Some Bite Size Business Advice

I was sitting with a client – discussing some simple, yet extremely difficult, changes he needed to implement to get his business back on the right track – when he blurted out, “I am shaking with fear at the daunting task that lies before me”.

I looked at him, and indeed, the look on his face was one of fear, a fear steeped in being totally overwhelmed by some very “simple” tasks that many of us would get done in a heartbeat without much thought.

My job, of course, as his business consultant, is to break it down for him into bite-sized tasks, with clear objectives, goals and due dates to “hold his hand” and help him face – and overcome – his fears, and do what needs to be done to get his business out of a parking spot and cruising smoothly on the highway of success.

Though I deal with many business owners, of various sized businesses across many industries, this particular encounter, for some reason, crystallized for me something that I knew all along to be true, yet now know it so much deeper: Tasks scare people. A Task doesn’t. (Read that again slowly, so you digest what I ust wrote)

Meaning, we all have a thousand and one things to do, to accomplish, to achieve, and many of us see the pile of tasks as simply too much to handle, and thus we don’t do them at all. If we somehow break down the pile of one hundred tasks into one task and then another one task and then another, each one on its own is simple, manageable, doable and thus gets done without fear.

The key is to figure out what the tasks are, get them on a list in order of priorities, give them a specific time-frame and due date, and before you know it, they will all be done. Not only will they be done, they will be done right, with proper focus, proper attention and will ultimately help the whole business succeed more rapidly and more steadily.

Some people can do this on their own (and many people can't, but think they can, but that's a whole different article, for another time), while others recognize that they would benefit greatly from having an objective "somebody else", such as a consultant or a coach, assist them with specific task identification, realistic goal setting and most importantly, with accountability mechanisms.

Whatever business you are in, and whatever it is that you fear, take a deep breath, and take your task deck and split it into single task cards, and watch how quickly your fear dissipates and you start feeling more in control of your business’ destiny.