It turns out the hardest thing to do is to keep on track when you start a new business. The truth is when you start, you have lots of ideas about how it will be and what clients you will get, but as it turns out, your ideas are very different from your plans. In fact, I would say that every small business needs to go off course to re-find their course. A few months ago, I started my business with concrete ideas about the clients I would get, the type of work they would need, and the money they would be willing to pay. However, in the first few weeks, I discovered the need, client and money were opposite to the ideas I had plucked from obscurity.
I attended a great Free Range Women in a Business session run by Jane Cooke a number weeks ago, and the topic was all about course correction. Normally I attend events, listen, maybe apply a few tips and then move on. But this session was so specifically useful to me; I have not been able to let it go.
The metaphor was that your business is a boat, and you need to correct its course to stay on track. The track is your happiness and purpose, holding to why you started in the first place. Simple huh? It was explained that it was easy to divert from your course quickly, and often business owners don’t notice until they are way off the trajectory. This is exactly what has happened to me.
So, what is the answer to help steer your business boat? Reflection and questioning.
It would help if you took some time, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly (whatever feels right for you) to ask yourself these fundamental questions:
- What should I stop doing?
- What should I start doing?
- What do I need more of?
- What do I need less of?
- What is in my zone?
- What am I happy doing?
- Do I enjoy what I am doing?
It seems so simple with most training sessions, but in the (what I like to call) “business fog”, it is easy to be led away from what you wanted and into what others want. This is particularly the case if you are a solution-orientated person who wants to help others (like I do).
So, in supporting and helping others, I thought I would share this learning and thank Jane Cooke for such an excellent lesson. Since the session, I’ve taken time to sit down and consider these questions for my own business. I have started forecasting the trajectory of my business boat, tweaking existing agreements to get closer to having a business that delivers on the reason I set out to become self-employed in the first place.