Running a business – if you are doing it properly – can be very overwhelming, as there is so much to do to make sure you get it right, and there seems so little time in which to do it. This is why you need professional advisors to help you and take advice from, take notes, compare and spend the first few weeks or months to make sure you get it right. This is not something you should just do when you are starting a business but something you should do regularly along the way. You need to do one task at a time, like eating an elephant – one bite at a time.
There are various templates you can use or you can design your own on a sheet of A4 and you will need 4 headings – 1. Urgent and important (Do it now), 2. Not urgent but important (schedule it), 3. Urgent but not important (Delegate it), 4. Not Urgent and Not important (don’t do it). This will help you do the really important stuff first, and you can move tasks from one category to another. If you don’t have a template like this, everything will seem urgent and important, or you wont do anything through procrastination.
I remember when I set up “LIONHEART MANAGEMENT”, I had an idea of a design for a business card and I made myself an actual sized card with the text and images I thought I wanted on the card and carried this around with me for weeks and looked at it regularly. There was one part I was not sure of and I wanted to make sure I got it right before I spent money on printing the cards.
Because there are so many things we need to do when we are starting a business or review once we have started a business, we need help. Don’t be frightened to ask for help, and don’t try and do everything yourself. Asking for help is a strength in business and not a weakness. If you don’t have an extensive contact base, please ask someone who has. Ask me. I have been networking for over 30 years and pride myself on having a number of trusted reliable contacts from most business sectors and if I don’t know someone, I know that someone in my inner circle who will.
Please don’t think you can start or run a business for FREE. You are going to need to spend some money with business advice, help and ongoing support and again categorise these into the same template as detailed above. One book that every business owners or prospective business owner should read and read regularly is “the E myth revisited” by Michael Gerber. Speak to anyone who has read this book and see how much they value it.
Running a business should be fun – or why do it? Yes it will be challenging and will test you, but by structuring your business correctly and by having “experts” you can call on from time to time will ensure you are on the right road and greatly increase your chances of success. You will not succeed at everything and you will certainly make mistakes and we learn more from the mistakes we make than the successes we have – providing we don’t make the same mistakes again and again.
If you are running a business and you have never been networking, can I strongly suggest you look into it. This is what helped me through the last 33 years of business ownership and enabled me to take a business from concept through to sale. If you need any help on the networking front, please let me know. I can help you.
If you want help or support, if you want contacts, if you want no nonsense advice from someone who has been where you are, then please contact me. I will happily give you a FREE one hour zoom meeting to help you.
This article was first published on LinkedIn by Richard Knight on 16/08/2020