As a home business owner, you probably wear many “hats”: marketing, sales, customer service, research & development, bookkeeping…to name a few. With all those day-to-day responsibilities, it can be very easy to get distracted from the kind of work you must do every day to stay in business – Income Producing Activities (IPA).
If you feel like you are crazy busy in your business, but at the end of the day wonder what exactly you accomplished, maybe you are spending too much time on “busy work”, not income producing work.
Start tracking your daily business activity: keep a list of everything you do, no matter what the task. After a few days (or at the end of the week), look over your list. How many of those tasks were directly related to your specialty and produced income for your business?
Stop and think about why you aren’t concentrating on Income Producing Activities:
Is this a new business venture and fear of failure is winning out?
Have you started too many “big projects” at once and can’t seem to finish any of them?
Do you feel that as an Entrepreneur, you should be doing everything by yourself to prove you can be successful?
These are just a few of the questions I’ve struggled with over the years in my business ventures. Without a “boss”, no one is telling us exactly what we must do every day to earn a paycheck…
So we need to keep it simple and stay focused on our IPAs.
- Make a list of your business’ Income Producing Activities
- Do at least one IPA every day
- Don’t waste time on tasks that you are not a specialist in – get help! Or get training in those areas that will increase your ability to create more IPAs
Yes, being a business owner is hard work. But you can help yourself make that hard work more rewarding by focusing on your specialty – the skills that produce income and the reason you wanted to become a business owner in the first place.
Top photo credit: kpi via photopin cc
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Image below courtesy of jscreationzs/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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Hi Terry,
The fear factor is huge for most of us. We have to keep reminding ourselves if we don’t take risks we can’t enjoy the rewards.
I recently went to a conference that reminded me to do the IPA during business hours and keep anything else to after hours. It’s communication with others that produces revenue opportunities so we have to make the most of the time when they are available.
Cheers, Caylie
Caylie,
Thanks for your input! That’s a great tip about doing IPA during business hours – makes a lot of sense.
Yes, fear can be one of the biggest challenges. I like your advice for taking risks to get the rewards!
Thanks for stopping by 🙂
Terry
Along that same line of thought is to figure out what are the things that tend to take us away from IPA during the day, and make sure to do them at night. It’s amazing how much time things like doing computer scans, taking a shower, and making sure the chores like dish washing and emptying the trash can take out of a morning when you just didn’t get them done the night before. And how much more time you’ll have to jump right in when you figure all that out!
I also found website that can help us look back and see how much we’ve actually DONE so we feel better about ourselves. It’s http://www.idonethat.com. It’s free.
LuAnne Jamieson recently posted..Kaboom! It’s Exploding Head Syndrome!
Such a WONDERFUL reminder. I sell hand-made crafts (mostly crochet) and there are so many little tidbits that can really bog down your time. Researching new products, marketing existing product lines, keeping the books (like you mentioned), and then the actual creation of the products can take up quite a bit of time. I believe that managing your time in productive ways is a big part of being successful. Thank you so much for this reminder 😀
Thanks Sarah! Glad you found it helpful 🙂 Just visited your Facebook Page – your crafts are adorable! Good luck with your business!
Thanks for your comment,
Terry
Today was one of those days when I’m fairly certain no IPA’s were completed in my business. It’s emotionally exhausting, reflecting back on a ‘wasted day’. Thank you for this gracious reminder to remain conscious of doing at least one IPA to my daily to-do list.
~ Loralee
Believe me Loralee, I know how you feel…had one of those days this week that started out with computer issues and went downhill from there (and my hubby is the computer expert so I even have live-in tech support ).
All we can do is start the next day with our list and a positive attitude, right?
Thanks for stopping by!
Terry