Too busy to grow your own business?

I’ve been talking to a lot of virtual assistants recently about the roadblocks they face in their business.

One that comes up over and over again is that they can’t focus enough on their own business to grow it properly.

We work hard to get clients, and then we are too busy with the client’s work to look at our own business.

We stop marketing, we don’t network anymore… we forget how to tell people how good we are at what we do.

Then when something happens and we need new clients, we struggle to find them. We have to start all over again.

Or worse yet, we suffer from working with clients we don’t like or doing things we don’t like to do, simply because it’s easier to do that than to start over.

We all cite the same excuses:

I don’t have time (to network, market).

I have no money (to go to events, to take training).

I don’t know where to start (to find the shortest path to what I need).

And these reasons are valid, but they will keep you where you are.

If that’s not where you want to be, you need to dig deep and find your way out.

Getting motivated to work on your own business can be difficult. Here are some tips that can help:

1. Start your day on a positive note and in a positive frame of mind. Work hard to stay in a positive frame of mind and write down when you drift away from it (write it down if possible, to establish patterns). When you stay in a good mood, you can complete your client’s work more quickly and then move on to your own.

2. Try to avoid the urge to vent to your colleagues. I love social media groups as much as anyone, but I see a lot of negativity and time wasting in those groups throughout the day. Find a trusted colleague you can vent to when needed, and keep them off the public airwaves. You don’t know how long it will keep you focused on advancing your business until you do (trust me!)

3. Compare yourself with yourself, not with others. Review your numbers from last year and write them down, month by month (income, expenses, number of clients you worked with). Start updating those numbers with goals for this year (small to start with, bigger as you get more confident). And be sure to enter your numbers for this year as well to start comparing your own stuff to your own stuff. Bracing! And it really shows you where you can make small changes that will give you big results!

4. Simplify things for yourself. If you have a project or task management system, take some extra time every day to organize it. You’ll find that your day is much more productive when you keep it up to date. Being organized is one thing. Staying like this is another. Both will help you get more done, no matter how much you have to do.

5. Pay yourself to do your own business and marketing. One of my business coaches told me to do this once and it was a great way to get me to block time in my schedule to do my own business stuff. I was only working about 2 hours a week for myself, but paying myself (or knowing how much I had earned, rather) was really motivating for me. He knew he was worth more than he earned.

6. Make the effort. Motivation does not arise by chance. Unfortunately, you have to put in the effort to make this happen. To do that, make sure you understand what the reward will be. More money? Better clients? That’s all good. What does that translate to for you? Maybe a vacation? Pay off any debt? A night out every month? Any other guilty pleasures?

To really be in tune with your business, you need to be aware of it.

Getting immersed in the client’s work is a very common excuse for not paying attention to what we have the most control over: our own decisions!