Starting your own business was supposed to be a way to do things differently, right?

You were going to strike it out on your own. Be more kind and understanding to your customers and create products that would make their lives better.

Now, a few months or years down the road, you’re stuck doing all the boring, cost-cutting, time-saving bullshit you swore you’d never do.

Your dreams of innovation and creativity are swirling down the drain as we speak, but is it too late to turn back?

Knowing What’s Important And Learning To Say No

What’s important to your business?

We all have the “have-to’s” like bookkeeping that get in the way, but ask yourself how much of your time do you spend doing things that really move you closer to your business and financial goals?

How often are you saying “No” to the unimportant tasks?

Here’s a scarier question: do you even know what’s really important to your business?

Do you know the truly tangibly steps that make a difference? Can you tell them from busy work?

The Cog and The Boss

When you started, you wanted to break out of the roll of the Cog, right? You wanted to innovate and create new ways of doing things.

So what happened?

The difference is the mindset of the Cog vs. the Boss.

The Boss looks at the bottom line. He creates the things that move him closer to it and cuts what doesn’t work. He’s strict and merciless about it, but effective and he knows when to step back and leave working processes alone.

The Cog is a head down, nose-to-the-grind type of worker. Big pictures aren’t important, only being efficient at what he’s doing right now. He doesn’t create, he simply makes and sticks to the plans he’s been given.

It’s a difference that Tim Ferriss puts better than I can:

It’s often times what you do, not how you do it, that is the determining factor. This is the difference between being effective, doing the right things, and being efficient, doing things well whether or not they’re important.

We get stuck thinking like a Cog because it’s easy and it makes us feel good. We look at everything we did today and feel good about our efficiency.

Thinking like a Boss is scary. It means making real decisions.

To move into the mindset of the Boss you have to start turning away from those things that don’t strictly further your goals. It means asking yourself hard questions like “Is writing another blog post really going to make me more money this week?”

An Exercise In Bossness

In the future we’re going to talk more about furthering this mindset and how it can grow (or destroy) your business, but for now I have a short exercise.

Take a second at the beginning of your day and gather something to write with (text document, smart phone, pencil) and write out the top five actions you take, or should be taking, every week that absolutely grow your your business.

Is your most important task to get more clients?

Sell more units?

Get more blog subscribers?

Whatever makes you more money by doing it, write that task down.

Once you’ve gotten your top 5, or at least the #1, take a look at your list and honestly ask yourself if you’re doing these things to your fullest effort every day.

The answer might change today’s agenda for you.