Rightsizing Your Business
Posted on July 31st, 2009
Every business owner comes to a time when he feels that he wants to work less and do other things that are also important to him. He’s not ready to give up the business. He just wants to establish a better balance between his work and personal life.
Susan Ward, author at About.com suggests some useful approaches for downscaling your business:
You could start turning down some clients and referring them to others. If you are in the service business, look at the hours you work in a typical week and evaluate your client list. The easiest way to free up more time is to let the difficult clients go. Let them off graciously by delivering on your obligations to them and passing them on to someone else.
You should hire employees to man the store. If have a retail business and you are always there to oversee everything, hiring people would be worth the trouble and expense.
You could outsource some functions or aspects of your business. There are businesses, like Virtual Assistants and bookkeepers who could do your administrative and office-related tasks. You could also subcontract the design and maintenance of your website, if your business has one.
You might want to cut back your hours. If you run a store, you could shorten your business hours or decrease your business days.
It won’t hurt to close your business for a week or two so you could take a well-deserved vacation. Take time to let your clients and customers know in advance that you will not be out during those days.
If you have a willing family member, you may bring her into the business to split the work load. Eventually, you may be able to teach her to ultimately handle the business on her own.
Lastly, you may lessen the number of products or services you offer. You could focus on the most saleable products or services and specialize on them. This would simplify your business and make things easier for you.
If you are not sure, whether you should downsize your business, Ms. Ward recommends taking this quick self test “Is It Time To Downsize Your Business”.
