brand that people trust. And then a few months in, you created your own yolk. Accounting, billing, emailing, time tracking, contracts and lead hunting became a crushing, invisible force, like gravity. And you accepted all the extra work and administrative lassoing because that is what “freedom” requires, right?

Wrong.

Entrepreneurs choose their workflows, and if they seem to work, they gain inertia. Habits are easier to make than kill. So for a lot of entrepreneurs, the holiday season just means ‘fake vacation’ is on its way. While customers are tanning on a beach or hanging with family, you’re catching up on the tasks that had to be put off just so you could make it to this glorious week of less emails.

This year, I say have a real vacation. Make a resolution to replace the broken process and habits that normally take cheer out of your holidays. Every small business is different, but several problems are common to them all. Here are five business New Year’s resolutions that could make the holidays – and 2016 – a hell of lot more enjoyable.  

Make templates for every repetitive task

How many times have you written the same darn email to different people? How many times have you gone scrolling through old sent emails just to find that great way you phrased your services in a past quote?

Before you open shop in January, create templates for the emails, quotes, questionnaires, invoices and contracts you consistently send. Make a resolution to use these in 2016 and add new templates as the need arises.

Get paid automatically

When it’s 4:30 pm, you still have three hours of work to do and you were supposed to do billing today, what happens? You postpone billing. And when you finally send that invoice and realize it wasn’t paid two months later, you have to write that awkward email: “Hey! Did my invoice reach you? Perhaps it landed in spam?” Translation: I’m trying not to sound like jerk…but…uh…when are you going pay me?

Don’t put yourself through that in 2016. Use software that automatically loads work from your project management tool into your invoices, sends the bills on a scheduled date and then automatically reminds the clients to pay, if they forget. Make sure your software enables electronic payments so you’re not manually recording payments received.

Respond to leads quicker 

Email is where new business goes to die. Let’s face it: if you’re checking your email often enough to catch every new lead immediately, you’re not getting much else done. Sifting an inbox full of dozens of email, every dozen minutes, is self-defeating.

Instead, configure the contact form on your website to send new business inquiries to you as text messages. If you promote your business on social media or other websites, link to this contact form instead of your email address.    

Get paid for every minute

Time tracking sometimes feels like it will cost more than it pays off. First you have to setup the timer, then you have to enter the time in a spreadsheet, and then eventually you copy that to an invoice. This leads to scenarios where you think, “This will take two seconds. Screw the timer.” Then the task avalanches into a half hour of work that you didn’t track.

Switch to a time tracker that’s integrated with your project management and billing software. That way, you’ll actually use the timer, eliminate copy-pasting and bill for all the time you would have donated to clients.

Stop memorizing everything

Your email inbox is not a to-do list. When email, or your brain, is responsible for tracking projects, invoices received, personal to-dos, etc., you’re going to a) miss stuff and b) feel paralyzed. The question “What’s next?” should never take more than a few seconds to answer.

For 2016, record every task in a digital to-do list where you can set due dates and get reminders. If you have a lot of tasks but few clients, you may want to create to-do lists for each client. On the other hand, if you do one task for tons of clients, you may benefit more from a single to-do list.  

Head into the Cloud

It’s hard to imagine that you can eliminate or automate the most stressful small businesses tasks. You just get used to them, and that is what reduces entrepreneurship from a passion to self-inflicted punishment.

In the 2016 resolutions I shared, you’ll noticed two themes: go digital and connect everything together. Simply put, the more tools you have linked together in cloud (i.e. in web-based software), the less time you’ll spend on data re-entry, copy-pasting and wild goose-chasing.

If work-life balance is distant memory, it’s time to win it back. In 2016, make resolutions that will rekindle the reason you probably launched your own business: freedom.

About the author

Donovan Janus is the embodiment of an entrepreneur. Born in New Zealand and raised in The Netherlands, Janus started his first company, NTN Publishing in 1998. The flagship product Web! had over 50,000 users and was sold worldwide. In 2000, Donovan moved to the United States to set up his office. Prior to starting his next  company, he built the online donation platform for Spirit of American, a nonprofit that helps US military personnel provide assistance to local citizens in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. Sparked by his next idea, Donovan started Exposure Manager in 2004, which is an e-commerce platform for photographers. Still running today, Exposure Manager has 6,000 users including the Elvis Presley Foundation and Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants. Janus launched 17hats in October 2014 after a short 4 months in development. It currently has over 7,500 users and grows exponentially each month.

 

Donovan has lived all over the world including Canada, Norway and Australia. He currently resides in Pasadena with his wife, young son and their two dogs. In his spare time he likes to juggle, play golf and ride his motorcycle. Janus is an instrument rated private pilot.

About 17hats

 17hats is a cloud-based all-in-one business management solution built for solopreneurs, freelancers and microbusinesses. 17hats provides a single hub for email communications, quotes, contracts, project management, bookkeeping and more so that entrepreneurs can follow their passion instead of fumbling with multiple tools. Designed to eliminate busywork, the platform also simplifies repetitive tasks with templates and automated workflows. Today, more than 7,000 entrepreneurs use 17hats to get organized, save time and end the chaos of juggling multiple business apps. 17hats is based in Pasadena, California. Learn more at http://www.17hats.com.

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