Tag Archives: Small business help

5 ways to be accountable to yourself for your business

When you are employed and work for a company, you are usually accountable to someone. You can ask that person for help; you might have a mentor and your manager will usually help you climb the career ladder.

However, when you work for yourself and own your business, the buck stops at you. You are suddenly responsible for everything – not just the day to day running of your business, but the marketing, sales, customer service, your own training, training employees if you have them, and keeping yourself organised and efficient. You are only accountable to yourself…and that can be hard.

It’s not that you aren’t responsible to anyone, it’s that your goals become more subjective. Your diary fills up with things you ‘have to do,’ rather than things you should be doing…or even things you enjoy doing.

But there are ways to create self-accountability so that everything you do doesn’t depend on your willpower alone!

Get yourself an accountability partner

Team up with another small business so you can encourage each other. Share you goals and deadlines, so you can help each other achieve them.

Having someone you can talk to, perhaps just once a week – or even once a month – can really help you to stay on track. You can ask each other for advice, share your new ideas, run social media posts past each other, talk through any problems or issues you might be having with your business, and generally gee each other up to keep going.

This will help you in many ways, but mainly because you won’t want to let your accountability partner down, so you’ll find you get more done and with more enthusiasm. Give it a go!

Share your goals publicly!

By this, I don’t mean plaster your goals all over your social media and website! You just need to be reminded of the commitments you’ve made to your business. Tell your friends and family about the goals you’ve set yourself and your business. Not all of them will ask you about them, and some will forget you even told them, but you will find that a few will ask how you’re getting on – and it will spur you on.

Speak about what you want to do in networking groups or business groups that you belong to and share that you need a bit of accountability. You’ll always find a few people who will be willing to encourage you.

Community support can be amazing. For example, if one of your goals is to learn a new skill, find a training package that includes a support group – or create one yourself. Finding people who you can work with – who have the same interest and goal as you will really increase your chance of success.

Have a plan

I know I’ve said this load of times, but I just love a list! So, for me, planning is key to me achieving things. I always have a ‘to do’ list going, which will help me achieve the things I want to get done. I have lists for the month, for the week and a daily one too, which when I think about it, might be a bit excessive!

It’s about doing things that work for you. The best thing about having a plan of action, and a list, is that it feels so good when you can tick something off that list and see it shrinking.

If your goals are big, work out a way to cut them down in more manageable chunks, so you achieve that goal step by step.

When you can see that things are getting done, this gives you more confidence and will inspire you to keep moving forward.

Use a calendar

I’m sure that most of us will use a calendar to put meetings in, schedule work we need to do and deadlines we need to make. But do you use a calendar for yourself?

I’ve started to do this over the past few months, and it makes such a difference. I block out time to batch-make social media posts, write my blog and monthly email newsletter. I’ve started scheduling some of my social media posts so that I save time. I must admit I do like to post in real time too, so I don’t schedule everything. I like to engage with people as they comment, but I now block out time to do this – and guess what? My engagement figures are increasing and I’m getting to know more small businesses.

If you have a goal such as learning a new skill or completing a course – schedule time in your diary for that, so that you don’t forget about it or let it slide. It also helps you to avoid that Mr. Procrastination!

Avoid procrastination  

That does bring me nicely to Mr. Procrastination. One of the things that will help you is to recognise why you procrastinate. Some of the signs are that you will find any excuse not to get on with the job in hand. You might find yourself just doing the easy, quick-to-achieve work, instead of concentrating on the larger, more complicated tasks.

You might find yourself ‘popping onto social media’ for a bit, and then realise that two hours have passed!

Sometimes it’s just that you’ve lost sight of why your goals were important to you in the first place. So, being organised and having a plan can help you with that – and all the other things I’ve mentioned above to be accountable to yourself.

And finally…CELEBRATE YOUR WINS!

No matter how big or how small, celebrate your achievements. If you’ve cut a big goal down into smaller chunks, celebrate each milestone along the way. Cut yourself some slack and look at all the positive things you have managed to do.

Coaching can really assist you with accountability, and with an action plan to assure you achieve your goals. If you would like to book a free 30-minute consultation, we can discuss your situation and how I can help. Please email me – cindymobey@outlook.com

Is Mr. Procrastination knocking on your door?

What is procrastination and how can you deal with it?

Procrastination is where you delay or postpone something…not necessarily because you don’t want to do it, but you just keep putting it off. It can show itself in a simple way – such as keep pressing the snooze button on your alarm to avoid getting up. But when it starts to interfere with your work, you need to take action.
It can occur for several reasons: poor time management, lack of organisation, low motivation, inability to concentrate, unrealistic expectations of yourself or your business, personal problems, negative beliefs about your capability, low self-confidence, perfectionism, or anxiety and fear related to failure and success.
Everyone who has a business will have experienced procrastination at some point, but it can become very debilitating if you lose control of it. So, what can you do? You need to know why you procrastinate before you can address it.

Reasons why you may be prone to procrastination

Your business may not be making progress as quickly as you’d like

When you first start your business, you are full of enthusiasm, it’s exciting and you are positive about where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. Your body releases dopamine when it experiences excitement…and that feeling is what fires you up and keeps you going in the beginning.
But after a while, as with any business, you will hit a few lows, and this can have the knock-on effect of making you feel things aren’t as good as they were. Negative thoughts can start to creep in…
• Are you going to get rewarded for all the hard work you’ve done?
• Is all this work worth it?
• Will you ever make it really successful?
And so, Mr. Procrastination knocks the door, and it’s very easy to open the door and let him in.

You just don’t know where to begin

Procrastination can also rear its ugly head when you start to feel overwhelmed by your business. You have seemingly endless to-do lists, your goals seem to be slipping away, and it all seems just too much of a mountain to climb.
You may notice that you start to only concentrate on the things you like doing, rather than the things that are urgent and important. By doing this you are in danger of not focussing on what will move your business forward…instead you stay smack bang in the middle of your comfort zone. But then your business starts to stagnate, and this is where procrastinating can be a danger to the future of, what was, an exciting prospect.


You’re scared you’ll make the wrong decisions

This is a very common reason. After all, we are only human, and we all live in fear of making a wrong choice. Some of you may feel that if you do make the wrong decision, you could ruin what you have already, so you either do nothing, or do things in a very haphazard way, which can be more damaging to your business…and to your mental health.
You may have heard the phrase, ‘you don’t fail, you learn.’ I know I have used this myself, and it’s true, but it’s better to try and avoid that feeling of failure as much as you can. It’s inevitable that you’ll make mistakes – everyone does, and some spectacularly (!), but it’s the fear of failing that is more debilitating that the actual failure!
It might be that you really worry what other people might think, and you care about other peoples’ opinions. It’s great to aim high, so long as you can remember that none of us is perfect.


You just hate a particular task

When you run your own small business, there are loads of tasks to get done. You only have yourself to rely on and this can lead to stress, especially if some of the tasks are dull or just plain boring.

Now, if you can afford it, you could outsource those irritating tasks to someone who does them for a living – get yourself an online assistant.

However, when you have a small business, especially if you’ve not been going for long, it’s unlikely you’ll have the money to invest in this kind of help straight away.

How can you overcome procrastination?

First, ask yourself some questions. Most of the time we know why we are letting Mr. P in. If you don’t know where you are with your business, you won’t be able to get to where you want to be.
• Are you setting yourself unrealistic goals?
• Are you putting unnecessary pressure on yourself?
• What are the consequences of NOT getting this done? (Whatever it is)
• What are the benefits of getting it done?
• What is getting in the way?
If you can answer these questions, you can start to plan what to do to stop the procrastination.

Here are a few tips

• First, forgive yourself. It’s happened and you need to let it go and move on.
• Secondly, look at your working environment. Is your desk a mess, with paper all over the place? Tidy up before you start, make sure you have a glass of water and that you’re comfortable.
• It might seem that everything is urgent or important, but the truth is, many things can be adjusted, or deadlines moved back. A good strategy to coping is something called The Eisenhower Matrix.

This is where you break down your tasks into Urgent/Important, Urgent/Less Important, Less Urgent/Important, and Less Urgent/Less Important. If you can categorise your tasks into these different areas, you can see where you need to focus your time and energy.
• One you have all your tasks categorised – take one of the tasks you hate and break it down into the steps you need to follow to complete it. Write it down.

Then break each step into a smaller task and give yourself a timeframe to complete it. Write it down! For example, you could set your alarm for immediately before lunch – when your alarm goes off, switch off all distractions and just do that first step. Then reward yourself with a nice lunch. Breaking a task down into more manageable chunks really helps you to concentrate and just get the job done. And you have a reward to look forward to.
• One of the most important things to remember to avoid procrastination is to remove distractions. For example, I work from a desktop. I know that if I leave Facebook on, I’ll see it flashing if I get a message. I can’t ignore it – I just can’t! I must open it – then I’m distracted and can easily lose an hour as I’ll start scrolling. The same applies to email or any other social media site. Switch off your distractions, so you can totally focus on the task in hand.
• For each task you decide to do, look at it and decide how long it’s going to take you. Give yourself a challenge, for example, I’m going to complete this task in 1 hour and 20 minutes. Then next time you must do this task, challenge yourself to knock off 10 minutes from that time. You’ll feel more of a sense of achievement if you deliver ‘on time’ – even if it’s your own set time!
• Think about what time of the day you are more effective. I know that I work better, harder, and more quickly in the morning. As soon as I stop and have lunch, I seem to relax and can find it hard to concentrate. So, I do the things that are the hardest, or that I hate doing most in the morning. I know I’m more likely to get it done before lunch than I am afterwards.

Conclusion

Procrastination can be a tough cookie to crumble, so be prepared. You will have the odd relapse, but it’s about learning to recognise the signs that procrastination is near. If you can learn to manage your procrastination, you will be able to reduce your stress, build your confidence and build your business.

If you need help to get your business organised, or don’t know where to start to sort out your priorities, drop me an email or message.

cindymobey@outlook.com or click here to send a message.