Do you ever get confused when you find yourself sabotaging your small business success? Some people might even mistake their self-sabotaging behaviour as a way of achieving their goals.
There are many societal beliefs around success and running a business that contribute to people’s downfall. Here are some tips for breaking free.
1. Delaying and Procrastinating. Because you don’t have a boss giving you a deadline, it’s easy to put off complicated or challenging projects. Form a mastermind group or a success partnership whereby you meet virtually or face to face and set goals and create accountability to achieve those goals.
2. Not having a to-do list. This will contain a specific and detailed action plan of what you intend to do. You can’t afford to go about your business in a scatterbrained, disorganized manner. Organize your list via priority, and focus on the tasks that are going to help you succeed rather than those administrative tasks that bog you down. Give those away where possible to an assistant.
3. Micromanaging your helpers. Hire people who are better than you at their jobs. Many business owners make the mistake of over-managing people, and that defeats the purpose of getting help.
4. Over-analyzing. Sometimes you try to perfect every aspect of your work, that you end up getting nowhere. The priority is to get things done, and if there are problems encountered along the way, solve them the next time around.
5. Miscalculating your weaknesses. What are your weak areas? Are you having a problem with your marketing strategy or are you delaying your business-generating activities? The problem with most businessmen is that they don’t recognize their weaknesses and have a misplaced thinking that they can do just about anything.
6. Sticking to your comfort zone. There aren’t a lot of things as self-sabotaging as sticking to your comfort zone. If you don’t move out of it, you will never get the traction required to move forward. Hire a coach to help you identify and move past them.
7. Not having a support network. Keeping a business is difficult—which is why you have to go hand in hand with other small businesses. For sure, there’s a support network in your community that is aimed at doing just that. Look for Meetups, associations, mastermind groups or coaching groups.