Four Activities You Should be Doing Every Day as a Side or Home Business Entrepreneur
Are you stuck? Has your progress slowed to a halt? Are you wondering why some of the success you enjoyed initially has dried up?
Your success, or lack of success in your business will be directly correlated to the amount of ACTIVITY, or lack of activity that you put in consistently every day. We know from the books such as The Slight Edge and The Compound Effect, that the correct activities over time lead to the success that you desire.
Here are four activities that you should be doing every day in your life and business to help restart your progress. This is the very basic, and minimal amount of work to do every day. If you have no opportunity to do anything else, at least do these 4 things.
Meet One New Person
At the end of the day, business is not about money or spreadsheets, it’s about people. In order to make your business successful, it doesn’t matter what it is, it requires people. You need to build relationships with people and build your network.
“Your network is your net worth.”
– Tim Sanders
One method for meeting a new person is physically. This could be done in a contrived setting such as a networking group, or meet-up, or via you reaching out and setting up a meeting with someone. It could be in an “unintentionally, intentional” setting such as the grocery store, the gym, your day-job workplace, in line at the coffee shop. Simply say “Hi” to someone, and pay them a complement.
You could also use the social media world in places like Facebook and LinkedIn. However, “meeting” someone new on social media does NOT mean you’ve posted something and someone new has “liked” or commented on that post, or even that you’ve sent out some connection requests. That “like” or comment or connection request acceptance is just the opening to allow you to actually meet them and start a conversation. Reach out to that person and thank them for the interaction or the connection and start a conversation.
Try to add one new person to your network every day.
Follow Up with one Person
Equally important to growing your network, is to cultivate the relationships that you have already established. That is done by following up with people. You’ve likely heard this timeless quote before:
“The fortune is in the follow-up!”
– Every sales trainer since the dawn of time
I’ve seen sales metrics all over the map with how many times customers have been exposed to your business before they decided to make a purchase. I’ve seen anywhere between 4 and 12 times. My own experience would be in that range as well. Regardless of the actual number of times that convert for you, the fact that you MUST follow up is the basic message here.
Make sure you are following up with at least one person every day. If you’re meeting one new person every day, then you have a never-ending supply of people with whom you should also be following up. The reality is, if you want to take your business to the next level, you need to be meeting and following up with several people every day. But, at an absolute minimum, you should be following up with at least one person every day. It’s all about relationship-building.
Track Your Progress
Here’s one for the accountants and engineers out there (like myself). However, regardless of your personality type, its another critical daily activity. Track your progress. A professional understands the data. A professional knows where he or she is at in relation to where he or she was, and where he or she wants to be, and that the data doesn’t lie.
“If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.”
– Ronald Coase
When you set your goals, you need to track your progress against those goals. You break the goals down into the activities and tasks that are income generating, and then find the metrics that you can track against those activities. For example, how many people did you reach out to today? How many new people did you meet? How many people did you follow up with? How many new or repeat customers today?
Once you have started recording your metric data, then start to compare yourself over time. Break it into daily, weekly, and monthly chunks and see how you are progressing, or receding. How many new customers did you have this week compared to last week? How many new people did you meet this month compare to last month?
Tracking progress does not require fancy software or apps. Certainly you can use these tools if you find them helpful, but the reality is that plain old paper and pencil work just fine. Do NOT let what can be the overwhelming complexity of CRM software, or sales tracking software, or even your colleagues methods of tracking keep you from recording your metrics and tracking progress. Find the basic method that works for you, and use it everyday. As you progress, then you can work on whether a more sophisticated method or tool set would be beneficial.
Work on One Skill
The single biggest “Aha!” moment for me, and the single biggest contributor to any progress and success I have enjoyed has been working on myself. Intentionally and purposefully developing my personal and professional skills.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
– Ghandi
Maybe you think this quote from Ghandi is a bit grand for you and your little business or your little personal goals. After all, you are simply trying to get more customers, help more people, run a marathon…you’re not necessarily trying to change THE world, are you?
But why not change YOUR world? Your business, and your goals are directly and by definition in YOUR world…so make the change in YOUR world…and that means BEING the change you wish to see in YOUR world.
When I realized that one of my goals (with my business and my life in general), is to make a positive impact on people in any way I can, I realized that I was woefully short in many of the skills to make that happen. That’s what started my personal and professional skill development journey.
Working on your skills takes effort, intentional effort. Sometimes it takes having uncomfortable looks at yourself in the mirror, or talks with yourself in your car. But if you don’t change, things will never change. You have to progress as a person, and a professional, and sometimes that even means relearning things you thought you knew.
Think of it very generically like this…Let’s say you went to college to become a school teacher. Most (maybe all?) states in the United States require “continuing education” credits for teachers throughout their career. Why is this? It’s because the powers that be know and understand this concept that every one MUST continue to get better, and that techniques and even the people themselves change over time. A college education provides a static, “here’s what we know now” snapshot in time as a basis from which prospective teachers START their journey. To continue to effectively teach students through their career, they must continue to improve themselves and their techniques.
If you are a teacher, this structure is built in to your profession. If you are a side or home business entrepreneur, you have to recognize this and commit to it personally. The great news about this is that YOU are the one who can decide how to get better and what to work on!
Every day you should be working on developing one professional skill. The BEST way to do this is to focus. Focus on one particular skill and string several days or weeks together where you are working on it exclusively.
Conclusion
Those are the four things you should be doing everyday:
- Meet one new person
- Follow up with one person
- Track your progress
- Work on one new skill
If you do this, over time you and your business will progress. If you want to move faster, take 1 and 2 and 10x them 🙂
I hope you received some value from this message. If so, please contact me, leave a comment and share with someone whom you think might also get some value.
