Are you working too much in your business? Do you feel like you’re the only one you can rely on? Would your business have to shut down if you got sick or passed away? Are you struggling to find ways to get more profit, more freedom? This is the opposite of what a healthy business looks like.
I have a three-step process to fix this:
1. Become a stronger leader, someone who employees love, respect, and want to impress/serve. This means WORK ON YOURSELF.
Make sure their job descriptions are clear, and they include key performance indicators (KPIs). When your staff follow their job description and achieve their KPIs, you hit your budget (and your profit goals).
Make sure you have clear step-by-step procedures for each part of every job description. You need a job description too—so that one day you can pass it on to someone else, and you can have your freedom.
2. Understand your financial statements, plan your years out with goals for revenue, cost of goods sold, gross profit, overhead expenses, net profit AND balance sheet payments, to be able to predict and fulfill your goals in each of those areas.
You should be able to explain where every dollar came in and out, every month. You use the actual results you get every month to decide, “Did I hit my goal? Why or why not? Where do I need to go next in my business to improve things?”
Remember, if your staff hit their KPIs, you hit your budget (and achieve your profit goal).
3. Track your marketing and advertising data like a crazy person! Be SUPER curious, track, then analyze:
- Where new clients heard of you.
- Why they came in.
- Where else they have seen and heard about you.
- Where existing clients were reminded of you, and whether or not that’s why they came in this time.
- How many clickthroughs did you get?
- How many people actually bought something from a social media post?
- How old are your ideal clients?
- What do they do for a living?
- What type of media do they notice/like/consume?
For some more thoughts, here’s an article talks about four ways to have more freedom in your business.
My Good Friend Data
Data is your BEST FRIEND in business; make sure that you are capturing as much detail as possible about every client (especially their email address), and analyzing that data each month to make decisions about:
- Which marketing is working?
- Which marketing is not working?
- Where do we need to improve procedures or create better procedures?
- Is someone’s job description unclear? Or do they just need great coaching on how to do their job better?
- Is someone unclear on their goals? Or, do they think the goals are unachievable?
*Remember, for staff to perform for you, they need to believe that it is worth it and possible to achieve goals.
One Step At A Time
Don’t be overwhelmed, don’t be worried, just take one small step at a time in these three areas and your business WILL get better. You WILL experience MORE PROFIT AND MORE FREEDOM. This video is a good exploration of the process of finding more time for yourself and more success as a business owner:
Here’s one more tip that I hope helps you:
“You will never get it done.”
That didn’t help, did it? Give me a minute here—it’s meant to bring you peace of mind because it means that as we grow, as the world changes, we are ALWAYS going to be improving our businesses. So, knowing that your to-do list will always be new again, just go one step at a time.
Only Work On The Top 20% Of Your To-Do List
And here’s a secret: review the list often, and ONLY work on the top 20% of things that will produce 80% of your results. You can save the other items for later—but most likely they will already be achieved because of the other 20% you worked on!
This stuff works, every time, in every business, for every person. I KNOW it will work for you too.
If you need more help to find ways to get more profit AND more freedom, contact TMH Business Coaching and Consulting today for a confidential, free, no-obligation consultation to propel you forward. Also, please feel free to add yourself to our weekly coaching tips email!
