You’ve heard the term “spring cleaning” plenty of times and chances are you have almost always equated that to getting your house nicely ready for the beautiful days ahead. You clean out closets and drawers, do a bit of sorting and make the give-away piles, dust in corners that may not have seen much light for the past few months and voila you are all set. But have you ever considered that your business might need some Spring cleaning too?
We get so caught up in our businesses that we seem to forget that we may be doing things as they have always been done when in fact now that time has passed there may be a better way to do them or you may not even need to do them anymore. So take a bit of time during your Spring cleaning to give your business a once over too with these Four simple and practical steps:
1. Use the 3-D System
- Do it
- Delegate it
- Delete it
Go through your general To Do list. You know, those things that you do on a regular basis in your business. They may be daily, weekly, or even monthly activities but they are the things you do periodically and systematically. Now once you have that list together, you are going to give it the 3-D test. Take a blank sheet of paper and draw two lines down the paper so that you make three columns on the page. The first column label “Do it”, the second column label “Delegate it” and the third column label “Delete it”. With your three column page and general To Do list in hand, start from the first task and work your way down. For each task ask yourself if you really, really need to be the one who does this task? If yes, then keep it on your personal To Do list, if on the other hand, you realize that you could easily hand this task over to an assistant or part-time helper, then put it in the delegate list so that you can open up time and mental space for yourself by handing this over to someone else. You may realize though that you are not really interested or may not have further need for a particular thing in your business so that is a sign that it is time to get rid of the old by putting it in your Delete list, so that you can clear time and or resources for other things.
2. Plan for the next three months. Now that you have looked at your general activities, take a look at your planning for the next three months. Now hopefully you have a year long plan that you have created for your business that you can refer to for this step but if you don’t, there is no time like the present to write out an outline of what you would like to accomplish and in what time frame(s) over the next three months. It is essential that you do at least a bit of planning to get a real grip on where your business is going and where you would like to take it.
3. Ask yourself why you planned what you planned. In other words now that you have taken a look at what you want to be doing for the next three months in your business, ask yourself why this is important to you. It will probably come down to one of these reasons:
- Fun (This is actually a great reason as long as you are creating with the other three reasons listed here. After all running your own business is hard work, but let’s face it, it can also be a lot of fun so allow fun to be a real reason that you choose to do something!)
- Connections (If you are doing an activity or project so that you can solidify current connections or meet new people and make new connections, this too is a great reason to do something. Remember as you are creating your new connections that the golden rule in building a solid relationship is to ask what you can do for someone else instead of only focusing on what she can do for you.)
- Money (Yes, you actually do have to make money if you want to continue to run your business for very long, so this is a very good reason to plan to do a certain thing.)
- Future possibilities (If you can be sure that a certain action may have future benefits then it definitely qualifies as good business planning.)
If you have planned something into your next 3 months’ business calendar and it does not fall into one of these four categories, head back up to the 3-D system and see if this is really something that is going to be beneficial for you and your business. These four points above do not cover every single reason you would want to do something but if it does not fall into one of these four, make sure that you have a good reason for keeping it on your list.
4. Review your Products, Services and Projects. Now that you have gone through your general To Do List and gotten clear on what you want and need to be doing in your business over the next three months, it is time to take a look at the Products, Services and Projects you have lined up for your business. Write all of them out on a piece of paper and then ask yourself which category you would like to put it under.
- Keep it exactly as it is
- Tweak it up/down
- Get rid of it
Now, on your Products, Services and Projects (P,S,P) list write next to each one either “Keep”, “Tweak up”, “Tweak down” or put a line through it to indicate you are ready to get rid of it. Once you have decided what to do with each P,S,P take some action.
Keeping it as it is? Great, this one is good to go, so move on to the next one.
Tweaking it up? That means you are ready to add something extra to this P,S,P. Do you want to spice it up with some new elements (audio, video, checklists, …) or do you want to add a few extra chapters or topics? Don’t forget, tweaking up means more effort on your part so this will probably need to coincide with a price increase with your “version upgrade”.
Tweaking it down? Simple, you can take an element or two out, make the steps quicker and easier or simply pull one element out to make it a mini P,S,P. Since this is a smaller version you will want to lower your price point on this item even if it did take a bit of your time. Think of it as the “petit pain” (little bread) method – low price point so you can sell to more people.
Get rid of it? Well pretty self explanatory, you are ready to be done with this one. But before you simply hit delete, how about having a Spring cleaning sale and let your clients know that you are doing away with this high quality product and it will never be available again so if they want a copy it is now or never at a very special price!
Voila, doesn’t that feel great? You have streamlined and cleaned up your business and opened up a space for new and exciting opportunities to present themselves! Breathe in the fresh air and enjoy.