Every business has a life-cycle. In startup phase, everything runs on rapid pace: Growth is phenomenal and the potential of your business is awesome.
Unfortunately, this won’t last long; You will face, on certain point of your small business life journey, challenges that require more out of you, the small business owner.
When sales are stagnant and staffs are demotivated, congratulations – You have arrived at the peak of your small business journey. This is not always translated into a highly profitable business, but this is the time when your small business hit the ceiling-top, thus yours can’t go any further.
There are times when implementing every best practice you know won’t make any differences on your business. Even worse, doing changes hoping to better your business may actually do your business harm, dropping your overall business performance. That is often translated into less revenue.
Depressed and stressed-out small business owners are common sight (yes, we do get depressed and stress out, even if our business is not failing.
In order to break mediocrity, you need to do a fitness regime and lifestyle alteration for your small business to get yours through the barrier.
How to have a lean and sexy small business
To keep your small business “lean” and “sexy” you’ve got to do these three common-sense human-like activities: exercise, diet and weight loss, and stress management.
Exercise
Small business owners must maintain their small business operations on top shape. This can be achieved in many ways, such as regular training and seminars for your staffs, maintaining your office or store equipments and fixtures, maintaining the attractiveness of your small business (through smart advertising, clean store, top-notch customer services, etc.) The most important thing: Set milestones to get your small business work pursuing goals.
You, as the owner, should exercise your entrepreneurship skills, too – Continuously learn to better your business, implement the best practices you feel can enhance your small business operations, and many other things. If you are an absentee owner (Owner who is not actively involved in day-to-day operations), held meetings on regular basis to keep your staffs and business operations focused on what’s important.
Diet and lose weight
You should continuously look for ways for your small business to be more efficient and effective.
Overheads slow you down, as a penny salvaged means a penny more for your small business development. Not only in term of money, your staffs’ efficiency and effectiveness should be enhanced in such a way that their productivity rates increase. Procrastinating and unfocused staffs are burden to your business’ bottom line – You should ‘diet’ them and ‘lose their weight’ (How’s Facebooking and Twittering sound to you on busy office hours?)
Manage stress
Ah – stress. On a certain doze, stress is actually good for your staffs and your business. Pressures let your staffs focus more on what’s needed to be done. Deadlines and milestones ‘force’ your small business to stay on track, doing what’s important.
However, too much stress and pressure deprive your small business – Your staffs could be worn down and demotivated. What’s more, pressure causes your business to do ‘stress eating’ – In other words, your business makes more unnecessary, costly mistakes.
Practicing those common-sense activities above will only do good for your small business. Why wouldn’t you treat your small business like it deserve?
Ivan Widjaya
Healthy small business
Image by Pink Sherbet Photography.