photo by jared

As a business owner, it can be difficult to stay focused on any one thing – you are constantly being pulled in different directions.  You really need to hire someone but more importantly you need to get more clients in the door, you need be working ON your business and when you get some free time it would be great to spend some time with your customers and make sure they’re happy and spreading the word about you.

On top of that, most businesses are feeling a pinch these days (real or imagined) and a total layer of extra stress.

So how should you be focusing your efforts and your time?

The first step is to make sure you can carve out some time…every week that you use to really work ON your business – make sure you’re working hard on the right things.  You need to be creating systems and consistently doing longer term planning based on solid data.

Having said that, if you’re currently flying by the seat of your pants and hoping that you’re actually making money (because your checking account still has something in it) then you really need to start with cash forecasting.

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photo by nattu 

I try to make it to the gym most weekdays and it seems my schedule works out best generally late in the afternoon.

It turns out that Oprah is on from 4 to 5 and although I generally watch something like CNN or MSNBC, there are some days when Oprah has some pretty interesting stuff going on.  (I know I’m at risk of losing my man card, but there’s only so much Wolf Blitzer I can take since the election overload we’ve just gone through).

Today’s show was Oprah and Dr. Oz talking to the author of ‘The Blue Zones‘, a guy named Dan Buettner that’s spent the last 7 years researching people around the world that live well beyond the average life span and are healthy, active and vital (the areas they live in are called the blue zones).

In addition to the basic good health stuff like the right diet and exercise, there were a few common traits that Mr. Buettner uncovered that I thought were interesting.  Oddly enough these all apply to having successful and long lived businesses as well.

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There’s a lot of people talking about how bad the economy is, how bad the impact on business is and how there are a lot of similarities between today’s current environment and the Great Depression.

It’s all really cheerful stuff.

However, it does inspire reflection and in my case a bit of a history lesson.

I ran across an article / post online that did a nice job making the case that the best defense is a good offense in difficult economic times.

The post was a response to a question about what industries and companies did well during the Depression and were there any clear reasons why?  You can find the whole discussion at Successful Companies and Industries during the Great Depression.

The gist of the response is that not only were there some relative winners during this period of time, but some of the most successful companies in the world actually got their start and really took off – many of them going strong 60+ years later.

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photo by balakov

Hard work is always going to be part of the equation for success for a business owner (or anyone else for that matter).  The picture above is a clever reproduction of a famous photograph “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” from 1932.  I’m sure you’ve seen it before (see link) with a bunch of blue collar construction workers taking a break 69 stories above Manhattan.

It’s a great example about hard work during difficult times.

The problem as a business owner is that hard work by itself isn’t going to get you where you want to go.

Hard work without continually applying strategy and building systems into your business will lead you to burnout and eventually closing your business.

Alternatively you can channel that hard work into things that:

• You’re really good at  or
• No one else can do or
• Generate a maximum amount of profit or
• You really enjoy doing

But how do you get started?  How do you get out of the vicious cycle of constantly doing the work just to make ends meet?

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Everyone needs an Elaine.

Not Elaine Benes (from Seinfeld) – the Elaine I’m talking about came up in a discussion at the workshop I did this morning for the Overland Park Chamber on marketing to your existing customers.

The discussion was on the importance of employees carrying out your key marketing differences to your customers -really representing all of your best values and qualities to give ‘Wow’ service.

One of the participants was from Grandma’s Office Catering and she used the example of one of their caterers (Elaine) that was a perfect example of what we were talking about.  Elaine not only had a great attitude and made everyone smile, she was also reliable, on top of her responsibilities and a great ambassador for the business. 

Elaine gets customers to call in and rave about how much they like her, even when she’s just doing her job.

So how do you get your own Elaine?

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