-
Quick question for small business owners and freelancers...
What’s the one task that takes up far more of your time than it should?
For me, I hear the same answers regularly:
• Admin
• Marketing
• Chasing invoices
• Social media
• Finding new customers
• Wearing too many hatsRunning a business often means spending less time on the work you love and more time dealing with everything around it.
So I’m curious…
What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing in your business right now?
Drop it in the comments. You might find others are dealing with exactly the same thing, and someone in the community may have a solution.
Stuart Morrison, Emma Selby *Flexspace Operator* and Christina Relf25 Comments-
Morning Simon and everyone. I think finding new customers is my biggest challenge right now. If you’re in business long enough, there will be ‘churn’ of long-term customers and this happened to me last year, leaving a significant gap. It’s a difficult marketplace out there, which doesn’t make it any easier. Admin also takes a lot of time (I’ve just spent an hour renewing my website hosting and domain name, for example 🙂).
2-
@christinareal-word-com Thanks for sharing. I think a lot of business owners can relate to that. Losing long-term customers can leave a real gap, especially when the market feels tougher than usual.
It’s interesting that you mention admin too. Tasks like renewing hosting and domains are essential, but they rarely move the business forward in terms of growth, yet they still need doing.
When it comes to finding new customers, what has been working best for you recently – referrals, networking, social media, partnerships, or something else?1-
@sl007 Referrals and recommendations have been fantastic. And you have to network to make new contacts – you never know where it may lead.
-
-
-
The number one, time consumer historically for me is getting the client to make up their mind. If you only have red, green and blue, they will tell you “but I really like rose pink”.
The second you try to be generalist, is the same second you’ll attract the undecided.
2-
@gregory-mullins I think a lot of business owners will recognise that too. I personally really do.
When cash flow is tight, it’s incredibly tempting to say yes to work that’s outside your ideal offering because some income feels better than none. The challenge is that those short-term decisions can sometimes pull us further away from the business we’re actually trying to build.
I’ve certainly seen business owners end up creating a job they don’t enjoy because they’ve spent years saying yes to opportunities that weren’t really aligned with their long-term plan.
Do you think there’s a point where specialising becomes less risky than trying to be everything to everyone?-
@sl007 From my experience, being a generalist of a vertical is different to trying to specialise in multiple verticals. take the guys in Swindon who work on Lamborghinis and Audis. They will work on and try to fix any and every problem they are faced with as a matter of personal challenge, with those 2 makes of car only! That’s how they’ve built their YouTube channel. But the owner gets offered silly money to work on other makes of car and he flatly refuses. because you are then no longer high level generalising in a specialism, your spending more time learning to be a generalist across a swathe of manufactures, and that’s just in 1 industry.
From my time as an injection mould toolmaker, the guy who I worked for as an apprentice (amazing man) could not say no to customers, ever, and as a result I have a great story (for another day) about me bringing the whole Renault lorry production line to a stop back in France.
Always be careful what you say yes to lol
2 -
@gregory-mullins I hope that we can hear that story one day – I am sure there was incoherent mutterings.
-
@gregory-mullins sounds like a great story! Perhaps a Linked IN Article for the pod next week now you have whetted our curiosity !
-
@signal-emma I have so many, but it is a crazy story. I’ll try and get it ready for next week. how many words are we talking about?
-
-
-
I was fortunate enough to have a set of 6 training sessions with Sara Davies, one of the Dragon’s! She really focused on the difference of spending time in your business and spending time on your business… There needs to be a blend of both and the biggest thing she sees is so many people spending time in their business that they forget to spend time on their business… an essential space where we need to question all the above points and find solutions! This is now something I ensure I tackle / question / sense check every few months.
1-
@sarah-daniels I used to work for Peter Jones, many many years ago.
2 -
@sarah-daniels wow! That is fortunate, I love her. Really good advice
1
-
-
Hi Simon it’s strange that you bring this up today as you observed I met with a VA today to help me sort some of these very things. The two main obstacles for me are Marketing and social media neither of which I am very good at. However with the services of a very good VA I’m sure this will change over the next six months!
2-
@paulsteve1953 Totally get that Paul. I talk to so many SMEs who feel they don’t get around to doing the marketing activities that will help their business grow.
-
@paulsteve1953 good move! A VA can substantially move the needle for a small business owner
-
@paulsteve1953 I’m so sorry Paul, when you say VA, do you mean virtual assistant?
-
@gregory-mullins Yes sorry I should have made it clearer.
-
@paulsteve1953 That’s sounds amazing. So how dose your Virtual Assistant help with marketing and social media. I ask because I always think of VA’s as someone to answer the phones. More of a reactive service than proactive.
1 -
@gregory-mullins There are a few different styles of work & personalities virtual assistants – Having worked with Laura (Paul’s VA), she loves the jobs you hate, she is wonderful. would you like me to ask a couple to contact you?!
-
Thanks for the offer Simon, I might be interested in a couple of months. I’m currently waste deep in trying to get my CRM Tech finished and launched. I’m right now front end testing my AI assistant I built from scratch code up. I’ve currently got it on my main website and my job board but it’s still in production. I’m hoping to have it fully operational by the end of the week.
http://www.career-ladder.co.uk and http://www.flynn-technologies.co.uk
1 -
@gregory-mullins This is very exciting. What platform are you building this on? Do you need help testing?
-
All my technology is built from scratch using Postgree SQL and Laravel framework. I’ve created AI testing with Playwright and Laravel’s feature testing. I’ve also added into the AI chat the ability for the User to suggest feature upgrades. So If you know anyone with a publication or association that wants a job board, I can do it for free as an add-on to the career-ladder or I can deliver 100% bespoke on a dedicated server with a Hobspot / Zoho level Personally built CRM to commercially run it.
I’ve developed about 80% of the capability of Salesforce so it’s all comparable as being a salesforce expert, allot of the functionality they have developed is to suck the client dry of funds rather than actual beneficial use to the customers business. I think salesforce is a perfect example for this thread with the saying “trying to be all things to all men”. SAP being a comparative company to Salesforce have a similar issue in it’s such a heavy product, it’s very difficult to deploy reliably.
anyway, on my technology front, I’ll deliver whatever functionality anyone wants. I’ve also developed a newspaper site, scraping nearly 1000 newspapers for specific jobs, economy and business news stories every day: https://business.career-ladder.co.uk/ .
I’ve also downloaded all 58GB of ONS data and have historical employment numbers fully updated to today https://www.career-ladder.co.uk/salary-ladder/salary-data.
There’s allot to unpack there I know lol
-
-
-
Disconnecting time for money is the first bit milestone in getting your business working for you. I would rather take 10% and manage the project than 100% and do the project. Having any income that is independent from the hours you work helps you build, and grow. You cannot make more time, but you can buy other people’s time.
Be like the $1 grilled cheese guy… you may need to zoom in – but this is someone who knows exactly what his customers want and is not doing anything else other than that…
-
@stu I love grilled cheese… but I love this guy more.
Appreciate the share.
with 10% of the fee, does that also equate to 10% of the responsibility and sh!ts given? – asking for a friend!
1-
@sl007 100% professionalism at all times. And no – you cannot shirk the responsibility, but choosing the right partners on projects is key!
-
-
-
