Pace yourself, the year has only just begun
It’s hard to not get caught up in the new year and new decade hype – it feels like everyone is setting huge goals and getting ready for their ‘biggest year yet’. Of course, it’s an incredible time to reset and reframe what your goals are in your business, but remember that business is a marathon, not a sprint.
Remember that study by the Harvard Business Review? It found that companies that push ‘go’ on every opportunity ended up with lower sales and operating profits than those that paused at key moments to reflect. The firms that “slowed down to speed up” averaged 40% higher sales and 52% higher operating profits over the study period. So embrace these moments in the new year to reflect!
I love the approach that Jacqui Lewis has taken into the new year for her business, The Broad Place. After some reflection, she is shifting from daily to weekly newsletters, a move which completely aligns with their philosophy and frees up loads of time. For Jacqui, “it is not about adding in more, chasing and grasping, but removing that which can result in more creativity, space and grace in how we work and live.”
It’s clear that this decision to change was grounded in The Broad Place’s goals for how they want to both work and live. Likewise, if you want to be able to make important decisions in your small business, you need to have clarity around your goals, from a both personal and business perspective.
Know where you’re going before you leave the start line
I can’t emphasise enough how the way you run your small business is your key to creating the life you want to live.
We can all get caught in the “doing” trap - head down, bum up, trying to do all the things. I like to think of a strategy as putting a framework around the doing, so you don’t fall for everything. A good small business strategy, is a framework for making the ongoing daily decisions about how you will play the game of business.
It consists of three clear parts:
Who you are (as a brand)
Where you are going
How you want to work and live (as a person)
Without a framework to guide everyday decisions, a business can run in too many different directions, find itself saying yes to every opportunity without thinking about whether these opportunities are going to help achieve their overarching goals, stretch their valuable resources too thin or grow faster than they can cope with (a good, but stressful problem to have).
In a recent chat with a client of mine, she said, “That’s the beauty of your work. You help people get so clear on where they’re going, that they get there.”
Call it manifesting, call it strategy, call it whatever you like, but getting clear on where we’re going, helps us get there.
Slow and steady wins the race
Somehow society forgot the wisdom of the turtle and the hare and we were all programmed to become speedy little overworked hares. And where do the hares end up? Sadly, most of the time in total burnout.
Was the turtle beating itself up for being slow or worse, ‘lazy’, as it went on it’s merry way to win the race? I doubt it.
Pacing yourself and getting clear on what your personal ambitions are (what is the business giving you?) requires clarity of direction and of decision – it means doing things at the right pace, finding the yin and yang, and knowing when to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’.
As you embark into 2020, I encourage you to choose to play the slow and steady game – map out what you want to do, what products / packages you want to launch, what you want to outsource or hire for, and spread it out over the full 12 months – don’t use up all your energy and excitement in the first couple of months. It might not be as exciting as launching all of the things straight away, and you might not see the fruits of your labour immediately, but you will have more head space and clarity as the results evolve at the pace they are meant to.