4 Ways to Do More Busness Without Spending More Money

I came across this article and thought it was worth posting.  I especially like the Quit Complaining Section.  Hope you like it!

4 Ways to Do More Business Without Spending More Money

Van Deeb

The following four ways to do more business without spending more money may seem simple and easy to accomplish, yet over 97% of us don’t do these things. Yes, we’ve read about these strategies in motivational, inspirational self-help articles and thought about doing them, but we still don’t do them. My challenge for you today is not just to read this list but actually print it out and do what it says! THEN, after you have experienced the incredible results that I know you will, please email me about how these four ways have produced more business for you without requiring you to spend more money. I will feature your triumphs in a future newsletter.

Here they are:

1.     Tell more people what you do for a living.

If you don’t tell people about what you do for a living, then you are basically keeping it a secret and guess what—it will remain a secret. People in business who don’t talk about what they do are usually broke, they don’t stay in business very long, or they make very few sales. Why? Because they keep their business a secret! Not only do you need to tell everyone over and over again what you do for a living, but you also need to ask them to do business with you. People want to help people who ask for their business. It’s not that difficult. When was the last time you asked someone to do business with you? If your answer is anything other than “Every day...all day,” then start doing it. Ask more people to do business with you and you will do more business without spending more money.

2.     Stretch your business day.

Add 30 minutes to each business day and then gradually stretch it to an hour if you can. Either start work 15 minutes earlier and stay 15 minutes later, or take a shorter break or lunch hour. Spend less time visiting unproductive social websites that have absolutely no benefit to your career. If you really want to make your business day more productive, you may not have to add any time at all and may even work less hours if you are willing to pick one average day and keep a journal on your desk and document everything you do and how long it takes you to do it. This is one of the most effective ways I know to figure out how much time you are spending in certain areas. You will have to be your own best critic and make adjustments accordingly. You might be surprised how much time you spend doing unproductive things, which could be time better spent doing more business without spending more money.

3.     Quit complaining.

You may ask what complaining has to do with doing more business without spending more money. Complaining takes time, it depletes your energy, and it is most definitely unproductive, which ends up costing you money. Where does it say in any manual that complaining is a positive business characteristic? It doesn’t, and not only will it make you less productive but it will also bring down the people around you. I know complaining is part of human nature, but we all have the ability to complain less, especially if we are trying to be more productive in our careers. If you are a complainer, work to eliminate this habit because it could end up costing your business. No one likes to be around a complainer. Use the time you spend complaining to do more business without spending more money.

4.     Schedule time to accomplish everything on your “to do” list.

Most of us motivated business types have a “to do” list of things that we want to accomplish the next day or week. To get results, you have to turn your “to do” list into a series of appointments. Take each item or task and write it into your calendar as a scheduled appointment, just as you would do with anything else. I have been guilty of having a “to do” list that just kept getting transferred to a new list. When I started making each task into a scheduled appointment, I actually would get it done and see it through. The more tasks you can cross off your “to do” list, the more business you can do without spending more money.