What To Do When Your Best Is Just Not Enough Jun 14, 2010

Is there something in the air lately? I’ve noticed a lot of small business owners feeling a bit stressed out, overstretched, and in general feeling in a bit of a funk.
Perhaps we can point to the economic situation, which some claim isn’t recovering in the way it should.
Perhaps we can say that this is just the transition of the seasons – our antipodean friends are winding down while things heat up in Europe and North America.
Or perhaps we’re all just sick and tired of this social media junk: Tweeting, Facebooking, Foursquaring, Search Optimising, Email Newslettering, Blogging, PR’ing… it is enough to drive one mad, right?
Recently I had a customer who bought our small business dashboard (it’s nifty – if you haven’t, check it out) say they just couldn’t get their to do list down to a manageable size. I understand: when everything you stop doing has a consequence, the only option is to work yourself into the ground, and hope for the best.
Or not.
First Things First
My opinion is unequivocal on this point: your first, and only, number one priority is to deliver a REMARKABLE product or service to your customer. You simply must not lose focus on this – if you need to drop something to pick up the creative energy to deliver that hospitality, do it. If you are cutting corners in order to make room for some new media thing, stop. The heart and soul of a tourism business is you and what you offer – loose that and the rest is no longer important. You can’t undo bad reviews or bad customer experiences, so you can’t let them happen.
Your special thing. Your wow factor. (Old school marketing jargon: USP – unique selling proposition). That is number one – always, always, always. If that is failing you right now, please stop reading this and go fix it, right now.
Then What
After your key priority, your customers, are taken care of, then you need to prioritise the rest. And, well, I am not you so it is hard to tell you what is important and what isn’t. When I started out, someone gave me a piece of advice that said something like do whatever is the next step closer to an invoice. There’s something to be said for that – after all, the reason most small businesses fail is because of a lack of cashflow, not because their idea was bad. So, is there something you could do that would be a long term cash flow generator – finally writing up that new tour offering you have, or actually using that email list you’ve been building but afraid to use. I like to take a long term view here – unless you actually do have a serious cashflow problem – and ask yourself what can you be doing that is building a good foundation for the long term.
After that, you just need to do some hard thinking. But the most common problem here, as the customer I mentioned above has, is wanting to put everything on the list. You are human (unless you’re an alien – *waves hi* – aliens please stop reading here.) You cannot do everything. So stop trying.
The best advice I have here are the two things we mentioned in last month’s new media myths and misconceptions podcast:
- Tips from the world of yoga: Do what you can do, and leave the rest behind.
- Tip from Theodore Roosevelt: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
To Learn More
If you need help managing your priorities, our TOP Travel Business Toolkit can help – it is filled with fresh perspectives, realistic tips, and suggestions on how to do more with less. Click the banner to find out more and download a copy today.
Photo by shermee












