Starting a business is no easy task. Regardless of what anyone tells you or shows you, don’t believe the hype. Regardless of what you see on social media, don’t believe the hype.
See I knew better than to believe the hype but I did anyway. I tried to mimic and do what I saw others in my industry doing and it wasn’t working for me. I was so busy doing research that I wasn’t implementing. True paralysis by analysis. That saying doesn’t just refer to the monitoring your numbers, although I was doing that too. I was so focused on meeting numbers that I wasn’t focused on perfecting the process and the systems or serving my clients.
But somewhere during the late spring, I stepped in. I attended a conference and saw a lot of people I knew and saw that they were much further along in their business than I was; much happier and much more successful. Now remember – success is subjective. It depends on their goals and their business industry. But based on that definition, they all appeared to have achieved success.
But where was I?
I wasn’t nearly as happy on the inside and in fact I was struggling financially. Sure I had clients who were paying me and I was a profitable business – because it’s the only way I know to be. But I was cash flow negative and it was weighing me down. I was nearing the end of Q2 and far from reaching my financial goal of being a six figure business this year. I was giving clients recommendation that I knew were vital to their business, but I wasn’t following the advice myself. So some things had to change.
I took the lessons learned from that event and made a shift. I needed to up-level because everything depended on it. And that’s what I did. I updated my processes, policies and procedures , as well as my mindset. And the shift began.
Now here I am six months later. I have not only put in place new business processes and new softwares but I also added some legal protections processes as well – to protect not only my business but my clients too. And I have also reached my goal, that’s right we are officially a six figure business. Proof of concept complete. 🙂
How did I get here you ask? I applied my own business process improvement plan. I assessed my current situation and determined what was working and what was not. Which processes were efficient and which ones were time suckers and time wasters. Which procedures were getting me closer to my goal and which ones were taking me further away.
As was I identifying these successes and failure, I documented everything. The good, the bad and the ugly. Because I believe you cannot see what needs to be fixed if you have no clear idea of how you are doing it. As business owners, you believe you know the process, but without documenting it you have no idea how many times you tweek the process – intentionally or unintentionally.
Thirdly, I designed by desired goal. I painted the picture I wanted to see and the timeline to get to my desired goal. After that I created the process or step by step plan on how to get there.
After that the only thing left to do was implement. Because nothing changes if nothing changes right?
And that’s how I did it. Easy peesy. If you want more details around each of those steps, visit my blog on 5 Simple Steps to Improving Your Business Processes. Then you too will be well on your way to a thriving business!
What lessons have you learned about starting your business? Share the good, the bad and the ugly.
All rights reserved. © 2014
