How healthy is your business?

Top athletes, top business professionals, really anybody who's at the top of their game is typically performing at peak performance levels.  With peak performance comes peak physical health and peak business health.  Some of you might be saying, "but Greg, I don't have my own business.  I work for someone else.  Why should I care?"

It doesn't matter if you work for someone else.  You're still running a business.  You have to market yourself, you must master sales skills, you must know and manage your professional finances, improve your professional skills, and have enough fuel in the tank to manage it all.

I'll spare you the physical health lecture for today, and please know that it is critically important to the success of your business.  Your business does have a health level.  How often are you playing doctor and assessing your business health level?  How often do you get your metaphorical checkup?

All businesses, all skill sets, all successful people are constantly assessing their business and how it's living, breathing and functioning on a daily basis.  There are 6 critical areas to your professional and business health.  Neglect or abuse any of them, and your business and success will suffer.

The six areas to master are:

1. Sales
2. Marketing
3. Operations
4. Financial
5. Professional Skills
6. Health
   

Imagine your business is a high performance sports car, and that each of the 6 areas represents a section of one of the tires.  Rate yourself and your business in each area on a scale from 1 - 10; with 1 being you're in trouble and 10 being you've mastered the area.

If you're 8 or better in all these areas chances are your business is very healthy and you're experiencing success.  If not, your wheel is not going to roll smoothly and your high performance sports car, or business, is no longer high performance.  It's time to go to work on your business.

So what can you do?  

• First pick an area, any area that you need to improve 
  
• Identify 3 key variables that will have the greatest impact on improving these areas
  
• Decide if you can either do them yourself, delegate them to someone else, or outsource them
  
• Then, execute that decision - make your plan and get it done.

Your health, your business and professional health must be constantly monitored.  You cannot improve unless you take a step back and play the role of a doctor periodically.  Find out where you are really, and then create and execute your plan to drive to where you want to go.  Don't be too proud to get help elsewhere.  Delegate and outsource whenever possible.  

Make your professional life easier, more efficient, richer, and most of all - HEALTHIER!