Profit Solved – Clarify Your Small Business Objectives
By Don Osborne
Without clarity your profit picture will be too fuzzy to serve as an accurate guide to making more money in your small business. Sharpen your focus in these four areas to improve your bottom line.
Personal Reasons: Understand your personal reasons for successful small business ownership.
Most small businesses are started for personal reasons. Your motivation might come from a skill, hobby or passion. The tipping point is often an incident in your life. It might be the threat or reality of losing a job, need for extra income due to a child on the way, insufficient retirement funds or general frustration.
Many times your personal reasons for starting a business of your own are really, “more personal” – they have to do with who you are as a person, the need to have more control over your time and more options in your life.
The greater clarity you have about the “Why” behind your decision to start your small business the greater chance you will be focused and produce a higher level of profitability.
Business Goals: Clearly state your business goals regardless of your personal talents or skills.
You and your business are really two separate entities. You, as the person who owns the business, and the business itself. This is an important distinction because business must stand alone for several reasons.
You need to set goals for the business to achieve to be profitable. These goals are set based on the mission statement of the business rather than the capabilities of its owners. That would be too limiting. Also, for the business to be in the best position to be sold some day it must be capable of operating independently of its ownership.
Without a clear set of goals your business will lack focus and not be able to develop and implement a profitable business plan.
Active Lifestyle: Schedule activities for each lifestyle area: individual, family, spiritual, career, financial.
Small business ownership is generally all consuming. It gobbles up a huge amount of your time, at least mentally if not physically. If you set goals for each core area of your lifestyle you can maintain more balance and, as a consequence, be in a position to accomplish more in your business.
Use a simple system to select one or two goals for each lifestyle area including business ownership. Schedule time for each goal on a weekly basis. The amount of time allocated for each area or goal does not need to be equal. It just needs to be scheduled.
When your business clearly serves your lifestyle and is integrated into your daily life plan you free up time and energy to accomplish more and positively impact your profit potential.
Mandatory Time: Plan your use of time in 30 minute increments with an emphasis on mandatory items.
Time is money, particularly when it come to the business of making money. It has a equal if or greater value in one’s personal life. A month, week or day is too much time to plan with accuracy, but a 30 minute window is not.
Set long-term objectives to create direction. Set short objectives to set actions. Set blocks of 30 minutes to work on or complete actions. Reserve your 30 minute blocks of time for those actions which must done to complete key profit plans.
The technique of scheduling mandatory items within 30 minute blocks of time give you a clear picture of the steps you’re taking to optimize your profitability.
Today is the best time to bring your profit picture into focus and enjoy the benefits that come from clarifying your small business objectives.
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