Streamlining Your Business

Streamlining Your Business by: L. Gettzo

If we can apply one of life’s major lessons into our business, it’s the fact that tightening our belts is as much an act of survival as it is an optimizing ritual. By recognizing and eliminating wasteful habits, we heighten our focus, improve our spending structure (of time and money) and steer toward a newer and better business direction. It is no secret that our personal disciplines greatly affect the way our business performs. So if the ‘reduction of oxygen supply from a tighter belt’ compels us to let go of counter-productive behaviors or wasteful spending, then streamlining helps us reinvent ourselves from a firmer set of disciplines.

First, ask yourself these basic questions:

• CAN I AFFORD TO KEEP MY BUSINESS (OR PRACTICE) GOING?
• WHERE DO I STAND WITH MY MISSION STATEMENT?
• WHAT CAN I CHANGE TO MAKE MY BUSINESS PERFORM BETTER?

Call it “spring cleaning”, but preparing for this year’s busy season means “tuning up the engine for higher performance”. By this, get ready to make some drastic adjustments in YOU and YOUR WORK HABITS to attract better results.

• Prioritize where to target your budget
• Review your expenses: eliminate what gets you no return
• Advance yourself with new skills & new technology
• Explore new professional talent
• Enhance your service set to offer more to your clients
• Audit your employees’ overall performance
• Dump bad clients (nickel & dimers, time eaters, welchers, screamers and the source of bad work CHI)
• Review and adjust your pricing structure
• Update your marketing material
• Make better alliances and network partnerships
• Attend better events that attract YOUR type of clients
• Surround yourself with positive, successful professionals
• Improve your networking and sales strategies
• Make realistic to-do lists
• Be aware of time MISmanagement habits (like oversleeping, over-checking your emails, staying on the phone too long, taking too many breaks and over-tweeting)
• Audit your database: eliminate those that get you no return
• Study your industry’s potential: seek positions that show proven growth
• Account for safety measures (ie. savings, plan B)

As this list is assembled by the many business professionals who generously submit to our “words that work” page, we welcome all comments and additions for part 2 of this article.