Have you ever looked back in your business life (or your career) and thought “if only”? If only you’d run with opportunity A or tried opportunity B? Maybe that would have been ‘the thing’ that made all the difference.
I think most business owners fall into thinking like that from time to time.
Then a tiny hopeful thought creeps in ‘but maybe I could still have a go now’. Often almost immediately followed by ‘yes, but it what if it’s not perfect/great/doesn’t sell a million, etc – or some variation of what if I fail.
Most of us all have those moments of doubt too. The bigger question though is what if you succeeded? What if that opportunity really could make the difference for your business? What if it’s the opportunity that takes your business to the next level. Or maybe makes your customers’ lives better?
Absolutely, you’d want to take advantage of that opportunity, wouldn’t you?
But first you need to have the capacity to take advantage of those opportunities, that’s where a lot of business owners and etailers get stuck. They’re so busy, taking care of busy-making activities that could be successfully outsourced, often at a lower cost to someone else, that they miss the opportunity.
And sure, another opportunity, just like the proverbial bus, will be along shortly. BUT if you don’t get out of your own way, you’re likely to miss that one too and the next one, and several/many after that.
So what could you do to make a bit more time in your day/week/month?
To take advantage of opportunities that come your way, there are a number of things you could consider;
- You might get a VA to chase down all those little irritating niggly bits in your business that don’t add to what you do and just slow you down
- If you still take phone orders for products, you might streamline that process using AI via live chat through your website or set up some really great FAQs to stem those calls
- If business back-end processes (aka bookkeeping and accounting) makes you want to stick pins in your eyes, consider hiring a bookkeeper or at the very least moving to a cloud accounting system that tracks your incomings and outgoings from your business bank account so all you have to do is match them up for your accountant at BAS time. And finally
- If you spend days unpacking or shifting product around your home, garage or storage shed to make space for the next shipment; or you feel like the hours your spend packaging up orders could be put to better use, you might consider outsourcing to a fulfilment house.
Opportunities are like buses. There will be another along shortly.
Sir Richard Branson
And that’s where we can help. If you have upwards of 50 orders or more a month that you need to ship to your customers, we’d be delighted to talk to you. You can always give us a call on +61 2 9828 0111 (Sydney), +61 3 9240 6300 (Melbourne) or +64 9 263 8855 (Auckland) or drop us a note via the form below. Alternatively, you can find a full list of available services here.
PS: You don’t just have to be seeking time to take up further business opportunities to outsource anything on the list above. You might also want to claw back some time for yourself, your family or something totally unrelated to your business – we’ll call that life in general. Or maybe you’ve just had enough of product clogging up whole rooms of your home or paying through the nose for off-site storage.