Your Profit is in Your Productivity

As a business owner, you wear many hats. If you try to do everything yourself, you will certainly fail. Becoming a successful business owner often means shifting the way you work.

Figuring it was part of her open door policy, one of my clients allowed her employees to interrupt her at any time causing her to work very long hours without achieving her priorities. When she did allow the interruption she was often distracted by reading her texts or answering a call. With each interruption, it took her twice as long to refocus on her task at hand leaving her to work more hours but accomplish less.

When she executed the Systematizing Step in my Entrepreneurial Edge System, she made several key changes that allowed her to focus her energy on the revenue-generating activities of her business. Here’s what she changed:

1. Reserved specific days of the week for clients. Don’t underestimate the power of consistency. If you’re changing your office hours each week, this is confusing for your clients. Identify a specific schedule and stick to it. If you need to modify it for holidays, make sure you communicate it in advance. Your clients will appreciate your reliability. This systematizing tip helped my client to focus all of her energy and improved her client retention.

2. Managed her resources. Each day, my client was fielding a lot of questions from her staff. Instead, as a team, they developed an internal set of questions each employee could ask themselves before getting her involved. With this new process, they would develop their own solutions so she could focus on those revenue-generating activities rather than the transactional ones. She also identified specific walk in times each day which created the space for her to field the questions more efficiently. In the end, she fostered an environment where employees developed their own critical thinking skills. When they did have a question that needed her advice, they appreciated her focused attention.

Whether you have a staff or not, you can still apply these tips to your business. If you’re a solopreneur, ask: How can you work with your clients more efficiently? How can you manage your resources more effectively?

The bottomline? Your profit is in your productivity. Shifting and shaping the way you work can make the difference between just being busy or building a profitable business and life you love.