Being in charge of your own career is a great thing, isn’t it? You have the freedom to chase your business dreams. This means working one on one with the people you really want to, without answering to the whims of an over important manager.

In short, you’re the boss, you say what goes!

These are some fantastic benefits to have on your side. However, the drawbacks that come with them can be almighty too. Namely, the amount of time you need to dedicate to making your business dreams come true tends to be massive. Numbers like this are part of the broader work flexibility trends for modern professionals running their own show.

Even when working from home and setting your own schedule, it’s likely you’re working around 50 hours a week. Specifically, this time is probably spent monitoring your website, marketing via social media, discovering and tracking leads, refining your product ideas, etc.

According to a U.S. Small Business Administration issue brief, self-employed individuals are far less likely than traditional employees to work a standard 40-hour week, with many logging significantly more hours.

It’s a long list of things to accomplish, but with at least 50 hours on the clock, you’re surely getting through them all, right?

Why Do You Never Have Enough Time?

Absolutely not! Most home business owners routinely run out of time to get things done. After all, you’re dedicating the equivalent of more than 2 full days per week to your business, but you’ve got to fit eating, sleeping, and even just breathing in there somewhere!

Let’s face it, the tasks you have to get through each week are fairly effort heavy; for example, marketing and administration alone consume much of the week. In addition, the nature of business is unpredictable.

Even when you give your all, there’s a 99% chance you’re going to come away with nothing. As a result, tomorrow you have to put in double time, despite the uncertainty involved.

All in all, it’s exhausting! Thus, let’s think about how you’re spending your 50 hours. Do you think you’re utilising them in the best way possible for your long-term business goals?

Or, on the other hand, are you just drifting? There’s a strong chance you think things could be better, and that’s why we’re going to go through the most common ways a home business owner’s time is likely to be wasted below.

How Much Time Should You Spend With Customers?

This is the lifeblood of any business, even those that are home-based and operate primarily via the online world. You need to spend time with your customers, to ensure they get to know you, they get the right customer service, they aren’t left with any complaints that’ll lead to a bad review, for example.

Therefore, the more time you have to spend with your customers, the better you’re going to come across. Your customer base will see you as a genuine and dedicated hard worker.

You’ll seem truly professional; moreover, you’ll come across as someone who takes a personal approach that guarantees a good experience. This kind of attention to customers reflects work dynamics in a changing economy that reward personal touch over scale. These are all excellent points that work in your favor.

There’s a lot of admin getting in the way sometimes. As a result, you won’t have enough time for this task. This is the most important thing you’ll ever need to focus on.

According to a Forbes-reported survey, the average entrepreneur spends more than a third of the work week on small administrative tasks, and those who delegate them see significantly higher revenue growth.

However, there’s so much else happening at the same time. Consequently, that makes it impossible to stay focused and provide these kinds of benefits.

How Do You Troubleshoot Digital Problems at Home?

Do you have a technical background? If you don’t, it’s likely you’re running into a lot of issues with running your own website, at the least.

If you do, you’re still spending a lot of time ensuring a smooth online experience for all of your customers. Either way, there’s at least a quarter of your weekly hours going into your digital presence.

You have so many other things to do. This much time funneled one way just isn’t sustainable in the long term. Imagine what might happen.

You are the only person working on your digital side. Then your website goes down, and you have no idea why. How much time will you need to put into getting it up and running again?

Sounds like a nightmare, right? Then remove this issue from your business right now by getting an IT desk. Some local It support will go a long way in freeing up your schedule; you’ll have a professional team of digital experts working in the background, meaning you won’t ever have to monitor your digital readiness ever again. This is a small window into how technology is changing the way we work for home business owners specifically.

In turn, this is a very cost effective way to do business. Get an expert to handle the things you don’t need to.

Then use the time left over to focus on the tasks that will help you grow. You can still access your website dashboard for your analytics, which you can use to form your marketing campaigns – you just won’t need to get into the actual code yourself.

How Can Home Business Owners Communicate More Effectively?

Whether you have employees or not, you’re unlikely to truly work alone. Most home business owners have a freelancer taking care of something for them, or they have a friend or family member helping out from time to time.

Indeed, communicating with anyone helping to take care of your business can be tricky. You may work different times, you may not be able to get hold of them, there may be delays when they’re working on something – it’s rare to get a response on time, every time.

However, this is why it’s crucial to have some kind of contract in place. Within this contract, make sure you state communication terms, including how you prefer to talk, and the maximum time frame either of you have to communicate with each other.

For a lot of people this will be 24 hours. You could even ask for 12 hours max.

Whoever signs the contract must agree with this too. This way, all parties have an obligation to get back to one another in a timely fashion, which can prevent communication issues from holding up an entire work day. Building that structure in from the start is really part of future of work planning for businesses of any size.

If you’re working around 50 hours a week on your business, let’s make it easier to use those hours right. You don’t deserve to spend all that time going through mundane, frustrating, and time consuming tasks. Change the way you work right now for success later on.