Only Two Things Matter: The Questions That Will Transform Your Business
As we enter the eighth month of 2024, here’s a wake-up call that might feel uncomfortably familiar.
Two-thirds of the year have nearly passed – how close are you to achieving 66% of your annual targets?
For many business owners I coach, this realisation can be quite brutal.
The Busy Trap
“But I’m so busy!” I hear this constantly in my coaching sessions.
And you are busy – we all are.
Every business owner I work with is surrounded by what I call ‘procrastination bait’ – those tasks that feel important but aren’t moving us towards our goals.
The most dangerous type? The ones that feel worthwhile and justified but are actually keeping us from real progress.
Deep down, we usually know this, but we keep getting pulled back into the weeds.
The Two Questions That Change Everything
Through my work with Entrepreneurs Circle and years of business coaching, I’ve learned that success often comes down to answering just two questions correctly.
These questions, when answered honestly, can catapult your business forward dramatically.
Question 1: What Should I Be Doing with My Time?
This isn’t just another time management question – your answer to this will determine where both your business and your life end up. Let that sink in for a moment. It’s that significant.
Let me give you a practical example.
If you’re aspiring to a six-figure income (which requires generating a three-figure hourly rate), you simply cannot justify doing tasks that someone else could do for £15-£20 per hour.
It’s what I call ‘non-congruent behaviour’.
The real cost of doing things you shouldn’t be doing isn’t just financial – it’s the cost of your unfulfilled potential. Your unfulfilled life.
Here’s a truth that Nigel Botterill often emphasises: getting and keeping customers is the single most important thing for any business.
When you have a consistent, rhythmic flow of customers coming in, everything else – and I mean everything – falls into place.
Think about it: none of us started our businesses dreaming of just getting by or struggling.
We all had visions of success.
We could picture exactly what that success looked like – what we’d be doing, how we’d be living.
Question 2: What’s Stopping Me?
This is the big one.
What’s getting in the way of you spending time on the things you identified in Question 1?
What’s the fluff, the periphery, the detritus that’s clogging up your days?
I see it constantly in my coaching practice – business owners spending valuable hours (not just minutes!) each day on tasks they shouldn’t be touching.
And the price isn’t just business growth – it affects your family time, your health, your overall quality of life.
Making Real Change Happen
There’s still plenty of 2024 left to grab it by the balls and make it your year.
But here’s the catch – and I tell this to all my coaching clients – if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.
The solution isn’t complicated, but it requires brutal honesty:
- Write down exactly what you should be doing with your time
- Identify what’s currently stopping you
- Create an action plan to eliminate those obstacles
- Implement changes immediately – not next week, not next month
Ready for Transformation?
If you’re finding these questions challenging to answer, you’re not alone.
Sometimes we need an outside perspective to see what’s really holding us back.
That’s why I’d like to invite you to have a virtual coffee with me. Let’s dig into these two crucial questions together and create a practical plan to get you focusing on what really matters.
The timing couldn’t be better.
We still have enough of 2024 left to make significant changes, but only if we start now. Let’s have an honest conversation about where your time should be spent and what’s getting in the way.
Best wishes,
Jamie
P.S. Remember, knowing what you should be doing with your time and understanding what’s stopping you are just the first steps. The magic happens when you actually do something about it.
