I’m willing to bet that your business has only got 3 problems:

1. Not enough money
2. Not enough time
3. Not enough good staff

I’m also willing to bet that no business has ever solved these problems. Like it or not, we only have the resources that we have. And it’s rare that we consider them enough. And yet every day businesses succeed and grow.

Not enough money
I once bought a one way ticket to Los Angeles, and landed there with just $50 in my pocket. I was young and naive enough to believe that I’d be ok. You don’t need lots of money to achieve your ambition, just pure bloody mindedness, and self belief.

Not enough time
Demands on our time have never been greater; everyone wants to grab our attention. Achieving a perfect work-life balance is a goal that always seems just out of reach. Life is, and always has been difficult. Have you worked out what’s important to you? Do you give your time to the things that matter most?

Not enough good staff
It’s tempting to believe that no-one does it as well as you do. No-one may do it quite like you do, but isn’t quality a judgement made by the customer, not the salesman?

All this sounds like a case of tough love, but in business (as in most walks of life) we need to make the most of what we actually have, not what we would like to have.

If you would like some help looking at what you have, and checking that you are making the most of your resources (money, time and staff!), let me know.

We have much to thank Donald Rumsfeld for. Although mocked for his listing of “what he knew he knew”, “what he knew he didn’t know”, etc, this analysis of your situation can often distinguish perception from reality.

Compiling a list of things that you know you know about your business might seem like a waste of time, but put it beside a list of things you don’t know about your business, and you might surprise yourself just how many things you suspect, but aren’t sure about.

If you aren’t sure about it, then you don’t know it.

And then ask yourself, what are you doing to find out?

Great question raised this morning at the Birmingham Social Media Cafe – “Do you value your time?”

It sparked an interesting debate about the perceived value of your time. Do you give it away freely? Do you calculate free-time in terms of lost opportunity? Is your time worth more or less to you than to your clients?

In a service sector, time is what I sell. If I am not charging for it then by default I am giving it away. How much can I afford to give away before I start to devalue it?

As ever, it’s a compromise. I need to give a bit away to “show what I’m selling”. The time that I choose to invest in networking needs to have some ROI.

I was reminded today that time spent with some people is priceless.