Presents the top 3 methods for getting more billable time.

As self-employed professionals, werein business to make money doing what we love. And that means we need enough billable hours to cover our expenses, our salary, upgrades in our skills and technology, and our profit. But if you'reself-employed for any length of time, you eventually reach the point where you just don't have more hours in the day to give toyour business. After all, you have a personal life too. (If you don't have a personal life, you really need to work on that with your business coach — but I digress.) So, if you've maxed out on the hours you have available to build your business, how can you get more billable hours?

You have to get those billable hours from time you are currently spending doing other activities in your business. Here are some ways to do that: Delegate out anything you hate to do or aren't good at doing in the running of your business. For example, I hatefiling and organizing all my reference materials. So I hire a professional organizer to come in once a quarter to file all the papers I've stacked up, to set up any new files I'll need, to pack up old files on inactive clients and projects, and to reorganize my 10 bookcases. She can do all that for me in 3 hours. When I was doing it myself it took me forever and it was never completed because I'd let anything else distract me from it. So, finding just the right reference book or file was not only hit-or-miss at best, it again took too much of my time. How much time can you recover by delegating out activities and tasks you don't want to do, but that have to get done to keep your business running smoothly?
Automate or computerize administrivia, including making regular backups of your computer disk drives. (I learnedto get my backups automated after I'd lost my entire contacts database, including my appointment schedule—

Contact management and scheduling
Taking class registration and payment
Distributing class notes and materials
Taking coaching payments via the Web
Notification to follow-up with clients
Subscribing and unsubscribing to this eZine
Broadcasting of this eZine
Payment and delivery of digital products
Creating eClasses from templates
Subscriptions, payment, and delivery of eClasses
Tracking of billable time
Creating time reports
Invoicing
Expense and revenue tracking
Gracefully get out from under your most time-consuming and energy-draining clients and projects. I know it's difficult to say "No" to a client or a project in today's economic climate. But you can give these Clients and Projects from Hell referrals to competitors in your network who are better suited to serve them, retain the good will from the clients you are referring on, and free up all that time and energy to work with people and projects you love. Just by relieving all the stress you're under from your Clients and Projects from Hell, you make yourself open and available to more of your Ideal Clients and Projects. And, have you noticed,you'remore productive and efficient when you're working with your Ideal Clients and Projects? Increased productivity = increased billable hours available

Put these 3 secrets to work in your business and get back valuable and billable time for doing more of what you love foryour Ideal Clients!

About the Author

Rose Hill is a Certified Business Coach who works exclusively with independent professionals who desire to create a solid foundation for their continued business success. I do this by means of a comprehensive 4-pronged, 6-month High-Impact Business-Building program. Rose can be reached at (503) 629-4804 or via e-mail to rose@coachrose.com