20 Jan Do the Right Thing
It’s so easy to fall into the trap of being busy. But are you busy doing the right things?
Being in business takes a lot of commitment. As an entrepreneur, business owner or a practitioner, we can spend a lot of time doing things that don’t earn us any/much money. If you want to get clients, you need to take action that gets you clients.
As someone once said, “The enemy of great business is great busy-ness.”
Take the right action. I have had so many clients, even in the past week, that have been working incredibly hard in their businesses. But they weren’t making the progress they wanted to make. When we delved deeper we learned that they weren’t working on the right things.
They weren’t working on tasks that produced money, i.e. generating client calls, inviting people to work with them, sharing great content with a call to action etc. You need to be doing work that produces money.
‘Action Producing Success’ was a mantra I was given when I went about setting up my coaching and mentoring business. It has kept me on the straight and narrow, with much heartache in between. It’s served me well.
Drop the procrastination. Many of us procrastinate; a regular topic of conversation I have with my own coach. Tasks like updating the words on our website, creating yet another new funnel, changing our mind about our pricing, writing, rewriting and then rewriting blog posts until they are ‘perfect.’
On the surface we look busy, incredibly busy. But when you delve deeper, we’re not busy doing the right things. I fall into this trap over and over again. It’s just that now, I notice it much quicker than I would have done in the past. And over the past few years, I’ve taught myself how to focus. I set myself much smaller goals to achieve my end goals, and whatever I work on, I try to work with 100% focus – mostly!
I have clear strategic goals, yearly, 5-yearly and 10-yearly goals, horizon planning dreams and aspirations that concentrate on my family’s welfare, development and aspirations; and then my business. I used to have daily lists that then turned into longer daily lists. I have done away with these and with the help of my Executive Assistant, I work towards completing 3-strategic actions per day.
Do an honest check-in to find out if you are doing actions that will produce money- ‘Action Producing Success’. Make all your actions count!
Set yourself Realistic and Measurable targets! Then try to remove, acknowledge or at least better manage distractions. I personally love to use the Pomodoro method where you use a timer and work in 25 minute blocks. It helps with timekeeping, procrastination and not overall wellbeing and most importantly it keeps me focused.
In addition, every 2 hours, I take 10-15 minutes to indulge in something completely different; music, walk, personal messages or looking up stuff re my beloved Arsenal.
It is important to have timeouts during your day. Seen as one of the best and natural ways to supercharge you, give you time to relax or reflect which in turn helps you to focus to supercharge the success of your business.
Success is what you want it to be and not necessarily what you are told it should be.Moving forward wholeheartedly has been my measure of true success.
What does success look like to you?
What have you done or do to achieve success?
What are you going to do today?
“Do the right thing…”