💡 Business Tip - Getting Those Business Breakthroughs (Issue #28)
Work on your business, not just in it
Try this tip this week:
Schedule a recurring 1-hour block of time every Friday to ask yourself questions and think deeply about your business.
You need dedicated time to sit down and think about your business without interruptions from clients, customers, partners, friends, and family. Strategic work like this is crucial.
Warren Buffett once estimated that he has spent 80% of his career just reading and thinking. Thinking is important work.
Maybe you already have tons of ideas in the pipeline. However, if you need some prompts that can help you think differently about your business, try these.
What would make it easier for you to create your product or provide your service?
What would make your product or service even simpler for customers to understand and use?
How could you create your product or service offering more quickly?
What is your “flagship” product or service?
What “evergreen” human problem does your product or service solve?
How could you charge 10x for your product or service? What wild and crazy ideas do you have for making your offering 10 times more valuable?
Who is the customer who would be ready, willing, and able to pay that 10x price?
Who could you partner with to offer a new service or product?
What are you wasting money on today?
What tasks could you outsource and have a virtual assistant do for you?
Using #9 as an example, we often set up new services to test them out for our businesses. But we sometimes forget to evaluate the ROI and shut down the ones that aren’t serving us well.
I was using ConvertKit for my backup email service for years. But, it costs too much for the value it was delivering for me (my needs are simple). So, I finally moved my email lists to EmailOctopus (my referral link). This is already saving me $800/year.
Don’t fall into “autopilot mode” with your business. Schedule dedicated time to think about improvements and new ideas for your products, services, marketing, sales, operations, and more.
Hi, I’m Larry Cornett, a coach who can work with you 1-on-1 to design, launch, and optimize your business. You might also be interested in my “Employee to Solopreneur” workshop (coming soon). I currently live in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with my wife and our Great Dane while running my businesses 100% remotely.