Are Your Business Best Practices Helping You Succeed?

Setting yourself up for success with business best practices.

When I first began working for myself there were a few things I knew I wanted. I wanted to take off every holiday I had off when I worked for someone else and then the few that I didn’t get. I wanted to take the Friday before a long weekend without having to put in a “request for time off” form that I knew would be denied. And I wanted to to be able to take advantage of nice days and be outside from time to time during my workday.

You know, all of the things that I couldn’t do having to work for someone else, I wanted to give myself the liberty to do. In addition to that, I knew I needed a structure, a routine and a way of doing business. So I also set up some best business practices for myself to help me succeed.

Business best practices make all the difference to your success.

I looked up best practices to see exactly what others define it as and here is what Wikipedia says:

“A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to any alternatives because it produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means or because it has become a standard way of doing things, e.g., a standard way of complying with legal or ethical requirements.”

I know where I got the term best practices, I used to work in a law firm so it made sense to me. And it makes sense to have best practices for a business as well as a life! It fits a lot of scenarios. Though not many people have them. It could be why so many people and businesses struggle or are frustrated because they aren’t living the life they want or have the success in business they expected. By having your best practices in place, you’ll be setting yourself up for massive success.

How best practices can make the difference for you.

Best practices are for you to use to set your business up in a way that works for you. Especially if you are a solopreneur or owner of a very small business and you wear a lot of hats. It is something that helps you stay on track with all there is to do with running a business, accountable to getting things done and seeing actual results.

When you set up your best practices and follow them, your business runs so much more smoothly. It’s almost like you have a secret weapon of success in your back pocket. Best practices help you execute your business plan and day-to-day operating activities. Not to mention it is something that keeps you on time, knowing your schedule, what you can and cannot say yes to and basically running a successful business.

Setting up your best practices.

This is a big topic which I could talk about for a long time. When I work with clients we spend a good amount of time setting up best practices for them to follow. I’m going to share several key ones with you here:

• Determine your work hours. This includes your hours of operation, when you are open for business to come in and when you will be taking care of any administrative activities like bookkeeping, filing, cleaning and things of that nature.
• Create your schedule. Once you determine your work hours you can then determine your schedule. If you have a brick and mortar business, when will you be there working and when will you be doing your administrative tasks. If you have an online business, when will you go into your home office and when will you leave.
• Layout your time off. This one is a challenging one for most business owners. And it’s one of the more important best practices you can lay out. Will you work weekends, nights, holidays? How much vacation will you have? When is your off time when you can be with those you love and do fun things for yourself?
• Use a calendar faithfully. Now that you know your work hours, the time you’ll need to work on the business, your schedule and time off, put it in your calendar and honor that. Sure sometimes things may need to be moved around, that’s called flexibility, just make sure things don’t get ignored over and over again.
• Put together an operations manual. This will include everything your business does to market, sell, provide services/products and be profitable. It’s a tell-all kind of manual. If I were to walk in and have to start working immediately, this manual will be able to tell me what to do, how to do it and when to do it.

Best practices as your framework for success.

If you think of setting this up as daunting, I invite you to think of it as setting up your framework for success. It’s a business operations piece that will give you solid legs to stand on and build from.

I’ve worked with a number of solopreneurs and small business owners to set up their own best practices. It’s something that can be started quickly. Schedule a free Best Practices Session with me and you’ll be well on your way to creating success in your business (and your life too =)