It is spring and once again, and my lawn is infested with dandelions. I started out with good intentions of digging them out by hand, going the ‘natural route’ and after 2 weeks of digging for an hour each day, I am waving the white flag and calling in the big guns! Yes, I am calling someone to spray *gasp* my lawn! I give up! There is just no way I can keep up with it AND my work AND have time for all the other things in my life.
So, as I await my knight in shining armor on the white horse – well white van maybe – I can’t help but see the business gifts in this experience. After all, it is rare that my brain stops thinking in terms of business because I find it fun and intriguing.
There comes a time in your business that as you level up, you need to let go of the DIY methods and call in help. You run out of time to do it all yourself, it becomes impossible without compromising on things like sleep or exercise.
In the beginning, bootstrapping is essential, doing it yourself is often the only possible way; but we can easily be stuck in that mode for way too long. Plowing through to get things done, much like pulling weeds, can suck up endless time as you promise yourself ‘just one more’ extra hour.
If you are in this head down, push through it phase of your business and you are making more than 6 figures, it is time for a new strategy.
Time for taking some time away from working on the day to day grind tasks and come up for air – preferably with someone to give you an outside perspective. Someone to question what, how and why you do all the things in your business. This kind of evaluation with a fresh pair of eyes will shine a light on where you are stuck in a rut for the sake of being in a rut and where it is time to call in help and offload your work so that you can free up your time or increase your profits depending on your goals.
So, if you must do it yourself, here is my suggestion; go away for the weekend. A change of venue where you are not looking at work will help you have a fresh perspective.
Next, do your best to pretend you are someone else and ask your self the hard questions about each of your business processes. Look for where you are leaking time, doing busy work for the sake of busy work. What processes are not really netting you the return to make the effort viable?
Now, take some time and start to ask yourself some playful questions. In this step, it is important to let yourself be outrageous and imagine things that might be impossible. This is what sparks the creativity. So pretend you are as imaginative as a 5-year-old as you ask;
“What would make my business more fun?”
“How would I run my systems if I was starting over with no limits?”
“What parts of the business would I like others to do for me?”
Once you have let your imagination run wild, and trust me the wilder the better, now you can take a look at your answers and see if there are common threads. Are there bits of ideas that you could actually use now? What other ideas does this inspire you that you could implement?
From that list, pick one or two that you will commit to implementing and do it!
This is the kind of fun that I love to bring in when I do a one day VIP strategy planning session. Weaving in the energy shifting tools to keep them on track with being light and playful so that the inspired strategic action can bubble up.
If you are ready to take your business to the next level and get out of the grind without sacrificing profits or your sanity… it is time for us to talk! Business can be so much more fun when you are standing firmly in your Inner Dominatrix ™. Mindest + Strategy + Consciousness = Badass in Business™.
