These tags are ways for people to label their tweets to give them some context, to help make them searchable, and to help make them trackable.
Context: Let’s say that you see a tweet that says: “I love Sumatra!” You might wonder if your friend has suddenly traveled to one of the largest islands in Indonesia. But if their tweet says: “I love Sumatra #starbucks #coffee” then the context of the tweet is much clearer. Your friend hasn’t journeyed to the other side of the world, they just happened to be in Starbucks around the corner. Now you can tweet with something like “Bring me a mocha latte” instead of “Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving the country?”

Okay, obviously that’s a silly example but it does illustrate my point: hashtags help to explain your tweet in a fast, efficient way. Since you only have 140 characters, why bother saying something excessive like “I’m at Starbucks drinking a Sumatra coffee and I really like it” when “I love Sumtra #starbucks #coffee” says exactly the same thing?

Searchable: As well, hashtags help to make your tweets searchable. By adding the “#” in front of keywords in your tweet (either inside a sentence or before or after the main content in your tweet) you can highlight the important words for Twitter Search (and other search apps). The truth is, search functions do look through all of the words in your tweet but the hashtag helps to make it clearer for people once the search pulls up the tweet.

Trackable: There are sites set up that watch specifically for hashtags and can provide a variety of metrics and additional information about that hashtag activity on Twitter.

So, this context + searchable + trackable feature of hashtags make them very much like labels or tags in your blog. They are a way to indicate the subject matter and help people to find what you are talking about.

The great thing about hashtags is that you can make them about anything you want. You’re not stuck with a pre-set list of hashtags that other people have decided. All you have to do is tweet and add the # in front of keywords.

So, a tweet like “Enjoying the weather in Orlando” can become something like “Enjoying the #weather in #orlando”. Or “having a coffee with a friend” can become something like “having a #coffee with a friend at #starbucks”.

So, how can you use hashtags?

• Use them on references to your industry – #dentist, #consulting, #freelance

• Use them on references to your products and services – #coffee, #bookkeeping

• Use them on references to your city or town – #miami, #nyc, #la, #denver

• Use them on references to your favorite past times – #movies, #music, #MLB

• Use them on references to conferences, seminars, or Twitter-based groups – #followfriday, #businesslunchclub

These are the most common uses, but what about some of these less common uses that can help you build your business or your brand?

• Use them on references to your own name. Sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer adds his own name at the end of every tweet (without the hashtag but in a similar way to hashtags). So I might use one like #HeatherVilla. In general, use these when you are quoting yourself or using your name as your business brand. For example, I might tweet a quote like “‘Project management is the heart of entrepreneurship’ #HeatherVilla”.

• Use them on references to your business name. A company might do this if they happen to be tweeting about themselves. For example, you might see “Mention the phrase ‘tweets for eats’ next time you’re at #mcdonalds and get 10% off your meal”.

• Use them on references to your product brands or other thought-leadership that you develop. If you created a blue widget, then add #bluewidget at the end of a tweet.

Next, you’ll want to register these hashtags at wthashtag.com. WTHashtag is a user-editable site (like a wiki) so registering your hashtag there doesn’t give you any specific rights over it, and others could come in and edit it. However, registering does help to “lock it in” so that it is defined and trackable. You can click to a hashtag at WTHashtag and see more information about it, see who tweets about that hashtag the most, and you can see usage trends.
Hashtags are useful tools to help other people understand you better and to help you brand yourself and search important information.

Bonus Tip:  My Favorite Hash Tags

Here are some Hashtags I love to follow on Twitter:

#VATip:  These are tips for Virtual Assistants and working with a Virtual Assistant.

#smbiz:  These are tweets related to small businesses.

#smallbizchat:  This is a chat that exists every Wednesday from 8-9pm EST relating to succeeding as your own boss.

Related posts:

1. Tweets in 10 – Twitter Plug-ins for Your Mobile
2. Tweets in 10 (Part 3) – Hashtag Like a Pro
3. Tweets in 10 – Twitterpress: Combining Twitter and WordPress10

As I mentioned, expense review – which is just one part of bookkeeping – is among the unsexiest of the business functions you need to do. And it’s nice to outsource it to a bookkeeper or accountant. But some of you can’t outsource it, or choose not to, and more importantly, as a business owner you should still have a handle on your expenses even if you do outsource the majority of your expense management to someone else.

I also recommend that you do this in ten minutes a day. Once in a while you’ll have expenses that will require more than ten minutes but what I’m proposing will only take ten minutes or less. So, although you might not like to manage your expenses, a ten minute “quick hit” of expense management is something you can get through. And as long as you set aside ten minutes a day, it will rarely take more than five minutes. Depending on your business, if you start now with ten minutes a day, you might get to a point where it only takes ten minutes a week… but you have to start somewhere.

Preparation
The first thing you’ll want to do before you sit down for your ten minute expense blitz is to keep your expenses in one convenient location. Don’t keep them in your inbox with everything else. When it’s time for your scheduled ten minutes of expenses, you’ll spend more time searching through papers for your bills than you’ll spend managing them! Instead, try a stackable organizer and set one shelf aside just for invoices, bills, and receipts; anything that represents money that has gone out or is about to go out.

Step 1: Enter your expenses. (Duration 1-2 minutes)
This is the easiest and the fastest step: Open up your favorite bookkeeping system and enter your bills. (What’s that? You don’t have a bookkeeping system? You need to get one ASAP). This step won’t take long. The more familiar you are with the system and the more you do this expenses-in-ten-minutes work, the faster it will go. Some days you’ll input one or two expenses or nothing at all. If you’re just catching up on your bookkeeping, make this your priority before you do the next steps. But once you’re at a point where you are all caught up, and entering your expenses only takes a moment or two, then you can move on to do the rest of the expense management, which I’m sure you’ll find more interesting (and profitable).

Step 2: Analyze your expenses (Duration 6-7 minutes)
After you’ve entered the expense, you’ll still be left with pile of papers. Now it’s time to do some analysis. This might take you the full ten minutes at the very beginning (and could spill into ten minutes the next day, too, if you have a lot of expenses). Over time, you’ll end up with just a couple of expenses to manage each day and it will go very quickly.

With your pile of expenses, you’re going to analyze each one to make sure that it is helping you to run your business. So, create a chart (you can just use a piece of paper unless you want to save your work to review it in the future) and write the following columns across the top:

• Expense
• Amount
• Time
• Impact on Sales
• Impact on Profit
• Is there a better way?

Expense & Amount Columns: The Expense column and the Amount column are easy. You can simply list whatever the expense is. Make sure you also list expenses that don’t have a corresponding piece of paper to go with them, and list the expenses on your credit card bill as separate expenses (not as a single lump sum).

Time column: In the Time column, list the amount of time that it takes you to deal with that expense. So a lunch with a client might be an hour at the table plus another half hour of travel time. So you’d list 1.5 hours. Some expenses won’t take any time at all. Others will take a lot of your time. If you have employees and you have entered their wages as an expense that day, the amount of time that goes in this column is still whatever YOU spend. So you might spend time training them, managing them, reviewing their work, and dealing with administrative paperwork (like health forms, etc.). If you have 4 employees that you pay biweekly and you spend 4 hours each with your employees in that period, then you would write down 16 hours in the column.

Impact on Sales & Impact on Profit column: The Impact on Sales and Impact on Profit column is really simple. On a scale of 1-5 simply write down a down a number that represents what impact you feel this particular expense has on your business’ overall sales and overall profits. 1 = Not at all, 2 = Very little, 3 = Some, 4 = Noticeable impact, 5 = Great impact. Yes, this isn’t an exact science and you won’t find an accountant or bookkeeper who uses this 1-5 scale. That’s not the point. You’re not trying to replace a bookkeeper or accountant with this effort. You, as a business owner, are just trying to figure out how a particular expense impacts your business overall. Your telephones might be used as the primary way to make sales so they’d get a 5. Your lunch with a client might have an impact on a single sale but not a big impact on your business’ overall sales, so it might be a 1 (or, if they’re a big client, it might be a s high as 2-3).

“Is there a better way?” column: In this column, you are just pausing for a moment to consider if there is something you can do to manage that particular expense more effectively. In many cases, the answer will be no. In some cases it might be yes. Your sales staff might not be an expense you want to do anything about. Or maybe you want to float the possibility of switching them from a wage to a commission. Your $100 lunch with a client, though, might have been equally as effective if it was just a $60 lunch. Use the other columns – like the time it takes you or the impact on sales and profit – to be your guide. If something takes you a long time but has little or no impact on your business’ sales or profit then it might be worth outsourcing, eliminating, or reconfiguring for a more cost-effective way of doing things.

Step 3: List your to-dos (Duration 1 minute)
From your list of expense analysis, you might end up with a few to-dos a couple of times a week. Some of the to-dos will be specific things you need to act on, like “find someone to outsource my staff administrative work to” or “find out if the phone bill needs to be as high as it is” or “shop around for a new service provider”. Other things will be items you just need to keep in mind for later like “Don’t spend so much on lunches with clients.” These latter reminder-type to-dos are worth noting and I like to put reminders of them in places where they are applicable. For example, if I wanted to spend less on lunch, I might add a little “$!” to my schedule for my next client lunch as a way to remind myself to watch my spending.

Final thoughts
At first, you’ll push the 10 minute window every time; but soon, you will only have a couple of expenses to deal with everyday and this will become a fun exercise to focus you in on running your business in a more efficient and profitable way.

This isn’t a perfect science and as you read through my instructions I’m sure you thought of a couple of expenses that don’t fit the system. That’s okay. I’m not saying it’s going to be bulletproof. However, in my experience, most of my readers will find that most of their expenses will fit nicely into this analysis and the other expenses can just be dealt with on their own. This isn’t deep analysis that will replace your accountant. The purpose here is to get you processing your expenses quickly but also to compel you to pause for a moment and consider whether or not the expense has an impact on your business.

Related posts:

1. Generating Repeat Business in 10 Minutes a Day
2. How Much Does A Small Business Owner Really Make?
3. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day

Some of this freelancing, contracting, and outsourcing (and I’ll use these words interchangeably throughout this issue) are ongoing requirements while some are short-term or one-off projects.

Typical ongoing requirements include:

• Website management
• Marketing
• Bookkeeping and accounting
• Blogging
• Administration

Typical shorter term or one-off projects include:

• Website design and development
• Logo and graphic design
• Content (i.e., for website, for advertising, scripts for the telephone, etc.)
• Deliverables (i.e., if your deliverable is an information-based one)
• Specific marketing initiatives (which might be above and beyond your regular marketing efforts, such as a free whitepaper)

… and, of course, there are plenty of others. I just wanted to give you a basic list to make sure we’re talking about the same things before I continue.

Hiring these contractors isn’t easy (although I’d suggest that it is easier and cheaper than bringing them on-staff). When you realize you need a contractor, here are the ten-minute steps I’d recommend. What you’ll read below is a basic ten-minutes-a-day process to create projects and hire professionals. However, in upcoming issues, I’ll be going into greater detail about certain aspects of these steps. This issue is a big picture overview.

1.    Take ten minutes to decide what you’re looking for. Spend ten minutes defining your needs by what you want AND by what you don’t want. When deciding what you want, you should include the outcomes you expect and what input you want to have during the process. But you should also decide what you DON’T want. For example, you might want to have a website created with some tie-ins to social media but you don’t want a blog. This will help you when it’s time to look for a contractor and this will also help your potential contractors give you an accurate price without accidentally adding in extras. (And, thinking about this stuff now instead of while you’re talking to contractors helps you to think through everything before instead of in the heat of the moment).

2.    Take ten minutes to figure out the details: List the steps you need to take (as best as you can; you may not know everything and that’s okay). Rarely are projects quick to implement. A website design, for example, can be outsourced but what about hosting or a domain name or the content? These require investments of your time and resources elsewhere beyond the website designer you’re about to hire. As you think through this stuff, you’ll need to decide who will do it (and this might require you to hire another person or go back to step 1 and make revisions to your project description). You’ll need to set dates so that you can make sure the right things are done in the right order by the right people so that the project can maintain forward momentum. At this stage, people are often tempted to think about price, and you may want to give it a bit of consideration now but I’d only recommend that you th ink about price if you’ve hired contractors before. The reason is: If you lock a price into your mind too early in the game, without any frame of reference to guide you, you might use that as the ultimate deciding factor to the exclusion of other important elements like quality, timeliness, or value to your business. (I’ve seen this happen frequently with many of the people I coach who start looking to outsource their work!)

3.    Take ten minutes to post your project. You could Google the kind of person you’re looking for (“bookkeeper” or “copywriting” or “web designer”) but, frequently, the sites that appear high on those lists are informational or very high end or too broad for your needs. Instead, I recommend visiting a site like Elance.com or Guru.com. On these sites, you can post your project within a specific category (there is a significant variety of categories so most of your business needs will be met) and you’ll have many freelancers and contractors submit proposals. Creating a project on these sites is free and fast, allowing you to take just ten minutes to do this part of the process. (In an upcoming issue, I’m going to give you more tips on how to write an excellent project request for these sites). Once your project is submitted, sit back and wait. The proposals will start coming in from freelancers.

4.    Take ten minutes a day to compare proposals. Depending on your project and how you described it, you might end up with a lot of freelancers or only a few. My advice is that you don’t decide yet. I realize that you’re probably excited to get started on your project but patience is a virtue: By waiting, you”ll gather a slightly larger bank of freelancers from which to narrow the field. (If you find a freelancer right away and run with the project, you might get your project started faster but you might miss out on a superior freelancer who spend a couple of days thinking about your project before creating a proposal for you.) So, wait a few days until you have several proposals. Keep track of the top professionals who have bid on your project. Take ten minutes to sort the field down to about 25% to 50% of those who bid. Then wait a little longer. Again, take another ten minutes and sort the next ba tch down to 25% to 50% of those who bid. If you only have a few bidders, you may want to do one more round of waiting and sorting. Or, if you have several freelancers even though you’ve aggressively narrowed the field, it’s time to find the right one. I’ll be writing more about this in an upcoming issue.

5.    Take ten minutes to review the details. At this point, you’ll have a much clearer view of what people are charging and what they are offering. Compare this against your initial project. Using a few guidelines that I’ll talk about in an upcoming issue, you can hire the right contractor to do your work. Select the professional via the site you used (Guru.com or Elance.com) and contact them to get started.

6.    Take ten minutes a day to manage the project. Managing projects is something I’ve discussed in detail in previous Tips In Ten so go through your archived copies (you do archive them, don’t you?) and review them to get started.

Related posts:

1. What Compels People to Hire You (Instead of Your Competitor)?
2. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day… IS Possible
3. Training Others in Just Ten Minutes a Day so You Can Free Your Time and Grow Your Business

Although bookkeeping isn’t an activity you’d prefer to spend your time doing, I’m sure you realize how it important it is to have good, clean books: It makes tax time easier, you can navigate audits if they happen, and (most importantly), you can make better business decisions when you have a clear understanding of your financials.

This Tips In Ten article is divided up into 2 sections. The first section is a list of ideas and things to have in place so that when you get to part two of this issue, you can do your bookkeeping in just 10 minutes.

Part 1: Master your bookkeeping with these preparatory steps

Tackling your books
Part of the problem is that bookkeeping feels like an arduous task so people put off their bookkeeping and it piles up and then they have to devote a couple of frustration-filled days to navigate through it all. What feels like an arduous task becomes an arduous task! So the most important thing you can possibly do for your business’ books is to schedule 10 minutes a day every single day to stay on top of your bookkeeping. Eventually, you might be able to cut that back slightly but a daily 10 minute look at your numbers will make even this challenging task a lot easier.

If you have a backlog of bookkeeping tasks to do, you might want to spend a day or two catching up but it will feel better to just break up your catching-up effort over 10 minutes each day for a while. Do a solid 10 minutes of work and then stop for the day. It will feel considerably better and you will tackle your books faster than you think, especially when you use some of the other bookkeeping mastery techniques I’ve listed below.

So, set aside time right now in your schedule to spend 10 minutes doing your books.

Use online bookkeeping software
If you are using the old fashioned pen and paper approach to bookkeeping, or if you are using simple software like an Excel spreadsheet, there are a lot of options out there that you should look into. Thanks to some serious advancements in online technology, you can automate so much of your bookkeeping to make it even faster and easier for yourself: There are some good core online bookkeeping solutions that will sync with many of the popular web applications you use in your business, which means you can automate a lot of your business processes!

Start by looking for an online bookkeeping solution. I’ll give you a couple of examples here and I’ll be speaking generally about them for the rest of the issue (and they might or might not have all of the features I describe).

• IAC-EZ (Disclosure: I started this company and although I’ve sold it, I still have an affiliation with it).
• Clarity Accounting
• QuickBooks Online

There are others but these are the big names in the business. They come with a subscription fee and there is usually some entry functionality, calculation and reporting functionality, and exporting functionality (so you can send files to your accountant or tax preparer).

(On a side note: Sometimes business owners point out to me that a free Excel spreadsheet seems preferable to the monthly subscription cost of online bookkeeping. My advice is to consider the hours of time you’ll save by using these automated systems, especially in conjunction with the ideas I’m about to list below, and you’ll quickly see how these solutions will pay for themselves each and every month).

So, before you go any further, investigate the solutions and choose the one that makes the most sense for you. Take the time to set it up. It won’t take long and consider this time an investment into much easier bookkeeping in the future.

Take advantage of other software
Once you’ve chosen a core bookkeeping solution and started to use it, you’ll eventually want to move some of your other processes into compatible solutions. For example, Freshbooks is an online invoicing software that syncs with many bookkeeping solutions. When you enter an invoice in Freshbooks, they are automatically entered into your bookkeeping software. Or if you have a compatible automated shopping cart solution, purchases made through the shopping cart will be automatically applied to your books.

Another tool you may find helpful is Shoeboxed.com. Shoeboxed.com takes all of your receipts and scans them. Then you can get scanned images of your receipts to attach to bookkeeping entries and Shoeoboxed will even enter the data into a file so you can upload that to your bookkeeping system without manually entering everything.

Part 2: Mastering your bookkeeping in 10 minutes a day

So, you’ve got your fancy new bookkeeping system in place and you’re ready to start using it (while only spending 10 minutes a day… which you’ve already scheduled, right?).

Catch up
One of the fastest ways to get a lot of bookkeeping done in just 10 minutes is to use a CSV file (which stands for “comma separate value” file and can be opened in Excel) and enter several entries quickly then upload it to your bookkeeping file.

Here’s how to do that:
Open an Excel spreadsheet or Google Docs Spreadsheet and set up each column with the information you’ll need in your bookkeeping system (like Date, Contact Name, Amount, Category, and whatever else you need to include). Then, sit down with your big stack of bills and receipts and just type in the data really quickly into the appropriate column. (Or, better yet, spend only 1 minute a day instead of 10 minutes by passing this data entry off to an assistant). Save the file as a .csv and upload it to your bookkeeping software. The system will review the entries, have you quickly double-check to make sure that everything looks right, and then it will enter the data for you.

Automate
Where possible, automate the entries. For example, if you have a bill that comes out on the same day every month, and it’s the same amount each month, just create a recurring bill into your system so you only have to enter it once, at the very beginning, instead of each time you get the bill. Some common examples of these kinds of bills include:

• Rent or mortgage
• Flat fee telephone or internet plans
• Subscriptions

This also works for incoming entries, too: If someone pays you the same amount of money every month (as in a rental situation or a membership site), you can set up a recurring entry for them.

Automate as much as you can and schedule one of your 10 minute bookkeeping segments in each quarter to review your automated billing and make corrections if necessary.

Do the rest in ten minutes a day
By now you’ve set up your bookkeeping, caught up on your bookkeeping, and have automated as much as possible. Now it’s time to move forward with 10 minutes a day.

I’ll give you two options and each one should just take 10 minutes each day (and might end up taking less, depending on your business).

Option 1: Batch your weekly entries. Sort all of your week’s data into individual piles and enter one pile per day using a CSV file (as I’ve described above). For example, input all of last week’s money-coming-in entries on Monday; input all of last week’s money-going-out entries on Tuesday; input all new contacts on Wednesday; then spend Thursday reviewing anything you might have missed. (Yes, you can take Friday off! Or, use Friday to do other bookkeeping-related work like reviewing your reports). With this option, I like being able to quickly batch things; it feels faster and you can handle a lot more data. But you do end up with a week’s worth of entries sitting in a pile, which can sometimes feel daunting.

Option 2: Input the previous day’s bookkeeping. If you have a lot of entries, you might want to use a CSV file but if you only have a few entries it might be faster to just enter them into the bookkeeping system’s interface manually. With this option, you feel totally up-to-date and there aren’t papers sitting around for very long. However, if you miss a day or two, it’s easy to get behind quickly.

So, to summarize, here are my 10 minutes-a-day bookkeeping best practices:

• Get up to date as quickly as possible with a good online bookkeeping solution
• Automate as much as possible
• Sync business processes
• Stay on top of your bookkeeping and keep strictly to 10 minutes a day

Bookkeeping doesn’t have to feel as painful as many people think it is. It’s just a matter of minimizing how much work you have to do and staying on top of the rest.

Related posts:

1. Ten Minutes to Faster Decisions – Part 1
2. Ten Minutes to Faster Decisions – Part 2
3. 22.5 Minutes is all You Really Need to Make a Big Difference

I’m not a big believer in the “magic bullet” theory of business. I’ve never believed that a particular business model or the perfect product will turn a business from a mediocre business into a super-success. I’ve always subscribed to the notion that if you work hard and provide value and do good in the world, you’ll enjoy some business success. But IF ever there was a secret to success, I think a good set of systems is a contender to be nominated as one.

Systems are the processes that we develop for our business. It’s a preplanned structure; an outline; a pre-determined way of doing something. Sometimes the idea of systems is one of automation but I don’t think that’s always accurate (and I’ll show you why in a moment).

Systems make your day easier and they save time. When those two things happen, you can do more in less time. And when you can do more in less time, you can make and sell more and your business will grow.

So, what kind of systems am I talking about? I would recommend a system for everything you can make a system for:

• Create a checklist to make sure that every email you send out contains specific pieces of information that your clients usually ask for.
• Create an easy way to write a blog so you take less time thinking up a topic and writing about it.
• Create a workflow system so that every incoming project ends up in one central location and is scheduled appropriately.
• Implement a CRM system so that every prospect and customer gets treated right and doesn’t fall through the cracks.
• Create a bookkeeping workflow so that every income or expense item gets passed to your assistant on the day it is received and logged within one day in the right spot.
• Create a flowchart for common “mini-disasters” you face in the day, such as an irate client or a customer service issue.
• Create a social media checklist to make sure that you are engaging appropriately each day without wasting time by starting at a Twitter stream without a clear idea of what you need to do.
• Create a checklist of the 10 things you need to do each day to market your business.

See what I’m doing? I’m listing the most common tasks that you (and every other business owner) go through and I’m recommending a type of system to be developed. Systems don’t have to be technologically automated. They just need to have an established process in place. It could be as simple as a checklist or a flow chart. (By the way, one of my clients has exactly this: a 12 point checklist posted on his wall right in front of his computer. As long as he goes through each point each and every day, he earns six figures a year. Having the list, he says, has helped to free up his time).

Systems ensure that you don’t reinvent the wheel every time. Systems ensure that you do what needs to be done and you don’t miss something. Systems simplify your work by freeing you from having to remember what to do each day. Systems make work predictable so you can spend your energy on the value-adding efforts for your clients.

Want the secret sauce recipe for your business? It starts with a system of the things you do every day.

Let’s go make some sauce!

Related posts:

1. Successful Business Proposals in Just Ten Minutes a Day
2. Nine Tips for a More Successful Business
3. What makes a successful business?

I believe that many successful people seek help early: They realize they can’t do it all so they bring someone else on board. While I don’t know the exact details of the 3 people mentioned above, I do know many successful people and one of the things they have in common is that they have help: They have people to whom they can delegate work and they recognize that they can’t do it all themselves.

I don’t think that’s a new concept to business owners, but many small business owners who might be reading this might be thinking, “but I don’t have the revenue to support an employee, nor do I have the time or office space (or employee liability or software licenses or equipment or desire to post a job opening).

This is where another step comes in that I believe is the perfect step between the solopreneur and the growing multi-employee enterprise:

Assistants. And, specifically (thanks to today’s web-based interaction opportunities) virtual assistants.

Now, you might be wondering: “How can an assistant make any difference?” Here’s my answer: Assistants can be used in every aspect of a business organization to help with administrative work, bookkeeping, and customer support. By taking care of these tasks, the business owner has recaptured time that was formerly spent on important (but non-revenue-generating) tasks. Even though they are spending money on an assistant, they are still earning more money, making their time even more valuable.

As an example, consider the consultant who bills $100/hour and spends 4 hours a day consulting and 4 hours a day on marketing, administrative work, research, bookkeeping, scheduling, and more. While they might bill $100/hour, they only bill 4 of their 8 working hours; so their effective rate is only $50/hour. But when the consultant hires an assistant, they might pay that assistant $20 for 4 hours of work per day and the assistant does the marketing, administrative work, research, bookkeeping, and scheduling. This leaves the consultant spending $80 per day on an assistant, but they now have an additional 4 hours of potential billing time! They could do another 4 hours of consulting to earn an additional $400 per day, or they could do a couple more hours and hit the golf course.

But an assistant can do even more. If you find the right assistant, you can even give them some of your marketing, sales, and customer service work. In some cases, they can do some of your revenue generation for you (depending on the product or service you provide, of course).

This is the concept of “scaling”. Many small businesses stay small because they feel that it’s too big of a leap between solopreneur and multi-employee enterprise. But there IS an intermediate step: the virtual assistant. They’re affordable, skilled in many things, and you can scale up your virtual assistants by several iterations long before you ever hire your first employee.

And that is how you make the step forward.

About the author: Heather Villa, MBA CMA MSM, is a Business Coach and Entrepreneur. She helps business owners achieve success in operations, productivity, project management, and social media. Read her other articles at http://hireheathervilla.com/resources/articles/ and visit http://heathervilla.com for more information.

Disclaimer: © 2009 Heather Villa. Permission is granted to repost this article. Article must be published in its entirety, including author bio, and all links must remain intact.

Related posts:

1. Time Off: Do Small Business Owners Get Any?
2. A “workout” regimen for small business owners
3. Invest in your small business

Outsourcing is an effective way to manage business critical functions without incurring the expense of full time employees. Overhead costs are kept down. There’s no office drama between two competing employees.

“But I’m so small it’s cheaper for me to just do the work myself” is the common objection of many small business owners. However, what they don’t realize is that it’s actually a better use of time and money talent to outsource. In a Fortune 500 company, you are unlikely to find the CEO working in the mailroom or the Administrative Team putting together quarterly forecasts. Companies hire people to do specific jobs based on their expertise. Each employee contributes to the success of the organization by performing their specialty.

Every business must manage a budget and no one has infinite resources. But your budget is more than the tangible dollars in the bank; it’s also the value of your time. And the amount of focus you spend on revenue-generating effort. As a business owner, if you spend 15 hours per month on bookkeeping you have taken 15 hours away from other activities. Consider this example from a solo entrepreneur:

20 billable hours per week at $100 per hour = $2000

10 non billable hours per week (which might include bookkeeping or administrative work) worth $45.00 hour = $450

If the entrepreneur outsourced the non-billable tasks he or she would gain 10 more billable hours or $1000.00. Even after paying $450.00 for outsourcing, there is a gain of $550.00 and they are no longer burdened with a detail-oriented task that they might not be skilled at.

In addition to the financial gains, outsourcing provides a peace of mind that the task has been expertly managed.

In your business, are there non-revenue-generating tasks that you’re doing simply because you’ve always done them or because you’ve thought that you couldn’t afford to hire someone else to do them? You don’t need to hire an employee, but you can hire someone else to do them and you’ll earn more money doing things that you probably enjoy more!

About the author: Heather Villa, MBA CMA MSM, is a Business Coach and Entrepreneur. She helps business owners achieve success in operations, productivity, project management, and social media. Read her other articles at http://hireheathervilla.com/resources/articles/ and visit http://heathervilla.com for more information.

Disclaimer: © 2009 Heather Villa. Permission is granted to repost this article. Article must be published in its entirety, including author bio, and all links must remain intact.

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What now? She and her husband had talked about the possibility of a lay-off when the economy first slumped, and Mary had said at the time that she had dreamed of owning her own business. In her spare time she painted watercolor and friends and family had encouraged her to pursue it as a career but she had never had the nerve or opportunity. Until now.

She spent the weekend enjoying time with her family and talking about the future. That Monday, she officially went into business for herself… although what it meant was still a puzzle. She wasn’t great at sales. She couldn’t design a website to save her life. Bookkeeping wasn’t a strong suit. But she could paint!

Many business owners find themselves in this situation and desire to break through but cannot. They know that a variety of skills are required to run a business (marketing, sales, administrative, etc.) but no one is equipped with all of those skills. Should they partner with someone? Should they just push through and hope for the best? Should they ignore their entrepreneurial dreams and pursue the 9-5 job?

Mary didn’t. She painted because that’s what she was good at. She also called an outsourcing firm.

An outsourcing firm is one that provides a number of services necessary to run a business but are often not core to the business. In Mary’s case, she hired an outsourcing firm that could create and maintain her website and blog, answer a telephone around the clock when orders came in, handle her finances, and even track down corporate leads and make sales.

Outsource firms make business possible. They allow business owners to focus on the core of the business – the thing that they entered business to do – by doing for the business owner all the other things that need to happen for the business to run: administration, marketing, sales, finance, you name it.

Outsource firms make business possible in another way. Aside from helping the business owner focus on the core of their business, outsourcing also makes sure that the phone can be answered 24/7, or that there is always someone available to answer questions asked through IM or chat on the website.

And, outsource firms make business profitable. One of the challenges of businesses (especially those operating in today’s economy) is the problem of staff. Hiring staff can be costly. And what if sales decline? There is overhead to consider, too. But outsource staff can scale with the business, increasing as the need demands and decreasing if necessary. This keeps costs down (and more closely tied to sales than a salaried employee would). And yet another profitability factor – time spent on the right things. Business owners should be focused on their area of expertise and, if possible, on sales and marketing. Everything else takes away their attention from those more important tasks.

On her own, Mary’s painting would have remained a dream and she would be out with her resume looking for another job in a very difficult hiring climate. But with outsourcing to help her, Mary’s business prospects look bright.

To be successful in today’s highly competitive global market, businesses need to find creative solutions to their business needs. If you are starting a business, or are running a business right now, there’s a good chance that it will be a stronger business when you put more of your focus on the core and push the non-core activities to an outsource firm.

About the author: Heather Villa, MBA CMA MSM, is a Business Coach and Entrepreneur. She helps business owners achieve success in operations, productivity, project management, and social media. Read her other articles at http://hireheathervilla.com/resources/articles/ and visit http://heathervilla.com for more information.

Disclaimer: © 2009 Heather Villa. Permission is granted to repost this article. Article must be published in its entirety, including author bio, and all links must remain intact.

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