19 Simple Rules to Manage Your Business More Effectively
1. Know your business and its direction. You can be the best CEO in the world, but if you don’t have a bigger game plan in mind, your company won’t make it very far.
2. Find your one thing. You can’t do everything perfectly. Find one thing your company is really good at, and build upon it.
3. Know your market. Unless you run a bakery in a small village, you need to research your market. Be aware of your competitors, and find people who want your product/service, and understand their needs in order to fill this demand.
4. Keep your clients happy. Design your product around your clients, not around yourself. Offer value, and reward clients for being loyal.
5. Keep your employees happy, too. Your staff members are your biggest asset. They can make or break your business. Offer benefits, be fair, and make them happy to be working for/with you.
6. Hire and work with people who have skills you lack. This is probably the most crucial point. Let go of your pride for the success of your company. Hire people who can fill the holes, and benefit from their skills.
7. (Try to) be organized. Being organized makes your life easier, that’s a promise! Keep your documents in order, maintain a sales pipeline, and introduce daily meetings with your team.
8. Manage your time. Get used to using a calendar to manage your time. Dedicate portions of your day to specific tasks, including finance, sales, business development, etc.
9. Never give yourself more than two main tasks per day. This is a wise statement of Tim Ferris. Don’t try to rush through your to-do list. Rather, set yourself the goal to do two main things a day, and actually complete them.
11. Automate and delegate time-wasters. Whether you have a virtual assistant or work with others, keep focused on the important things. Automate and delegate where possible!
12. But, always have time to learn. Be it reading an article online or a conducting a client survey – don’t dismiss the importance of being up-to-date. Use a portion of your day to catch up with the world’s news, find a self-study course, and keep moving!
13. Trust analytics, surveys and polls (from trustworthy sources). The market changes constantly, and we don’t know when. Keep an eye on developments in order to maintain your market share and be able to give your clients what they are asking for.
14. Network. Tell everyone about your company. Make as many contacts as possible. You never know who’s going to come back to you one day.
15. Know your money. This concerns both personal and business. Being aware of your money situation makes you work better (and sleep better, too!)
16. Have a plan B, but focus on plan A. Knowing what to do if something goes wrong is important, but thinking about it too much takes you off track. You need to focus on your goals!
17. Eliminate the words “always” and “never” from your vocabulary. It makes you sound more credible and less promotional and helps you find alternative ways to say things. No kidding. Try it.
18. Forget about the things you can’t control, and focus on those you can. Sitting around and worrying about the economy is not going to make your business do well. Instead, survey your market, and change your product or your advertising strategy.
19. The only constant is change. Stay true to your business core, but don’t be afraid of changing things about it. Change = evolution. Be open to changes — to your logo, to your office location, to your marketing message. Just don’t forget why you are doing all this. The answer should be for the purpose of your company.
by Melanie Haselmayr
1) Observe yourself
Forget justifying why you did (or didn't do) this or that; just watch yourself. The adage "don't listen to what people say, but watch what they do" to see what they're really like can be applied to yourself equally well. Imagine you're someone else whose behaviour you're watching. Ask yourself: "What did I do there?" and "What was driving it?" Was it fear, spite, the need to be in control (even if that control is related to making things fail), the need for excitement through conflict, or the desire for attention through sympathy?One client who did this realized that he had been unconsciously reluctant to earn more than his (bullying) father had done when he was alive: "As if I couldn't betray him by being better off than he had been." This realization helped him overcome this limiting belief once he had observed it operating within himself. He decided to actually ignore it until the old compulsion not to succeed became a faint whisper, then died away all together.
What do you sabotage and how? Get to 'know the machine'. Seeing your own behaviour more clearly has nothing to do with over-applied self-blame, but rather being more objective.
2) Remember that success isn't black or white
Strongly imagine (and get into the habit of strongly imagining) what true success will be like, because it may be different from what you'd been unconsciously assuming. Successful relationships, for example, don't work well all of the time; earning good money doesn't solve all problems. Success isn't black or white; it's all relative. So remember that becoming successful (in whatever way) won't feel so strange when it happens, because it is a natural part of being human - but the idea of success may feel strange.3) Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater
People often self-sabotage because of perfectionism - if it isn't perfect, then what's the point? You may have heard about recent research (1) which showed that people on strict diets, trying to lose weight, will more likely overeat if they feel they have veered off their diet even slightly: "What the hell, I've blown it now. I might as well completely binge!" People not on diets don't do this so much. So if you have a little setback or mini-failure, consciously stop yourself from throwing it all away and seeing the 'whole thing as just ruined' and then really ruining it.4) Think beyond yourself
Most of us don't like to consider ourselves as selfish, but it is also true to say (not from a judgemental perspective; more of an observational one) that self-sabotage ruins stuff for others and is therefore a selfish behaviour. People so often deny they are behaving selfishly because they don't intend to be selfish. But behaviour is behaviour.So the lover who feels compelled to end a great relationship hurts another, the co-worker who sabotages a project scuppers it for everyone else, the father who sabotages financial opportunities spoils the chance of a better standard of living for his family, and so on. Once we get into the habit of seeing the needs of the wider group rather than just our own emotional impulses, it actually becomes harder to sabotage situations.
5) Explore life
All of life is an exploration. Imagine if Cinderella had decided she really couldn't go to the ball, even when she had the opportunity; or if the ugly duckling had concluded it wasn't 'good enough' to fly high with the swans. Being open to life means seeing where certain experiences will take you and accepting openly the good as well as the bad. Of course, if something really isn't working or it genuinely isn't for you, that's fine; but if it's really a reluctance to explore life and to experience the good and healthy, then it is an area that needs some self-work.The mouse in our story failed to observe the bigger picture when he felt compelled to talk, but you're not a mouse (I'm presuming) - so you shouldn't live like one.
Article written by Mark Tyrrell.
- See more at: http://www.uncommonhelp.me/articles/stop-self-sabotage-behaviour/#sthash.XZKcyDH1.dpuf1) Observe yourself
Forget justifying why you did (or didn't do) this or that; just watch yourself. The adage "don't listen to what people say, but watch what they do" to see what they're really like can be applied to yourself equally well. Imagine you're someone else whose behaviour you're watching. Ask yourself: "What did I do there?" and "What was driving it?" Was it fear, spite, the need to be in control (even if that control is related to making things fail), the need for excitement through conflict, or the desire for attention through sympathy?One client who did this realized that he had been unconsciously reluctant to earn more than his (bullying) father had done when he was alive: "As if I couldn't betray him by being better off than he had been." This realization helped him overcome this limiting belief once he had observed it operating within himself. He decided to actually ignore it until the old compulsion not to succeed became a faint whisper, then died away all together.
What do you sabotage and how? Get to 'know the machine'. Seeing your own behaviour more clearly has nothing to do with over-applied self-blame, but rather being more objective.
2) Remember that success isn't black or white
Strongly imagine (and get into the habit of strongly imagining) what true success will be like, because it may be different from what you'd been unconsciously assuming. Successful relationships, for example, don't work well all of the time; earning good money doesn't solve all problems. Success isn't black or white; it's all relative. So remember that becoming successful (in whatever way) won't feel so strange when it happens, because it is a natural part of being human - but the idea of success may feel strange.3) Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater
People often self-sabotage because of perfectionism - if it isn't perfect, then what's the point? You may have heard about recent research (1) which showed that people on strict diets, trying to lose weight, will more likely overeat if they feel they have veered off their diet even slightly: "What the hell, I've blown it now. I might as well completely binge!" People not on diets don't do this so much. So if you have a little setback or mini-failure, consciously stop yourself from throwing it all away and seeing the 'whole thing as just ruined' and then really ruining it.4) Think beyond yourself
Most of us don't like to consider ourselves as selfish, but it is also true to say (not from a judgemental perspective; more of an observational one) that self-sabotage ruins stuff for others and is therefore a selfish behaviour. People so often deny they are behaving selfishly because they don't intend to be selfish. But behaviour is behaviour.So the lover who feels compelled to end a great relationship hurts another, the co-worker who sabotages a project scuppers it for everyone else, the father who sabotages financial opportunities spoils the chance of a better standard of living for his family, and so on. Once we get into the habit of seeing the needs of the wider group rather than just our own emotional impulses, it actually becomes harder to sabotage situations.
5) Explore life
All of life is an exploration. Imagine if Cinderella had decided she really couldn't go to the ball, even when she had the opportunity; or if the ugly duckling had concluded it wasn't 'good enough' to fly high with the swans. Being open to life means seeing where certain experiences will take you and accepting openly the good as well as the bad. Of course, if something really isn't working or it genuinely isn't for you, that's fine; but if it's really a reluctance to explore life and to experience the good and healthy, then it is an area that needs some self-work.The mouse in our story failed to observe the bigger picture when he felt compelled to talk, but you're not a mouse (I'm presuming) - so you shouldn't live like one.
Article written by Mark Tyrrell.
- See more at: http://www.uncommonhelp.me/articles/stop-self-sabotage-behaviour/#sthash.XZKcyDH1.dpuf
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