How To Avoid Revenue Ceilings, Pt. 2 -- Day 13/365

Real People.  Real Business.  Real Life.

Yesterday we dove head first into an incredibly powerful topic -- optimization.  You could also call it "continual improvement," or "process improvement" ... whatever term clicks with you.

The core of it is simply this:  Learning how to systematically improve your business, little by little by little, so that it performs better and better and better.  And while this concept has a host of applications, we're applying it particularly to the habits of the entrepreneur --- and aligning those habits to generate maximum revenue.

Yesterday's action exercise addressed the stuff you need to do to start optimizing your business.  Today is all about getting started and actually doing it.

It picks up right where yesterday left off:

BEGINNING OPTIMIZATION - ACTION EXERCISE

Start focusing the bulk of your time and energy on your CORE SUCCESS FUNCTIONS that generate the majority of your business results – IE, revenue.

• Start looking at the activities you engage in and understand how much financial value you are generating each hour. This doesn’t mean what you charge per hour, but rather --- what activities, in actuality, generate the highest financial return?

• Systematically begin to engage in the highest return activities as much as possible. Avoid low value activities as much as possible. Example: you have to stay on top of the books, but that is not a high value task for you. It is complimentary. Don’t burn unnecessary time there, but don’t neglect it.

• Think of it this way: Imagine that you want (or need) your activities to consistently generate $100/hour. You must continually ask yourself, “would I pay someone else $100/hour to do what I’m doing now?” If the answer is no, then you are engaged in the wrong tasks.

• A point: When you are a one-man show, you have to engage in a delicate balancing act here. Yes, you actually do have do ‘do it all’ yourself. But the key is to focus the bulk of your time and energy on core success functions and high value tasks that move your business forward.

• Something else to consider: You won’t be totally effective at all your core success functions. There might be high value tasks that you just aren’t very good at. Eventually, you will need to discern which tasks you perform the best at and focus on those, while someone proficient in the others handles them for you.

The truth is ... if I was really going to make sure you "got this" fully ... I would dive in much, much deeper -- and perhaps blog about it for a month or so.  But the core boils down to...

...a mindset of continual improvement.  

And if you can read this post, and if it can introduce this mindset, or affirm it ... then the post has been worth it.  Tomorrow we'll address following through with the optimization process you have started.

To Your Enduring Success,