One of the biggest challenges of owning your own business is trying to fit everything in (Who needs sleep?).  On a typical day you’ll probably spend a few hours dealing with current customers, a few hours trying to land new customers and a good chunk of your time managing your employees and worrying about money.  Your day is full…and you still haven’t figured out how you’re going to get to the really important stuff on your to-do list.

Here’s the key – you need to STOP doing some things.  You need a stop doing list!

Author Jim Collins popularized the concept of a Stop Doing List several years ago, here’s the gist of the idea.  If you’re going to be effective at work you need to prioritize and focus on what’s really important – what you should be doing.  That’s common sense…but what’s equally important and not nearly as common…you also need to routinely focus on what to STOP doing.  There’s only so much time in the day and a big part of prioritizing and doing the right thing is to build some room by stopping things that don’t fit.

The Stop Doing list is not one size fits all – everyone is going to have their own list.  In general you should focus on stopping those things that drain you of energy, that you really don’t enjoy or that aren’t aligned with where you really want to go.

Here are a few ideas to consider based on talking to business owners for the last few years:

STOP:

Dealing with your most difficult customer – most business owners have 1 or 2 customers that just wear them out.  Fire them and free up your time and energy to work with someone you enjoy.

Wasting your time on bad networking -  if you dread going, if it’s consistently been a waste of time in the past or if you know there’s no one attending who can really help you, then do yourself a favor and drop it.  (Note – don’t stop networking, just drop the bad events / groups)

Rolling out ineffective marketing – If you’re spending money on marketing or advertising, you need to see a tangible return on investment.  If you don’t see a positive payout (after a reasonable amount of time) then you need to stop.  Take some time, rethink your strategy and your message and try something different.

Doing the grunt work – As the business owner, your job is to lead, that doesn’t mean you won’t do day to day work, but to succeed in the long run, you’ve got to get the work that can be done by someone else off of your schedule.

Chasing prospective customers – You’re really good at what you do and assuming you have a viable business model, there are a lot of people out there who need what you do.  If you’re spending any significant time chasing someone, you’re wasting your time.  Move on and spend your time with people who want to work with you.

Being vague -  If you want to be effective and make good things happen you must be exceptionally clear about what your priorities are.  What are the 5 most important things you need to do to win this year?  How about in the next 90 days?  If you can’t quickly answer those questions, you’re not clear enough.

The Rollercoaster – Marketing really only works when it’s consistent, that means you have to build marketing tactics that happen over and over consistently.  When you don’t do that, you get the rollercoaster effect and end up chasing opportunities when you finally slow down.

Overscheduling – Yes you have a million things to do but scheduling yourself back to back all day every day isn’t going to make you more effective.  Build in some down time, carve out time to think big…to refine  your stop doing list…or to just catch your breath.  It won’t happen unless you make it happen.

Making quick, bad hires – As a business owner, one of the worst things you can do…ever…is to hire someone quickly who turns out to be a bad fit.  Depending on how bad it is, you may end up leaving yourself in a bigger hole than you had before you made the hire.  You could alienate other employees or customers and waste a lot of time and money cleaning up the mess.  Remember – slow to hire, quick to fire…!

What are the top 2 or 3 things you need to stop doing?  What would it take to actually stop?  We’d love to hear your thoughts – what are you going to stop?  Leave us a comment below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

photo by Afroswede

I’ve got a weakness for chocolate.  In fact, I’ve developed a bad habit of finding something chocolate to eat pretty much every day.  It could be one of those Ghirardelli squares (love the ones with caramel), a cupcake…even a few M&Ms will work.

As habits go, this one is fairly harmless – sure it’s not good for me, but it’s not a huge amount and it’s reasonably controlled.  Still…it would be good for me to break this particular habit.  Which ties in well with conversations I’ve been having with several clients lately on how to create (and break) behaviors and habits.

Habits are critical to success, because once you’ve established a healthy habit, it’s like getting stuff for free – there’s really no willpower involved at that point.  Ask anyone who works out all the time – maybe inherently they enjoy going to the gym…but realistically all that did was make it easier for them to build the habit of going to the gym.  Now if they miss going to the gym it bothers them and they will find a way to make it happen.  That’s the power of a positive habit – it starts working for you rather than normal behavior that works against you.

I love the quote attributed to Aristotle:

We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

As a business owner there are lots of habits you need to get into if you want to succeed over time.  It should be a habit to invoice on a regular basis.  It should be a habit to do marketing activities on a regular basis (networking, blogging, interacting on LinkedIn, etc.).  It should be a habit to communicate regularly with your clients…and your employees…and your referral partners.  You get the picture – there are a lot of regular activities you need to excel at if you want to be successful, which means they should be habits!

How do you build (or break) habits?

The good news is there are a lot of powerful resources out there to help you figure out what might work for you.  Here are a few that I found helpful:

Check out ZenHabits

There are a lot of top notch ideas on personal effectiveness and creating positive habits on Leo Babauta’s blog ZenHabits and from his book The Power of Less.

For starters check out this post on 2 Simple Ways to Create New Habits.

Listen to Jerry Seinfeld

Beyond just being a funny guy, Jerry has also developed (or at least made popular) a process that can help you follow through on an important activity every day.  There’s a story behind it, but essentially the recommendation is to identify the behavior you want to create and then use a visual aid to help you track your progress – specifically Jerry used a large wall calendar with red X’s marked when he did his daily writing.  Once you get a chain of X’s you won’t want to break your streak and you’ll be motivated to continue.  Repeat until you’ve created a habit.

Here’s a much more detailed write-up from LifeHacker:  Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret

As an added bonus, there’s a really cool (and free) online app that can really help you apply this idea across your most important activities – check out irunurn.com

Apply some science to it

Finally – you might want to look into a new book called: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.  This New York Times writer did a lot of research and worked with scientists to pull together why habitual behavior occurs and what you can do to change it.

He simplifies it down to a simple process that starts with a cue, or a trigger which leads to the behavior itself…which is followed by a reward.  In order to change a habit, you have to understand all 3 components and then identify the right change(s) to make.

Here’s a good summary on the book from Brain Pickings – The Power of Habit.

What behavior do you need to start doing on a regular basis?  What do you need to stop doing?  Have you found a great way to make changes that stick?  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

Photo by Snowy*******

Every now and then you get handed a slow week – usually the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, but sometimes you’ll get a quiet week other times during the year.  Maybe you’ve officially taken the whole week off – which is great!  However if you’re like most business owners, you’re ‘working’ this week, you’ve just planned it to be slow.

Slow doesn’t have to mean unproductive though – here are a few ideas of what to focus on to make sure it’s a great slow week and not just…well, slow!

Finish your planning

Planning is a four letter word for most entrepreneurs – it runs counter to your instincts…and for most of us it’s just not any fun.  But if you want to succeed, you need to at least go through a planning process.  It doesn’t have to be complicated – try this:

Identify your top 5 priorities for the next year…if you could get these 5 things done / achieved / etc. you’d make it a great year!

Identify at least 2 or 3 key targets you want to hit – usually one of them is revenue, but it could also be profits, number of new clients, some sort of quality metric.  The key is to make sure it’s something easy to measure and it’s a valid, important measure of your business success.

Finally – with the above in mind, identify the top 5 (or so) things you need to get done in the next 90 days.  What will move the ball forward?  What’s achievable?  Be specific and layout at least a framework of how you’ll do what you’d do.

Make a list of people to contact

Your long term success is also going to be driven by the company you keep…and if you don’t make time to stay in touch, you’ll lose out on a lot of opportunities. 

Make a top 20 list of business (and some personal) contacts who are likely to either refer you business or be a great contact for you in some other way.  Once you’ve got a good list, make a commitment to meet with someone on the list at least weekly.  Relationships only get built when you spend quality time with people.

Take a nap!

It’s a slow week, take some time and give yourself permission to relax a little bit.  Seriously…when was the last time you took a nap (and being sick doesn’t count).  You’ll be amazed at how good you’ll feel after a quality nap.

Clean off your desk

There have been tons of studies that prove that clutter on your desk, in your office causes stress…and with that stress you’re going to be a lot less productive.  Don’t believe me?  Try doing a great cleanup job on your desk…and let me know if you don’t feel way better about what you’re doing afterwards. 

My experience is that it’s like a weight coming off your shoulders…one that you didn’t know you were carrying!

Hang out with family and friends

This one’s obvious – the reason you planned a ‘slow’ week in the first place was to build in some time to relax, but if you’re like most business owners, life often gets in the way of your plans.  An important email comes in, you get some phone calls you have to handle, you just remembered a commitment that had to be done…before you know it the week’s up and you didn’t spend any time with those most important to you.

Don’t let that happen.  On your slow week…make sure you build in hard stops and walls for your business activities…and give yourself some quality time away.

What are the most important things you do on a slow week?  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, especially if you’re just relaxing around this week!

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

Photo by Arvee5.0

The world is moving faster every single day.  In fact if you want to keep up with it, you need to start developing some super powers…super productivity skills just to keep up!  Everybody faces different arch enemies – for some it’s the dreaded interruptions, for others it’s that evil villain technology…for most it’s dealing with a lack of discipline or organization!.

Whatever’s holding you back, there’s no time like the present to start fighting back – you can develop productivity skills and habits and you can get better at efficiency and effectiveness.

Check out the 15 ideas below, put on your tights and pick at least one or two ideas to try out this week!

Read More…

Apparently a lot of small business owners are not familiar with ‘The Cloud’ – at least when it comes to Cloud Computing as a technology solution for their business.  According to a recent survey (May of 2011) done by the Small Business Authority, only 29% of small business owners are familiar with the term Cloud Computing.

Only 29%!  There’s a huge opportunity right now, both for qualified vendors who can supply great cloud based solutions, but more importantly for small business owners who can leverage Cloud based technology to cut costs and do more with less!

What is Cloud Computing?  In a nutshell, it’s the ability to interact with data or applications that are centrally hosted on the internet (or in ‘the cloud’).  The reality is that you’re likely dealing with a lot of cloud based stuff today and you didn’t know it – when you get a movie from Netflix Instant Streaming, you’re pulling down data / content from the cloud.  It’s available in a lot of different ways (your computer, an iPad, your TV etc.) but it’s all tied back to your account.

Read More…