What Keeps You Up at Night?

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:

StressorRank 1-10
Client Follow Ups8
The Cost of my Product6
Presentation Next Week4
Losing Top Client9
Social Media Content3
Cash Flow10

Once you have identified your biggest headaches it is time to make a plan of action:

Stressor1-10Plan of Attack
Cash Flow10Talk 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
9Continue 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 Ups8Build e-mail template for appointment follow-up e-mail
Hire a Virtual Executive Assistant (VEA) to handle all follow ups
Cost of Product6 
Presentation4 
Social Media3 

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.