I’d like you to take a step back, look at your
business as an outsider would and ask the question "Is this a hobby or
a business?"
Put aside the anger that immediately boils to the
surface because, after all, you are working 12 hours a day, 7 days a
week; eating and non-sleeping this entity known as your business with
little financial return and look at it objectively.
There will
come a time (if it hasn’t come already) when you get up one morning,
exhausted and overwhelmed, and ask yourself "What happened to my vision
of carefree self employment where I’m my own boss, there’s plenty of
money and I’m a raging success? Did I take a wrong turn on the road to
success?"
Be thankful for that day. That is the day you realize
you have a great opportunity: to step up and act like a business (and
recognize the limitless possibilities) or keep playing with your
"hobby" (and be realistic about your income potential). Up until that
point, chances are you’ve been more focused on your specialty
(bookkeeping, massage therapy, virtual assistance, etc.) than on
running your business (think "technician" rather than "manager").
As a "business", you must focus on the future and look at planning and revenue. As a "hobby", you focus more on today.
If
you wish to create a business, especially a successful one, you must
have certain success indicators in place (just ask the IRS):
1. You have a business and marketing plan.
If
you want your business to be successful for the longer term, you need
to define what "successful" and "longer term" mean to you. Your
business plan must be written and adaptable to the change that will
happen.
I strongly recommend that you have a separate marketing
plan which outlines the activities you will do to attract more clients.
Your business and marketing plans should be living, breathing documents
which you use to keep on track.
2. You act like a business.
Your business has its own identity or brand. You have a "look", possibly a tagline and cohesive marketing materials.
Your
email address has your domain name in it (e.g.,
Sandy@SandraMartini.com) rather than you using a generic account such
as yournamehere@yahoo.com.
And, most importantly, you are not
mixing money between business and personal. You track your business
income and expenses in a software such as QuickBooks and not in a shoebox timidly carried to your accountant each year.
3. You’re making money.
Your business needs to be holding its own and then some.
OR, at the very least, well on it’s way to profitability. You can’t be
drawing out of your savings or racking up credit card debt with no idea
of when you will actually start making money.
Hobbies can cost a lot with no hope of financial return aside from the sheer pleasure of engaging in them. Businesses can not.
4. You have a team.
As
a solopreneur, there is only so much you can do. . .and do well. To
build your business to the point where you are focusing only on your
core strengths (which should be the same things that bring in the
revenue), you need someone to delegate to.
5. You continue to learn and improve.
As a business owner, you must continuously review what’s working and what’s not in your business and make changes accordingly.
Personally,
I do two things to insure that my business (and I) continue to improve:
1/ I invest in myself by hiring good coaches — I currently belong to a
very small, high end Mastermind program run by Alexandria Brown in
addition to working with another coach who consistently challenges me
and 2/ I created a "Flash Report" for my business — one of my virtual
assistants populates the report and sends it to me each Friday. It
tells me what’s working and what needs tweaking within my business
(more on this coming soon).
If you dream of a business where you
fulfill your passions, work less, yet make more while making a
difference in the lives of your clients, these are just a few of the
indicators that you want to insure are in place. The proper systems
will do more for you than a thousand networking meetings. 🙂
I
challenge you to take a hard look at your business over the coming days
and see where you can improve — make a list and choose one indicator
to work on over the next 90 days.
Sandra Martini, the
Automatic Business Coach, and award-winning author teaches small business
owners how to implement processes and systems designed to take them out of the
day-to-day running of their business. For more information and to receive her FREE e-course/audio series, ";">"5
Quick & Easy Ways To Put Your Marketing on Autopilot", visit http://www.SandraMartini.com