5 Keys To Success For Women Business Owners
Don't Put Yourself Last
Time Blocking
Time blocking is a very simple strategy for making sure the things that are important to you get the time that they need.
If you're not familiar with the concept of time blocking, then I highly recommend the book The One Thing.
Writing out a task list and time blocking are not the same thing.
With a task list, you can write down five tasks for today and those tasks might actually require a total of 10 hours to fully complete as closed items.
And, oh yeah, these are just tasks. You still have you whole normal routine for the day in addition to these tasks.
So you never really had a chance of completing those tasks.
Task lists are how you set yourself up for failure by putting yourself perpetually behind because you can never catch up. Stuff just keeps rolling over to the next day.
With time blocking, you assign a time value to each task and plan your day accordingly. The Pomodoro technique is useful for this.
At the end of each day, you will have actually made progress towards your goal, as opposed to writing up a long-ass task list every day that will never get completed.
"Finding" time to do things is a myth. You have to block out the time to do the things that are important to you, or those things are not going to get done. It's really that simple.
Modeling
Highly successful people do not use task lists. They use time blocking.
A recurring theme in the world of performance optimization is that if someone is getting results that you're not getting, it's because they're doing something that you're not doing.
There is no magic or secret sauce...just systems and processes.
If you want better results for yourself, you have to model the system that someone is using who is producing the results that you want. It's as simple as that.
Doing the same things over and over that are not working is never going to work.
Business Development Day
Your business development day is an extension of time blocking.
If you run a full-time business, having a business development day is imperative for your success because there are so many tasks that must be done in order for your business to succeed.
The tasks that I'm talking about pertain to working on your business and not in your business.
Working in your business means you're doing day-to-day operational tasks that will keep you where you are. It means you have a job that you will always be stuck in because you're not doing the things that are necessary to grow your business.
Working on your business means you're doing the strategic planning activities that are necessary to grow a wealth-building business that generates revenue without you having to trade your time for money.
For more information on how to do this, I recommend you read The E-Myth.
If you've read The E-Myth and you're ready to work on building your business systems and processes, my Business In A Box may be exactly what you're looking for.
Don't Try To Do It All By Yourself
Get An Accountability Partner
The American Society of Training and Development found that "people are 65 percent more likely to meet a goal after committing to another person.
Their chances of success increase to 95 percent when they build in ongoing meetings with their partners to check in on their progress."
Embrace Automation
Automation is how things get done consistently and to a high standard without you having to put time and energy into doing the work each time.
If you want something done right, build an automated system that will do it right every single time.
Having an automated system that can answer FAQs and onboard new customers without your intervention and deliver a consistent experience to everyone is absolutely critical if you want to build a high-revenue business that allows you to enjoy your life.
McDonald's does not reinvent the Big Mac every day.
You cannot serve your customers a different way each time if your goal is to generate high income with as little of your time as possible.
Systems and processes are what make a business profitable.
A lack of systems and processes is what makes a business unprofitable and ultimately fail.
Your logo, your slogan, your elevator pitch, your pretty website...none of those things will make your business successful if you do not have systems and processes in place that allow you to consistently attract quality customers and sell them your Big Mac on a daily basis.
And if you're tired of wasting time and energy doing free consultations where people just want to pick your brain and never hire you, your automated marketing system is how you fix that.
Identify Your Ideal Client
Who is the one person in the world who you offer a life-changing solution for?
That's your ideal client and that's who you build your business around. That person and that person only.
The only way you can get someone's attention in today's busy world is to present them with a solution that they feel will change their life in some significant way.
The only way you can develop such a solution AND be able to communicate about it effectively is to focus on ONE ideal client and build your business around that person.
You Must Learn Marketing
Stacking credentials on top of credentials is not going to make your business successful.
So you don't need to get that "one more thing" in order to take your business where you want it to go.
What you will benefit from, however, is getting better at marketing.
And that means you're going to have to show your face.
[RELATED: The Top 3 Marketing Mistakes Small Business Owners Make]
If you run a service-based business, nobody is going to hire you to help them transform their lives if they've never seen your face.
Would you hand your money over to a faceless company name?...especially a lot of money for a high-ticket coaching program?
If you want the best clients and the big dollars that come with them, you're going to have to show your face, early and often, just like a politician.
Actually, that's a good way to think about it.
Would you vote to elect somebody whose face you'd never seen?
Is that what you're asking your ideal client to do?
[RELATED: 3 Tips for Making Money As A Public Speaker]
Change Who You're Hanging Around
Following up on my earlier point about not trying to do everything by yourself, you're going to have to surround yourself with people who you can get things done with,.
You have to change who you're hanging around if you want to go somewhere different.
The painful truth is that, in many instances, you're going to have to cut some people loose and replace them with better people.
Choose Your Priority Carefully
If maintaining old relationships is more important than achieving your dreams, then you don't have to change anything.
But if achieving your goals in the precious little time you have on this earth is important to you, you're going to have to stop spending time with people who will never help you get there and start spending time with people who will.
You have to hang around people who are trying to go places.
The only people who will respect your time and energy limitations are people who are trying to accomplish big things themselves. These people will support you and encourage you and motivate you. They will not drain you.
And they won't allow you to drain them. This is how hanging around the right people causes everybody in the group to step their game up.
Average People Make You Average
There's an old saying: If you hang with 9 broke friends, you're bound to be the 10th one.
The same applies to hanging around people motivated to succeed.
The easiest way to become successful is by hanging around successful people because you will have to step your game up in order to remain in that circle.
You will learn what they know. You will read what they read. You will do what they do. And you will get the results that they get.
Another old saying is "more than anything else, the two things that will determine where you are in 5 years are what you read and who you hang around."
What are you reading?
Who are you hanging around?
And what are they reading?
Make the changes that you need to make to position yourself for success because your life is literally at stake.
You only get one life and you only get a short time to do what you're going to do with it.
The 5 keys to success that you've learned here are how you can take control and create whatever kind of life you have in mind for yourself.
It's not at all about being selfish. It's about taking care of yourself because you can't take care of anybody else if you run yourself into the ground.
All those people who count on you for this, that, and the other all day, every day...what happens to them if you work yourself to death?
And self-medicating with wine is not the answer. Yeah, I know that's a thing, too, and it's not a healthy thing at all.
Putting yourself and your needs first and surrounding yourself with better people is how you create a better life for yourself.
You Can Start Right Now
If what you're learned in this article sounds good to you, I invite you to join the Grown Folks' Business community.
It's a peer support community for small business owners where you can find the right kind of people to help you achieve what you're trying to achieve with your business.
You can learn more about the Grown Folks' Business community at the bottom of this article.
Your Reading List
Here are the three books I mentioned above:
These are not books you read once and go on to the next thing. These are books that you have to read, implement, re-read, implement some more, re-read, and implement some more until you're achieving the results that the methodologies these books teach will deliver.
Think about it like learning how to drive. You don't need ten different instructors for you to learn how to drive. You find a good instructor and you do what they teach you until you've learned how to drive.
You also don't need to read dozens of books to learn how to build your business.
You find a book that teaches you what you need to know and you keep implementing what you learned in that book until you've mastered it.
Reading more books and not implementing what you're learning won't get you anywhere.
