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07.03.08 To Be Successful You Must Be Your Own Best Client  By
Stacy Karacostas To market and grow your small business effectively, you have to be your own best client. Just the other day, I was chatting with a prospective client on the phone. We had first talked about her hiring me about 9 months ago. Then she decided to hire an in-house person to handle her marketing efforts instead. Well, that didn't work out. So she decided to try to do it herself. And you know what she discovered? Most of the time she wasn't getting the things done that needed doing on a regular basis. And what she was doing wasn't working. In the process she had two big realizations: 1) She didn't have the time to be in charge of sales and marketing (and didn't really want to be). 2) She didn't have a plan, so everything she was doing was kind of haphazard. You know, she'd send a few postcards here, knock on a few doors there. But she wasn't building up to bigger and better results. So, she decided maybe she does need my help after all. Which is smart. Because one of the big secrets I've learned about growing a small business is... You have to treat your business like your own best client. And if you can't do that yourself, hire someone else who can. Otherwise you'll end up spending all your time working in your business (servicing clients, putting out fires, filing, whatever) and no time working on your business. And if you aren't spending time trying to grow and improve your business, it's probably always going to be more or less like it is right now.
For many small business owners, that means a business where you work yourself to the bone day in and day out. You work nights. You work weekends. Frankly, you work too damn much with no end in sight! Now I don't know about you, but I've got goals for my business that I haven't reached yet. And the only way I'm going to reach them is by doing a lot of planning and marketing. If I book myself solid with client projects, I won't have any time left to work on my business. Sure, I could try to work on it after hours. But by then I'm exhausted and tired of marketing. So my stuff either gets put off, or I don't end up doing good work anyway. Plus, one of my goals is to have a life (IE spend time with my hubby and dog, get out and exercise, and generally have some fun). In order to do that I have to fit my business projects into my regular work day just like any other client projects. Regardless of what industry you're in, you should be doing the same. At some point, you need to make your own business a priority-even if it means giving up or putting off taking on a couple of new clients right now. Continue reading this article.
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