Working on your business instead of in it

For most people, more time working from home has meant less time commuting, and potentially more time to spend on, rather than in your business. It’s easy as a business owner, or someone with a busy role in an organization, to get bogged down with the day-to-day challenges of running a business. Try regularly blocking your calendar for one morning or evening a week to work on the business. Get on top of that to-do list that you never have time for. Assess what’s not working well and do something about it. Do you have a product or service that’s not profitable? Can you make it profitable by increasing pricing, or do they need to be enhanced or cut all together? Establish why it’s not working and what you’re going to do to solve it. You may need to speak to your customers for their feedback and check out your competition, maybe your product and price isn’t as good as what your competitor is offering. Are there growth opportunities you’re not taking advantage of? Do you connect with your current customers on a regular basis with new offerings or upsell opportunities? Is there a market segment that you’re not tapping into? Identify these opportunities and set yourself a goal with the tasks required to reach that goal. Having a list with smaller tasks will seem less overwhelming. Once you have your list, allocate some tasks to your staff. Are your current systems working efficiently or could they do with a fresh take? Sometimes it’s hard to see what’s not working well, or how things could be done better when it’s always been done that way. Technology is evolving all the time, and software is easier-to-use and more affordable. Are you using your existing software to take advantage of all the features it offers? It may require you sitting down to see what you’re not using that would streamline some processes. If you’re not a user, sit with the users in your business, go through the features to get feedback on how they think things could improve. If your staff have been with you for a while you may need a fresh set of eyes from an external specialist to identify what could be done better. Are there systems, procedures and communications that could be digitalised further? This could free up time for staff to work on growth initiatives. Contact Acudio for Xero training to help you steam-line your business and business advice.