It’s late January – are you still keeping track of your New Year’s Resolutions?
Making resolutions is great. Making resolution sets goals, and if you are clear about your goals they become possible. But in order to make those goals real, you need plans. Once you have plans, you need to work on them – every day!
It’s the same for your business. Set your goals, make your plans – then, how do you keep them front of mind before you get lost in all the little things you have to do?
Has the title of this week’s article got your attention?
Like many entrepreneurs and small business owners you are probably struggling with your work-life balance, right? You are working long hours, sometimes weekends, when you go on vacation you can’t help feeling the guilt, your phone or tablet is always on and always calling for your attention even at all hours of the night. Yet the reason you started your own business, apart from the passionate belief in what you are doing is…getting time to do what you want.
Just stop for 10 minutes (yes, you can!). Ask yourself why you aren’t able to find that “life” part of the balance. Do these reasons sound familiar?
I need to really pour myself into this to make enough money at the moment
I’m really busy because I can’t afford someone else to do some of the work
It’s all in my head so I can’t let go
I haven’t broken through financially yet
I’m ultimately responsible
As I expand there’s even more work to do
Only I can do it
There’s just so much to do
The work comes with success
Think about those reasons just for a minute. They all come down to the fact that there seems to be a lot to do and you are the only one available or capable of doing it. Read More
As busy entrepreneurs, what we all want in our businesses (and in our lives!) is efficiency, right?
You want to be able to do your usual processes quickly and efficiently, and because you do them day in and day out memorising every step, you probably do. But what happens if someone has to take over for you – perhaps when you have a day off? Or what happens when you expand and have to start hiring staff, or take on VA’s and contractors?
I’ll tell you what happens – it all slows down! Disturbingly this means you can never leave the business, not even for a holiday!
Other people don’t live inside your memory so they take longer to work out what to do, perhaps even do things in the wrong order and have to come back and do it again. Okay, so you train them – you take them through the steps, and yet….they get it wrong! They can’t remember everything they are told – you wouldn’t either if your weren’t living it day in and day out!
This week’s discussion is about how to systematise your business – treat it as if you were a one-branch franchise and organise procedures and process manuals!
Your standard processes are just that – standard – so why not write them down, video yourself doing them, and make these records the basis of how you train your staff?
Do you find that time gets away from you? Of course you do, we all do.
It’s funny that the only one thing in our lives that you can neither lose nor get more of seems so scarce for some and so plentiful for others. Everyone has a 24 hour day, yet some people seem to get things done while others “run out of time”!
One of the causes is the infamous to-do list. If yours is as long as mine, you know you need a system to get it in order.
But seriously, if you look at your to-do list closely, I wonder how many items there are actually expectations on your time by others? On the flip side, I wonder how many of the hundreds of items on your list are things that will truly make you happy, really move you closer to your goals in life and business?
Well, it’s time to get your to-do list in order.
The system is to look at each item and ask how important it really is? How urgent is it? This video provides you with the training to apply a system to get the time that you have in line with where you want to go.
So what do you think? Get over to my website teikoh.com and comment on the training.
No matter how overwhelmed you are, taking a few minutes each day to ask if something is important or urgent gives you control back over your own life.
For more tips, traps, ideas and downloadable free content, go to teikoh.com. While you are there subscribe, or subscribe here, to get these valuable ideas delivered directly to your inbox for free.
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