If you’re jumping over from my personal blog Tuesdays with Terry, welcome. If you’re a regular reader of Better Business Basics, you may want to take a peek at the personal blog post that triggered these thoughts on simplifying!

This week I’m beginning a series of posts on simplifying your business. Of course this all relates to building a better business through better business basics; we’re just looking at running lean and focused from a slightly different perspective.

When I talk about simplifying your business the first question is, where do I start? But even better, let’s talk about why do it at all?

Being in business as a sole proprietor or with a partner or in a small sub-chapter S corporation is a lot of hard work and is accompanied by a lot of stress. You want to keep the revenues up, expenses down and your employees happy and productive. You have to deal with planning, marketing and sales, operations, human resources, technology, finance, and results. And ultimately this is your livelihood, failure is not an option.

You cannot afford distractions, and that means keeping things simple and focused on your purpose. It means doing only those things that are essential to your success, only the right things. And it means doing those things as effectively and efficiently as possible, doing them right. If you are doing the right things right your chances of being successful are greatly improved.

Simplifying your business is all about decluttering it, getting rid of distractions, and developing a laser-like focus on your purpose and mission. And watch out because the process of simplifying can itself become a distraction and draw your attention away from the reasons for simplifying.

You are simplifying your business to improve your chances for success. You are going to accomplish the task of simplifying by getting rid of unnecessary and duplicative processes, streamlining those processes that are necessary, and ensuring that everything your business does is focused on fulfilling your purpose.

So where do you start? Well, as with any journey, you start with where you are. For this journey that means reviewing the foundation of your business and making sure it describes exactly what you want your business to be. The next steps include evaluating and simplifying your plan, your systems, your structure and your people.

Be thinking about where you are and where you want to be. But remember, this will not be a trivial task. It will take time, commitment and effort. Be prepared to work some overtime and even to get some help from your business advisers.

Next time we’ll take those first steps on the road to simplifying your business and generating better business results. After all, every journey starts with a single step…