If you are like most businesses owners, youve 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. Youve got marketing going, production to oversee, calls to return, employees that need your advice. Its 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. Its in their head. I ask where their employee training manual is. Its in their head. About the only thing thats written down is their calendar of appointments. Even a lot of their to-dos are in their head. Heres one simple and powerful way to get out of overwhelmwrite 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 havent 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, youve now got business processes. Processes that you can rely on. Processes you dont have to think about. Processes that you will use to grow your business without all that overwhelm now that its not all in your head. |
