Habits of small business owners.
As small business owners, we wear a lot of hats. We carry all of the information, nurture the relationships, make so many decisions, and play so many roles just to keep things moving forward. Here is how to run your business like a BOSS.
Make time away from the business
Trust me, in this current season, I feel like I am eating and breathing my business, but making time for fun, family and friends, time to recharge, is so important. Burnout is real and we need to cultivate habits to keep it at bay. Look at your schedule each week and make sure that it includes at least a little bit of the activities that help you relax, connect or reenergize.
Build the right team
Whether you are looking at employees or contractors, bringing in the right team can help you in ways that are a million times more valuable than the cost you incur. Track your time for all business activities and then figure out which pieces are the worst use of your time or your least favorite and find a rockstar in that area to hand it off to. This could be marketing, admin, bookkeeping, sales, manufacturing. Whatever it is, find the best person for the job and let them help you be more efficient.
Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate
Its easy to get busy and let things click onto auto pilot, but a good business owner is constantly evaluating data, processes, people and parts of their supply chain. Depending on what phase your business is in, this may need to happen quarterly, monthly or even weekly. This means gathering the right data and meeting with the right people to make sure your business is operating at as high a level as possible.
Take the calculated risk
It can be scary to go a new direction or even to pivot completely. A huge percentage of small businesses were forced to do that when COVID hit and for many, it paid off in ways that we couldn't have imagined when shut-down first hit. Now what if we didn't wait for the next global disaster to look for opportunities, crunch the numbers and take a chance on a new direction in our business.
Have a vision beyond this moment or even this year
With the chaos and busyness it can be easy to put your head down and just grind through the tasks on your list. But in order to actually build something of substance, you have to look ahead, 2 years, 5 years 10 years even and have goals and metrics for how to get there. Using data that you've gathered can be a big help. And write that shit down. Put it on your wall. Refer back to it every 6 months to ensure you are moving forward.
Build a brand that is uniquely your own
I don't know if you know this, but bookkeepers aren't known for being colorful, creative, extroverts. But that's kind of who this team at Missoula Bookkeeper is. So when I started to build a web and social media presence last fall, I found a photographer who could capture the essence of who we are as people so we could stand out in a field of traditional financial services websites. I also work hard to make sure that everything we put out into the world had an authentic voice. And that has resonated with so many of you.
