When you are run your own business, it is very easy to find yourself busy – ALL of the time.

When you aren’t answering the phone or replying to emails, you are speaking to clients, going to meetings and doing the work that you are being paid to do.  All that rushing around and no time to think!

But as a small business owner, it is critical to make the time for mental space.  And I am not just talking about spending valuable time on planning.

I am talking about time spent gazing out of the window watching the sun shine through the trees.  I am talking about the time spent walking around your neighbour without listening to the latest podcast or business audio download.

It’s amazing how much clearer your business becomes and what the next stage of your action plan needs to be when you spend time leaning back in your chair – just gazing!

How do you create mental space for your business?  Leave your thoughts as a comment below.

When you run your own business, it’s easy to fall in to the feast and famine trap.

Spend 8 weeks marketing like crazy and then spend the next 3 months working on the projects that you generated during this time.  Then your diary is empty once again as the work dries up and you are out marketing like crazy again to get the cash flow going.

The feast and famine cycle is hard work and very stressful.

And this is why it’s important not to let your networking happen just in the quiet times.

Networking is not an instant fix to increasing your sales leads.  Many big contracts and projects are awarded because of relationships built over several years.

Being visible 12 months of the year – little and often – is far more effective than the 8 week networking tour of every event in a 40 mile radius. 

Networking throughout the year will help you attract clients and customers naturally throughout the year, reducing the number of stressful *strapped for cash* months.

So if networking works for you, which networking events are you planning on attending over the next month?

This weekend I sat down and watched cartoons with my 7 year old.  None of those kung foo kicking, robot ones. But the classic cartoons that I loved to watch when I was 7.

One of the cartoons I particularly loved was Road Runner and poor old Wile E. Coyote who never, ever managed to get that bird.  Every idea he came up with failed and usually resulted in him being blown up or falling off a very big cliff.

But this time, being that little bit more older and wiser, I realised I was sitting there wondering why on earth did poor old Wile not learn from any of his ideas.  Because most of the ideas he came up with were actually quite good (if not a tad wild!).

Such as the dehydrated boulder which turned from a pea-sized crumb in to a huge boulder at a drop of water.  The attempt resulted in Wile being crushed as the boulder reached it’s full potential with Wile underneath it.  If only he had had another go, he could have thrown the dehydrated boulder in the air in that split second before it expanded.  This would have got that Road Runner good and proper as it crashed to the road below!

But instead poor old Wile had to go and think of yet another crazy idea. And another crazy idea. And another crazy idea.

Exhausting isn’t it? Coming up with new ideas all the time, watching them fail one after the other until you feel like giving up altogether.

But so many small business owners follow this exact same crazy pattern month after month.

“Twitter – that’s a great idea!” you shout merrily and spend the next few weeks getting more and more confused about how it is supposed to work.  After a month, you declare “What a waste of time. Twitter doesn’t work for me. I’m off to think of the next idea.”

The next idea is leaflet dropping all the local businesses. But after a month of wearing your shoes out, you declare that this idea stinks too.

The following month it’s the turn of buying a database and mailshoting the whole list. And the month after that you decide to give LinkedIn a go.

Small businesses will never fail because of a lack of marketing ideas.  Small business owners are naturally creative and their entrepreneurial instinct throws up dozens of ideas, week in and week out.

But what small businesses do fail in is the follow through of marketing ideas.  They fail in the planning, the learning of what works and what doesn’t and they fail in making the necessary changes to improve and develop their ideas.

Don’t be like Wile E. Coyote. When an idea doesn’t work out, take the time to learn, understand and move that idea on.

It’s far more effective than coming up the next “BIG” idea!

What do you think? Add your thoughts in the comment box below