This is especially important for those times when owning your own business starts to feel like a grind. Maybe your “day off” isn’t a day away from your business at all, but rather a busman’s holiday where you are walled off from your least favorite tasks (workers’ comp audit, anyone?) and devoted to the activity you love to do best in your business.
Few things are as motivating as reconnecting with the energy you had when first launching your business and that elusive state of work when time disappears.
Schedule Training Time: And speaking of fresh perspective, if your industry is traditionally slow during the summer months, make a habit of summer learning. If you need continuing education credits to keep a certification up to date, summer may be the perfect time to knock out those professional development classes. As an added bonus, if you have kids, seeing Mom or Dad brushing up their skills sets a good example for preventing the “summer slide.”
But what if summer is your high season? For those business owners looking at their busiest time of year, prepare for the onslaught with new initiatives and offers. For example, if you find yourself answering the same customer questions again and again, head them off at the pass with a new FAQ link on your website or, even better, a quick video tutorial.
If summer is when you make the lion’s share of your revenue, challenge yourself to come up with ways to close more business than ever before. Perhaps that means some just-in-time sales training for you or your people, or maybe it’s a creative up-sell campaign. Whatever that idea is that you’ve been wanting to try, summer has a lightness that invites experimentation.
