Some of you may have recently seen an Instagram post from me about my health journey of late. It was a squirmy moment because I lean towards secrecy and quiet about me. However, I was prompted to share because I hoped that my story would resonate with other micro owners who may be struggling with health, wellbeing challenges, stress or may just inertia in some way - it happens to us all!
Today, I wanted to explore the concept of you being THE key asset in your micro business and how to optimise yourself in just the same way you would try to optimise your marketing activity, streamline your financial process or upgrade your website.
We so often overlook the impact of not focussing on ourselves - as the human in charge of a little business but also the essential cog in our micro business make up.
Does this just mean more self care or something more fundamental? Can stepping back and seeing ourselves as a core function in our business help us to finally re evaluate and set systems in place to optimise ourselves in our business? After all, we wouldn't dream of ignoring our online shop or forgetting to do our tax return would we?
Here are 6 steps that you could try and I'm sure there are many more you can share in the Forum and with each other on top!
Understand the essential functions that you carry out in the business - the things that only you can do to keep the business going and afloat. This might be delivering a service, making the things or doing the marketing. Make this list short and just the absolute essentials (e.g. you could get help with book keeping or website updating). This short list need to be your primary focus on a daily basis and everything else you can get help with, do once a week, automate or put in second place etc.
With said list in hand, identify the key things that need to happen for those functions to be carried out well. For example, to make your things, you need a calm and tidy studio with no distractions. Perhaps you deliver a service that means you have to be well rested and mentally alert. Do you need to have several hours of digital free time to deep dive into a core activity each day or each week? The question is - are you prioritising that set up properly?
Now look at your working week, day or life and check in with the systems you currently have in place to facilitate that essential activity above? Do you find yourself realising that you don't set up your day or week in order to do this essential things well? Does your week get swallowed up with other fluff so that you feel constantly derailed by 'emergencies'? What small changes could you make that would allow you to find the right environment to do your magic?
Time to craft something new! You have your list of essentials, you have your current working and living style. Now it's time to match them up. Create a two column list with the essentials on the left and your daily routine on the right e.g. walking the dog, taking kids to school etc. Using a pencil (so you can rub out and start again!) draw lines across to link up what needs to happen versus in what order they happen to make sure your essentials are achieved each day. This might require quite a routine change for you, asking family to chip in in a new way or minor tweaks that smooth out bottlenecks that regularly trip you up.
Now it's time to communicate your changes. So often, I have made changes to my daily routine but failed to tel my family or friends. This has then caused my new systems to fail quickly. For example, I might need someone else to walk the dogs first thing so that I can do my yoga but I didn't actually ask or explain why it was important. Perhaps you need to set up an auto responder to let people know when you're not contactable? If you were a doctor on call there would be no negotiation so why negotiate with the essentials in your business?
Finally create new habits and go gentle on yourself when you trip up! It takes time to develop new regimes and your new plan may need a tweak. However, never lose sight of the fact that YOU are THE key function in your business and you need to prioritise the core things you do that creates the magic in your business. Maybe write the new regimes on the office wall or add new tasks in your digital planner. Resist the temptation that this new plan feels like a luxury or hard to ask for. You are worth it as a famous ad once said.
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