So you’ve left the 9-5 life, started your own business, and things have been going pretty well. Great! Now it’s time to ensure that working a 9-5 job for someone else, remains a thing of the past. Since you’ve already taken the leap of faith, the rest should be quite simple.
Stay motivated! Reaching your goal of becoming an entrepreneur, doesn’t mean that the motivation ends there. In fact, motivation should be the driving force that wakes you up every morning to have the greatest products or to be the best at whatever your field of business is in. Keeping track of your sales, customer satisfaction rate, employee performance, and quality control will help you to not only maintain your business but set a certain standard as well. When you consistently reach that standard, you can then set new objectives. Using incentives can improve your business tremendously and keep you a cut above the rest.
“Those who fail to plan, plan to fail;” a popular quote that can be utilized in all aspects of life but in the business world, it should be the first rule of thumb. In order to ensure that your business not only stays afloat but also reaches it’s full potential, you’ll have to do more than weekly and month to month planning. Being successful will require you to think outside the box and prepare for things for years to come or that may not ever happen but it will all be well worth it. The bigger your mindset, the bigger and better your business will become. For instance, let’s say you’re a restaurant owner and you haven’t been getting the amount of diverse customers that you’d like to, consider what you can plan or change in order to obtain your desired results. Maybe switching the menu selection will help, handing out business cards, and having specialty events. Once you take note of what was effective, you can plan out the entire next year based upon what you learned to be useful.
Work smarter, not harder. For someone like a restaurant owner, business can fluctuate and be competitive at times. When you keep track of your numbers properly, you’ll be able to realize what your slow periods and seasons are. You may even be able to find correlations that explain what the problem is. Then you can go on to plan ahead as mentioned previously. However, is that really enough? The important thing to always remember is why you started in the first place. Don’t ever forget the 9-5 struggle and always apply the same hustle that you once used to help fulfill someone else’s dreams towards your own efforts. Keeping the same example of a restaurant owner, how could you try to keep your place up to date with modern times and appeal to new customers, all while going about it in an intelligent manner? Changing your decor, offering discounted or valet parking, and free WiFi may be a smart way to make minor adjustments that benefit your business in a major way. Other ideas might include having your business create a social media page or having an awards program app. Providing delivery options or using a third party like GrubHub may also help to keep business booming. Although a restaurant owner was used as an example, the same mindset and ideas can be implemented towards many business ventures. It’s all about being innovative, keeping up with the times, and the times to come.
Be the boss you were born to be. Practice makes perfect and it’s no different when you are self employed. However, there is less room for errors when every decision you make could be detrimental to all of the hard work and the sacrifice you’ve put in. Knowing that shouldn’t frighten you, allow it to be a gentle reminder; keeping you aware that as a boss there won’t always be a lot of time to analyze every single detail of every situation. Entrepreneurs have to make swift choices and trust their instincts. The best way to become a better boss is to hone in on your leadership skills. What does being a leader mean to you and what can you learn from great leaders that you have witnessed or worked for? Great bosses
not only know the ins and outs of their own establishment but they also understand what consumers are looking for and what their employees expect. An open minded and well rounded individual always makes a good boss.
Love what you do. The answer on how to keep from working a 9-5 job is simple. If you love what you do, you’ll be willing to do whatever necessary in order to avoid going back to doing what you don’t. When you love something, you are passionate about it, and where there is passion and persistence, there will always be positive results.
[Nyia Moore]
