Running a Small Business Doesn't Have to Be So Complicated

If you run a small busi­ness, chances are you’ve read or heard a thou­sand times from all the best busi­ness books, class­rooms, sem­i­nars and busi­ness coach­es that in order to run a suc­cess­ful busi­ness you must do many of the fol­low­ing things: have a mar­ket­ing plan, a busi­ness plan, researched com­pe­ti­tion, have com­plet­ed a SWAT analy­sis, a sys­tem for track­ing leads, a CRM pro­gram, cre­at­ed a employ­ee man­u­al, an exit strat­e­gy and so on. If you are like me, your head starts spin­ning when you are plagued with all the things you’ve got to do to be suc­cess­ful. I think some­times all the busi­ness lead­ers out there make run­ning a small busi­ness com­pli­cat­ed. It does­n’t have to be! Don’t Try To Keep Up With the Big Guys Attend­ing sem­i­nars and fill­ing up your notepad or note­book app with pages of todos and goals is ok if you like that sort of thing. Maybe you lis­ten bet­ter by doing that. I sure don’t. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve just seen a lot of busi­ness­es strug­gle to make it because they are try­ing too hard to fol­low all the ​“rules of suc­cess.” They try to keep up with the big play­ers in their indus­try. They want to be suc­cess­ful, make more mon­ey, work less, look and feel big. They do this by over­com­pli­cat­ing what it takes to run a small busi­ness. Just grow­ing a com­pa­ny large does­n’t mean you will be prof­itable and have a healthy busi­ness. I know a few busi­ness­es that run small com­pa­nies under the ​“busi­ness suc­cess radar” and are more prof­itable: make more mon­ey than the big guys. Stop Com­par­ing and Succeed If there is one take­away from this blog post, I’d hope it would be this: stop com­par­ing your busi­ness to every­one else out there, be your­self and begin mov­ing your busi­ness for­ward. Instead of try­ing to fol­low every jot and tit­tle of what it takes to run a busi­ness (that you’ve heard works) just do one thing that you feel com­fort­able with right now. If your cus­tomer hires you because your brush­work looks and feels like glass when fin­ished, then start there: deliv­er those same results to every cus­tomer. Make ever cus­tomer’s home look the best. If cus­tomers hire your com­pa­ny because they feel they can trust you, don’t every let them down. Make it your goal to focus on 100% cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion with all your employ­ees. Share that vision with each employ­ee and make sure they all get it! All the oth­er ​“stuff” that you hear about can have its place at the right time. Set­ting goals, work­ing with bud­gets, track­ing leads, all impor­tant things. Just take it one step at a time. Slow down, enjoy your work, and focus on mak­ing your busi­ness the best it can pos­si­bly be. P.S. Don’t just take my word for it. Order a copy or down­load to your dig­i­tal device a copy of REWORK by my friends at 37 Sig­nals. It goes against every­thing you’ve ever heard about run­ning a busi­ness. When you get the urge to write out your action plan, stop. Just re-read and enjoy it. ; ; ;