How to Maximize Your Time to Grow Your Side Hustle
As an “employed entrepreneur”, an entrepreneur who is currently also working for someone else, your time is even more limited. You have to find time outside of your full-time job to work on your business. Learning how to maximize your time to grow your side hustle or business is crucial. The more time you’re able to spend working on your business and serving others then the more your revenue will grow.
During the startup phase of business, you need time to learn about business itself, your particular business field and to implement what you learn to attract more customers and clients and to provide your products and/or services. You’re splitting your time many different ways around the business itself, never mind your other responsibilities such as family and friends.
Your time is limited, but you have to make time to not only work in your business but on your business so you can grow the business. Growth means more revenue and profitability. So how do we maximize your time so you can get there.
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1) Determine how many hours you have.
How many hours do you have during the week and the weekend to devote to your side hustle. You have to work on and in your side hustle in order to build it into a business that can support you. Aim for 10 – 20 hours per week. If you have less competing responsibilities for your time then you may be able to do more, but this will be a great start.
2) Set your work hours.
You have select time slots. Likely they are:
1) in the morning before work
2) lunch break at work
3) a few hours after work once you handle the household
Once you have identified reasonable chunks of time in your day, create a schedule for the week that has set working hours for your business. For all seven days when are you at work for yourself. Make those hours non-negotiable outside of an emergency. If you want to change your business from a side hustle to a full fledged business then you have to show up to work consistently.
3) List your revenue generating activities.
List out your revenue generating activities, activities that will bring a return on investment (ROI ). Don’t fall into the trap of doing busy work during your working hours. There is a huge huge difference in being busy working for your business and doing busy work. Here’s the difference, busy work is when you’re completing small tasks that do truly need to get done, but likely don’t have to be done right now and/or aren’t making you money. Create a list of all your revenue generating tasks.
4) Set what revenue generating task you will do each day.
Look at your revenue generating activities list and assign each activity a day. When you write your tasks for the day, the primary task should be a revenue generating activity. The more of these you have each day the better, but at least have your primary task(s) be revenue generating tasks. Focus on the tasks that will bring in more revenue. Cash flow is needed to continue operating the business and to grow the business. Maximize your time by making sure you perform tasks that will increase your cash flow.
5) Get better tools.
Sometimes you really are only as good as your tools. Getting better tools mean you will likely cut the time required for tasks in half or can eliminate tasks altogether. For example, think about social media. You likely have several social media profiles for your business. There is no way you should be manually logging into each social media platform at a specific time, typing up a post and sending it out. Who has time for that? Not an entrepreneur. Definitely not an employed entrepreneur. Most of the times you want posts to go out you may be at work at the job.
A tool such as Hootsuite or Buffer allows you to schedule posts on different platforms. Set it and forget it. They also allow you to monitor engagement a bit so you have a better idea of what is working and when are great times to post.
Think about the different tasks you have to do, ask yourself is there a tool out there that will make this easier and less time consuming. Do a little research. There are numerous free tools that work great and of course to get more advanced you have to invest some money.
What else do you do to maximize the time you’re able to work on your side hustle?
Photo credit: Frerleke
