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By: Laurie Taylor

Are you guilty of filling your day with profit-depleting activities? You know the ones I'm talking about: Filing. Checking emails every few minutes. Checking web stats. Chatting with a friend. Attending networking events that don't connect you with your target audience. Forwarding emails that were forwarded to you. Surfing the web aimlessly.

If you are the owner of a business and you wonder why you aren't making more money, start thinking about all the activities you do every day -- can you identify your Profit-Building activities vs your Profit-Depleting activities?

If you are very clear about where you see your business in the next 18 months, it's easier to stay focused on Profit-Building activities. Why? Because you make sure that every activity you engage in answers this critical question: Will this activity help me get me to where I want to be in 18 months? If the answer is NO, you may elect to stop doing that activity or relegate that activity to evening hours or weekend hours.

Profit-Building activities are those activities that 1) keep you connected to your target audience 2) provide immediate or long-term value to your existing customers and 3) drive money to your bottom line.

Think about how you can add Profit-Building activities to your schedule and reduce those activities that aren't letting you focus on following the money!

Here's a quick and effective exercise that will help you identify those Profit-Building activities. Take a blank piece of paper. Draw a line down the middle. In the left hand column, jot down everything you do in a day as it relates to your business. Do this for 5 days.

At the end of the week, in the right hand column, put a PB (Profit-Building) next to everything you did in that 5 days that kept you focused on these three things: 1) kept you connected to your target audience 2) provided immediate or long-term value to your existing customers and 3) drove money to your bottom line.

Once you have identified all the PB activities, go through and identify all the PD (Profit-Depleting) activities. The goal: having more PBs than PDs!

All of us are guilty of PD activities. They happen. I find that business owners, however, who aren't consciously thinking about activities that will make them money, can fall into patterns where their PD activities consume their days adding frustration and a sense of burn-out because their business isn't growing.

You owe it to your business to ferret out Profit-Depleting activities and find more time for Profit-Building activities. Staying focused on activities that bring in money will serve you well and ultimately help you reach your financial goals quicker!

And if you'd like to discover other ways to improve your company's bottom line and proactively manage your growth, visit and get ahead of
your own growth curve.

Tags: Business/Entrepreneurship/Growth Topics entrepreneurship growing a business small business business growth

Look For Profit-Building Activities to Grow Your Business