Spring has sprung and Easter has been and gone. My mother would have said it was time to have a spring clean. While I’m sure my house would benefit from a whizz around with the vacuum and duster, I’m not writing about that kind of spring clean here. Instead, I want to look at how you can refresh yourself and your business in this new season.
You
Starting that spring clean with you is always a good idea. Most people spend the winter in a kind of hibernation. We cover up against the cold weather and plough on towards Christmas and the festive season. With any luck, we have a couple of days where we switch off from work. Then it’s into the post-festive storm of leftover food, festive sales, and trying to lose weight before we see friends and co-workers again.
Come the new year, we optimistically load up with resolutions, but I always think January is the worst time to try something new. The weather is miserable, most of us are skint after gift buying and entertaining, and all those winter celebrations can be exhausting.
Spring brings a better mindset for change as our gardens and the countryside burst into colour, the weather cheers up, and we get the chance to venture outside without four layers of clothes.
So how do you spring clean yourself?
Check your new year resolutions
If you did set new year resolutions, are you still on track? If yes, well done, brilliant. If no, why not? Were they unrealistic or something you didn’t really want or need to do? This isn’t about beating yourself up, by the way. Life is too busy to be ordered about by new year resolutions that don’t improve your life. Re-assess, re-adjust, or throw ill-fitting resolutions to the kerb.
What are your wants for the year?
What do you want to do this year? No, not in your business. What do you want to do, achieve, or get your mitts on before the end of the year? Business owners can find this a difficult question to answer because we often connect our identity with what we do for a living.
Putting aside your business, what are your wants for the year? They might include:
- a holiday
- improved health
- a new wardrobe (the contents, not the furniture)
- to catch up with friends or family more
- to put more into your savings or pension
- to return to a well-loved hobby
- to get married (or divorced)
Whatever it is, now’s the time to map out how you’re going to get there. One word of warning: don’t include anything that is a ‘should do’. That’s another list entirely.
Take a moment
It’s easy (and very British) to just get on with things, blinkers on, chin on chest, following a familiar furrow. But it’s useful and healthy to sometimes lose the blinkers, look up at the sky, and at least consider an alternative route. And here’s the best bit: you don’t have to change a thing. Unless you want to.
Your business
We’re at the end of quarter one and almost into a new tax year, so how can you blow away the cobwebs when it comes to your business?
Assess what went well and what could have gone better in Q1
First off, make sure to celebrate the wins, however small. After that, take an honest look at how your business fared over the last three months, for instance:
- the general health of your business in Q1 (profit and loss)
- the effectiveness and do-ability of your content marketing routine
- your clients and workload
Breaking your business assessment down into sections like this can make it easier to identify the wins and learn from the ‘could have done better’ areas.
Prepare for Q2
You may already have a plan for the year, including the income you want to earn, the content you want to create, and the places you want to be visible. Brilliant. But even if you do have a plan, the beginning of spring can be an excellent time to make sure you’re on track. Here’s what you might like to consider, plan or not:
- Do you have everything you need to complete your tax return?
- What are your have-tos for Q2? A have-to is a factor or event that must happen. Are they all still set in stone?
- What are your would-like-tos for Q2? A would-like-to is something you’d like to accomplish, but nothing bad will happen if it’s delayed for a few months.
Getting ready for the next quarter isn’t a must, but it can provide reassurance and clarity before you charge ahead.
How is your work-work balance?
The term work-life balance gets talked about all the time, but how is your work-work balance? Your work-work balance is how well you juggle work for clients with work for yourself and your business.
For more on this, read my blog post, How to find your work-work balance.
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Life as a human being and a business owner can often mean that we’re so head down intent on the concrete path ahead of us, we forget to look up and enjoy the view. Spring has plenty to show us, whether it’s the returning colour, so many new beginnings, or just the chance to refresh our perspective on life.
