Caring for the Health of your Business

By Pia Jaaskelainen

Caring for the Health of Your Business

We are all professionals in health. Our main focus every day is to support the health and wellbeing of our clients, looking to improve their quality of life. With a busy schedule looking after the needs of our clients and trying to grow our businesses, it is easy to overlook the health of our business.

For small business owners, time is the most precious asset, and as most of us do not have the financial luxury of being able to outsource parts of our business management, we need to stay on top of it all.

By creating a monthly routine to check in on a few key health indicators, you will ensure that you stay on track and potentially save your business from financial difficulties down the line. So, prepare a hot cuppa, your favourite breakfast and set up a couple of hours each month to go through your monthly checklist. You can make it into something to look forward to!

Website / Social Media Pages

Whether your main business “pin board” is your website or Instagram or Facebook page, have a browse through it monthly from the perspective of your current and future clients.  Add some relevant and interesting news, events and/or introductory and seasonal deals that prompt people to make contact with you. Is it self-explanatory and hassle-free to make contact with your business?  As an added bonus, by adding or changing some website content each month, Google will reward you by shuffling you higher up in the page ranking.

Financials (P/L & Cashflow)

Most small business owners outright ignore checking up on the financials, due to not knowing what to look for and how to interpret the figures. If you have an accountant, ask them to teach you the basics and give you a 10-minute checklist for reviewing your Profit & Loss and tracking your monthly Cashflow. The internet is also a great source of free tools for tracking your business’ financial performance. Find a simple tool that works for you.

Your goals

When you originally set up your business, you probably wrote a business plan, right? As your business has grown, become more established, and you have learnt more about your market, the key goals that you originally set would have shifted. Check in regularly to adjust your key goals.

Examples of yearly goals that you could set are; (1) run 20 Foundation programmes and (2) organise 8 awareness building events over the year. Examples of monthly goals that you could set are; (1) get 20 new contacts from this months’ introductory sessions at a local school and (2) call up all of last year’s clients to see how they are going (and whether they could refer any new client).

Your business partners

Your key business partners could be anyone who gives you positive energy, new ideas or constructive and valuable feedback. This could be your best friend, someone who runs a business themselves, local business associates or your accountant.

A nice way to finish up your monthly Business Health Check is setting a few appointments in your calendar for the month ahead, giving you something to look forward to, while keeping your relationships with these valued people, inspirational and close.