Are you Insane

are you insane?

5 BIG TIPS to safeguard your SANITY

are you insane? | 5 BIG TIPS to safeguard your SANITY

5 BIG TIPS to safeguard your SANITY The tips below are based on my personal business experience since 1987 and echoed by a number of successful business associates I regularly associate with.

There are no courses on how to run a business so most of us enter into business ownerships with total naivety – not a bad thing – but unless we learn what to do and what not to do very quickly it is very easy for us to get into trouble and not know how to get out of it.

So below are 5 BIG tips – of many – that will make sure you are set up correctly and I am happy to offer a FREE one hour zoom meeting or face to face meeting to answer any questions you may have.

1Personal Development programme

We need to learn business skills and people skills very quickly, and if any of you are not yet running your own business but are looking to do one day, I would strongly recommend you start reading personal development books, and start associating with successful and success minded people. If you are already running your own business then get into this habit very quickly. I can recommend a number of books to you that will help you learn very quickly.

One recommendation that every business owner or prospective business owner should read is “The E myth revisited” by Michael Gerber. Build a habit of reading a new book every month. The way to read books is look at the number of pages and divide it by the number of days in a month and read that number of pages every day, so 300 pages in the book, 30 days, 10 pages a day. It’s a great habit to get into.

It is a fact of life that we are likely to become a product of those who we spend our time hanging around with. Spend time with people who are always negative, those who never see the good in anything and have never done anything in their lives, and you are likely to be the same. Spend time with successful people, people who will take you under their wing, people who will build you up and tell you, “You can do it” and it will highly likely rub off on you. Connect and speak with these people on a regular basis.

2 Don’t try and be all things to all people – ASK FOR HELP We all have the same number of hours in a day.

None of us are gifted any more. It can appear sometimes that some people seem to cram more into their working day and that is because they are great time managers and understand what they need to do. We have to use some of those hours for quality family time, some for social time and sleep and a number of other things we like to do in our lives. We should not be spending every

are you insane? | 5 BIG TIPS to safeguard your SANITY

waking hour in our business. That is not going to be good for our health and will not help our relationships with our life partner or children. We need to spend time on those areas we are good at and what makes us money We need to outsource to suppliers who can help us with coaching and mentoring, HR, IT, finance and a number of other areas that every business has to get involved in. Unless we are an HR professional for example, don’t try and be one. If we need to employ someone, use an expert. We cannot wait for our computer to crash before we seek support.

We need to make sure we have an IT consultant as part of our outsourced team. We should not be spending hours a week doing our own social media – outsource it. I am sure you get the idea.

for the best. This is related to staff and those we outsource to. To have a great business, we need to find the best. We need to make sure we are so well set up that success is the only outcome.

I would strongly suggest that we check the credentials of those we outsource to. We don’t have the time to keep looking for new members of our team and we need to get it right first time.

So by checking the credentials and talking to satisfied clients of this person we can be sure we are picking the right person. If we surround ourselves with the best, we will be the best. Your outsourced suppliers are as integral a part of your team as anyone you employ. We also need to make sure that we get all these “experts” together on a regular basis to make sure we are all pulling in the right direction for our success.

When we are building a team around us, look

3 You must know your numbers

What do I mean by knowing your numbers? Well,

we need to keep track of our finances but we also need to know what works when it comes to our marketing and our sales. If we don’t, we can aimlessly drift from month to month with no direction not knowing what is working and what is not.

Lets start with finances - I remember an article the

Federation of Small Businesses put out some time ago is that 88% of all businesses have no idea where they are financially at any moment in time.

I don’t know how anyone can run a successful business unless they know their finances, and be aware of them at all times.

One outsourced business we all know we need to have in an accountant – but we need a proactive accountant. We need one who looks and helps us plan to the future and not one who just works on the past – historic figures – as most accountants do. We need financial education and not just someone who does our books once a year and tells us how much tax we need to pay.

We may need a book-keeper, someone who keeps a day to day control of our finances. As a business owner, we need to make sure we understand where we are financially and we need to be aware of this at ALL TIMES.

Sales numbers – Every business must sell something

to generate income, whether it be a product or a service. We cannot and should not aimlessly throw money at every marketing opportunity that comes along without checking it out and then testing the water. Don’t commit to long term cost or investment without knowing something works.

There are more opportunities out there to market our businesses than there have ever been before, and different marketing opportunities will work for us all. We need to make sure we get a return on our marketing and without keeping track, how would we know. We need to regularly review results against investment.

One area I always promote to businesses is how vital it is to build a 6 month slush fund as quickly as possible. I can help you.

are you insane? | 5 BIG TIPS to safeguard your SANITY

4 Commit regular hours to work ON your business Over the years, I am amazed at the number of businesses who spend no time at all working on their business. We can all be too busy working in our businesses. We get in, do their daily work and go home. We need to develop employer mentality. We need to take ownership of our business. We need to make sure we are always in the planning zone.

Granted, working in the business is important as this is what brings the income in, but working on is as important, as this will better prepare us and our business for the future. Guaranteed every 8, 10 or 12 years there will be something come along that will stop our business in its tracks, so we better make sure we are prepared, or we may not get through it. Therefore the working ON part of our business is so vitally important.

In my opinion we need to spend somewhere between 10% and 20% of our working week in the working ON aspect of our business. This is why we have to learn not to be all things to all people and use expert help so we are only working on the productive parts of our business – that which brings money in and that which helps us plan for the future.

5 ABC – Always Be Creative

We could argue that this is all part of the working on side of a business, but it is a vital aspect of running a business. When the last recession hit in 2008/9, I saw too many businesses disappear because they stopped being creative years before this recession hit and therefore they became history. The got blasé and were running on past successes. They stopped looking at opportunities, and this is a very expensive mistake.

I

would strongly suggest we will need help and support from a business coach or mentor with the working on side of the business, someone who has experienced the peaks and troughs of running a business, and knows what it takes to get through a recession or worse. We need someone who can help us spot opportunities and keep us on track.

I would suggest we need to have a short, mid and long term goal to aim for. Goal setting and the discipline to do what it takes are important to the success of any business, and we need to plan with the end in mind. If you need any help on goal setting, I am happy to speak with you on this.

Being in the creative mindset and having an open mind will bring opportunities to us. Those opportunities are always there but if our thinking is not right and we are not in the creative zone, we don’t notice them, and that could cost us a lot of money or worse still, our business Sitting down and having conversations with people we meet – either face to face or through various online meeting platforms – are always worthwhile. We don’t know what we don’t know and we don’t know who we don’t know. We need to get to know a bit about our contacts and who they know and if we are not open to having conversations with them, how will we ever know whether they can add something of value to our business. We can always learn from others but not if our minds are always closed.

are you insane? | 5 BIG TIPS to safeguard your SANITY

To conclude We always have to be moving forward and one thing is for certain – if we are doing the same thing this year as we did last year, we are probably going backwards. Technology is changing the face of business at such a rapid pace and we better make sure we keep in touch, or we will get left behind.

There are a number of businesses who are no longer around and they almost certainly will have blamed external circumstances for their demise and not what was really the cause – THEM! A great little book on change I always promote is “Who moved my Cheese” by Spencer Johnson.

I am happy to chat with anyone – on obligation – and know my experience and the contacts I have in business can without doubt add value to your business and I look forward to speaking with you

Thanks for reading

Richard Knight Richard Knight LIONHEART Business Troubleshooting

are you insane? | 5 BIG TIPS to safeguard your SANITY

are you insane? | 5 BIG TIPS to safeguard your SANITY

Richard Knight Lionheart Business Troubleshooting 07798 632173 richard@lionheartmanagement.co.uk www.linkedin.com/in/richardlionheartknight/