You have set your goals, you have set up your ideal week, now its time to set things up in your business so that you have better control. There will be things that you do in your business that you want to do better, all business owners have that list. There will be things that you want to start doing but never get around to starting. Today we look at ways to achieve the things that we want to achieve.
Start with a list
The first thing you need to do is start with a list, write down everything that you want to improve in your business and everything that you want to do. Don’t worry about what it is and don’t judge your wants and needs, just write it down.
Some things maybe directly from your goal list, others will be things that you have always wanted to do but have never got around to. They will all be something to do with building a better business for you or being a more organised business owner.
Things may include:
- Send birthday cards to all clients
- 6 monthly staff reviews
- Post more on social media
- Track your time better
- Invoice more frequently
- Get better at paying bills on time
- Find a different supplier for a certain product
- And many many more…..
Batching
I love batching, it makes thing so much better and you feel so much more in control. Batching is where there is something that you do regularly, like my blog posts for example, and instead of doing them every week, you sit down and write a heap of posts all at once and schedule them to come out over the number of weeks that you have written for. Now I don’t do this for my blogs as I like my blogs to be topical for current situations but I do know of quite a few people who do do this.
I do batch quite a few things in my business, like the sayings posts that come out each Wednesday on social media, I sat down last Christmas break and did 52 sayings and loaded them all up to be posted over the next 52 weeks. I have allocated time to do this next week for the next 52 posts.
I go to a weekly business network meeting where you have to stand up and say a 60 second referral request (sales pitch). I struggle every week to find what to say, so yesterday I sat down with a calendar in front of me, highlighted every Tuesday (that’s what day it is on). Then in Evernote, created a note for each day, dated the note and wrote the opening paragraph of each 60 seconds.
I then went through the calendar and worked out significant events in the bookkeeping world and highlighted them, things like BAS time, End of Financial Year etc. For these peak times I wrote a relevant 60 seconds. Then with the rest of the weeks I wrote something general about bookkeeping.
I now have fifty-two 60 second referral requests written and I don’t have to wonder each week what I am going to talk about, I don’t have to sit down the night before or the morning of and write something, they are all written for me. And if by chance I want to change one because of significant changes in Tax Law or something then I can do so as they aren’t written in concrete.
I didn’t have to batch 52 weeks worth of stuff, I could have sat down and batched up the next 4 weeks worth of 60 seconds, or the next quarters worth, and then done it every 4 weeks or every quarter. But for me I know what my weeks are like and so doing 52 weeks worth when it is quiet is a lot better for me.
Repurpose your work
Repurposing is another good habit to get into. Repurposing means that you use something that you have done in a different situation from what it was originally done.
For example, my 60 seconds that I talk about above, I will also be using these for a post on social media each week to correspond with when I am presenting them at my meetings. This helps with the ‘post on social media more often’ goal. I now have fifty-two posts written and ready to be loaded to go out automatically.
Blogs can be repurposed; training videos can be repurposed. There are so many things that we do on a daily basis that we can repurpose. Have a look around your business with an open mind, what do you do regularly that could be used a different way and have a different affect?
Systemising
I love systemising things. Systems within your business can be really elaborate or they can be plain and simple. The reason you would systemise things is so that you can achieve things faster and also potentially get someone else to do them for you, but do them exactly the same way as you do.
Lets look at our goal to getting better at paying your bills more regularly. The easiest way to do this is to allocate time in our ideal week for a bill paying session. Once it is allocated you then create a system around it.
- Receive bill – either via mail, email, or in person
- Put bill in unpaid bills tray – this is kept in a prime position on your desk
- Every Friday load up bill for payment via online banking – with online banking you can set up things to be paid at a future date, so it doesn’t matter when the bill is due, you can load it up on the Friday and make sure that it is paid by the due date
- File bill in paid bills folder
It is as simple as that, nothing elaborate or fancy, just a 4-task bill payment system that will help you achieve your goal of getting better at paying your bills more regularly.
Discipline
This is a big one, because all the above steps wont happen if you don’t have the discipline to make them happen. It takes discipline write your list and discipline to sit down and batch your tasks. It takes discipline to look at what you do and see if you can repurpose it somewhere and it tasks real discipline to systemise something and implement it into your business.
But if you want to make changes to your business and you want to improve things, then you need to be disciplined to do so. It is all up to you.
I would love to hear from you about how you have done one or all of the above to make changes to your business. Keep me posted on either Facebook, Twitter or in the comments below.
