Is that how you manage your business? Are you quite a naturally laid back kind of a person who likes to see how things will unfold, or, are you more of an action-orientated go-getter? My personal view is that when it comes to having a successful business, that continually grows, you need to drop the “what will be, will be” attitude as it won’t get you where you want to be.
This doesn’t mean you have to totally change your personality if you are more naturally laid back, but it does mean that you need to take ownership for the success of your business, as it’s rare the “dove from above” will swoop down and bestow new business upon you unless you have taken action to encourage that to happen.
Now you have your own business there isn’t anyone above you in the pecking order to drive your behaviour to get the important things done. If you choose to spend the day procrastinating and being busy doing small tasks rather than knuckling down and pushing ahead with the meaty, more strategic ones, there is no one there to help refocus you.
When you are employed there are times when it’s totally irrelevant whether something you need to do will push you out of your comfort zone because it’s part of your job so you have to do it, but when it’s your business you can easily let yourself off the hook, with numerous reasons why you don’t need to do it today (did I say “reasons”? I meant excuses 🙂 )
How many times have you put off making phone calls because the recipient probably wouldn’t have the time to talk to you because it’s a Friday afternoon? How many times have you delayed working on key pieces of work for your business because you needed to respond to a client email (and then managed to drag that out so there wasn’t time left to get anything else done!).
When all is said and done the success of your business is in your hands. Do you know how to drive your behaviour to push through your procrastination, or to push yourself out of your comfort zone? Here’s a really quick exercise to help you push your business forward.
Take a sheet of paper. At the top write your business goal for 2013. Draw a line down the page dividing it in half from top to bottom. On the left hand side write down a list of the tasks you don’t like doing (go on do it now, it’ll only take 3 mins!). On the right, opposite each of the tasks you don’t like doing, write the positive impact that doing that task could have that would help you achieve the goal you have written on the top of the page. Now every time to feel yourself trying to dodge a task look at this list and remind yourself the positive impact that doing it could have on achieving your goal.
The success of your business is reliant on the actions you take. What actions are you going to take today?