Small Business Idea

Regardless of your opinion on the subject, everyone has basic instincts that trump the myriad of trivial business requirements that typically fill our days.

For example: while in the midst of a leisurely swim on a tropical vacation, you may find yourself wondering about how nice your new bathing suit feels, if you paid too much for your hotel room, if you remembered to unplug the toaster before leaving home, and so forth.  However, when you’ve been underwater just a few seconds too long, you suddenly get 100% interrupted by an unstoppable urge that says, “get me up to the surface for more air, NOW!!!”  Its your survival instinct which, without, none of us might be here.

Similarly, while in the midst of a productive brainstorming session, business plan meeting, or some other small business operation, it is totally possible to suddenly have your business focus 100% sideswiped by an evolutionary urge like “Why is my child screaming in the other room?!  Must save progeny!!” or “Man, its almost the weekend again, and I still haven’t heard back from [name of person you took to dinner 3 weeks ago]…  this is driving me CrAzY!!!” or “I am soooooooooooooooo thirsty…  who cares about this business detail I’m working on?  What I really need to do is find me a bevy…” and so on.

While this kind of instinctual reaction to keep ourselves alive may be good for our survival, it can also kill your business productivity in no time.

That’s because our bodies and minds have been programmed to prioritize some things, like eating and other survival skills, above more abstract 17th century principles like value creation, completing a year-end, or doing adequate business planning.

In a split second, its virtually impossible to choose a low-priority business task over an apparently high-priority, survival-dependent task. This is true even when your survival is really not actually threatened, such as ‘needing’ a snack an hour after breakfast or ‘needing’ to check on a child when you know they’re being well cared-for.

To deal with this, we have to try to deal with the instinctual/survival/evolutionary issues beforehand.  That way, hopefully, we can physically survive and get that business plan written.

To accomplish this, here are a few things you can do to instantly improve your small business’s productivity, assuming you have not already done so:

• Have basic snacks available near or at your desk
• Keep a large glass or container of drinking water on hand at all times
• Unless absolutely necessary, keep your workspace and your parenting space separate
• If you haven’t already got this under control, learn how to get a date so you can concentrate on your work
• Clear all bee hives, roaming bears, and angry squirrels from the vicinity

With these basic aspects of life and “survival” under control (and unlikely to distract you 9 minutes for every 10) your business productivity should improve markedly.

For at least 90% of your day, you now only have to worry about everything else in life!

At least this gives you a fighting chance of concentrating on the tasks your business needs to have completed in order to thrive, instead of just getting overrun by the tasks you need to survive.

We’ve all been there: you start on a Monday morning, filled with passion, clarity, and a prioritized list of things to do that will make this week superbly profitable.

Then you check your inbox. Then Tuesday afternoon gets interrupted by the plumber. Then you have a completely unrelated bright idea on Wednesday. Then you’re tired/unintelligent on Thursday. By Friday you’re spent, have logged 50 working hours, have gotten a lot done, but have totally missed the priorities identified on Monday. And sadly, the chances are, you did not end up having a very profitable week.

Alas, the trap of relapsing out of our profit-focused priorities back into that profitless addiction called “misc.”…

A Weekly Goals & Accomplishments List

Having faced this issue numerous times in the past, I have started to write weekly priorities down. This simple activity serves as a personal guide for those times in the week where I lack good decision-making ability and lack clear perspective about what my priorities should be. In the absence of an external manager (drill sergeant), an entrepreneur must become their own manager. A heartless, time-watching, production-driven manager.

And we need tools to pull that off consistently.

A Simple Tool You Can Use

Spending 5 minutes a week writing down your top priorities and budgeting time for each task can really upgrade personal effectiveness. It is super easy to do, allows you to maintain a sustained effort on specific goals over many days, and allows you to evaluate how effectively you have worked when a week has passed. And all it takes is a pencil, a printer, and somewhere to post this list where you’ll see it throughout the week.

Luckily, its also as strict or laissez faire as you want it to be.

Why Do You Need a Printer?

To print this free, easy pdf: Weekly Goals & Accomplishments Worksheet

Feel free to use this form (high-resolution printable version here) and share it with others.

Tips for Use

Getting Started: Print off several copies, fill in the “Week” dates in advance, and commit to trying this for at least a month. It may take 2-3 weeks before this system starts to click for you.

Goals: Under “Details”, write the goal in a few words. Be as specific or general as seems to work best. Aim to have anywhere from 5 to 20 goals. Sample entries might be, “brainstorm one new business idea”, “read chapters 5-14 of ____ book”, “investigate tax options”, “adequately do my 15-hour part-time job”, “design these 2 elements of my new website: ______, _____”, “write 3 new pages of marketing material”, etc.

Priority: Some jobs are more critical than others. After filling in your jobs, rate the most important tasks “1″ and the least important “3″.

# of Hours Budgeted: Estimate how long it will take to complete each task. Round off to the nearest hour.

# of Hours Actually Taken: When finishing a task, estimate how long it took to complete. Compare this number to your estimate and see what you can learn from this. Don’t worry if the two “hours” numbers don’t always line up; just be sure that you consistently get better at optimizing your work time.

Total Hours Budgeted and Taken: At the end of the week, add up your hours and evaluate how things went. Don’t be too hard on yourself - just become aware of how you actually spend your time and figure out how to make the next week better.

Want to phase into a shorter work week? Use this tool to start shaving wasted hours, leaving more time for fun and relaxation!

Reward for Completion of Tasks: This is BY FAR the most important part of this sheet. Positive motivation works a million times better than penalties, guilt, or negative consequences. Choose something fun to do, buy, taste, or enjoy if you meet your weekly targets EACH WEEK, and then enjoy the rewards you’ve earned! Samples might be, “guilt free night out”, “large chocolate milkshake”, “new sunglasses”, “fanciest coffee at the coffee shop”, “trip to the beach”, etc.

These ideas will each allow a very small business owner to save big-time $$$’s over the next 6 months. Depending on how many you choose to implement, you can easily save $12,000!

1 - Get a Free Library Card

Entrepreneurs have an insatiable thirst for novelty and information. Quench this thirst with a library card instead of your wallet. You can still buy items for your personal library later on (items you’ve checked out of the library 3 times), but 90% of the stuff you buy or think you want you’ll never end up reading/watching /using again. Educating yourself doesn’t have to make you poor.

Most libraries will charge you a few bucks for a card, but if you cite “financial constraints”, they’ll give it to you for free. Also, most libraries have “inter-library loans”, so that even the smallest suburban branches have access to a huge collection. Fulfill your need for information, advice, and how-to on the public’s tab. Reserve best-sellers or TV series online. Libraries have almost everything you can imagine.

Monthly Savings: $200 or more

2 - Cut Your TV Package and 2 Cell Phone Features

Cutting your cable or satellite TV package will have a dramatic effect on your life – you’ll have more free time, more energy, plus you’ll be smarter and happier. Trust me, its true. To rebalance your life, explore internet videos and a local library.

Cutting the most useless features on your phone package is also something you won’t miss. Endless voicemail, bundled text messages, the data package you never use… these can all turn into $’s you can use on marketing or something else way more fun.

Monthly Savings: $50 - $150

3 - Drop Your Land Line & Long Distance Packages

Get Skype for all long distance calls, get a Skype phone number or mailbox, encourage regular contacts to install Skype as well (so your conversations become free), buy a $30 headset, and chuck your landline for good. Keep your cell phone “in case of emergency”, having people call you to take advantage of free incoming minutes. You will never look back.

Monthly Savings: $50 - $100

4 - Lower Your Rent

If you can’t afford where you’re living or working, move somewhere $200/month cheaper. Pretty straight-forward, eh?

Monthly Savings: $200 or more

5 - Drive an Older Car and Live Close to Where You Work

Daily commuting costs an incredible amount of time and money – something often only visible once you’ve stopped doing it. 25 minutes to get to work… $75 gas… Arrangements to get the oil changed… $400 car payment…

Instead, buy an older import with no depreciation that does at least 40 MPG (mine does 55), move to within walking distance of your daily destinations, and park your car. Rent a car for that once a year trip where reliability matters.

If you’re trying to impress people with your automobile, impress them with stories of the foreign excursions you took with the money you saved instead.

Monthly Savings: $500 or much more

6 - Drink Water for Lunch

($0 drink per day) x (20 working days per month) = $0

($2-10 drink per day) x (20 working days per month) = $40 to $200

Monthly Savings: $40 - $200

7 - Brew Your Own Coffee

Brewing your own coffee = Almost nothing

($2-10 drink per day) x (20 working days per month) = $40 to $200

Monthly Savings: $40 - $200

8 - Sell High

When your stocks go up in value (perhaps well above their previous highs), and you’re thinking, “Yes! I’m finally about to become a millionaire,” stop being such a moron and take your cash while you can. Letting your portfolio of stocks plummet in value is a really easy to lose the money your business made in the first place. If you don’t want to follow your investments daily, set sell-stops so that you don’t have to. But regardless, don’t just sit around and lose your shirt.

Monthly Savings: Only you know this number

9 - Learn to Cook Gourmet

Cut out one fancy dinner per week and you’ll easily save $200 a month, especially if you like to entertain guests. If you’re relying on restaurants to be impressive, note that people like it better when you prepare it all yourself

Monthly Savings: $200 or more

10 - Make Your Own Wine/Beer

The first kit won’t save you much money, but it will still be cheaper than any sale in town. Subsequently, wine will cost you approximately $2/bottle and beer even less.

Making wine or beer is best done in good company (as your drinking should be!) Aside from ensuring fun throughout the whole process, if everyone does their own kit and you all split the results, you get a variety of products and minimize the risk of one or two ruined batches.

If you’re having a company party, this is an easy way to cut costs and do great team-building (the brewing process) as well.

Depending on how much you drink and how much you pay, this can save:

Monthly Savings = (X*Y) – (X*$2) Where (bottles/month = X) and ($/bottle = Y)

Adding Things Up

Take the amount of money you’ve saved with each of the 10 items above, put it in the “Monthly Savings” column, and see how much you can save!

If you can’t make things add up to $12000 per year (just $1000 per month, or less than half of the list above), there’s something wrong with you!