Run Your Business; Don’t Let it Run You
One of the most important principles of being a business owner is to run your business; don’t let it run you. To run your business is to create a vision of what is possible – a vision that’s bigger than doing the day-to-day work associated with your skill or trade. To lead your business is to forge a path based on your strengths and to take inventory of your weaknesses so that you can fill in the gaps.
To run your business is to leverage the opportunities that present themselves and to find the resources that you need. To run your business is to become aware of the limiting beliefs that you hold and replace them with beliefs that empower you, motivate you, and propel you forward. To run your business is to own a business and have a balanced life, not have the business run you.
Letting your business run you means:
- You settle for what is, and ignore what can be.
- You spend your time doing the day-to-day tasks that you are familiar with and comfortable doing.
- You ARE the business – that without your time and energy, the business is nothing.
To determine if you are running your business or if it is running you, keep a daily activities list for one week. Every 15-30 minutes, momentarily stop whatever you are doing and make a note of what you did during that time period.
Keep your notes brief – you don’t need to write a novel and you don’t want to spend more time writing your notes than getting the work done. Do not judge the activities you are writing down, just write them down. You will analyze your activities with your coach when you are done collecting your notes for one week.
After one week of writing down your activities, take a good look at what you have written.
- How are you spending your time?
- Where is your focus going?
- What do your activities say about how you are leading your business?
Being a business owner means taking responsibility for the business you’ve created. It’s easy to be resentful of all the time it takes to run a business. Put one eye on the future, and decide where you want your business to be in one year, five years, ten years, and twenty years. Then put your other eye on what’s happening in the business right now. A business owner can simultaneously hold both the current reality and future possibilities.
You will be amazed to see the results of this exercise … You need to do it!!!
