Most entrepreneurs and small business owners create a business with big hopes and dreams about what their life will be like owning a successful business: the freedom, family time, financial security, etc.
Reality is often far different.
Reality is that most entrepreneurs and small business owners create jobs for themselves – working long days in order to eek out enough m.o.n.e.y to pay their bills, often not even covering the costs of the business.
Reality is that most entpreneurs and small business owners spend their business lives trying to get new clients through a mishmash of information product and program launches, all the while burning out their lists.
Enough of the all-too-common reality.
When you design a business to suit your lifestyle (today’s and desired), your values and your goals, your business becomes freeing.
Rather than create a job, the entrepreneur who designs her business with the end in mind creates a path to freedom – a business which can run with or without her.
How it works
- Make a list of everything you don’t want in your life and your business (it’s usually easier to start with what you do not want as opposed to what you do want).
- Across from each item in #1, write the opposite of what you don’t want.
- Check in with yourself – are these items accurate? If so, great. . .If not, add, tweak, delete until they are.
- Write down your ideal day. Be specific (when do you get up, what do you do, who are you with, etc. – it’s often easiest to take this in 6 hr chunks from the time you wake up)
- Describe your business: what do you do in your business, what’s your business’ purpose, what makes your business unique from others offering the same services. Again, be specific.
- Now the fun begins. . . it’s time to design your business so that it fulfills its purpose and gives clients what they want and, in return, you get what you want (your desired lifestyle) and that design starts with answering 3 questions: 1/ Who are your ideal clients? 2/ What are you promising them? and 3/ How will what you do deliver on your promise?
- Once you have the above, it’s time to create a marketing and visibility plan customized for your business, your personality and your values.
In designing programs, I go through Steps 5-7 for each program and add one more question to Step 6: “When will the program deliver on its promise?”.
Seem like a lot of work? It’s the quickest path to a profitable small business and sure beats wandering around aimlessly purchasing this program and that product, all the while hoping for a magic pill.
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My Request to You
You know the statistics. . .most small businesses fail. And, in looking at the reasons, we can track most all of them back to the fact that they don’t take the time to design their success.
It doesn’t matter how good you are at what you do (harsh reality, but reality all the same). If you don’t design your business, you’re operating without a plan and will build a business around you – thus creating that job you wanted out of and which is often in direct contradiction to the desired lifestyle you wanted.
My request is that you grab your calendar, right now. . .I’ll wait.
Okay, got it? Now schedule in some time to go through the 7 steps above and hold this appointment as sacred as you would your most perfect client.
Are you going to file this away, thinking you’ll “get to it when you have time”? If so, your business, and your sanity, will suffer. Go ahead, make that appointment with yourself now…