Is Your Business Working For You?

Is Your Business Working for You? rnOr are you working for your business? I hope you’re doing work that you enjoy. Because I believe that if you don’t love what you do, you will lose out to someone who does. However, just working in your business isn’t enough. Yes, we all have to make sure that orders get fulfilled, phone calls get returned, new prospects contacted and the plethora of things you want to get done. I call it the busyness of business. But in order to excel, we have to work ON our business—and on ourselves. We have to step back for a better perspective. We have to ask tough questions and be willing to be honest with ourselves. We try to make several improvements each day. Things like . . . make the order process faster, easier or more clear rnimprove one of our reports rncreate a new one rntest a headline for better conversion rnautomate a process rnmake website navigation easier rneliminate a step rnadd value to our membership rnsimplify a process rnWe could go on, but I think you get the idea. We practice and recommend S-O-D-A. SODA stands for Simplify, Organize, Delegate or Automate. I use that as a reminder to practice CANI—Constant And Never-ending Improvement. And I don’t feel my day is complete unless we’ve made something better. Sure there are days when so much is going on, it doesn’t leave much time for self improvement or making our business work better. How about you? Do you make improvements every day? Sadly, I find far too many people working harder and harder sawing away at things and not leaving any time to “sharpen the saw”. Abraham Lincoln said, “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four hours sharpening the axe”. We may not use axes in our business, but we have tools and systems that can be sharpened or replaced with something that works better. It’s gratifying to grow and improve. And it pays off, too. But you do have to plan for it. You have to give it focus and attention. Otherwise, all the other demands—the busyness—will crowd out making things better. That’s really what we are all about. Helping you and your business grow is why we’re here. And sometimes it’s as simple as reminding you to take action to improve what you’re doing. It might be sharing a new idea or resource. Or it might be teaching an important principle or concept. And if you have ideas on how we can better serve you, we will listen and carefully consider your suggestion.