The perfect time to work on your business

Is it the beginning of the year, when you’re fresh from the Christmas break? Or perhaps it’s the beginning of the financial year, when the slate is rubbed clean? Maybe it’s once you’ve finally got the business to a certain level of revenue, or cleaned up all those loose ends that mean you won’t be “too busy” any more?

But all those elements are just part of the situation you and your business are in.

It is the beginning of the year, but already it’s starting to get busy and we’re almost into February.

It’ll be June in no time and you’ll probably be too hectic trying to finalise things for the end of tax year.

You might not quite hit your revenue target, or shoot past it and decide that business improvement can wait until you have less “opportunity” in front of you.

Those loose ends may never get tied up, or simply be replaced with other ends, just as loose.

We are rarely in control our situations.

It’s one of the key pillars of the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism. We want to be and we strive to be in control, but we’re not.

As a result of wanting but failing to assert control, we can get frustrated, stressed and demotivated.

We find ourselves angry at THEM because the place we want to be isn’t where we are now.

Of course, this very rarely helps. Most of us can’t fully control our personal or business situation any more than we can control when it rains or if the sun will shine.

What we can control is how we react.

In fact, if we take the situation for what it is, no matter how challenging it may seem, that’s the place where greater calmness and energy are also found.

It’s a place where really valuable businesses are created. Ones that can weather storms and come out strong and battle hardened.

Whatever your business situation right now, can you find at least a day? A day to define where you want to take your business next, the strengths you should exploit, the weaknesses you need to be aware of, the opportunities that exist for you to make 2015 your best year ever and the threats that might knock you off course along the way?

Of course you can. After all, in an industry facing seemingly perpetual uncertainty, that is one thing you can control.

Stewart Bell is founder and business coach at Audere Coaching & Consulting, specialising in innovation coaching for advice-based businesses. He was formerly a business coach at Elixir Consulting.

Stewart has over 10 years of business coaching and practice management experience, gained from a variety of business improvement roles working in MLC, ThreeSixty, NAB and AMP/ Hillross.

Stewart has also delivered presentations, workshops and training programs for a diverse range of institutions such as Count Financial, Zurich Investments, the AFA, the FPA and BT Financial Group.