Did You Just Fall Out of Love With Your Business?

It's the Christmas season again, and love and festivity is just all around us. Symbols of love are everywhere—the color red, Christmas trees, Santa, gifts, et cetera. What also caught my attention was the  massive business going on. Lantern stores sprout on busy sidewalks, beggars are now singing carols, and the price of fruits and flowers slightly shot up.

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I had no problem with any of those. However, as I contemplated on the business part and on all the love brewing around, I suddenly thought: what if you fall out of love for your business? What if you just lost it? What do you do to fall back in love again?

See, perhaps the best job in the world is to be one’s own boss. And even though it’s not that easy or as loose as it sounds, many people still jump into the bandwagon and try to come up with their very own gigs. At first you like being the king of your time and being able to have the say on everything; however, when the realities of business ownership and management settle in, it’s also easy to just lose the zest for your business.

Imagine, you have to worry about financial management, employee relationship, sales and most of the time, you even get to work on weekends as well. When your to-do list starts to lengthen more than usual, there will be times when all you want to do is shut yourself out and sleep all day.

If you need help falling back in love with your business, here are a few time tested tips:

The first thing that you need to do is to set your mindset right back on track. Ask yourself why you are doing what you do and what your business stands for. Or, if you want to amp up the purpose of your business, ask yourself, “what is the most important aspect of my job?”. Whether it’s giving jobs or providing above satisfactory services, you need to remind yourself what your purpose is. Take time to pause for a while and reflect on what we are there for. Usually it’s the daily drill that just gets into us, and reflecting on our purpose re-energizes us back into taking those drills more seriously and purposefully.

Now, if you think that it’s the huge mound of tasks getting into you, start delegating some of the little ones to a trustworthy delegate. Pass some important-but-easy-and-time-consuming tasks like website maintenance, social media marketing and calendar scheduling off to an assistant. This will give you more energy and time to focus on the more important aspects of your business or future projects.

Lastly, don’t forget to take some time off. Take a quick vacation (one weekend will do) to inspire yourself and perhaps generate fresh ideas and more innovative perspectives. Indulge your employees to these kinds of mini vacations once in a while as well.

See, it’s not very difficult, isn’t it? You just have to start with the right mindset and work from there. And for a while, take your time off the numbers (sales, debts, etc.) and work on the heart of your business—the purpose. Once you get it right from there, the numbers will eventually concede.

Need more help with business revamping or mindset recharging? Drop me a line at the comment box or email Your New PR Girl at karlastefansingson@gmail.com.

Business Advice: Bigger Vs. Greater

There are a lot of people who resign from their jobs and start out on their own because they want to work on their own terms. They want to be the kings and queens of their times, and they want to explore their passions. On one hand, entrepreneurship does make a lot of hard work pay off in bigger terms. However, it is not the best business advice to hurry on expansion once you see income pouring in.

Many entrepreneurs commit the mistake of hasty expansion. They want to branch out ASAP when they find that their first venture is earning a lot of money. They want to get as much mileage as they can, make the brand as famous at it can be and most of all, they want to invest their income before these investments get watered down to careless expenses. They want to be big, big and BIG! In this light, sadly, most of them lose their focus.

One way to avoid losing focus is to remember why you created your company in the first place. Rethink its purpose and through this, you can begin to re-define success. You don’t have to change anything. Sometimes, all you need is to remember. 

Remember the time when you were up and about, thinking about the things that you wanted to do for your business. Remember the time when you were convincing your friends that you had a great idea and that it would be a really good business endeavor. Remember that particular time you mustered efforts to ask your stern professor about sound business advice. Remember the time when you were trying to borrow money from your parents, and arguing a little about it. These things will remind you of what really matters in your business; and what really makes your business idea great.

Any small company will be given an opportunity to widen their range of products and services. What is important is that they maintain (or preferably, surpass) the benefits that their clients get from their current offers, as well as maintain the good experience of their employees. For this, you might want to consider a little survey.

See, bigger isn’t always better. Companies are not just evaluated by their revenue or their number of branches. These things sit side-by-side the number of employees, their growth rate, their location, and their openness to other opportunities for moving forward. Here's one great business advice: there are a lot of instances when growth is not from the outside but from the inside. Does your company still provide what your employees are there for? Does your company create the impact that you want it to contain? What do you want to be known for? And is that emanating? Those things make you not just big, but great.