More Than Houses Are Being Refreshed At The Moment!!

I am not sure if I have made mention of this in previous posts, but back in 2010 I took part in a business coaching program that has had a huge impact on not only my business, but many of the other businesses that took part in the program.

The program was run by Gordon Kay of the Adelaide Hills Business Centre and one of the best aspects of it has been the joint ventures that have started as a direct result of business owners meeting through this program.

As an example, I have recently started working with Gordon and Louise Drummond of Personal Touch Home Cleaning - another business owner who took part in the same coaching program as I attended - on a system that has really freed up more of Louise's time.

From the day Louise started her business she made a promise that her level of service would be second to none and very soon the word got out about the quality of her services and her business began to grow.

As a result of this growth, Louise began to take on contractors to assist her with her cleaning services and the demands on her began to increase because now, she not only had to continue providing her high level of cleaning services, but she also had to ensure that her contract cleaners did the same - in other words, there was a greater requirement for her to starting working on the business as well as in the business.

On top of this, Louise was forced to look after the ever increasing administrative demands of the business - as more leads came in, Louise had to find time to meet with these leads and market her services to them; as more contractors were employed, Louise had to find time to deal with the ever increasing dynamics that are involved in taking on more staff; as more customers were serviced, more suppliers had to be paid, so Louise had to find time to do things like pay suppliers, etc. etc. etc. - the list goes on - and on - and on!!

All this extra time required to run an ever increasing business had to come from somewhere - and where do you reckon it came from - yep, Louise was working all day providing cleaning services and working half way through the night attending to the ever increasing administrative tasks now associated with the business (put your hand up if you can relate to this!! LOL).

Something had to be done before Louise really "crashed and burned" so enter Gordon Kay - who has a wonderful flair of helping business owners get out of this predicament - and things are looking wonderfully better for both Louise and her business now.

Gordon has set up an automated process where now - instead of Louise having to manually create all the invoices for every clean done each day - as each contractor finishes their job they access a neat little app on their phone which calls up the customer whose property has just been cleaned and records that the clean has been completed - and that's it!!!

The invoice automatically generates and is sent to the customer and the bookkeeper (I'll give you one guess who this person is!!!) immediately gets notified of the clean and how much the contractor is being paid which allows me - sorry, the bookkeeper!!! LOL - to immediately enter the sale into Louise's bookkeeping system, together with the cost of sale to the contractors.

No more manual sales invoice creation - no more chasing contractors for their invoices - in other words Louise has now just got back hours in each week which has meant Louise is now able to market and grow her business more!!!

The moral to this story is simple - have a look at the processes that are sapping your time in your business and work out ways to automate - or outsource - these processes which will allow you to either expand your business, or give you back time to do those things in your life that are most important to you.

Oh - by the way - Louise is looking for more contract cleaners to assist her with her ever growing business, so if you are a cleaner based in South Australia and you're looking for more work, give Louise a call as I am sure she would love to have a chat with you.