One of our favorite things about Small Business Shop Talk meetups is the ideas that come from just a simple comment.
Last month, a member brought up the idea of having a meeting with yourself. I immediately fell in love with the idea. The more we thought about it, the more we realized this could be a solution to a problem every business owner faces when running a one-person business: nobody is there to check you and say, “Hey, should you be spending time on this?” or “Should you be spending money on that?”
When you’re running a one-person business, it’s super easy to get caught up in the day-to-day. Communicating with customers, answering emails, developing your product or service, marketing, sales, and whatever chaos pops up that day can make it hard to hold yourself accountable. You can be incredibly busy and even incredibly productive, but you may still be focusing on things that aren’t as important and that can be dealt with later. A larger team, by default, has regular meetings where someone asks about sales, marketing, upcoming projects, or goals. When it’s you all by yourself, nobody is there to ask you those things and help keep your business on track.
That’s exactly why meeting with yourself felt so valuable. It forces you to pause and think about your business. In those meetings, you shift from employee (the person DOING all the things) to owner (the person who DECIDES the things). The agenda doesn’t have to be anything crazy. Start by reviewing sales. Then maybe look at cash. Were there any new customers last month? How did you get them? What expenses are coming up? Can you reduce them? Start your meeting by reviewing the facts of your business: what happened and what influenced it.
Then look forward to your business. You can ask yourself: What is happening in the next 30, 60, or 90 days? Maybe you have a slow season approaching, a marketing opportunity you need to prepare for, or a project you have been planning for “when things calm down.” (Spoiler alert: things rarely calm down.) Putting these items on an agenda you review once a month makes it harder for them to sneak up on you and helps you prioritize what matters most to move your business forward.
Last but not least, at the end of your meeting, set goals. So many people think of goals as things we profess on January 1st and rarely still working on in March. We like to call these milestones. If we set an annual goal of gaining 12 new customers, our monthly milestone may be to get one new client. Take that big goal and decide what you need to accomplish by your next meeting to keep you moving forward.
During your monthly meeting, if you haven’t completed last month’s goal, don’t beat yourself up. Ask yourself why it didn’t get completed. Was it as important as you thought? Could you have prioritized it differently? Every business owner struggles to be pulled in multiple directions and to dedicate time to the most important things. One-person businesses aren’t just pulled in multiple directions; you’re pulled in every direction.
Running a business by yourself doesn’t mean you have to do it without structure or accountability. You may not have a team, a partnership, or a board of directors. However, you can still create systems that force you to pause, reflect on your business, and decide where you want it to go. Put the meeting on your calendar, create a simple agenda, take notes, and give yourself a few assignments before you leave. Show up next month, see how you did, and you may discover that the most valuable person you can schedule a business meeting with is yourself.
More conversations like this take place on the last Tuesday of every month at The Corner Store (1118 W. 37th Street) at 10 a.m. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at
@smallbusinessshoptalk. We would love to see you there. spt
Melissa Hay is a San Pedro native and owner of Homemade by the Hays, a candle shop in CRAFTED. She can be reached at homemadebythehays@gmail.com. Alexis Sadler is the owner of Accounting Therapy. She can be reached at alexis@accountingtherapy.com.
Melissa Hay is a San Pedro native who is the owner of Homemade by the Hays, a candle shop in CRAFTED at the Port of LA. She can be reached at homemadebythehays@gmail.com. Alexis Sadler is the owner of Accounting Therapy. She can be reached at alexis@accountingtherapy.com.
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