We had a fabulous response to last weeks’ blog post about living an auto-pilot life (if you missed it you can read it here )
It seems that a lot of people are up for taking the clutter out of their business.
So in my pursuit of how we run a more successful business using my principles of Keeping it Simple and Doing Deep Work, I’ve been exploring the idea of Business Minimalism this week.
There are some really contradictory ideas around minimalism in business. Do we mean making less profit, earning less, having less? And how does the idea of minimalism sit with the core of business being about ambition and personal wealth, even greed?
As business owners we’re all looking for success, and mostly that’s defined as making lots of money.
But what if success meant freedom?
Building a business was always supposed to bring us freedom – remember?
Freedom from unreasonable bosses, corporate nonsense, someone else’s rules. But how many business owners do you know who feel free?
The more I think about minimalism in business it feels to me that it’s a mind-set; about being free from financial worry, free from things that waste your time. And this brings me back to the financial freedom mission I set out on last year.
I’m really loving the minimalism approach to life – it feels right. But I still want financial freedom, my mortgage paid off within the next 5 years and to build a business to be proud of (we’ve got something huge launching next year!) And I’m not going to compromise on my ambition to become the leading authority on the financial management and performance of small businesses.
BUT often the only way to achieve this is seen as the almost mindless approach of continually growing turnover, without making deliberate and conscious decisions about what you spend money on.
It’s very easy to spend more. Business and personal overheads can grow quickly and the new levels of spending become your new lifestyle – one that needs more and more income just to stand still.
I’m already working on ideas for de-cluttering and minimalising different parts of your business, but this week I’d challenge you to look at your financial habits and make sure you’re fully in control of what you already have before adding more turnover hoping it will transform your fortunes.