Essential Routines that Lead to Success

After seven years as a business consultant I know that my clients do what they do for freedom, control, and to do what they love. But when they don’t have consistent routines and systems in place, and their business isn’t growing the way they hoped, they get frustrated. I help them establish essential routines that lead to success.

What is the big deal about routines?

There’s less thinking and more doing. You are not reinventing the wheel every day with how you work, how you manage your time, or how you market yourself. When routines are in place there’s less room for error. There’s no forgetting steps or doing things you really don’t need to. That way of doing things can lead to burnout.

Routines:

• Create consistency and predictability for you and for your clients.??
• Eliminate wasting time on decision-making.?
• Set you up to scale.?

What’s the best way to develop a routine??

Well, first you have to make a list of what steps are needed and then create a process around those steps. A routine needs to become a habit, so it has to be realistic and doable for you so you can achieve success.?

Here are the five essential routines I recommend to run a successful business:

Planning

Planning allows us to be intentional by taking control of our time. You have to set realistic goals that align with your vision. Then you want to implement weekly planning to stay organized and on track to achieve your goals.?

I highly recommend strategic quarterly planning. Annual planning is too long term.? Your business, your clients, your competitors and society in general change so rapidly that looking a year out is fruitless.?

Take some time to reflect on what has worked and what has not. Celebrate your wins, then get clear on what you need to focus on for the next couple of months. You decide on your goals and create executable action plans, break them down into action items with due dates, and list the resources you’ll need. If you follow your action plan successfully, you’ll continue to move forward toward the vision you have for your business.?

To stay accountable to your plan I recommend that you implement a weekly planning practice I call CEO Hour. On Friday mornings I take an hour to plan the following week. Then I head into the weekend knowing I’m all set for Monday and I don’t need to think about a thing. During this time you can:

• Sort out your schedule for the week?
• Create your task list
• Take a look at your finances?
• Follow up on networking from the week?
• And any other necessary weekly tasks

Business Development

Keep your contact pipeline flowing by going to networking events, engaging on social media, scheduling 1:1 coffee chats to get to know people, staying in touch with people you’ve already met, and following up after you’ve connected. It’s easy to get caught up in just doing client work, but without business development you won’t have clients to work for.?

You can use a CRM to keep track of when to follow up with people. Create a checklist so you have a regular routine around business development.?

Onboarding

One of my early clients was a career coach. She collected a lot of info from her clients in the beginning - questionnaires, assessments, contracts - and she was sending it all manually. She did not have a process document to follow so she often forgot and had to send things in the middle of a meeting. We calculated that she was spending about 10 hours a week on onboarding. That was like a day and a half a week. We streamlined and automated that pronto.

Creating an onboarding routine allows you to think strategically about how you want projects and client relationships to go and what you need to do on the front end to make that happen.

Think about:

• What information you need to collect?
• How you want your clients to feel when they start working with you?
• How you can set yourself apart?

Content Management

This is the number one pain point of entrepreneurs. If you don’t have a routine for creating and sharing content consistently, you’ll struggle to stay on top of it.

Options for getting content done:

• Hire someone. Decide how much involvement you want to have, then find the right arrangement.?
• Join a low-cost “content club”, where a social media specialist runs co-working sessions with support
• Do it yourself. Create an air tight system that provides a consistent monthly strategy

If you’re going to do this yourself, take a little time to work through the plan and then figure out what you need to execute.?

Financial Management

When I first started my business, I was terrible about keeping up with my bookkeeping. I hated it so I just avoided it. Every March/April, I had to take two or three days to recreate my entire year to prepare for filing my taxes. This was painful, and I’m glad I’m on the other side of it now. I find that having your financials in order delivers the biggest impact in terms of confidence. This is where I hear clients say things like, “I feel like a grown up business owner.”

Start with bookkeeping, either doing it yourself or hiring someone. The majority of small businesses use Quickbooks. The key is to keep up with it.?

A couple of other items that might be part of your financial routine include:

• Checking on open invoices
• Reviewing your goals v. actuals?
• Cash flow planning

The best way to get started with routines is one at a time. Decide which is most important for you right now and focus on that. In a few months, tackle another, and so on.

These routines will only work successfully if you schedule time for them and take action. If you need support getting started, let’s connect.