Work On Your Business Days!

We've all heard the saying, "Work ON your business, not IN your business". What that basically means is don't get immersed in the day-to-day details and administrative tasks that are part of your business, but instead make sure you spend time on activities that will grow, develop and enhance your business.

One way to ensure you make time to do this is to schedule a specific day into your calendar. Some people call these Business Development days or Business Planning days or Business Growth days. Whatever you call it, the important thing is that you schedule it AND keep that appointment with yourself.

Some people book off an entire day every week or every couple weeks. Other people find they like to schedule 3 hours every week or take a weekend retreat once a month. Finding out how long you need and want to take for the "work on your business days" will take a bit of time to determine. Also, if you're moving into a bigger direction or it's a difficult economic time, then you might want to allocate more time to these development days.

The important thing is that you DO these days - somehow, somewhere and sometime (preferably on a consistent basis!).

Some ideas of what you can do during this appointment with yourself:

- Create a marketing plan for the upcoming 6 months, year

- Take a look at current personnel and vendor needs and look ahead to anticipated future needs

- Set your financial/sales goals - overall and for specific product and service lines

- Take a look at current joint partners and affiliate partners to evaluate the continued mutual benefit to keeping the relationship going - is there something that you could do to enhance it? Is there a person/company you need to say goodbye to?

- Take a look at what systems and processes you have in place - for different areas such as finance, product fulfillment, marketing, customer relationships, personnel, etc.

- Brainstorm about possible new, different, advanced opportunities that could benefit both you and your company

- Re-look at your company's vision, top-line goals and objectives, USP (unique selling point) and so on - to make sure that it's still aligned with your passions and strengths

These days are really the most important time that you'll spend for your business. You can't grow, manage, market or promote your business successfully and with the fastest, best results UNLESS you book time off for the above activities.

Put it this way, if you don't spend your time on business growing/development days, you won't spend much time having profit-generating days!