Archive for December, 2010

It’s almost 2011, but you don’t need to wait until the New Year to review how you and your business have performed.

• Have you achieved your goals?
• Has your profit line increased?
• Are you and your team ready to take on the challenges of 2011?
• Are you clear what those challenges are?

It’s time to look forward and make sure you are on track for 2011.

That starts with a reality check before you can set realistic goals to work towards in  2011. You need to review your business vision and direction to make sure you have a clear strategy, one upon which both you and those around you are crystal clear.

What you can do now!

Have a really good think about what you got from your business this year; what goals did you aim to achieve?  Was it what you were looking for?

• If so, make sure you have a written plan in place to keep it on track and to continue to improve performance.
• If you didn’t achieve your goals, something has to change – for something to change, you have do to do something differently.
• If you didn’t set goals against which to measure your performance, how do you know how successful your activities were?

Steer your business in the right direction

Some of you joined me on my teleseminar that gave some insights into how you can get that clarity, direction and focus. Whatever the future holds, you need to take the helm and steer your business in the direction you want it to go.

For those who were unable to listen in, here is another opportunity to do so, to get ahead of the game and kick start your business for 2011.  Sign up for the FREE DOWNLOAD on this page and get ready to Step Up Your Business.

It’s hard work running and growing a small business, and I for one don’t always get that work life balance right. However, I do make sure that I plan my work and make time to go away with family and friends.

Last weekend, thankfully before the snow, I returned from a fabulous break with good friends. We travelled by Euro star and our hotel was just across the road. Comfortable and only a ten minute walk from the town centre. A great start for having as much time as possible for doing what we wanted to do – eat, drink, shop, enjoy the culture, and chatting of course!

As is the norm, there was lots of talk and catching up about what we were up to, what we had done and what we had meant to do -  but hadn’t. A friend noticed that I used the language ‘I haven’t made time for’…. rather than ‘I don’t have time to’.

Very often we make the excuse that we just don’t have the time to do things – no matter how important we think they are – be it time with family, friends, getting and keeping fit or working towards our business vision/goals.

We have a choice about how we use our time and we need to take control over how we spend it. We too easily say money doesn’t grow on trees – neither does time, once spent its gone! As small business owners, we need to choose what time we want to spend IN, ON and AWAY from our business.

There is no ‘3 tips’ in this blog post, a new year is almost upon us and I just want to get us all thinking more consciously about how we use our time, and a good way to start to do this is by contemplating what is important to us (see blog Are you neglecting your values.) Once we figure this out, it helps us MAKE TIME to ensure we are spending time where we choose to.

A couple of my core values are fun and friendship, which is why I made time to go away to enjoy just that!   But you may need to plan better than we did on our weekend. We saved our euros for shopping on Sunday – when ALL the shops were closed!