Small business owners who find creative ways to manage their current work while continuing to expand their businesses win out in the end; those who can’t eventually hit a plateau and are usually left feeling trapped by their businesses, and figuring out how to be more resourceful and innovative might be the only way to work through it.

Steering a 70-Ton Train

The first thing you generally have to accept when you find yourself at this point in your business is that it’s going to be hard to maintain complete control. Up to this point, it’s been only you, working at your own pace and your own way, so you’ve likely had a lot of control over your business and its growth. In fact, it’s likely that you’ve experienced many lulls throughout the life of your business. During those times, you had a lot more free time to plan, to market and promote your business, as well as organize your workload to suit your style and preferences.

As your business grows, however, things begin to change. It’s a quiet roar in the distance warning you that something is coming, and then all of a sudden, the 70-ton train is moving. All that marketing and promotion and hard work has started paying off, and you now have the momentum of that big lead generation train behind you. The only problem is that you haven’t built the tracks, and now it’s hard to steer.

You’ll have to get used to keeping things moving in the general direction you want them to go, without having absolute control over every detail. As you find help, you’re going to have to accept different working styles, get used to training and teaching others on your support team, and even adjust to the demands of your new role as manager (or engineer).

Learning to Take Baby Steps

Another thing you might want to prepare for is working in small increments to get things on track. Not everything is going to work immediately or as expected, so it’s going to take a lot more patience and persistence to see your business through the growing pains.

You may have to “try on” several solutions before finding the fit that’s just right for your situation and business, but you have to trust that a solution exists or risk relegating yourself to that plateau forever. Keep searching until you find the right match.

Also, prepare to make adjustments. As you put the support structure in place for your business, it’s unlikely that it will work seamlessly right out of the gate. You’ll need to modify the plan and your support team as you go, so set out to make gradual and steady changes over time so that you’re left with a strong and sturdy foundation to support you.

Being Resourceful and Innovative

The last part of the puzzle is adding support when you’re lacking the time and money necessary to build it. How do you hire help and train someone, for example, when you (a) don’t have the money to pay him or her and (b) don’t have the time to devote to training and figuring out what to delegate?

First (and again), you’ll need to be prepared to take baby steps, but second, you’ll have to figure out ways to be more resourceful and creative when finding support for your business. Some solutions might include:

• Bartering with other business owners who might be in a similar position,
• Starting an internship program or working with local college students, or
• Bootstrapping to incrementally build a budget for a virtual assistant.

Think about everything you have to offer, and find ways to make those resources work to your advantage. Chances are, something you have at your disposal is exactly what someone else needs, and that kind of exchange can get you on your way without taking much in the way of time and money.

Seeing a business through stages of growth and change can be challenging, especially for small and solo business owners who are strapped for resources, but with a little creativity, there might just be a way to push through the plateau and take your business to the next level.

How have you used creativity and resourcefulness to grow your business when limited on time and money?

Photo by Flickr user Chris Denbow, licensed under CC 2.0

When you first start your business, you’re simply looking for clients, so you become excited by the prospect of actually being able to work for someone. As things get busier, you’re excited to finally be able to say, “I’m booked.” Then the reality sets in, and instead of thinking excitedly, “How am I ever going to handle all this work?,” you actually start thinking:

• “What if I get sick?”
• “How will I retire?”
• “What if I decide to sell my business?”
• “If I’m not doing billable work, then I’m not getting paid.”
• “What if I want to take a vacation?”
• “The only way I can make more money is to charge more.”

All of a sudden, what once seemed like a badge of honor starts resembling a ball and chain. Even if you thoroughly love your work, you can see the trap you’ve set for yourself.

Deciding to Free Yourself from the Trap

In order to free yourself from the trap, you have to begin weaning yourself from one-on-one clients, and somehow replace that income with revenue from another yet-to-be-created source. It seems like a magical balancing act to make it happen, and you arrive back at the original question, “How do I justify turning away paid work from one-on-one clients in order to pursue [fill in the blank]?”

First, you have a choice to make. Do you want to continue working under your current business model, with all its limitations, or do you want to figure out and pursue an alternative? The best way to decide is to connect with the “why.” For example, why do you want pursue an alternative? Do you want more free time, greater flexibility, more income, etc., or do you want the business to be less reliant on your physical presence? Once you know the reason why you want to do it, then you just have to explore the “how” and find a way to make it happen.

Also, if you decide to go after the alternative, you’re going to have to accept that resources will need to go towards this new pursuit. That might be in the form of money, like the loss of income when you turn away one-on-one clients, or when hiring an assistant to take over some of your work or help out in other areas of your business. It might also be in the form of time, like you having to work additional hours so that you can maintain your current income while creating new revenue streams.

Alternatives to the Trap

The next step is figuring out what options you have for creating additional revenue streams. What you’re looking for are more automated sources of income (ebooks, products, etc.) or more group-centric sources (group workshops, membership sites, tele-seminars, etc.). The easiest way to get started is to explore ways to repackage or re-purpose your one-on-one work. Is there some way to create a group setting around the consulting or work that you provide on a one-on-one basis, or is there a way to package that into an informational product?

Another place to begin exploring the possibilities is with common questions that you’re asked or common problems that customers and clients report to you.  How can you create a “do-it-yourself” solution around these common questions or problems? Could you create a product, an ebook, an audio workshop, or a group tele-seminar that addresses these issues?

As an added note, you’ll want to remember that it’s more important to roll out these alternatives quickly and perfect them over time than it is to get caught up in the details. A tele-seminar, for instance, can be put together quickly and easily using EventBrite and a free conference call solution.

As solo entrepreneurs and freelancers, it’s easy to get caught in the spin cycle of working only billable hours, but there are ways to begin introducing new sources of revenue to your business. If you hope to create the greatest level of flexibility around your work, they’re definitely worth exploring.

At what point in your business did you begin setting up other revenue streams aside from one-on-one client work?

Photo by Flickr user »dolfi«, licensed under CC 2.0

There comes a time in your business where you experience growth or change. You think you have everything running along smoothly, and then the real work begins when everything is turned upside down. You want to take advantage of new opportunities, but in order to do that, you have to adjust your systems, support and tools to accommodate that growth and expansion.

Old Pain: Incomplete and Outdated Systems

You know you need to do it. You hear it all the time, “You have to put systems in place to support your business and streamline your work so that you’re more productive, and so that you can outsource and delegate lower level tasks.” It makes sense in your mind, but it just doesn’t seem to be a top priority in the early stages of your business. Instead, you concentrate your efforts on figuring out how to navigate the often confusing path of the small business owner, while spending the rest of your time trying to find new customers and clients.

Before you know it, though, your business starts to take off, and then the pressure really starts setting in. You’re still figuring your way around, you’re trying to maintain your current lead generation efforts, but now you have the added workload to boot. There’s just no time left to worry about creating systems now, except that the further things go, the more desperate you become, and you start feeling like you’re digging your way out of quicksand.

Old Pain: Little or No Support

Most small businesses have to keep things very lean during the beginning, but it doesn’t take long to get used to managing things solo, leaving you strapped for time and thinking you’re the only one who can get the job done.

Then, of course, because you never had time to create systems around your business, everything is a jumbled mess. How will you ever figure out what best to delegate? Even if you wanted to outsource some of your work, where would you start? Without clearly delineated roles, hiring help would seem like a waste of time and money. You’d only end up doing the work yourself or not having anything for the new assistant to do.

The only problem is, there’s only so much you can do on your own, and at some point, you’ll come to the end of the line of your availability, which will mean the end of the line for your company’s growth as well.

Old Pain: Few Tools in Place

There are so many tools available to make the life of a business owner easier, but in the beginning, several things can get in the way of you taking advantage of them. Money is tight, and with such a small workload, it just seems to make more sense to do it yourself, rather than paying for something that you’ll barely use.

As your business grows, you start thinking you might want to get a few tools in place to cut down on your administrative time, but by then, you think that you’ll get things done faster if you just just keep doing them as you’ve always done. By the time you realize you really need them, you’re worried that implementing new tools could cause you to lose valuable information or time, should there be glitches in setting them up.

They don’t call them growing pains for nothing, but as hard as it is to interfere with the delicate arrangement of your business in order to put new systems, support, and tools in place, it’s important to have the faith and, as organizational and productivity guru Julie Morgenstern would say: let go so that you can grab hold. By letting go of things temporarily, you’ll be able to get a better handle on them for the future so that your business can handle the growth that’s coming your way.

What “old pains” are holding back your growth potential, and how are you overcoming them?

Photo by Flickr user doug88888, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Divide and Conquer

To get started breaking down what needed to be done so that I could effectively delegate or outsource certain responsibilities, I first had to figure out what I did all day. (Oddly enough, this wasn’t exactly easy, at least not at first.) How do you name all the things that have to get done in a business each day?

To get a handle on it, I started at the top. What did I do immediately after coming into the office each day? From there, it would be easier to move through my day and week.

• First, I generally did a quick check of my email to see if there were any time-sensitive to-dos or messages waiting for me, but there was nothing there to delegate, really, at least not at this point.
• After that, I went to my Backpack account, where I keep all my recurring to-dos. (I have a template that houses a weekly checklist sorted by day that I simply copy each Monday for the new week.) Within my checklist, I had a variety of tasks. Some of them had to do with things like planning and accountability, others had to do with my writing, but most of them were administrative in nature (prime territory for delegation).
• At some point each day, I had to go back to my email box to sort through any new appointments and book guests for my radio show, magazine interviews, and podcast, which meant adding data to my calendar, as well as other locations to keep my content production schedule running smoothly.
• I also needed to sort through pitches and press releases each day, figure out who I wanted to book, and coordinate interviews.
• Then there came the actual production of content, which included things like editing down recordings and transcribing some of the interviews.

On and on, I went through my days, figuring out all the steps required to do every job I do. I noted each task on a separate index card and then divided them into groups based on context (grouping scheduling/booking tasks together, editing and publication tasks together, lead generation tasks together, and so on).

Once I had all the roles and responsibilities divided, I could decide what would be most beneficial to outsource or delegate at this point, but that required me to break things down a little more.

Focus on Highest and Best Use

To keep everything in perspective, I had to think in terms of “highest and best use.” There were certain tasks that were absolutely the most important things for me to be doing in my business. They weren’t the urgent fires. They weren’t the tasks that needed to somehow get done by someone at some point. They were those tasks that directly generated income or interest in my business, and there were only a few of them. Those few tasks were my “highest and best use” tasks, and I knew that they should have the majority of my attention each day.

In an ideal setup, I would only focus on those tasks 100 percent of the time. Of course, perfection was out of the question, but I could at least organize my workload, as well as the workloads of those who work alongside me, to focus on our individual highest and best use tasks as much as possible.

Obviously, the administrative tasks were not my highest and best use activities. I could quickly eliminate around 25 percent of my workload by delegating those to someone who charged 25 percent of what I made, so that had to be the top priority.

Organize and Execute

I decided to start with getting help in two main areas — scheduling and editing/transcription, but before I could do that, I had to organize all the tools and resources and develop a specific system around each role. That included things like:

• Setting up a branded email address for my scheduling assistant.
• Creating an email signature to clarify to guests her role within my organization.
• Creating canned email responses within that assistant’s email account to communicate in a consistent way with guests
• Creating a step-by-step checklist of “how-tos” that outlined each and every task the assistant had to do.

Once I had all that in place, the rest was pretty easy. Each time I got a new appointment confirmation email, for instance, I simply forwarded it to the new scheduling assistant with the following action in the subject line, “[Book].” There are only five or six actions that my scheduling assistant takes care of each day, and I start each email type with one of those actions so that she immediately knows what to do.

Until I know she has the hang of it, I’m saving all of the emails I send to her in a separate folder. Once a day, I’m running through them and making sure that nothing is fallen through the cracks. There have been a few hiccups, but nothing earth-shattering, and I’ve already seen a major reduction in admin time each day.

What steps do you take to make your outsourcing and delegation as painless as possible?

Photo by Flickr user Wonderlane, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Last weekend, I set out a few goals to help me get more done this week:

1. Create a better work schedule (one that limits my working time to 36 hours per week).

By limiting my working time, I am much more likely to focus on the most important things that need to be accomplished at any given point. On top of that, I’ll actually leave room in my life for things outside my business, which, let’s face it, is one of the main reasons for working for yourself.

2. Create focus blocks within the schedule that allow me to move bigger rocks.

Paraphrasing from the 3, 6, 9 Time Management System, if you focus on a given task or goal for three hours straight, you’re going to make progress on it. I don’t need to get caught up in menial tasks that simply eat away at my day (see this post about grinding vs. clocking from Chris Brogan).

I need to focus on moving big projects forward. A lot of my work (writing, for instance) takes a lot of concentrated effort to get it done. If I only have an hour here or an hour there, I end up focusing on a lot of junk tasks that are better left undone, rather than getting those big rocks moved.

With a set number of focus blocks each week, I’ll have to be very selective about what gets that prime real estate in my schedule.

3. Create smaller admin blocks within the schedule that allow me to do “have-to” things, like checking email and delegating smaller rocks that still have to get moved somehow.

The reality is that you can’t be 100 percent efficient and only concentrate on profit-making tasks. Email has to be read and responded to, smaller tasks have to be delegated, and phone calls have to be made and returned. If I leave no room for them, then I feel compelled to check my email at random times throughout the day, instead of focusing on what’s right in front of me. By leaving designated windows for it, I know that that task will get done, too, and that it hasn’t been too long since I made sure there were no fires to put out.

Here’s my revised work schedule. You’ll see “dots” and “dashes,” which come from Julie Morgenstern’s book “Never Check E-Mail in the Morning.” She refers to dots as the admin tasks, like checking email and returning phone calls, and dashes as the focused blocks of time where you really get things done.

The great thing is, I can move entire focus blocks rather easily, so if something comes up that isn’t work-related, I can rearrange my schedule without too much interference with the rest of my week. On top of that, I intentionally set up my week by deciding what big rocks will be moved and when, which hopefully will ensure major progress in several areas of my business.

What does your schedule look like? How do you ensure that big rocks get moved on a regular basis?

Image from Flickr by wwarby

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1. It means that if we’re going to be the ones to do something, we have to be available to do it. If a given hour is taken up by something else, then a new or better opportunity can’t be pursued.
2. It means we limit our growth and income potential. If we think in terms of the billable hour, eventually we hit a wall. By ourselves, we can only work x number of hours per week. Assuming all we did outside of work was sleep and assuming we ate every meal at our desks, the most we could work is somewhere around sixteen hours per day. That’s it. We’re not going to get any more hours from a day.  The only option is to increase our rates. Let’s face it — we might think we deserve $2,500 per hour, but realistically speaking, very few people are going to be willing to pay us that, so we’re going to eventually hit a wall with our hourly rates as well.
3. It means that our businesses imprison us. We’re tying ourselves to our businesses around the clock. There can be no vacations, no sick days, and no emergencies, if we’re expected to be the ones to do the job 100 percent of the time. All of a sudden, something that was supposed to create flexibility in our lives has become a ball and chain. If we do take time off, it means lost revenue and lost opportunities.
4. It means we can’t let go. We have to be able to step outside of our businesses. There will probably come a day when we want to sell out and move on to other things, but if our businesses can’t run without us, why would someone else want to buy them?

In order to overcome this, we have to start thinking about automation and delegation.

• Think automation. If it can be automated (set up once and then we don’t need to be available to oversee or do it going forward), then that’s usually the first choice.  Find ways to automate the things you currently do. For example, if you currently host monthly tele-seminars, could you simply record yourself giving the presentation and then charge a fee for the audio download? By removing ourselves from the equation, we create an income source that can be generated while we sleep.
• Think delegation. Some things require a person to physically handle them. That might include customer service inquiries, technical support, or a whole array of tasks within a given business. The question is, do you have to be the person to do them? If not, you can hire someone (for considerably less than your hourly rate) to handle them for you, thereby freeing yourself to focus on more important roles within your company.

When we first start building our companies, our primary concern is finding new clients and starting to earn a paycheck again, but as we grow, it can be easy to get so intertwined with the daily work that we forget about the bigger picture. It’s important to step back often to make sure we’re building something that doesn’t require our physical presence 100 percent of the time.

How do you ensure that you’re creating a scalable company and not a ball and chain? What checks and balances do you use to make sure that your business can run without you?

Image from Flickr by zoutedrop

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For the web worker who works remotely, relies on someone else’s technology, and/or needs to coordinate disparate, diverse inputs to some kind of timeframe and standard of quality, control is always going to be an issue.

Accepting the Limits

We’ve all had those times when an erroneous keystroke has undone hours (if not days or even months) of toil. The times when we’ve missed a deadline due to power outage or loss of Internet connectivity. The times when someone or something we needed urgently were simply unobtainable.

The nuances of web work dictate that we need to be able to relinquish our need for total control, because the environment in which we operate will not support such a goal. In some way, every new tool that’s released is designed to give users a feeling of greater control over what they’re doing. But the reality is that no matter how well you’ve bookmarked an article, uploaded a file, or composed that email, if the service, your web connection, or your contacts are offline for any reason, or a necessary device is out of power, it’s no good.

Perhaps rather than adopting the latest carefully-devised productivity philosophy or downloading a new work tool, we should accept that total control is impossible — we should let go of that idea. Then, we should work out the ways in which we might be able to influence our work success within a context of very limited control.

Managing the Uncontrollable

Of course, those cool apps we all subscribe to have their purposes. But there are other approaches we can take to help manage our work processes to take account of the uncontrollable.

• Delegation. Aliza mentions the importance of learning to delegate in her post. Recognizing and accepting the unique capabilities of each of the individuals you work with is the first step in learning to delegate effectively. Leaving them to do the work while you attend to other tasks, on the other hand, may take a little practice.
• Plan for unavailability. Web workers tend to be good preplanners, saving valuable information using decentralized means, backing up their work product, and operating around colleagues’ various commitments, timezone differences, and so on. But it’s also good to plan for the possible unavailability of services, people, and resources at any given time. If this means you need to get things done ahead of time, expand your remote work kit, or confirm and re-confirm the details of meetings, processes, and project plans, so be it. Perhaps, if you feel unconvinced about the reliability of an arrangement (a site, a meeting service, etc.) you’ll make your own contingency plans, just to be on the safe side.
• Accept the limitations of an offsite life. There’s no point getting frustrated that a contact’s not available, or that you left that important file that you need for your ten o’clock meeting in your home office. We need to accept that, as web workers, we must be super-organized and plan ahead. So make sure you have everything you need for a day on the road the night before. Don’t leave it to the last minute before you try to get in touch with a contact who has an input you need for your project. If you’re in a bind, don’t panic (too much). Remember that you’re at a the mercy of the online environment, and you can’t control everything. Then try to think laterally about how you could solve your problem.
• Learn when to step up and take the lead. We all know there are times when teams lack leadership, people place too much faith in the system, and we find ourselves in a train wreck waiting to happen. If you feel uneasy about the way a project’s going, think about what you can do to make yourself more at ease. This doesn’t have to necessitate your taking responsibility for the whole project, or taking control of aspects of the job that are beyond your sphere. But in some cases we can help work tasks happen more smoothly if we accept a little more responsibility. It can be hard to tread the fine line between responsibility and control; the key is to know and accept the point where your responsibility ends.

Are you a control freak? How do you handle the aspects of your web work that are beyond your control?

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After so brazenly bragging about Apple’s legal department’s request that one of Microsoft’s ads be pulled last week, Redmond has quietly made changes to the ad in question to make sure that it accurately reflects reality, which is what Apple wanted in the first place. Kind of puts a damper on Microsoft COO Kevin Turner’s bubbly enthusiasm, I’d imagine.

Last week, he basically did a little dance for joy when he received the call from Apple legal, and trumpeted the news to the masses to make sure everyone knew that Microsoft had indeed scored a direct hit, even going so far as to call it “the greatest single phone call” he’s ever taken. The ads in question are the Laptop Hunter series, in which Microsoft gives random people a sum of money and challenges them to find their perfect laptop, at which point they get it for free. The ads were created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky.

The specific ad Apple took issue with is the “Lauren” ad (not that “Lauren” ad, the other one), in which Lauren and her mother are shopping for a computer under $1,700. At one point, they comment on the MacBook Pro’s $2,000 price tag, asking “Why would you pay twice the price?” As of the latest notebook lineup refresh, Apple’s top-of-the-line MacBook Pro no longer costs $2,000, coming in instead at a much easier to swallow $1,700. Which, coincidentally, is actually within Lauren and mom’s budget.

Microsoft, for its part, is saying the minor change doesn’t change “the focus of the campaign,” according to AdAge.com, so it’s clearly still counting this as a win. I’m willing to bet Microsoft’s legal department has been in contact with Apple on quite a few occasions, yet COO Tim Cook doesn’t break out the noisemakers and party hat every time that goes down.

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It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out where the system can break down, but it’s a good reminder that streaming services are far from foolproof yet.

IN TRANSIT
Consumerist has a story today about a Qwest customer who believed her YouTube watching was being hampered by the ISP. Though a Qwest rep denied throttling users (after initially saying it did), as our sister site GigaOM has reminded us, instituting bandwidth caps and metered access helps cable and telephone companies manage their networks while protecting their traditional video businesses.

Problems with video watching can arise for completely non-nefarious reasons as well. I later learned that my recent tribulations with Amazon’s HD VOD service were caused by latency issues and excessive hops the data had to go through in order to reach me. (I only found that out after I got all reporterly and went through several rounds of back and forth with Comcast, Amazon and Roku PR departments.)

Throw in CDNs, traffic congestion and the way information is routed from party to party and you almost start thinking it’s a miracle video gets to you at all.

AT THE SOURCE
Netflix ran into some problems in March when customers started complaining about the poor quality of its Watch Instantly service. Most consumer ire was aimed at Microsoft Silverlight, but Netflix defended the media player, and said it hadn’t pinpointed the cause of the problem.

IN YOUR HOME
Netflix addressed its streaming issues on its corporate blog where it spelled out its own three pain points of streaming; among them was the traffic in your home. Watching a movie while another family member or roommate in the house is uploading their vlog or running a video Skype call can trip up your video viewing.

All of these issues aside, we’re still fans of streaming movies to our TV, but as more people use services like Netflix and Amazon, more problems are bound to arise. If you encounter an issue, what should you do?

1. Make sure no one on your network is using excessive bandwidth.
2. Try unplugging your modem and plugging it back in (the fix for everything!); you could have a bum connection.

3. Contact the appropriate customer service. Companies need to know when problems arise or they can’t be fixed. Even when Amazon didn’t know I was a reporter, they were quite helpful and even gave me a refund.

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