Mind Your Buckets: Three Most Valuable Business Resources

Growing a sustainable business requires constant analysis of how to best compensate for the changes in three of your most valuable resource buckets.

Without adjusting for change, imbalance occurs. And everyone knows that you need a balanced ship to make it through rocky waters.

We see this in a lot of industries.

In photography, we call it the exposure triangle. When setting exposure, the photographer will manipulate three main settings to achieve balance. Changing the camera’s aperture will require a compensation in one or both of the shutter speed and ISO to maintain exposure.

A skilled photographer can quickly pivot, giving and taking when and where appropriate, to nail the shot and deliver an image worth handing down for generations.

Service based business is no different.

It requires give and take of three most valuable resources you have when you are starting, maintaining, or sustaining a small business.

• Time

• Money

• Skill

Most people have an abundance of one or two of these three resources.

Most business owners start with an idea. They take all the extra time they have, put in elbow grease, and grow the skill needed to succeed.

It’s finding the money that stops most people in their tracks.

YOU AREN'T ALONE.

In fact, most business owners I've coached are in a similar position.

They have lots of skill, some time, and limited funds.

That's nothing new. Life is... unbalanced at best.

But it's not how big or unbalanced your buckets are that determine whether you reach sustainability.

It's how you compensate for them.

Sometimes your buckets just need a little strategic reorganizing.

Maybe you need to spend money to buy back some time. Maybe you need to spend time building a skill before you spend money outsourcing it. Maybe you have the skill and the time, but you’re spending money in places that aren’t actually moving your business forward.

And sometimes, you just need to stop comparing your business to someone with much different looking buckets than you.

Your business has its own combination of resources.

The goal isn’t to make your buckets look like someone else’s.

The goal is to figure out how to use what you have to build what you want.

That’s the business strategy I can help you with.

If you’re ready for a little strategic reorganizing, subscribe to my email list here.

This was Day 29 of 30 days of writing something every day!