You can’t plug the holes in your business with gum and tape forever

Every business I’ve ever come across has leaks in their business that they’ve been trying to plug themselves for years, or at least has had this problem at some point in their lives. Because they are busy running their business, cracks start to form, inefficiencies develop, and systems break down.

But we don’t have time to fix them, because that would mean shutting down our business, or hiring a contractor, or moving things around, and it’s all we can do to just make rent and payroll this month, right?

Well, here we have a perfect example of how to take advantage of an opportunity while not doing any creating, because I guarantee there are cracks in your business and problems that you’ve been plugging with gum and tape, or with your fingers, for years.

Maybe you have programs that you pay for and don’t use, or contractors who are just mediocre, or parts of your business which cost more time and energy than they are worth, or clients who are pains in the butt but you haven’t fired them yet because that would take emotional energy you just don’t have.

Or maybe you’re doing a lot of low-value tasks that you’ve always meant to outsource, but haven’t had a chance to find the right person. Or perhaps you’re offering products and services that don’t actually have a positive ROI (return on investment), which means you’re constantly spinning your wheels without getting anywhere.

This is the perfect time to audit your whole company, figure out what’s working, what’s not working, and what you want to do moving forward.

What lights you up? What causes you pain? Where do you want to go? What is the easiest way to get there?

I generally take a month off every year in order to plan for the following year and fix any inefficiencies that developed during the previous year, but this year has created an opportunity to do it twice, figure out how to break my company to repair it stronger for the long run.

Products that aren’t good sellers are being overhauled. Projects that shouldn’t have ever existed are being shelved. Things I’ve always wanted to try are being tried. Partnerships I’ve always thought about are being explored.

I have tried many things in my life, and most of them didn’t work. If I allowed them to keep creeping into my life, then I would never get anything done.

If you’ve never done this exercise before, here’s a little exercise guide you can use to audit your own career:

1. Write all the things you currently do down, either on a notepad, or an excel document, or a whiteboard. Really it doesn’t matter, but try to make it comprehensive.
2. Separate them into “admin” tasks that cost you time and you get no revenue from and products/services that you bill customers. Be as comprehensive as possible. Usually this will take a couple of days because you’ll keep thinking of things you do as you actually, you know, do them.
3. Place a time cost on every task, including the admin tasks and the services/products you provide. For products it’s a little trickier than services. You have to estimate how many hours you spent making the product. So, for a book you would take all the time cost writing and editing as well as promoting the book.
4. Place revenue received for the task in the next column. For products, you want to calculate total revenue received over the lifetime of the product to date. However, you may be making money on that product for many years and so the calculus of products change over time. If you have multiple products that build on each other, like a series of books, and you can include all books in a series together as part of the same “product line”.
5. Add actual costs next to the time cost. So, for admin tasks you do yourself, put $0. For services, include any materials you use, programs you use, etc, related to those services. For products, put the cost of the product to get to market/maintaining the market. For books, that would include the cost of an editor, cover designer, proofreader, printing, and shipping, etc.
6. Subtract costs from revenue and divide by hours and you’ll get a rough estimate of how much you actually make performing that task. This will often make you gasp and cringe. That’s normal. You might find that different products have NO revenue, but they generate revenue for other parts of your business. For instance, a podcast or blog might not make any money on its own, but it might drive revenue to your courses or books, or help you book speaking engagements, which has value in and of itself. I consider these to be marketing expenses for a product, and thus try to roll their cost in to the products and services which they support, but since nothing is a perfect fit, you have to make your own decision about where to include those kinds of tasks. I roll my podcast, blog, and courses into one package. My courses have a high ROI and can support me spending time on my blog and podcast to support them. However, if I find that the blog and/or podcast no longer drive sales for courses, then I will have to reevaluate.
7. Next, you need to put an enjoyment level next to the action. My favorite way to do this is to place a 1-10 numeric value, but you are not allowed to use seven, because seven is a cop out and doesn’t tell you anything about enjoyment. Anything 1-6 goes into one bucket. Everything 8-10 goes in another bucket. Everything 8-10 means you love doing it. Anything 1-6 means you do NOT like doing it. Since seven is the most common number picked, it’s neutral, and thus doesn’t give you a good sense of whether you like or hate something. The point of this is not to cut out anything that has a low ROI, but to find the things that have low ROI and you HATE doing.
8. Finally, you need to do the same ranking, but with how IMPORTANT each task is to your business. Same ranking, 1-10, but you can’t use seven.

This is all about figuring out what is mission-critical to your business.

For instance, if you HATE your mailing list, but it’s critically important to your business, then you need to keep doing it, find a way to outsource it, or learn how to make yourself love it.

Now, you can assess. What is an 8-10 enjoyment AND an 8-10 importance? Those should be your core products and offerings. You might even find some NEW services you could offer that more align with your passions.

What are an 8-10 in enjoyment and a 1-6 in importance? How can you make those MORE important to your business? Perhaps these could be new offerings, if they have a solid ROI.

What are a 1-6 in enjoyment and an 8-10 in importance? How can you outsource those, or change them so you love them?

What are a 1-6 in enjoyment and a 1-6 in importance? Cut those things ASAP.

What you’ll find are the things that have a HIGH ROI and a HIGH level of satisfaction. These are your “zone of genius” parts you should double down on NOW.

Then, you’ll also find things that have a High level of satisfaction but the ROI is minimal or non-existent. You can still do those tasks if you love them, but you should know that they are slowing down your business.

The more interesting part is that you’ll find TONS of things that are low ROI and low enjoyment. I cannot stress this enough, but those are things you should cut. You shouldn’t even outsource them unless you can find somebody who can turn them in to high ROI activities. Just cut them.

Then, there will be HIGH ROI and low level of satisfaction, which are things you can outsource. I work with a lot in comic artists and I know that FLATTING a comic is something that is something most artists HATE to do. However, it’s often necessary to deliver pages so they often hire out a flatter who can do the base coloring of a page and save the artist an incredible amount of time.

Look, there are things you will WANT to do because it lights you up, but you make no money on it. Maybe you write a blog, or draw a webcomic, or sing songs on Youtube. These are things you do for you, and if other people appreciate them then that’s great. You should absolutely do those things.

However, if you want to run a business you HAVE to know what actions drive the biggest return on investment because that is how you generate the profit to fund everything else in your business. They become your bedrocks.

This exercise helps you find those, but it ALSO shows you all the holes that exist in your business and how much fat you can cut. Cutting fat gives you tons of extra time in a day to do the things you love AND that make you money.

The more time you can spend doing those, the more your company will grow, and you just happen to have a good opportunity right now, especially if you feel burnt out and overwhelmed, to figure out how you want your career to look moving forward.

The end goal of this process is so that you are under-committed and have the ability to add NEW things into your business. So, if you found that you don’t have ANY high ROI products, this is where you can look into adding some, and planning for the future. If you’ve never done this before it’s going to be painful and you are probably not going to like the result, which is okay. This whole thing is a process.

Some of this is hard to quantify. some of this stuff is just “branding” overall, and it doesn’t fit in any category very well. There’s no perfect system, so you just kind of have to use your judgment and figure out if something is FUN and you like doing it, even if it has no ROI, keep doing it, as long as your lifestyle can afford to do it, but too often people are doing nothing but low-value activities, and they don’t have the time or energy to invest in something new. Instead, they are just kicking and flailing forever, adding low-value activities without focus.

Most people who run this the first time realize ALL they do are low-value activities and/or take a lot of time, and in that situation, I would say you should cut a lot if you want to add new things so you can be undercapitalized on your time and resources.

I had to cut back writing and only focus on the high-value activities, like The Godsverse Chronicles, Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter, and Cthulhu is Hard to Spell, along with one secret project. I just… don’t write anything else unless somebody is paying me or it’s for an anthology I can bang out quickly in a day because anything else is a low value activity that doesn’t move my career forward.

I focus all The Complete Creative stuff on course sales, with the blog, appearances, and podcast supporting that, so everything is going in one direction, together instead of breaking it all down because I had a lot of low-value activities last time I checked.