I’m so busy. I have too much going on. I’m doing it all. Have you heard your entrepreneur friends express these sentiments at some point? Are you one of them?

Whomever invented the solopreneur term was reading your mind weren’t they? That pretty much describes your role in your business – you’re the CEO/ Marketing Manager/ Accountant/ Receptionist/ Coffee Maker/ Cafeteria – what a job title!

I get it. But let’s be clear, people always talk about how busy they are, yet they never put the right words after the busy – running around in circles. Simply “busy” without a strategy is just that, “busy”. There’s a big difference between being busy and being productive.

Busy In Not A Synonym For Productive

How many people have you heard complain that they’re working very hard and putting in so much effort and yet they can’t seem to generate results? If those same busy people worked more strategically in their pursuits, they wouldn’t be so overwhelmed and bogged down with so little to show for it.

And goodness knows social media has made this worse! It has given many professionals an easy way to get distracted and waste time all day long and call it networking. Haha, you know it’s true!

Every action cause a reaction

If your actions are strategic, the reaction from your target will be advantageous for your business. If you lack a plan of attack and your actions are random, you will produce random (possibly mediocre) results.

In other words, don’t go doing a bunch of busy work with no strategy in place. That might look like it works for some people, but the 0.0001% of the population that may actually benefit from winging it most likely does not include you.

Solopreneurs have their work cut out for them. Particularly those that are either relatively new startups or not producing any income. Often times these entrepreneurs think they can’t afford to hire help.

What’s an entrepreneur to do?

Every business owner can afford to sit down, look at business income, assets, and expenses, and put together a 1-3 page assessment of where you’ve been and where you want to go. Then think about the source of your challenges: where you seem to be stuck doing busy work and spending too little time being productive.

For example:

If you feel like you’re in a rut, review my earlier post “Why Is Your Business In A Rut?” and see if any of the factors I mentioned apply to you.

If you figure out the problem is marketing, I would encourage you to read my earlier post “DIY Marketing or Hire A Professional” and see if you recognize your challenges.

If you’re running a restaurant, does managing your books make you want to pull your hair out? Consider hiring a part-time bookkeeper, and/or look into using any number of accounting solutions that will greatly reduce the time you spend on such tasks, use a restaurant management system to keep track of everything, or automate everyday essentials that take up too much time. I found this great article that has all kinds of solutions for managing and streamlining the invoicing process.

These are just a few of the many challenges that many small business owners face. However, there are tools and service available to simplify your life as a business owner simpler. It’s up to you to take the initiative to find out what will work best for you.

Once you identify your challenges, you can begin to form solutions. Take strategic action, based upon your business assessment, and your busywork will shift into productivity, thus producing the results you want.

Ciao,
Miss Kemya