During a check-in with my mentee, she told me that she had the feeling that she was loosing her grip on the organisation she has been building. Mind you she has been traveling to Dubai to gather inspiration at the Expo 2020. Every new projects she gets she crushes. And if all that wasn't enough client work and her own projects are going extremely well too! Yet, she still has the feeling like she wasn’t working on her business.
In an ideal world you would like to juggle everything in one hand: client work plus working on building/growing your own business. But is this even possible let a lone slightly realistic? The answer is: Yes! It’s possible, but only if you have the right system in place.
Having a strategy and working on your business instead of in it, is something many entrepreneurs struggle with or completely forget to do throughout. Putting this off often happens when you’re very busy or completely swamped with client work. As a result, you don’t spend enough time on what ultimately is most important: your business.
I want to give you 2 extremely simple tips that will help you regain grip in absolutely no time. As long as you put in the work, obviously!
1. Schedule a full day of work
The first and also easiest thing you can get started with is scheduling an entire workday solely to work on your business. Client work or any work that is unrelated to your business is not allowed during this session.
2. Prioritise your business
Whenever you’re doing client work, you dedicate specific hours or days to cary out that work. Have you ever thought about prioritising your own business as if you were your own client?
In order to build a healthy organisation, you need to have a specific plan, nurture it, and put in enough work and time to see progress. Sounds a bit like creating a healthier lifestyle doesn’t it?
To create a system that works the first step shouldn’t be done just once, instead you need to do this on a regular basis. The frequency simply depends on the attention your business needs at this particular moment, and the amount of time you’re able and willing to put into it. So, what are you trying to achieve right now and how much time will this cost you? One hour a week, a whole workday a week, bi-weekly sessions or is a 2-hour session every other month enough? You decide.
Okay, and what’s next?
You scheduled your first session in your agenda (yes, it works best to have a dedicated moment planned so you can hold yourself accountably for this). Or maybe you’re a bit further along and already a few sessions in. What is it that you could actually be doing during these sessions?
As I said before, that all depends on what you’re trying to achieve. The main focus here is to start working on your business sooner that later. These questions will help you get started:
Where can I start? Fe. Schedule weekly sessions for the upcoming 3 months with a specific goal to work toward;
What do I want to have achieved at the end of my session? F.e Get a better understanding of the progress of previously set goals and put in the work to achieve them.
What has to be done in my financial administration? F.e Update administration, send invoices, check the financial progress, file your taxes.
What work am I constantly putting off that needs to be taken care of?
Which webinars or workshops can I follow?
What would I like to achieve this specific month? Within my organisation? Within a year?
These are some questions and examples that can help you get started. And don’t forget, as this is a hands-on approach, you need to put in the work in order to regain the grip.
How I do this…
Personally, I love working on my business and in all honesty I see it as a treat to do so. I might be completely bias as helping entrepreneurs shape their strategies is my job, but also one of my favourite things to do. So dedicating that time to help myself, is equally as satisfying to me!
Unconsciously, I have created my own tiny ritual in regards to working on my business. This has really been working for me, but could look completely different for you. On the days that I work on my business, I usually wake up a bit later than normally and make sure that my agenda is completely empty for that day. A workout, hot shower and a freshly homemade latte later, I start around 11:00. When doing these sessions I sometimes work from home, but other times I feel like working in a different environment like a fun cafe to get my creative juices and determination flowing. Either way, I always start by creating a schedule. While doing this, I constantly ask myself what I would like to achieve that day. Whenever I’m already working on something, I check where I last left off and write down what I would like to focus on next.
In my case, I have been working on my sales proces for the last 4 months. Reshaping my offer: developing new services and eliminating ones that no longer fit my clients needs. Interviewing (past) clients to understand their challenges and get feedback & input on my services. Updating my website, creating a sales deck, creating and sending out my freelance resume and so on… Sometimes I use this time to solely be creative, read literature, look at recordings of my past workshops and reflect on ways to improve those. Try out or look for new tools, work with my own sales-coach, doing my finances, reordering the files on my computer, or working on my business model.
Okay, enough about me. Now that you’ve read the whole article (at least so I hope!), I have two questions for you: When will you start and what will you be starting with on that specific day?
Feel free to drop me a line on LinkedIn or send me an email at renate@twenty6consultancy.com if you need help getting started.