5 Tips To to Get Your Business Back on Track in 2017

Once you have completed your business plan health check, you will know where you have gone off track and should have a good idea why.

Here are five tips that can help you to get your business back on track to meet your goals by the end of the year. Even if your health check showed your business was in good condition, these tips can help you to stay on track.

1. Write Your Actions Down and Review Them Monthly

Now that you have reviewed your business plan, don’t just put it back in the drawer for the next six months and forget about it again. Write down all of your planned actions.

You may want to make a note of the actions you want to achieve for each of the remaining months of the year in your diary or working calendar. If you make it as a diary note, you will remind yourself to review your action plan for the business regularly.

At the start of the month, review the tasks you must achieve to keep your business plan on track. In the middle of the month, schedule in a quick review of your actions for the month to make sure you achieve those actions. At the end of the month, tick off all the actions you have completed. If there are any actions you have not yet completed, add these to the next month’s task list.

2. Find a Coach to Help You Stay Focused

It is very difficult to run a business alone. Solopreneurs often have no one to keep you accountable for actions. You can’t keep putting off the tasks on your business action plan every month, as this will definitely take your business off track. However, you may find that you get caught up in the every day ‘busyness’ of your business and find it easy to get distracted.

A high level athlete always has a coach to help keep them on the track to win the gold medal, so why shouldn’t you have a small business coach.

Find a good coach who can help you to define your monthly goals. More importantly, the small business coach will keep you accountable to someone else, besides yourself. You may tell yourself that it was okay to neglect a task on your business plan, but it is always harder to tell someone that. A small business coach can help you to stay focused and achieve the tasks on your business action plan.

3. Declutter Your Work Environment

Eliminate all distractions that can help you to go off track. If your work environment is messy and cluttered, you find it easy to get distracted when you should focus on an important task. Simplify your workload, so you have time to concentrate on the tasks to make your business grow.

Think about what is distracting you from being productive in your work environment. This is especially important when you work from home, as the lines between work and life can become blurred. You probably started the year with a clear desk, but in six months, junk and clutter can grow.

Take some time out now, while you are reviewing your plans to get the clutter under control. Then schedule in time each week to clear your space and give you the clarity to be able to focus on your important tasks.

4. Focus on the Important Tasks

It is just so easy to get caught up in the busy actions of every day life as you run your own business. While these tasks are important, you need to give yourself time to plan and complete actions that will help you to achieve your business goals.

Even if it just for an hour or so each month, shut your office door, turn off your phone, and focus your concentration on the important task of planning your actions for the good of the business. Then, look at your schedule for the month.

You may need to block off times in your diary to achieve those tasks. Schedule in the important tasks like you schedule in client meetings and treat them the same way – don’t be late, give your complete concentration to the task, and turn off your phone during the time you have blocked out, just like you do when you attend a client meeting. Once you have achieved your important task, you can go back to dealing with the day to day business or running your own business.

5. Make Course Corrections as You Go

Have you ever tried to navigate through an unfamiliar city. You may have a map, but what happens when there are road works and you need to take a detour?

Every good navigator will know that making minor course corrections as you go is much easier than ending up at the entirely wrong destination and trying to find your way back. Do not be afraid to adjust your course over the next six months as you react to the market forces or other things that can affect your business.

By reviewing your goals quickly each month when you look at your action plan, you can redefine and clarify specific tasks and make sure your business is back on the track to success.

Completing your six month review or health check of your business plan is only first step. Now, you need to actively plan your tasks to enable your business.

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Sample Documents To help You Organize and Plan: