A Pat on the Back? Or a Kick up the CPU? We Ask You to Take a Six Month Health Check This Week!

We’ve been providing you with nuggets of weekly business hints, tips, sarcastic commentary on your communication, dress sense and management skills since January 2007. As this week’s offering, it’s a good time (hitting exactly the six month mark of our advice, guidance and general pointers in the right direction), for you to spend a little time reflecting.

Now you’re at the top, do you still know what you need to know? How are you keeping your management skills updated? Have you been on courses and spent time reflecting on your performance? Have you spent time reviewing your business plan or have you been slowly sliding into self satisfaction and congratulation having opened your own tech business, not been carted away to a debtors court or prison, and still been able to fund your pad (or bedroom in your parents house and penchant for ipods and gaming software?)

Give yourself the day off work, pack yourself off to a quiet place in your office/at the beach/in the garden, and take our six month healthcheck.

It’s not enough to be the MD of your own business if you’re not using the hunger and drive you had to get you started on a daily basis to take you further. Ask yourself these questions before resting on your hardwired laurels!

1. If you were starting up in business now, would you be doing the same activities as you did before, or have you learned anything along the way? Only a moron won’t have picked up some tips along the way, and the good thing is, as you’re the boss, you don’t have to wait for anyone’s permission to make changes and improvements.

2. Have you learned any lessons that you can apply now, for example, marketing materials and campaigns that have been successful or poor, customer drives that have worked or fallen really short. It’s never too late for a relaunch, or to change your mind about an activity or a product, and it’s always, always a good time to advertise, in whichever way you do it.

3. Have the grand plans on your business plan materialised? Why not, what have you not done and what might you go back and revisit? A business plan has to be a work in progress. Put some work in and progress it! Go back to your competition, and see what they are doing well, poorly or making a killing on!

4. Technology – has it changed (it has – do you know how/why/where/when and what they effects of it are?)

5. Opportunities – can you get into a new area that was not available when you originally planned your business?

6. Threats – is there anything looming now that you need to be aware of?

7. Strengths – are you still at the top? Do your customers come to you because you are the best/most reliable/closest/friendliest or because they can’t be bothered to go anywhere else?

8. Weaknesses – is your business under threat in any way? Are there holes in your portfolio that you need to consider?

9. Finances – what are you making? Are you looking at an improvement in income or at a reduction? Are you able to take a salary yet, and if not, when might you be?

10. Equipment – do you have what you need? Is there anything pending? Do you have the potential to lose business because of not having the right stuff?

11. Accounts – are you keeping on top of your accounts? Do you keep receipts and document your incomings and outgoings?
12. Customer payments – everyone paying or paid up? Are you doing what you can to make sure that you encourage your customers to pay in a timely manner, in the way you need to be paid?

13. Contacts – have you managed to network with reliable, useful people?

14. Where next? Do you have a path to follow, and do you know what to do, every day to make it happen?

15. Vision – can you see developments, and know when and where to go to take advantage of these developments?

Not all of these questions are going to be easy question, and not all of the answers are going to be YES. However, some of them should be, and most of them ought to be what you are striving for, in order to make sure you are developing your business in the right direction. If you’re not sure, make some time in your week over the coming month, and invest some time and some energy to gather advice and guidance for your next six months. Spend time watching what others are working on and copy and adapt as you can – it’s not the most innovative, it’s often the most adaptive and responsive that make it big.