Debbie Mayo-Smith: How a busy home life won't halt business success

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Last week I wrote about the importance of allocating time for marketing. Especially if you have high value sales that take time to eventuate. I promised to tell you about how I (a busy mother of six children, two dogs and three cats) can run a successful business, keep everyone happy, the home running smoothly and have my icing time. All done along with dad of course.

Come back with me to 2001. An afternoon like any other. The door burst open and the house came alive with laughter, chatter, 14 feet running up the long wooden hallway. As usual I was sitting at my desk, working on the computer.

The desk faced the window, so my back was to the hallway. Matthew, had a new friend over and as they walk back past me I hear Matthew say to the friend "that's my mom. She's always on the computer". You can imagine my guilt.

Matthew, he kick started a re-examination of my business. By 9:10 am the next morning I had an ad in the paper for a part time office manager. There would go all the administration, clerical and routine activities I was doing.

We already had home help. It made infinite sense as I could earn more per hour working than I would not paying for cleaning assistance.

By 10 am I finished reviewing and rating all the types of work I took on. As many do, you pick up the phone and say "yes, I can help. I can do that".

As you know some activities are more time consuming than others. Some are more profitable. Some you hate passionately but still take on.

Life being too short, I thought about what I really wanted to do, then and for the future. Next I analysed each element of work I took in, rated it by how personally pleasurable and profitable an activity it was. Or how passionate I was about doing it. Thus my Three-P rating system came to being. Pleasurable. Profitable. Passionate.

Out went all the low paying work I was doing such as consulting, one-on-one training, email distribution for clients.

From that day on I focused only on developing and accepting the Three-P work I really wanted - speaking/training/workshop engagements.

To apply this principle to your business (and personal life) do two things. First, rate your activities. Take a piece of paper and simply write all the things you do. Then score each by how passionate you are and how pleasurable an activity it is. Next rate the income production activities by how profitable they are. Pleasurable/passionate has to be part of the equation as life isn't about money alone. For example last week I mentioned I was fixated on making sour dough bread but I still had time left over for marketing. Then start finding ways to eliminate the activities with the low score.

Second, focus all future marketing and promotional activity on the most profitable, (or if you're self-employed the most profitable and pleasurable) service/product. It takes the same amount of effort to find a $5000 client as a $1000 one.

Written by international speaker and bestselling author Debbie Mayo-Smith. For more tips, over 500 how-to articles visit Debbie's article webpage.