Working as a solopreneur has its challenges. However, it’s easier than you may think to overcome those obstacles to become more productive and profitable. When you can make the most of your time, profits are more likely to grow. Here are some actionable strategies to try.
How to Become a More Productive Solopreneur and Increase Profitability
Outsource When Possible
Working as a solopreneur naturally means wearing many hats and juggling multiple responsibilities. However, it doesn’t mean you should or must try to do everything without help. Outsourcing is often the best solution in certain cases where it makes the most sense. That’s because you’ll usually waste valuable time wrapped up in tasks that fall too far outside of your abilities.
Outsourcing lets you focus on core competencies while allowing experts to fill in the gaps and help you get tasks done faster than you could without their help. It’s often hard to convince yourself to relinquish duties to other people. However, that necessary task becomes simpler by working through the four Rs. Ask yourself if the job in question is:
Repetitive: Do you have to perform it regularly, such as at scheduled times or intervals?
Research-Focused: Do you lack the time and energy to learn about all the available options?
Reactive: Does the task require you to respond to something another person did?
Reluctantly Performed: Is the task one you wish other people could do for you?
Thinking about those questions is an excellent way to categorize what to outsource versus keep doing yourself. Consider that when you primarily focus on the duties you can do best, you’ll have more opportunities to spend your time wisely and explore additional options for increasing profits.
Use the Right Work Setup
Having a productive office space is essential for allowing you to do your best work and find the best options for growing your business and your profits. Start by considering the lighting. The human body requires full-spectrum light for the proper hormonal responses throughout the day. Installing an LED light is an easy way to ensure your workspace has the best lighting for productivity. It’ll allow you to see things clearly and could even make it easier to get a restful night’s sleep.
After that, take a close look at the layout. Does it allow you to reach frequently accessed items and move freely around the room as needed? Do you find your office is disorganized, perhaps to the point where you feel embarrassed about potential clients seeing where you work? If so, those are signs it’s time to de-clutter the space and think seriously about how to make it more conducive to high-quality work.
Ask yourself whether the furniture you have, such as the desk and work chair, provides the surface and support needed to help you feel comfortable and focused throughout the day. If not, consider upgrading to more appropriate options.
It’s also important to truly love the space where you work. That might mean painting the walls a vibrant color or hanging an inspiring picture in a prominent place. You might also invest in some stylish and functional organizational products, especially when dealing with space limitations. Doing that could make your space look larger than it is and give you more storage options.
Having a productive workspace is essential as an entrepreneur. From the lighting to the layout, here are a few things to consider for your work setup. Click To TweetCreate a Marketing Schedule
Effective marketing is one of the best ways to increase profitability by expanding your audience size and their awareness of your business. However, it’s easy for solopreneurs, and even people running bigger enterprises, to get overwhelmed by their marketing plans. Then, you could become unproductive and fail to see the kinds of profits marketing can bring.
However, an easy way to get your marketing efforts on track and keep them that way is to create monthly and weekly schedules for what to post or distribute across online and offline platforms. It then becomes more straightforward to see what you need to do when and how the overall workload looks.
You may realize that the work is too much for you to accomplish without help. Such cases create good opportunities for outsourcing. You may decide to let someone write your weekly blog posts or help ensure social media posts get published on time.
The goal is to plan marketing efforts that keep people aware of and thinking positively about your brand and business. Those things are more likely to happen when they see relevant content through online and offline channels.
Consider using automated marketing tools to help you stick to the schedule. They’ll help you verify you haven’t overlooked anything and have things going out at the right intervals.
An easy way to get your marketing efforts on track and keep them that way is to create monthly and weekly schedules for what to post or distribute across online and offline platforms. Click To TweetTrack Relevant Metrics
You’ll have the tools to be more productive and profitable by choosing and tracking appropriate metrics that highlight how your business is performing. Many people are initially surprised to realize that modest improvements in metrics can have major payoffs.
Perhaps you run an online store where the average order value is $100. In that case, even a 1% rise in your daily conversion rate would bring $3,000 more to you every month.
It’s also important to keep an eye on other metrics, such as how many new versus returning customers you have and how many customers become aware of your business through specific channels. Getting information like that helps you become more productive by suggesting where to focus your efforts.
It’ll also allow you to become more aware of which activities are more worth your time than others. Being a solopreneur means you often have to be choosy about how you spend your days. It’s easy to feel pulled in multiple directions at once. However, when you can refer to data about which business activities are working well and which need improvements, you’ll be more justified in devoting your attention to certain necessities.
Remain Adaptable and Responsive
A final thing to keep in mind is that you must be ready to respond to changing circumstances as an entrepreneur. That means the things you do to stay productive and profitable now may not be entirely the same a year from now.
Being flexible enough to change your workflows and practices when necessary will help your business stay competitive, even as things in the surrounding environment change.
Ciao,
Miss Kemya
