3 things that could be blocking success in your home business

Here are three things that could be blocking success in your home business.

When I was coaching I sometimes had to be quite firm with my clients. I could see clearly that they needed to get real about what’s going on in their business. Be completely honest with themselves about what was happening.

I see these three things come up time and time again and I’ll be straight with you, I’ve done all three of these things and they can serve as serious blocks in your home business.

Until you deal with them, you won’t find the success in your business that you want.

Eliminate them, or at the very least be aware of them and work toward eliminating them from your business life and you’ll vastly increase the success of your business.

3 things that could be blocking success in your home business

Note: These issues come up time and time again. Be honest with yourself as you read through. Could any of these be blocking you from the business success that you want?

If you feel that any of these things could be blocking success for you, acknowledge it and take action to eliminate it. Often just being aware is enough to cause a big change.

Success Block One: Too many non-work treats and distractions

Too many non-work treats and distractions are often the biggest culprits when it comes to success blocks.

In your home business, you don’t have someone keeping an eye on you, making sure you’re putting the time in and more importantly getting the work done.

A quick coffee with friends, a couple of hours here and there doing house chores or popping out shopping soon add up.  

We all love the flexibility of setting our own hours, but you do need to make sure that you’re consistently taking action to move your business forward.

I’ve had clients tell me they work a 40+ hour week and when they actually monitored their work time it’s been less than 10 hours and not all of that was productive work.

Be absolutely honest with yourself about how you’re spending your time – Read How are you spending your time?

Solutions

Try this: For the next month, set your work time and say “NO” to all non-work treats that take you away from your work.

Now, if you can see already that this has been a problem for you, I encourage you to be realistic about your work hours. What do you really think you can commit too.

I’m all about working smarter not harder or longer (I kind of learned this one the hard way).

Rather than saying you’re going to work 9-5 every day but then, in reality, you spend a lot of the time not working,

Make a decision to work 3 or 4 hours a day (maybe in a couple of time blocks) but fully commit to working on your priority tasks during those times and nothing else. Total focused work.

Communicate your business hours with others and be really strict, even if that’s only for now. This will help you and help others to understand it’s your work time. Put your phone on silent. Even put a note on the door.

I know that my really focused concentration time is a maximum of three hours a day. So I work with this and really work on my most important tasks. Then after that, it’s pot luck what else gets done.

But I can honestly tell you that working this way is far more productive for me than those days where I worked 10+ hours a day.

Success Block Two: Not prioritizing the important tasks

Without anyone to tell you what to do when it’s easy to spend your working time doing the wrong things.  Small, easy tasks that don’t really have an impact on your business.

Maybe that’s two hours a day on social media rather than picking up the phone and phoning a potential client, or going out and knocking on doors, or going to a networking event where you can connect with people who can help you.

For me, my priority tasks as a full-time blogger are creating new content and updating old content. I work on this every business day.

Only you will know what is really important in your business.  You need to get clear about what these things are and prioritize them every working day.

If you haven’t got it yet, grab your FREE copy of the Ideal Business Workbook, this will help you get real clarity in your business.

And also read 3 Productivity Tips for the Home Business Owner

Solution – Know what to work on

Know what your business goals are and what your priority daily tasks are each day. A good question to ask at the start of your work time is WHAT ACTION DO I NEED TO TAKE TODAY TO ACHIEVE MY MONTHLY GOALS? Work on these things as an absolute priority.

If every time you work, you focus on these priority tasks that move your business forward, you will see results.

Success Block Three: A lack of confidence

Are you suffering from a lack of confidence in yourself or your business?  

I see this a lot.  I’ve experienced it in my own business too. Often when people are doing the low importance tasks in their business, it comes down to a lack of confidence.  Let me give you a couple of examples.

Jane has set up a very local business and needs to connect with local businesses, her time would be well spent attending lots of local networking events and also contacting local businesses directly, ideally by arranging a one to one meeting.

Instead, she focuses on social media only and places a small ad in the local paper. Both of these things could be good for her business but for her type of business, she must get out and speak with other businesses directly.

She’s not getting the results she needs but she doesn’t feel confident enough to go out and connect with people in person.

Sarah has just started her own networking business,  her mentor has advised her to contact 3 people every day about the business opportunity and give out 2 trial packs for the products every week to gain customer sales.  Sarah lacks confidence.  

She believes in the business and the product but actually going to speak to people terrifies her, so other than a few close family members and a couple of close friends, she doesn’t tell anyone else about the business or products.

Louise has started a blog and wants to make it a full-time income from blogging but she agonizes over every line she writes and therefore has very little content on her blog after 3 months.

Any is working with lots of clients but she lacks the confidence to charge them so she’s doing most of her work for free.

If you can relate to these scenarios it’s now essential for the success of your business that you focus on improving your confidence.

Work on your confidence

Work on improving your confidence and your mindset overall. Below are some posts I’d really like you to read with exercises to help.

• 6 Tips to boost your confidence
• Improve Your Confidence with EFT, affirmations and Hypnosis
• EFT for Fear – Emotional Freedom Techniques
• Stop Being Critical Of Yourself And Others
• How To Set Yourself Up For Success
• Developing a growth mindset
• EFT – I’M NOT ENOUGH – Release the feeling
• Affirmation “I am ENOUGH!”

Ruth Soukup from Elite Blog Academy is a big believer in facing your fear head-on. Check out DO IT SCARED for really valuable advice. I think this is sometimes an absolute must to create the business you want.

Let’s do a recap

If you’re not yet getting the success you want in your home business, examine your business and see if any of the three blocks could be relevant to you.

• Are you spending too much time on non-work treats or allowing distractions to take up your time? If you are, give yourself 1 month of absolutely no Non-work treats and see what a difference it makes
• Do you focus on things that are not very important in your business? 
• Download and work through the Ideal Business Workbook to get clear about your ideal life and business, then decide on your priority goals – Do these first
• Is a lack of confidence holding you back in your business?  Read 6 Tips to Boost Your Confidence – There’s lots of help available to further boost your confidence

I know that you really want your business to be successful. Be honest with yourself and if you spot that any of these things could be success blocks for you, take action now to deal with them.

You’ll be pleased you did.

Please share this post wherever you can. Thank you. Wendy – Morning Business Chat

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