You may have noticed that I call myself an Efficiency Expert.  That’s all well and good, and it sounds really neat, but what the heck is an Efficiency Expert anyways?

Here’s an official definition: An efficiency expert is “a specialist who seeks to increase the productivity of a business or an industry by improving the efficiency of its operations.”

Basically what that definition is saying is that an efficiency expert can help you find ways to run your small business more smoothly by decreasing the amount time it takes you to do things, therefore increasing your productivity and in the end allowing you to free up your valuable time.

You may be thinking, “okay, more time always sounds good, but how does it work?  What does an efficiency expert do?”.

Let me use myself as an example.  I am a virtual assistant, and this means that I partner with small business entrepreneurs.  I work with coaches of all kinds, counsellors, therapists, instructors, you name it.  Sometimes I work with folks who are simply overwhelmed by having to take care of all the pieces of their business all by themselves, and they not only need someone to help them sort out what’s going on, they also need someone to take some tasks off their plate.

For example, let’s say that a life coach has been actively marketing their business in a variety of ways:

  • with their website
  • regular blogging
  • monthly newsletters
  • writing articles
  • speaking engagements
  • writing some e-books

They also want to teach online workshops in the future and so need to set up a shopping cart, and add new info and sales pages to their website, and figure out a plan on how to let everyone know about these new workshops and get them to sign up for them, and get a teleseminar system set up and running, and create the actual workshops themselves, and, and, AND!  Whew, you get the picture how things can easily spin out of control when you’re on your own.

Here’s where an efficiency expert can step in.  In this scenario I would sit down with this coach and together we would look at four very important points:

  1. Current marketing tactics
  2. Overall marketing plan
  3. New product marketing plan
  4. Delegation

Next week I’ll explain in more detail what is involved with each of these four points, and how an efficiency expert works to improve your small business efficiency.