General Business Files

If you are like most businesses owners, you’ve experienced overwhelm in your business at one time or another.  Maybe you experience it regularly and for good reason.  Hundreds of things are pulling at you at one time.  You’ve got marketing going, production to oversee, calls to return, employees that need your advice.  It’s never ending right?  How do you possibly handle it all?

Most of the small business owners that I talk to keep almost all of these things in their head.  I ask them where their business plan is.  It’s in their head.  I ask where their employee training manual is.  It’s in their head.  About the only thing that’s written down is their calendar of appointments.  Even a lot of their to-dos are in their head.  Here’s one simple and powerful way to get out of overwhelm—write it all down.

Your overwhelm is in your head because most of  how you run your business is in your head.  Start writing it down and you will start having less overwhelm.  Start taking a little time each day to document your business processes.  Make a list today of the processes that you haven’t recorded.  Cover marketing, production, training, accounting, etc.

Then take one of these areas and document it in detail this week.  Each week, for the next few weeks document another area.  Within a fairly short period of time, you should have at least the basics of marketing procedures, production procedures, client follow up procedures, and employee training procedures in place.  In other words, you’ve now got business processes.  Processes that you can rely on.  Processes you don’t have to think about.  Processes that you will use to grow your business without all that overwhelm now that it’s not all in your head.

One problem that many small business owners run into is simply thinking too small. I often have readers writing to me asking for helping getting their business ideas off the ground. I also often hear from folks who have run their small businesses into the ground. There are five key areas where you can think too small — and doom your business to failure.

Niche Too Small

Is your niche too small? Finding a small market to target with your business is key to success, but sometimes people narrow their niche too much. While doggy dental products could be a wonderful niche (as almost any dog owner can attest) you could even narrow your focus down to a certain type of dog (such as lap dogs) but going for one specific breed would be taking it too far.

Target Market Too Small

Is your target market too small? If you are looking only at one community or small geographic region then you may well doom your product to failure. It is far too easy to saturate a small market and it is far too easy for any marketing mistakes to end your campaign before it gets off the ground. In today’s economy with the availability of global marketing you need to think big when you are planning your target market.

Budget Too Small

Is your budget too small? You don’t need a million dollar advertising budget but you should have some seed money to get your business and its marketing campaign off the ground. It is possible to build a business from nothing but it is also a lot more difficult and you might find yourself making some mistakes that cost you a lot more down the road than putting a little money up front.

Schedule Too Small

Is your schedule too small? Do you have enough time to devote to your business?  Starting, running, and growing a business takes time. Some people get swept up in the planning and dreaming stages and never really start their business. Other people start before they have completely planned everything out and quickly get mired down by unexpected difficulties. While others do everything right in the planning and startup but once the business is running they get overwhelmed by day-to-day business and never think aobut ways to improve and grow their business.

Mind Too Small

Is your mind too small? You need to open up your mind’s eye to continually seek new opportunities to find new customers, to find new potential partners, to find new ideas for products, and to find new opportunities for marketing. Flexibility and adaptability are key to surival in today’s business climate and you always need to have new ideas cooking to grow and expand your market and your business. This means raising your head up out of the trenches once in a while. Yes, you might need to dodge the occasional missile lobbed your way but this is the only way to see those opportunities heading your way.

If you do your best to avoid these five not-so-small mistakes then you will be on your way to small business success.