How to juggle your priorities without breaking your neck

Work life balance

If you want to set your business on track for ongoing victories and find the life-work balance, you have to introduce scalable systems and practices to accelerate growth.

Have you heard this saying, “Follow your dreams or spend the rest of your life working for someone who did”? Ouch. Sounds like a pretty harsh statement, doesn’t it? But saying it is one thing, while chasing ongoing business success entails much more than that.

As a business owner, you know that it’s not enough to be good (and we mean, damn good) at what you do.

You also have to balance being a great communicator, negotiator, manager and sales rep, a marketer and an advertiser, as well as a role model to your team, a good service solution for your clients, and a human who still has to attend to family and personal needs after work (If you believe in life after work)…

Yes, all those hats need to be worn simultaneously.

Don’t get us wrong: We love business owners and get inspired by each and every one of you for daring to make your dreams a reality. And we believe that your initial business success is very much important.

However, if you want to set your business on track for ongoing victories and find the life-work balance, you have to introduce scalable systems and practices to accelerate growth.

What are these practices?

Analyse your business operations

Figure out what you do best and how you do it. Document every step of the way. Take note of processes that need improvement or may be skipped altogether. This analysis will help you to create consistency, enhance business efficiency and save time.

Manage your risks

Make sure to minimise unnecessary risks such as dealing with a sole supplier or relying on one person to be responsible for a certain task. There are no guarantees that this person will be there tomorrow as people get sick, unexpectedly quit their jobs and move to Hawaii for the rest of their lives (just saying.) It’s better to have a balance with several people trained to perform the same task or have multiple suppliers of identical products to manage your risks.

Put together a useful business plan

Have you noticed the word “useful”? It’s there for a reason! Many entrepreneurs spend sleepless nights in front of their computers trying to squeeze out their business plans…But remember, you are not at uni struggling to complete a boring assignment. Your business plan is your working document you’ll use to understand your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and to set short and long-term goals and priorities. For instance, it will help you to develop a realistic budget, but we’ll speak about the magic word “budget” at another time.

Consult with your trusted bookkeeper as often as you need

Even though a talented business person has a full skillset, it’s hard to be equally good at everything. Make the time to see your trusted bookkeeper on a regular basis to help you increase your revenue and plan the next steps in realising your business potential.

Sarah Bendetsky, BAS&MORE bookkeeping & virtual CFO services