Too busy working IN your business to work ON it?

Are you struggling to keep your business running, working 12 hour (or longer) days?

Do feel harassed trying to motivate staff, pay bills, do sales calls, keeping your eye on the cashflow? Systems and procedures are virtually non existent, or if they happen it’s by default rather than by design. Disorder seems the rule of the day. It’s hard to find enough time to run your business, let alone develop it.

Many business owners are running so hard just to keep their business at its current level they can’t possibly imagine kicking it up a notch or two or putting some systems in place to streamline it.

They feel harassed, overtired and stressed-out.

The truth is, you’re not going to find enough time to do it all. So start spending your energy thinking about something you can do. What might that be?

Focus on your target

If you focus on HOW you’re going to hit the target (ie. your ammunition) and then let fly you could get lucky and hit your mark – fortune could be on your side. But if you want to achieve predictable and consistent results you need to focus on your target and take careful aim each time.

In business, good target shooting requires a vision that your business can aim towards. You need to know what your business will look like when you’ve hit your mark. Without the vision, nothing you do in your business will make much difference. You can make small changes, you may even see some good results. But if there’s no vision, your business will never become a GREAT business.

The business owner’s most important job

What’s the most important job a business owner has? Taking care of clients? Making sales calls? Advertising, managing your employees? All these things are important – your business probably won’t function effectively without them. But none of these are your most important job. Your most important job is developing your vision and then communicating it effectively with your staff and consistently moving towards it.

Perhaps you’ve already got a vision for your business but you think you’re still on your own, your employees aren’t buying it and no one’s helping you achieve it. You better stop and take a good look. Have you communicated your vision effectively to your team? They can’t help you hit the target if they don’t know where it is or what it looks like. Engage your people in your vision – communicate and share your vision. Let everybody know what it is.

Have a strategy

It’s one thing having a vision, but you’ll need a plan if you’re going to head towards that vision. With a strategy to follow you can avoid failing into emergency mode – because there’ll be times when you’re developing one system and more problems will show up seemly more pressing and important than the one you’ve started working on. You need to stay with your vision and stay with your strategy.

Remember, you can’t do it all – but you can take a bite. Use your prioritising system to identify what needs the most attention and get working on that. But don’t lose yourself in it. Pick and choose your battles. Allocate some time and do it regularly.

Ask yourself – “what needs the most attention in my business right now? “. Draw up a list and prioritise it – which is the most important, which will make the most difference?

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time. But take the right bites – the strategic bites. And above all – keep focused on the results, not the work. Focus on the vision, and what your business will look like and how you’ll feel when you get there.