We all want to work less, and I can’t think of any group that works as hard as tax accountants in March and April, when the entire country needs assistance with their books and on their taxes in about an 8-week span of time. No matter what you do for a living, you might want to find out how you can cut your work hours while maintaining or growing your income level. Here are five ideas to get you started.
1. Say “no” to activities that are not profitable.
Too often, we fill our day doing “freebies” for accounting and QuickBooks clients, friends, and well-meaning, really “nice” people. A quick email here, a fast phone call there, scope creep, favors. These add up to no income for you during the time you are spending on them. This translates to working harder but not smarter.
The antidote is to put your foot down and set healthy boundaries with accounting, bookkeeping, and QuickBooks clients and others as to what you will and won’t do. Start by having your accounting clients agree to a detailed, scope-defined contract up front if you’re on fixed fee, or being more disciplined about tracking your accounting service time if you’re charging hourly.
2. Learn to build leveraged revenue.
One obvious way to leverage accounting revenue is to hire staff, but not every accountant or QuickBooks ProAdvisor wants to grow their accounting or QuickBooks business in that way. Luckily, there are several other ways to leverage your accounting revenue. You can leverage your resources such as your content and skills and generate multiple streams of income from similar accounting information. By creating group programs, you can leverage your client base and your time. And by learning how to position your accounting firm well, you can leverage your marketing materials to produce more in less time.
3. Learn to leverage your time.
One of my accounting clients’ favorite ways to make more while working less is by implementing time-saving techniques I teach in Accountant’s Accelerator that I learned from the multi-millionaire business owners that I studied in 2010. Many accounting clients who are disciplined about implementing just one technique are getting a pickup of about 15 to 20% free time per day, and they are billing more, too.
4. Be proactive in your marketing.
Instead of waiting until you’re low on accounting clients and jumping into the next networking meeting, I recommend selecting a few marketing methods, sticking with them deeply, measuring and improving them carefully, and reaping the rewards. Having a numbers background is a plus to approaching marketing this way. This is a great way to deal with an area most people are uncomfortable with.
5. Become aware of your mindset.
It’s easy to brush past this one as woo-woo, “not for me,” and something that you can’t really change. But if you’re thinking that, you’re the one that could probably benefit the most from some of the latest discoveries in brain science.
Neuroscience has made phenomenal strides in showing us the sources of discrete personality characteristics, the individual differences and range of personality in people, and how all of this affects our actions. There is a certain trait that some people have that predisposes them to more unconsciously sabotaging behaviors than others, and this trait can occur in normal people like accountants.
The good news is this trait can be changed by increasing your awareness, discovering how you impact others and how others feel about you, and examining the beliefs you might have that are holding you back.
These five ideas are a great start to learning how to work less while making more in your accounting or QuickBooks practice.
I’d love for you to post your comments on this article. Share your stories and ideas on my blog or on my Facebook page here http://www.facebook.com/sandismithleyva.