4 Effective and Efficient Actions that Drive Your Success

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Anne Bachrach, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.

Actions that Drive your Success

As a business owner, it’s imperative you focus your energy on completing actions that drive your success. When you spend your workday procrastinating or refusing to delegate low-priority tasks, you are losing money as well as preventing your business from growing. Below are some tips for effective actions that will drive your success.

Understand What Your Time Worth
What do you consider to be valuable tasks for your business? How about building your client base, completing client projects, and/or promoting your business? These are all important factors and you should be focusing all of your energy into fulfilling these tasks in the most efficient and effective manner possible. Completing these tasks will lead to increased revenue, satisfied clients, and attract the attention of more clients. Actions that increase your profits substantially are inarguably effective actions that drive your success.

If you’re currently a one-person show, completing all of these tasks on your own is not practical. If you also take care of administrative tasks such as answering phones, replying to emails and bookkeeping, you are seriously hindering the growth of your business. Individually, these tasks may seem like quick and simple tasks to accomplish, but if you take a step back and look at the big picture, you’ll discover that these “quick and simple” tasks actually eat up countless hours of your time, decreasing your productivity – and success. You probably already knew this.

The logical answer is to hire an assistant. Your time is a limited and valuable resource; do yourself and your business a favor by delegating administrative tasks to an assistant. As a business coach, this is one of the most valuable tips for being more successful I share with my clients. If you work from home and don’t have space where an assistant can work, don’t worry. There are thousands of qualified and experienced virtual assistants that are willing and happy to work remotely. You can search through a database of freelance virtual assistants through websites like oDesk.com, eLance.com, guru.com, and virtualassistantnetworking.com.

Learn from the Masters
By emulating the actions that drive success used by other successful business owners and entrepreneurs, you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches and growing pains. Below are the top four effective actions of successful business owners and entrepreneurs.

1. Stop procrastinating! Successful people wouldn’t dare procrastinate because they know that their success is riding on their ability to grow their business. Discipline yourself to work on a daily schedule and stick to it. Focus on income driving and client building actions during the day and leave personal actions to after hours and weekends.

2. Become a master marketer! Successful people are aware of the fact that clients are the reason why they’re still in business. They take the time to allocate funds and time to effective marketing plans. This is not something you have to know how to do – just hire the right person with a proven track record of delivering results.

3. Delegate, Delegate, Delegate! Chances are you became an entrepreneur because you like being in charge, but you have to learn to give up control of certain tasks. Successful business owners value the art of delegation and know that it is a vital part in expanding the reach of their business. Hire an assistant to take on the tasks that don’t lead to directly putting money in your pocket. And yes, you can even delegate grocery shopping, running various errands, and cooking to an assistant.

4. Successful entrepreneurs spend money to make money! Successful business owners know that in almost every profitable situation, you need to spend some money to earn more. They don’t think twice about paying for the billboard ad or hiring an assistant to place cold calls, because they understand the results that money will bring. Businesses need ongoing investments to expand.

One of the best pieces of advice I can offer you is to remember that you are a business, even if you’re a one-person show – at least for now. Keep your personal and business separate by having clear boundaries for each. Establish the days and times you will be working – and only focus on actions that drive your success. On the flip side, establish days and times when you have the time to relax and enjoy your personal time. Don’t invite your friends to hang out in your office; it will only be a distraction and lead to immense procrastination. And don’t talk business at the dinner table with family. Give yourself the space to enjoy each of your respective lives.

Last but not least, keep in mind that your personal actions affect your professional reality. Think about your actions, professionally and personally, before you take the next step to ensure your taking effective actions that are driving your success.

With the goals you have in mind, how can you achieve them if you are not using your time and resources effectively. Take these action steps to heart:

1. You must take action now, today!
2. Selling doesn’t have to be uncomfortable. Hire the right people to do it for you. And always have an online and offline marketing plan designed by someone (or a firm) that has a proven track record for results.
3. You cannot build your business doing $10 or $20 an hour jobs. Delegate easy tasks to an employee or VA (virtual assistant).
4. The wealthy don’t get rich by not spending money; however, they do spend it wisely. Pay attention to things that deliver the benefits and results you need to grow your business – and invest in those; pass up the things that are not in line with growing your business. Quit looking at how much it pays – what does it deliver? And does that benefit get you closer to where you want to be?