Are You Running Your Business or Is Your Business Running You?

Presented for the Brown Bag Luncheon for South Shore Women's Business Network (SSWBN).

Author: Brenda Wornum Moore, Founder & President, BWM Consulting

When you own a business, there are two things that face many small business owners: you and the business. Most often the line between the two gets blurred.   Most small business owners typically don’t get bogged down in planning for the growth of the business, but in the day-to-day operations of the business. 

Managing and growing a business requires constant movement and activity; but lots of activity in the wrong direction without the right results is wasted time and energy. The outcome of unfocused activity can lead to aggravation, frustration and exhaustion.

This workshop provided the participants with the opportunity to:

• Step back and revisit the reason why they are in business.
• Restate their passion, dreams and the goals that began the path to business ownership. 
• Take a look at what got them off track, what derailed them. The common answer to this question was: Getting bogged down in the day to day!

To address this issue participants analyzed their day-to-day operations and determined how much time was spent on particular tasks and activities.  Creating a visual picture provided useful insights as to which tasks and activities where focused on working in the business and which tasks and activities were focused on working on the business.

In the final step of the workshop, participants created a “blueprint to successfully run their business” the way they would like to see it run.  Here are some key points from those blueprints.

The Blueprint

• Discipline yourself to stay focused on doing the right things, at the right time, for the right reason.
• Delegate time consuming tasks. Get help from others and hire the right talent.  Do what you do best and hire for the rest.
• Decide to investigate your use of time; use time wisely to focus on activities and tasks that will help to grow your business.
• Determine to think like a business owner and not like an employee.
• Develop and implement a plan; stick to the plan to successfully run the business the way you want it run.
• Dedicate yourself to your keeping your passion alive, achieving your goals and fulfilling your dreams.

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