Are you very satisfied, mildly satisfied or downright frustrated with your business right now?

No matter where you are at, there is always room for improvement. And depending on your outlook, that fact can either be encouraging or depressing.

On one hand, we’ll never arrive at the day where we lean back and say, “OK, I’ve done it all. I’ve conquered this,”. As soon as we think we have arrived, a new mountain of challenges will be in front of us.

At the same time, this can be encouraging! We can always improve by looking for new and better ways to serve others.

So if we’re honest and realize that improvement is always going to be part of our life and our business – it’s probably good to think through what improvement is going to look like and how to do it efficiently and effectively.

What to improve

While you can always improve any area of your business, you can’t improve everything in your business.

At Kahuna, we are constantly reminding ourselves of the 80/20 principle that 80 percent of the results will come from 20 percent of the effort.

With that in mind, we are constantly evaluating and thinking through the things that actually make a difference. Or more accurately, what is the 20% we have to improve to make the business 80% better?

If your business Facebook page gets very little attention and does nothing to drive your business, you can improve on it, but will that really matter?

The first step in making meaningful improvements is to decide what the area that needs the most improvement to lead to the greatest impact.

What does improvement mean for you?

The next step in improving is by far the most important – defining what improvement means for you.

That means setting a goal. Too often our complaints and frustrations are vague and presented as if we have no control over the outcome.

We are too reactive and let things happen to us, and we simply drift along and look back to see if we improved. We need to be looking forward, identifying our target then mapping a process to get there.

So if you are frustrated with your client acquisition process, you need to take the time to think back and decide what you want it to look like.

Think of how you’d want it if everything was perfect. Now you have a target. You can take that and compare it to your current situation.

What’s missing? What needs to change?

Once you have identified a gap that you need to improve on, you will need to create a plan to get there!

A Plan to Get There

Improvement doesn’t just happen.

We have the ability to dictate exactly what we want to improve and take steps every day to make something more efficient, more profitable or more satisfying.

The only way to do that is to have a plan. You have to have something to measure where you are and measure where you want to go.

Without any metrics to measure, how can you know what improvement is? And once you uncover those metrics, you can work backward to determine a path to get there.

Determining the path is equally as important as the steps you’ll take along the path.

This is what we are passionate about at Kahuna. We work with entrepreneurs all the time who have spent their whole business life looking backward and reacting to what happens.

Do not be reactive in your business! Instead be proactive by changing what areas need the most improvement.

It Doesn’t Happen Overnight

The final point about improvement is to remember it is an incremental, steady, daily growth. It’s not easy and it’s definitely not instantaneous.

We often can’t measure the results until much effort has been put in, and that can be the most frustrating part of improvement.

That makes the planning part all the more important. That’s why we need to fix our eyes on where we want to be, not where we are today.

Keep focused on where you are going and work every day to get there. Look forward, not backward, and then eventually you’ll get to the destination you have planned!