Small Business Week is, in my opinion, a week to step back and say, “Wow, look what I’ve done!” If you need help patting yourself on the back, make a list — things that are going along swimmingly and things that could use some improvement. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, there is always some tweaking that can be done.
If you are a B2C business, do a focus group. Or, if that’s too time consuming, overwhelming, or too much of a budget drain, ask customers directly for feedback; you can do this formally or informally. But, listen to what they say. Check review sites to see what people have said. Respond positively to their comments. Let them know you hear them.
If you are B2B, same rules apply.
But remember, just because one person says one thing, it doesn’t mean their thoughts are gospel. You will never please everyone.
Step back, again, and remember why you started your business. The hope is that you started your business because you are passionate about the concept, the item, the industry, the money – something about it excites you. You need to keep that passion with you at all times.
Passion is one thing, a necessity I believe. But the pressure of running a small businesses, any kind of business, actually, will too often strip away that passion. Daily, weekly, month, there are long lists of never ending action items. There’s internal management often there is management of clients as well.
Management of stress levels is key! Because, the minute you stress, you lose your ability to think critically.
Here are 5 five tips to stay in on task and swim through the chaos like an Olympian.
1. Learn to properly prioritize instead of multitasking. Have a strategy. Figure out what your real priorities are through a “process of clarification and communication.” Make sure you make time regularly to think about your daily action items. What is absolutely the most important thing on that list based on the evolution of the day, week and month? Your strategy should enable you to be a “mono-focuser.” We actually get less done multitasking than we do when we are in a heavy duty, blinders on, full fledged focus-on-one-task, all-systems-go mode. According to Sharon Melnick, a business psychologist and author of Success Under Stress, we actually aren’t able to truly focus on more than one task at once so, we “lose efficiency and focus each time we have to switch between topics and projects.” This could change your multitasking mind: studies show that it can actually take you 30 percent longer to complete a task while multitasking and worse, leave you making more than twice the number of mistakes.
2. Create your own accountability: Accountability is the key to a successful small business. The hard part, according to Melnick, is “being able to keep up the intensity even though there’s no external accountability.” As a business owner, you need to be accountable to yourself as well as your marketing plan and action item list (your daily strategy). If you don’t have time to get everything done, make sure to find someone who can help you and make sure they can be held accountable.
3. Identify time wasters. Sustainability. Can you sustain your business goals if you are always wasting time? Are you necessarily wasting time if you take a break? Is surfing the web a time waster if it’s research tool to brainstorm new ideas to enhance your business? In order to sustain ourselves — to be productive, that is — we need productive breaks. If you are taking a break, tell yourself you are taking a break and give yourself a realistic time for that needed break, then get back to work.
4. Don’t always be available. Dedication to your business does not mean that you are always available; it means that you are always productive. Allowing yourself to be “off the grid,” as I pointed out in tip #3, is important to sustainability, your personal sustainability as well as your company’s. Not only do you need to create synergy within your business – making sure that all the pieces of your business work together cohesively – you need to make sure that you create synergy with your internal business world and your outside world. That means not always being available. Do not jump every time the phone rings or every time a client or co-worker needs you. According to Melnick on average business people (including office workers) are usually interrupted seven times per hour, which amounts to approximately 56 times every day, wasting an astonishing 2.1 hours per day. Here are three ways to handle interruptions: allow, cut it off or triage.
• Allow: Give the issue your full attention; resolve it immediately so it doesn’t cause further interruptions.
• Cut it off: Put on your proverbial blinders by turning off your email notifications and keeping your phone on silent.
• Triage: “Allow a brief interaction between you and the interrupter solely to determine how to deal with the interruption,” says Melnick.
You need to celebrate your small business with a strategy, accountability, synergy, sustainability and, of course, by blasting your message through social media, and that is, e-commerce.
“sasse” matters …
