Seven steps to spring clean your business

Darryn Le Grange, ActionCOACH Ignite Owner & Business Coach, shares seven tips to help business owners effectively spring clean their businesses.

1. Review and revise your business plans
   Make time to revisit your business plan and evaluate which strategies have and haven’t worked. It may be necessary to rework or adjust certain plans, structures and tactics in order to effectively realign your business plan.
2. Consider long-term goals
   While you are looking at your business plan, think about your long-term goals on a business and personal basis. Have your goals changed? Perhaps your business has evolved or your family has grown over the past year. What could you be doing more, or less of in order to achieve your goals?
3. Update your website and social media
   Go through your company’s online presence and ensure that the copy, tone and images accurately reflect your brand. If not, now is a good time to address these small details that make a big impact.
4. Track spending
   In order to increase financial control and account for fluctuations in the economy, find a convenient and easy way to track your spending and plan a budget accordingly.
5. Monitor your time
   Step back and measure where you spend your time. Split your time up into two categories, ‘in-the-business’ activity and ‘on-the-business’ activity. This exercise will quickly reveal any areas that may be slowing your company down. It is important to remember that anything ‘in’ the business can be delegated or outsourced.
6. Reconnect with your clients
   Take some time to review everyone you’ve worked with over the past year and send an email to anyone you haven’t heard from. Before contacting them, take a look at each client’s website to learn what they’ve been up to – enabling you to provide suitable suggestions on how your company could assist them. By simply reconnecting often results in new business.
7. Take a break
   Taking a break is crucial to your health and that of your business. This may be as simple as getting out of the office, going away for the holidays or spending quality time with your family. The key is to be outside of the ‘work’ context both mentally and physically. You will find that when you return to the office you’ll be able to approach your business with a fresher perspective.

“Remember to work harder on yourself than you do on your business,” added Darryn.