What’s Stopping You From Succeeding?
When you own a business, you’re both the boss and the employee. Some people love this kind of setup and achieve far more than they ever would in a traditional workplace. For others, it can spell disaster. It’s important to analyze yourself regularly to ensure you’re keeping on track.
Are you focusing on your business? This one thing can make a huge difference to your success. When you’re working at home, it’s pretty easy to lose focus with all the other things calling for your attention. But it’s okay to let the laundry sit for a few hours while you’re working. The laundry isn’t going to pay any bills, but your business sure can.
It’s not only important to focus on your business, it’s also important to focus in your business. It’s easy to get sidetracked from one task by some new idea or offer. Spreading yourself out over too many projects means none of them are going to get done effectively. It’s all about focus.
Are you being productive? At the end of the day, do you ever feel like you worked all day but accomplished nothing? Take a look at the tasks you are working on, and whether they are actually important to your success. If you find yourself getting sidetracked by surfing the web, chatting in forums, or reading blogs, try to schedule time for those activities after your “real work” is done.
On the other hand, if you feel your time is being sucked away by answering email, updating your website, or collecting research for an upcoming information product you are working on, try outsourcing those tasks to a virtual assistant. This will help you free up some time to work on business tasks that need more attention.
Are you reaching the goals you’ve set for yourself? If you’re constantly missing deadlines and not reaching goals, you might want to look at them and see if they’re really realistic. Create an action plan for yourself and follow it.
Would I hire myself? This is a tough question to ask yourself, but it is very important. It may sound silly, but perhaps you could write out a job description and give yourself an interview. Are you the type of employee you would want to hire?
If you find that you wouldn’t actually hire yourself, take a look at the areas that need improvement. This can be uncomfortable, but once you identify your weaknesses you can get to work on improving them, or outsourcing those tasks to someone who can do them better than you.
