By Stacy Karacostas
Expert Author
Article Date: 2008-07-03
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.
I know that from a short-term perspective this might seem crazy. And if you're still in start-up mode it might not be possible (you do have to pay the bills after all).
But if you want your business to grow, and you ever want to unchain yourself from it, you have to devote the same time, energy and effort to it that you give to your clients.
So although you might be giving up revenues right now, by focusing more time on your own business you're setting the stage for greater earnings down the road.
Here are 5 simple ways I've found to make it happen...
1) Set aside time in your schedule each week to work on your own business (and I mean block the time out so you don't schedule anything else). I devote Monday afternoons and Friday mornings to my own business.
2) At the start of each day, before you check emails, do one thing to grow your business (send a card, write a blog post or newsletter article, call a past client, etc.). Otherwise it's too easy to put off until tomorrow.
3) Create a plan for achieving your goals. Break it down into small steps with specific deadlines for each, then put these on your calendar. This makes big goals less daunting and keeps you moving forward.
4) Wake up and start work 20 minutes earlier than usual. I have never been a morning person (though I've gotten better as I've gotten older), but I often get my best work done before 8:00 am. Sometimes I even wake up an hour or two early to get a jump start on the day.
5) Hire a Virtual Assistant (VA) to handle time consuming tasks and deal with the technology side of your business. My VA built my blog, puts posts up, manages my Facebook account, and much more. They are the perfect solution for the small business that can't afford to hire an employee.
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