Are you running your business or is it running you?
Just another day spent working on the business instead of running it like a CEO. Although the day started with hope and good intentions, by the end of the day it was clear that today was really no different than any other day at work. Most small business owners find themselves in this situation, stuck on a runaway train, unable to adapt to changing market conditions, unable to get off the train until the track runs out. It’s not a pretty picture, but does it have to stay that way? What have others discovered that has allowed them to free themselves and become masters of their own destiny?
working on your business
The key to breaking out of the rut and being able to run your business is that you must spend time working us your business instead of just in it’s. This is likely to be a big change from how you currently spend your time in your business. The difference between working in a company and working in it is enormous. Working in a business means that your time is consumed doing the routine. Working in a business means that you spend your time running the business like a CEO.
Change in thought, then in action
The change that must take place for you to go from working in your business as an employee to running it as a CEO is one that first takes place in your mind. You need to start thinking about your business differently. Start approaching your business from a strategic perspective: What can you do this week that will have the biggest long-term impact on your business? Focus your time on the things in your business that have the greatest long-term rewards.
Making time
One of the tools that I have used repeatedly to allow myself to achieve leverage and growth is a time log. This is what it looks like in action to me. I record everything I do throughout the day at work, including the start and end time of each project on a piece of paper. At the end of the day, I’m going to take a couple of minutes and figure out how much time I spent on each entry in my time log. I then group my entries by category and record the total time spent by category for that date in my weekly time log. I like to keep the daily log on a piece of paper so I can quickly capture everything that happens during the day and then save the weekly and monthly summaries on the computer for convenience. After doing this exercise for a month, I always get powerful ideas about how I can change the way I use my time to achieve more influence in my business and in my life. You can do this more often if you want, but usually doing it one month a year is enough to gain significant influence on how you spend your time in your business. If you’d like to follow a pattern, you can download the same template I’ve used from the MIMP Enterprise Development Tools page.
There is something very powerful about seeing exactly where your time is going. When you see exactly how your time is being spent, you’re in a position to make changes that are guaranteed to free up time in your schedule. This is what will allow you to start spending more time working on your business without putting in more hours. It’s about working smarter, not harder.