Is Time to Rethink Your Team Model?

As a business coach one of the major challenges I have encountered for a great many business owners is they have a team that is operating way below their true potential. For some owners the problem is they don’t even know their team is under performing, they think their team are achieving a great deal until I help them open their eyes to realise that they are not achieving anywhere near as much as they could or indeed growing as fast as they could be.

There are a number of indicators to look out for when determining if you have an underperforming team and today I would like to point your attention to just three of them.

1.   The need for you to be a firefighter

This one can be hard to spot because for most it is considered ‘The Norm’ to be the glue holding the team together, spotting mistakes and swooping in to fix them, in actual fact, it may appear appropriate for you to go to work in a Super Heroes outfit. The strange thing is that some owners enjoy this because it gives them a sense of purpose and it can also be good for the ego. The big question is “If you have to be there to fix all the problems what are you paying your team to do?” and also “What are you educating them to do?”

I am not suggesting that your business should be problem free everyone makes mistakes from time to time and even the best of businesses I have coached have always had fires to fight but they have been the exception and not the rule.

If you find yourself having to solve problems on a day to day basis you need to take a good at how your team is structured, how clear are THEY on their roles and responsibilities? How clear are YOU on their roles and responsibilities?

A good exercise here is for you to jot down what you think a team members top 5-7 roles/responsibilities/tasks are and ask them to do the same then compare notes. You may be surprised at the difference in understanding.

2.   The need for micromanagement

Does leaving your business for a period of time fill you with dread and lead to sleepless nights? Do you find yourself having to create task lists for your team so that things get done?  If you’re in this position then you are micromanaging and the longer that is allowed to carry on you stand the risk of tearing yourself apart due to stress or you will severely limit the growth of your business.

If you have a lack of trust in your team to deliver the results you expect of them there is definitely a management issue.

A lack of trust in any business will always lead to a lack of commitment which in turn will eventually impact the results the business achieves.

3.   It’s easier to dodge communicating with the team than facing the issues.

Clear communication is the heartbeat of every business. It has been suggested that in a great deal of businesses the team are treated like mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed with #7+*. This is the opposite of open book management. The team have no idea about the purpose of the business, the state of the business and giving an opinion is frowned upon.

A lack of understanding between yourselves and your team often leads to communication that can be abrasive and difficult which may result in the owner thinking “What’s the point in ever bringing up the issues?” I might as well just do it myself” If you ever find yourself in that position then you can be sure you have a communication problem within your team. It may be time to take a look in the mirror because your team are a direct reflection of you!

What is it you need to change about your leadership and management style to get the results you yearn for?

For the situation to change first YOU must change. To borrow a famous quote “Be the change you want to see”

Essential Elements of a Great Team Meeting

During our Grow Your Business With Confidence last week, one of the attendees commented that he is searching for a way to grow his business without having to hire any staff.

Ever found yourself uttering a similar thought yourself?

Hard truth is though, if you want to grow a great business you won’t be able to do it on your own.

The headaches involved with the hiring talent, holding onto talent, managing talent and growing more talent are very common in the SME sector. And whilst the subject is in and of itself way too large to cover in one blog, I would like to focus today on just one small change that can help get your team aligned and also tap into and leverage the collective intelligence of the whole team to drive your business forward.

That small change is Team Meetings. For some, the very mention of team meetings will have you cringing but I have witnessed not only in my clients businesses but also my own that meetings that are correctly structured and have clear outcomes can both be interesting, enlightening for your team and game changing for the business.

In any growing business one of the main arguments for not having meetings is the time they take. I would argue that not taking that time is costing you far more time across the business because of a lack of communication, understanding in which direction the business is moving, and the plan for how you intend to get there.

For some a team meeting is seen as a way of having a quick catch up or chat together about last night’s football or other interesting events that have taken place. The point of having a meeting is being totally missed and provides the biggest excuse I hear for why meetings don’t take place “I am always here with my team and it’s only a small team so I don’t need to have formal meetings,” yes you do.

There are four key elements to holding a great team meeting:

1.    As the business owner you need to be very clear about the purpose of the meeting.

2.    Have a very clear agenda for all meetings.

3.    A time limit for the meeting. Most tend to be an hour but in actual fact, the same result could be achieved in much less time.

4.    Limit the amount of attendees. It’s not about having the whole team sitting there with you. It’s about having the right people sat in the meeting and making sure that these people cascade the message throughout their departments.

There are in actual fact four kinds of meetings that you need to be considering within your business:

1.    The first being the daily huddle. This is a quick stand-up kind of meeting, taking no more than 5-10 minutes to outline the wins from the previous day and the expectations for coming day.

2.    A weekly meeting. Normally a tactical meeting to discuss the operational stuff within the business. Keeping abreast of KPI’s and the movement towards the businesses priorities.

3.    A monthly strategic meeting. Based in and around the 90 day plan (you do have a 90 day plan?)

4.    The quarterly meeting. Which I would highly recommend is held off site so that you can really get your heads down to planning the next quarter’s priorities for the business, look at what could have worked better in the previous quarter and the one that most businesses forget identify what it is you are going to stop doing in the forthcoming quarter.

This might sound like a tall order for most of you but remember, if you spend a great deal of time fire-fighting, if communication is a problem in your company, if people are making the same or similar mistakes time and time again, or maybe your team are not doing what you want them to do so thus never reaching the potential you would like to see, this is by far the most valuable and quickest intervention you could undertake as a business leader.

A great question to ask yourself every time you plan a meeting. “What do I want my team members to be doing as a result of attending this meeting?” you will surprised how much clarity and focus it will give you within the meetings. The biggest plus will be how the whole process will accelerate the progress of your company.

Are you fed up of just drifting on the tide?

If you look on the bridge of any modern ship, you will find a whole array of instruments designed to produce metrics that are critical to the safe navigation of the vessel. Would you board a ship if these instruments were not working and the crew was unable to gather this vital information?

I’m going to guess that you said no because apart from the safety aspect it would be highly unlikely that you would reach your intended destination. You would end up drifting along at the mercy of the tides, winds and surrounding environment. To do that would be a little crazy wouldn’t it?

Yet in business many companies invest vast amounts of money into sales and marketing strategies with no clear metrics in place that will give an indicator of how that investment is working or, indeed, not working.

Most companies recognise the need for metrics, yet they tend to be “one of those things we will get round to one day” because the busyness of business takes over. This is a little like being the Captain of your ship; down in the engine room, shovelling coal “got to keep the ship moving,” but never getting up onto the bridge to actually see  what direction you are actually going!

What metrics can tell us and why there are so important?

Take a trip to the doctors when you’re feeling unwell and three things the doctor might take a look at are; temperature, blood pressure, and pulse. If your temperature is 98.6 its normal, blood pressure is 120/80 that’s normal and a pulse of 65 would be considered normal. Differences in these numbers would indicate areas that might need further investigation.
On our ship the captain will be able to tell he is heading in the right direction, by the readings from his rudder angle indicator, gyrocompass, he can also make sure he is moving at the correct speed by checking his GPS system or by using a Doppler measurement.
In business, there are numerous indicators we could look at in marketing including; return on investment (ROI), customer retention, average sales value, leads generated, conversion rate, frequency of transactions, lifetime value…..

What can you do with the information?

Let’s say for instance your business is measuring customer retention, and you discover that your retention rate is 65%. This means that to maintain your customer base you will have to generate 35% new customers every year. It has been estimated that to acquire a new customer can be between 5 and 10 times more expensive than retaining a current customer. Armed with this information you now have choices: you can spend more money on generating 35% new customers, you can look at implementing strategies (at a lower cost) aimed at keeping the customers you already have or you could have a combination of the two.

It is quite frightening to think that because most businesses do not track customer retention; they will normally revert to spending money on generating new customers never realising the effect that has on profits.

What should you be measuring?

I would suggest that you use your intuition and focus on implementing marketing metrics that are specific to your business operations. As a starting point, you might want to look at profitability metrics; after all, you are in business to make a profit. Once these metrics are up and running smoothly you can move onto some more complex measurements which will reveal even more profit building opportunities for your business.

It is worth pointing out that it is not the number of marketing metrics that you use, but the effectiveness of those you do choose to apply across your business.

HOW TO HIT THE TARGET

A question I get asked by many business owners is what is the most important factor when it comes to marketing my business? Is it my offer? Is it my unique selling proposition? Is it whether I market online or offline? Is it how quirky I make my marketing? Is it how my marketing looks?

Actually, whilst all of these will help the key to making marketing work for you is to target the market you are aiming to sell to. Now you may be thinking “but everybody can use my product or service” and although that may be correct you are forgetting one key point; everybody buys from you for a different reason, so how do you expect to appeal to all of your potential customers at the same time?

One of the main reasons business owners learn to think like this is because it is the way we are marketed to most of the time. We are constantly bombarded with marketing from some of the biggest companies in the world such as Apple and HP. They are well known brands and have huge marketing budgets so that they can sell to millions of people and they need to keep their brand name in front of their customers.

Brand marketing does work but it is very expensive and well beyond the marketing budget of most in the SME market.

So what does work?

Consider if you only had one product/service and this appealed to only one type of customer, how much easier would your marketing be? You would be able to extol the full benefits and uniqueness of your product and your customer would understand this and be much more likely to buy from you because you will have forged a very specific connection with them.

So this is the secret of proper target marketing, but like most things in life, it may be simple yet not necessarily easy.

If you have numerous products/services and customers of all shapes and sizes on your database how do you choose who to target?

If you were to review your present customer base I am sure you will find some really awesome customers that buy from you more than average are a pleasure to serve and never quibble on price (they do exist!). You will also have customers that could be classed as ‘bread and butter’ or basic type of customer who are just good solid business. Then you might have a group that you would be a darn site happier if they were customers for one of your competitors because they are hard work, rarely spend much and when they do always find something to complain about. We call this your customer ABC – A is awesome, B is basic, C is can’t deal with.

Now you don’t need to be a marketing guru to realise that it would be better for your marketing  to attract more A type customers than B’s and C’s. If you agree with this it may a good time to identify what exactly make an A grade customer in your business. This can include factors such as location, demographic, what they buy, what they spend, profit per sale, how quickly they pay etc. Once you have identified who these A graders are it could also be an opportunity to reach out to them and find out what it is about you that they like, and you can use that feedback as the basis for discovering your USP.

Once you know who you’re ‘A’ grade clients are, your job is now to go out and find more of them this will then become the basis of your marketing campaign.

There are many ways to do this yet this has to be the simplest method I have found is:

Who do you want to target? – Which of course you have now identified and are being really specific!

What do they want? – Which product or service are they going to be interested in?

Where do you find them? – Think differently here where do they hang out? What magazines do they read?  What trade journals will they read, what industry bodies do they belong too? Who could you possibly form a strategic alliance with that is already dealing with these people?

When will they be looking? – When it comes to marketing, both timing and consistency are critical. So when do you intend to start marketing your product/service? How long do you intend your campaign to last? It has been estimated that it takes at least 7 touches before somebody is prepared to buy from you so it is important to plan the intervals and types of touches you intend give.

General rule of thumb erratic marketing = erratic results, consistent marketing = consistent results!

Why should they take action? – You must have a compelling offer that will make them take action now, even if that is just register interest and allow you to contact them again in the future.

How are you going to communicate to them? – What medium will you choose? Paper, letter, magazine, telephone etc. If you know your target this will be obvious.

When doing this, think of picking off your future customers one by one with clear a specific message that will make them react immediately, rather than hitting everybody with a weak and confusing message.

So now you know how to hit the target every time. But just like any great darts player you may not hit the bullseye every time but you will have another turn and the more you throw the better you get.

Is it time for you to step up to the oche and take action?

If you are a business ownerand don’t consider yourself to be a marketer this may be of interest to you 

Dealing With Difficult People

Had a really interesting coaching session with a client last week, when I asked “What would you like to get out of today’s session” the reply I got was “How do I deal with difficult people?” That’s a big subject, and I could write a book or two about it.

For the purposes of this blog we will define difficult people as people who behave in a way we would rather they didn’t and who say and do things that we deem are unacceptable.

Sometimes it is worth considering are these people really being difficult or are they just being different?

It is also worth holding the mirror up and asking “How are we contributing to making this situation difficult?” which leads us nicely into one of the first keys to dealing with difficult people:-

Recruiting the behaviours you want to see…This maybe a little late if you have already recruited but is still a worthwhile exercise going forward to prevent making the same mistake again. How clearly defined are the roles and responsibilities for each and every position in your business. Blurred lines around who does what by when can lead to what is perceived as difficult behaviours when the challenge is really a case of a bad hire due to a poor understanding of what is really required to fulfil the role.

What are the key behaviours you want to see from the person whose role this will be? Once you understand this you can gear your recruitment ads and process towards asking the focused questions that will help you hire not just on skills but attitude as well.

Define clear behaviour goals…Not only behaviours you want to see but also behaviours you want changed. Define clearly what you expect to see in people, and how you expect them to behave. In business it is normal to set goals for things that we want people to DO. A change in thinking may be needed here how about defining who you want people to BE. By having clear goals and objectives you can measure what those correct behaviours are and manage the performance and build that into a plan

Hold regular one to ones…It is okay setting goals and measures to achieving those goals or what is better known as  KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) I believe this description can be changed to Keeping People Informed. The way to do that is through having clear communication channels and giving regular performance updates.

In most businesses, employees get a once year review or appraisal, challenge is these tend to be held towards the end of the financial year and are a way of determining how much bonus the employee is to receive for their performance over the previous 11 months. If the employee has met all their targets brilliant life’s good but if they haven’t performed it’s too late to do anything about it, the business has already suffered because of this person’s performance.

Every business owner should be thinking in terms of building a meeting rhythm within their business. Meetings can be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually depending on the message and agenda. They need to be designed to meet the needs of the business.

One of the biggest excuses I get for not holding meetings is “I/we haven’t got time” to which I normally reply “You have as much time as you’re ever going to get, what is it costing you and your business not finding the time to hold these meetings?”

Give specific feedback…There is a perception that we only give feedback when there is a problem with performance in other words leave people alone until they do something wrong and then zap them!

I sometimes get asked “What can I do to motivate my staff?” it may be that the question is wrong and a better question might be “What am I doing to de-motivate my staff?”

Instead of catching people doing things wrong and giving negative feedback how about flipping that and catching people doing things right and giving encouraging feedback? 

Instead of knocking people down build them up. As humans if we are getting recognition for a certain type of behaviour we are more likely to repeat it.

Understand why the person is doing what they are doing…By asking a better question you can effectively get inside the other persons head and have a greater understanding of what is driving the difficult behaviour. Once they have explained it they may also become aware of how the behaviour is affecting other people and other areas of the business. 

Feedback will have a similar outcome.

We spend most of our time doing things unconsciously we go through life in a state of hypnosis and let our sub conscious minds run the show. This can sometimes lead to us not knowing how we are behaving and the effect it has on other people.

Actions you can take to move this forward:

Look at your present team and in particular the people who you feel are behaving in less than useful ways.

Define the behaviours that are causing the issue.

Imagine giving those people effective feedback:

·         Describe the behaviour

·         Explain the impact that behaviour is having both good and bad.

·         Specify the behaviours you would prefer to see or the behaviours you would like continued in the event of giving positive feedback.

·         Spell out the consequences of not changing the behaviour. In the case of a great performance the consequences are obviously going to be great so please carry on.

Let me know how you get on with this process and I look forward to hearing all about your success.

The Number 1 Marketing Strategy Since The Beginning of Time

Over the past couple of days I have been gathering ideas and content for our next workshop which will be themed around marketing that actually works.

Occasionally when I am presenting a workshop there may be people in the room who can be thinking along the lines of “That might work in the widget industry but it would never work in mine.” For that person it may be true, although I would still challenge the thought by asking “How could you make it work?” This did however get me thinking, is there a marketing strategy that does actually work in every industry? There is, and truth be told it has always been and always will be the number 1 strategy for marketing.

Strange thing is we all know about it but I have rarely walked into a business that has a plan in place to work on and continually improve it. Let me tell you what it is and as way of a bonus I will also throw a couple of supporting strategies that will help take your marketing to a whole new level.

The ultimate marketing strategy is this, Be Remarkable in every single thing you do. You have to be remarkable from the way you deliver your product or service, the product or service itself, the way your phone is answered, the way you and  your people turn up, the way you invoice, in other words you have to be remarkable right across the board. Just to clarify this point you don’t have to be good or great you have to be remarkable. You want people to go away and because of the remarkable experience they have had dealing with you they feel compelled to remark about you to other people!

Just to make this point a little clearer when Sir Chris Hoy won the worlds sprint championship in 2012, who finished second? My guess would be that for some of you it is much harder to name the second man because most people just don’t care about second best.

The person who is remarkable by being slightly faster than everybody else gets all the praise, all plaudits, all the money and trappings that go along with being remarkable.

You may asking “why have I got to be remarkable?” here is why; who is your competition? Most of you might be thinking about a competing business or the company just down the street, truth is your competition is anybody your actual or potential customer chooses. Basically they can compare you with anybody.

If somebody can purchase an item on Amazon and have it delivered the very next day in a particular time slot your delivery will be compared to theirs. If somebody can make a purchase from a website in the evening and the very next day pick it up in store you will be compared to that experience. Rightly or wrongly you are always being compared to the best. Since the arrival of the internet you are on a world stage you have to be remarkable more now than ever.

So let me ask you “What is your plan to be remarkable? What strategies have you and your team got in place to make sure you are and continue to be remarkable?

The number 2 strategy is to keep in constant contact with your customers. Not every six months, quarter or monthly every single week! I’m not talking about trying to sell them something every week, what I am talking about is strengthening your relationship with them by giving them something that will add value to them which could be information, new ideas, or just plain old helping them overcome a problem.

The final strategy, ask for referrals if you are being remarkable and adding value when you keep in touch then ask them “Who do you know who would benefit and appreciate the level of service that we are providing you with” and once you have the name ask “Do you want to contact them or would you prefer to just give me their number?”

There are loads of great marketing ideas out there but I believe these are the top 3.

So just to recap:

1.    Be remarkable in everything that you do.

2.    Keep in constant contact and add value every time

3.    Ask for referrals

If these were the only three marketing strategies you used in your business what do you think the difference would be?

Give them a try and let me know how successful they have been for you.

Looking Into My Crystal Ball

Last weekend I was travelling back from a trip to Bristol and decided to break up the journey by stopping for a coffee at a service station.

At the table I sat down at somebody had left a Sun newspaper, not my usual choice of reading but I decided to have a quick flick through to see what was happening in the world through the eyes of the people at The Sun.

There’s not much to report back to you in the way of real news but one page did grab my attention and that was Mystic Meg’s astrology predictions for the National Lottery which had a rather large prize fund and was being drawn last Saturday evening.

Were her predictions correct? To be truthful I have no idea. What fascinated me about this piece was that there are people out there that do believe in horoscopes and indeed some who plan their lives by them.

So I thought I would look into my crystal ball and see if I could come up with any predictions for business owners for the rest of 2016, and here is one that will prove a challenge for the vast majority of businesses this year.

Take the last 3 months in your business multiply by 4 and that’s your 2016!

Most business owners will hate that because it highlights that HOPE is not a strategy.

Truth is that if you really want the last 9 months of your year to be better than the first 3, you need to start doing something different.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always got”…Tony Robbins

Change can be hard but that is not a reason not to change yet a great many business owners will go into denial when they look at their first quarter results or come to the belief that they just need to work harder!

If I was to ask you to finish off this line for me….. practice makes….?

Most will have answered that with ‘perfect’ after all that is what we have been taught.

Truth is practice doesn’t make ‘perfect’, practice makes ‘permanent’.

As an example if I were a golfer and because of the way I held the club my shots always seemed to swing to the left of where I am aiming and if I were to spend more hours practicing this swing I would see no improvement, I would be wasting my time.

In his heyday Tiger Woods was asked why he had a coach to which he replied “I can’t see my own swing”

And there lies a real problem for business owners because they are working in their business and caught up in the day to day operations doing the do so to speak, when things aren’t going as expected the go to strategies tend to be work harder or put more hours in.

So, by practising the thinking of work harder or put in more hours this can become a permanent fixture in the life of a business owner.  

So what can you do?

In life and business you either win or you learn and a vital process that you will find game changing for your business is to STOP take some time out for quality thinking, REFLECT what has gone well what has gone not so well, REVIEW and UNDERSTAND unpack and analyse what has happened and why did it happen? If needed CHANGE if what you have been doing isn’t working and now because you have taken time out to understand why it’s not working it is time to change direction by either tweaking your strategy or changing your strategy

For some of you it may be quite a challenge to take this time out to run this process but what is the alternative?

For all our clients and owners that attend our Ultimate Planning Day a pre-requisite for the day is that they take time out and complete a preparation document which is designed to take them through the first four steps  STOP, REFLECT, REVIEW and UNDERSTAND the CHANGE step is of course covered in the workshop itself.

If you would like your own copy of preparation document just drop us a line.

Your past does not determine your future is it time for you to give yourself and your business a real lift by taking time out to REFLECT, REVIEW, UNDERSTAND AND CHANGE?

Does Your Business Have Any of the Following Symptoms?

·        Poor or erratic cashflow

·        Owners stress levels on the increase.

·        The need to take electronic devices on holiday “just in case I’m needed!”

·        Owner is first in, last out and finds the need to have work from home as well.

·        Not enough hours in the day

·        Owner suffers from Nobody-does-it-as-well-as-I-do-itus!

·        Customer complaints on the increase

·        Staff are motivated apart from when they are in work!

·        Delivery challenges leading to customers switching to your competitors

·        Low staff morale

·        Little or no trust between owner, staff, suppliers and customers.

·        Profit dead lining or in decline

·        Owner has little or no work-life balance

·        Owner considering or has consolidated the business to make life easier

·        No plans for growth

This list is by no means complete but it is the common symptoms that business owners tell me week in week out. The danger is that if they are not addressed they will eventually have a detrimental effect on both the business and indeed the business owner.

How many apply to your business?

If you would like to know the causes to these symptoms and how you can fix them and eradicate them for good grab your spot at our 4 Stages to Grow Your Business With Confidence Workshop... Call 0151 348 1202 to secure your FREE place

I Could Complete My To-Do-List if Only There Were 28 Hours in a Day!

For a great many of the business owners I meet they are working really long hours, sometimes more than 60 and yet they still find it a real struggle to complete everything they need to do. This inability to get all their work done tends to lead to an imbalance with other areas suffering, whether it be family, health, fitness, or fun.

When you first start a business it can be hard work and that will almost certainly involve long hours. The challenge is that this becomes the norm and years after starting the business a great many owners still find themselves working way too many hours and the promises they have made to their families, friends and themselves, that someday it would get easier just don’t seem to evolve.

It is possible that what’s happened here is the owner has confused business with busyness.

What can be a problem for all human beings is that we are in fact driven by our reptilian brains. Back in the day when leaving our caves was a really dangerous event our brains came with a ready to use fight or flight response centre. So at the first hint of danger our brains released chemicals that drove us to either stand and fight or run for our lives.

In the past this mechanism served us really well but now in modern days, where once it was your servant it may now have become your master seeing danger everywhere and having you operate in a fear fuelled reactive state instead of a proactive state.

Imagine if your sales are down a little, you receive customer complaint, a supplier puts their prices up, a team member hands their notice in, a job is late or you have to  do some rework the list goes on, during each of these events you will get a blast of the fight or flight chemical cortisol. The hairs on the back on your neck stand on end and you are primed again to react. Your brain is telling you to keep on running and it is no wonder that a great deal of owners get themselves into running a busyness.

What is needed is a change in thinking. Instead of cramming everything you have to do into the number of hours you have in your day, instead, remove from your day the hours you spend doing work you just shouldn’t be doing.

So how do you do that?

                                                                                   

In his brilliant book The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People Stephen Covey introduced us to the idea that we decide how to use our time based on two factors either importance or urgency or a combination of the two. At any moment of the day we will find ourselves working in one of four areas:

1.    Important and urgent this is a Demand on our time.

2.    Important and not urgent – here you find yourself in the Zone your most effective work will be done here.

3.    Not important but urgent – in this area we may become Delusional that we are making progress

4.    Not important and not urgent – these tasks are normally classed as Distractions.

To make the most of this model you will need to identify what is important in your business. The only way I know how to do this is to have a really clear vision of where you are taking your business and that vision has been transformed into a clear plan further broken down into time bound goals.

Once you are clear what is important for your business success you just need to review on a daily basis everything you are doing and asking yourself the question! “is this helping me achieve my goals?”

The aim here is to either stop or delegate anything that falls under the heading of a distraction. Delusional work is where you are spending your time dealing with other people’s important work and the key here is to learn to say NO and encourage people to solve their own problems. There will always be demands on your time, but if you discover patterns forming or the same issues repeating time after time, it may be time to create some systems that solve the issue before they become urgent.

If you do the above what you will find is that you will now have more time to invest doing the important work of your business, and by doing this you will be far more effective.

So the key to taking control of your time is to get really clear about what is important for the success of your business and making that a priority in your diary.

If you would like help identifying what is important in your business, setting goals, developing action plans, or systemising your business, just give us a call.