Is your business running you?

When I was working in the corporate world, with someone else calling the shots, one of the biggest attractions of working for myself was that concept of “freedom”!  The freedom to work when I wanted to, to take time off during the daylight hours, actually see my kids during the week and generally take back control of my life.

But what happened when I started out in business for myself?  Just like many others – I ended up working far longer hours than I ever did when I had a boss!  Now that’s not all bad – I was working on something that I was passionate about, and I was doing it for me and my family – no one else was getting a cut of my efforts.  But still – when I started working from home, I was expecting to see more of the house than just my office!

The key to getting more done from each and every day is, of course, simply organisation.  If you go into any day without a plan, then you can be sure that there will be people at every turn – sending emails, making calls – all of whom will happily organise your time for you.  Only problem is – they’ll organise you right out of business!  If you want to achieve your goals in your business then there are a couple of steps that you absolutely have to take:

1. Get clear on what it is that you are trying to achieve!  If you just want to replace your coporate salary, that might not be too hard.  But if you want to make $100,000 or even $1,000,000 per month – you are going to need a bigger plan.  If you have no goal at all – just stop now, is my advice…
2. Work out when you want to achieve that income goal – and don’t be too conservative on this one.  It’s often far easier, and certainly more exciting, to move quickly in business than to move slowly.
3. Define some key milestones on that route – hitting $1,000,000 per month might seem a long way off, but if you can define some clear and logical milestones along the way, then the journey will be much smoother.
4. Now break that down into what you need to do each month, each week and each day.  That breakdown will be in terms of sales made, ads placed, blog entries made – anything that is a part of your business.  But at this point – you need numbers!  Exactly how many sales will you make?  How many words will you tweet?

Now here’s the last and best step.  Now you have your daily benchmarks in front of you – set yourself up with a daily chart.  This can be a spreadsheet on your computer, a sheet of paper or a big whiteboard – though I recommend something big and obvious in your office or workspace – something you can really get focused on for the day.  List out exactly what you will do each day and leave a space for filling in the results as you achieve them.

And here’s the exciting part – it’s your business, so there’s no way you’ll leave that office until your board is complete.  But on the other hand – it’s your business, so if you get your board completed by lunchtime – you can spend the afternoon on the golf course without asking permission and without wondering whether or not you did enough today.  Now THAT’S why I love working from home!!