What Keeps You Up at Night?
If you are a business owner, chances are you have a strong gut feeling about your business. Whether you listen to it or not could be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful business. The goal of this post is to focus on the nagging thoughts and stressors in your business that keep you up at night. We all have them but they never go away until we address them and create a plan of action to overcome them. Don’t miss our worksheet at the bottom.
On the worksheet we will ask what your stressors are and to rank them from 1-10 (10 being the highest). We will start with the top ones and create a plan of action to eliminate them, whether that means delegating, hiring someone new, bringing in new programs to help or to remove a product or service. Here are a list of examples:
| Stressor | Rank 1-10 |
| Client Follow Ups | 8 |
| The Cost of my Product | 6 |
| Presentation Next Week | 4 |
| Losing Top Client | 9 |
| Social Media Content | 3 |
| Cash Flow | 10 |
Once you have identified your biggest headaches it is time to make a plan of action:
| Stressor | 1-10 | Plan of Attack |
| Cash Flow | 10 | Talk with a Bookkeeper to create monthly financial statements |
| “ | “ | Create Savings Accounts for current and future needs |
| “ | “ | Have ________ hold me accountable to my spending habits |
| “ | “ | Create a budget/assess every bill |
| “ | “ | Renegotiate interest rates with the bank |
| “ | “ | Worst Case Scenario: Take a part time job |
| Losing Top Client | 9 | Continue to build relationship |
| “ | “ | Build my systems to handle their orders and communications better |
| “ | “ | Build Relationships with potential new top clients |
| “ | “ | Hire a Client Care Associate to handle their account |
| Client Follow Ups | 8 | Build e-mail template for appointment follow-up e-mail |
| “ | “ | Hire a Virtual Executive Assistant (VEA) to handle all follow ups |
| Cost of Product | 6 | |
| Presentation | 4 | |
| Social Media | 3 |
Having a plan of attack will not only help you sleep better at night but also create plans to grow your business in new ways. Now it’s your turn. What are your stressors and how do you plan to attack them?
– Derek Burbidge, Manager of Sales & Marketing
VEA
If you need more focus in your business, check out our “Goal Tracking” blog and worksheet, as well as our “Think Week” blog post.