Eat Your Own Dogfood
'Eating your own dog food’ in marketing terms refers to a deep, emotionless, self-examination of all aspects of your company’s operations, from the perception of the most important person in your business, the customer. You have to put down your ego and take a long hard look at your company. By the way, if you think you don’t have an ego, everyone does. The fact you think you don’t have one, proves you do.
Many businesses fail to reach their potential because they quite simply don’t know what the potential of the business is.
Most of the businesses we deal with on a day to day business have no business plan. Even the start-up businesses, who you would expect to be doing things ‘correctly’, often have no more than a fuzzy idea of what they want to achieve. Most have done zero competitor research, nor any customer surveys to see if there is a market for what they do or are planning to do.
So to quote Steve R. Covey, “You must begin with the end in mind”, and in this case, the question is Why are you in business?
There are many books out there on business plan writing; some tell you that you can do it in a minute, on one page, in 30 days or less, or any sort of claim that will get you to buy and not read their book. The simple steps of business planning are
- What do you want your business to achieve for you?
- How do you make that happen?
To start with question one, What do you want your business to achieve for you?
Too many people I meet in business are working more hours than their employees, they are strapped for cash as they put all their money back in to build their business and they never take time off. Sometimes I think that running a small business for some people is like making a rod for their own back, but once they start turning the wheels on their machine they become instantly trapped in the gearing and can’t escape, so they just carry on and on and on.
Here is a radical concept, just say no!
Change what you are doing right now. Break the habit and start with writing down your goals for your business.
Here is a typical list, but your goals are your goals, you can select from this list or create your own (it's YOUR business, how do YOU want it to work?)
Aims for business – What is your Why?
- Be a sellable entity, independent of my activity – (If you do not have this as your number one aim, you own a job, not a business)
- Allow me to live the lifestyle that I aspire to.
- Be less stressed.
- Allow me to have weekends off (or two days a week if your business needs to operate at weekends to service your customer base).
- To remain something I enjoy doing and want to remain associated with.
If you did just do what I asked, you have your list (your Why), it is time to work out HOW you will fulfil it.
'I am the centre of the universe!'
Too many business people think the world will stop spinning if they do not work 7 days a week. Here is a news flash, it doesn’t!If you feel you can’t take time off, go and visit someone who has the flu. They can then infect you, and you can spend a week in bed watching the world continue to spin, in many ways. When you return, you will be a little behind in your workload, but the world will have carried on without you, and you will very probably still be in business.
Or, you could just take some time off when you are not sick.
You may be stuck in a big project or busy schedule, but you take time to sleep. How about as a radical concept you leave work one hour earlier tomorrow and go for a walk in a local park or garden to relax. Don’t do anything else, turn your phone off, it has an answering machine on it I understand (amazing what people think of isn’t it ). If you were in a meeting for an hour, you wouldn’t answer your phone so have one hour where you turn the thing OFF.
Then two days later, do it again and repeat for two weeks. Two things have happened, one, you have taken a break and had thinking time (it is okay to think about your business) and you have taken some light exercise. The next step is to take an afternoon a week off, try something radical like a Saturday or Sunday afternoon (I doubt the world will notice you are not at your desk - but your family will!). Try that for a further month and then move to days off, then weekends and who knows before long you will be taking holidays.
I know that this approach sounds like a smoker being told to cut down as a way of moving toward quitting, but it is the same. You are probably addicted to work, and you need to take actions to break your addiction. Only you can do it, no one is going to hold an intervention for you.
All joking aside, for some reading this even the first hour off seems an impossible dream, but you have to start somewhere. No one on their death bed ever said they wished they had spent more time at work!
On the subject of thinking about your business. You can’t stop doing it most of the time, so don’t beat yourself up about it. Often the only way to turn your business brain off its to do something that dominates your mental capacity like ride a motorcycle, visit a museum, create your own art, play with Lego with your kids, whatever it takes to distract your mind and allows it to take a breather from thinking about the business.
I used to be a typical workaholic, I thought the world needed me to work all the time, my typical definition was I would work from 5 minutes after I woke up until I fell asleep many hours later, it was an existence, not a life. I started taking my one hour off and I believe I now have a life I truly enjoy. It isn't perfect, but I can take time off to go to school sports days. I hate the phrase work/life balance, it is meaningless, what you need is a balanced life, which is different for everyone.
Back to the list…
Achieving your list
I am not going to tell you what to do next, I can’t; it is different for every business. We work with 500 plus companies, and every single one of them has a separate way of doing things. It is impossible to write one guide about how to achieve your perfect business (doesn’t stop people writing books and articles though does it lol).There are some guidelines I can share that I use
- Think actively about the list you have created. If it helps, put it on the fridge like your children's art, or recite it each day.
- Ask your friends in business for their ideas about running a business, most will be only too pleased to help, but you don’t have to do things like them. You can start that conversation of ‘I know we run different businesses in different ways, but what do you consider to be the most important things you do to achieve what you do?’.
- Examine your current business and practices regularly to ensure they are keeping or getting you where you want to be.
Examining your own business
Some people think that they are stuck in their business, I have even had people tell me they want to ‘escape’ from their business as if it was holding them prisoner. You need to understand not just what you do in your business, but how you do it. Ask yourself if you are doing it as well as you could be, in relation to your goals.This will be disagreed with by many, but I believe that your first goal in business should be stability and to have a ‘normal’ life. Growth brings stress and if you are already stressed with what you have, how can growing help you?
You need to look at your business from the outside as if you have asked someone to look at what you do and write a book about it. You need to look at how you attract customers, how you do the work for them, how you look after them after you have taken their money and, how you turn them into repeat and/or recommending customers.
You can start this process with 4 pieces of paper, each with a single heading on the top of each.
- Attracting Clients
- Execution of work
- After Sales
- Repeat Business and Referral Generation System
Fill in the detail, and plan
This is where you look at each facet of how you run your business and put it to the ultimate test. Once you have a deep understanding of what you are doing, you will be able to see the good and bad parts of your business, and you will be able to make changes where needed.
This examination or eating your own dog food is a never-ending process. You will refine your business to a greater and greater degree until you are at a point where you have started to achieve the plans on your list, then you can redefine your list and start the process anew.