Are you an action taker? Are you sure?

As I write this I’m 41,000 feet in the air en-route to Chino Hills by way of Phoenix. I had to write this now as I was just reviewing submissions for a 90-day business transformation challenge and needed a break. I run this challenge every three months within the elite coaching program I run with Bedros Keuilian. I have to pick finalists today so they can get prepared to campaign for the votes of their peers at this coming weekend mastermind. Let me explain why all of this is important to you.

People, but entrepreneurs especially, like to win and compete I’m sure you agree. As entrpreneurs we’re generally Type-A analytical types, detail oriented and continually pushing forward, this is mostly true.

The prize for our business transformation contest is travel and hotel to our next meeting, always in a fun locations like beautiful Las Vegas. All you have to do is commit to paper how your business has changed in the last 90-days to be considered. Interestingly in this elite group still only an average of 1 in 5 submit their 90-day summaries. Would you have been the 1?

Every day I hear from people how busy they are, heck even I say how busy I am, when you review the last 7-days or even the last 30 can you say with confidence that have you been effective? By effective I mean have you implemented something or improved something directly related to the profitability or longevity of your business and can you measure it? Or have you been working on your technician skills of becoming a better trainer?

It’s easy to be busy, but it’s surprising how easily it is to be distracted by the wrong things. A trainer calls in sick so you jump in, a client isn’t happy with their other trainer so you jump in, the toilet breaks, you jump in.

There’s a time, no matter how big or small your business is, that you’ve likely done all these things or you soon will.

The effective entrepreneur will succeed in doing these things less until one day you can’t believe you ever did them at all.

Here’s the big secret if you want to be really successful in the shortest time possible, you have to avoid being the technician. Declare your line in the sand, the line that says you will never cross.

You have a responsibility to your customers and to your employees to stay focused on a very narrow set of tasks (simply because few people juggle a lot of tasks well) and these tasks should be the things that will have big impact on your business.

• Marketing campaigns, write the copy, prepare the flow, create the instruction set for people to run the promotion over and over and then pass it off to a teammate to execute.
• Reviewing sales performance and even client performance, then coaching or creating any systems you can to improve these performances.
• Review the business finances. What are the key areas your business is spending money in the last 90 days? Can any of these be improved or reduced?

You notice in there I didn’t mention training people or anything like that, no paying bills, no buying supplies, etc. If you’re juggling all of these things on a regular basis you will never be able to gain the momentum to take huge leaps forward. That doesn’t mean you’ll never do them again, there’s still days in my businesses where everything collapses and I could be doing any task you can imagine but the point is that’s not the rule, the more you work to delegate the more ways you’ll find to delegate and when crap happens you’ll have a greater tolerance and less of a desire to jump in.

Stay focused on the prize!