What can you do in your business to increase your stride, gain better results and increase momentum?

How often do you go running or walking? I can walk really fast for endless length of time, but running is an effort, or so I thought. My kids would laugh when I ran, and my husband swears I walk faster than when I run!

Apparently, when I run I take really small steps and when I walk I take longer strides. Interestingly when I take the longer strides in walking, it is easier and much less strenuous, allowing me to go a longer distance at a sustained pace.

For me with running, by refining the length of my stride and slowing down the number of paces, I found I was actually moving faster over a longer distance and putting less energy into that movement, which also meant I could run for a longer time without getting exhausted.

In business, there are many occasions when the effort we put in to doing a task is actually more than is required, and if we looked at changing the way we did it, we would get much better results.

6 Steps [pardon the pun!] to Increasing Your Stride in Business

  1. Plan the order of work by the highest priorities that are in line with your goals. It is so easy to get off track by getting caught up in other people’s agendas if we don’t proactively plan our workday and work our plan towards reaching a desired goals.
  2. Know what is most important. It makes decision-making much easier when we cut out the things we don’t need to focus on. We stop filling our day with busy work that serves no purpose.
  3. Know your numbers. When you track your numbers such as your average client value you can focus on the activities it takes to find the clients that bring a higher return and so increase your average client value. It is much better to have 10 clients each earning you $10,000 than have 100 clients each earning you $1000. This means you have less clients bringing in more money to your business and allows you to spend more time servicing those clients more effectively. Of course this depends on your focus, we do tend to leave money on the table though with our existing clients that if we took the time and planned appropriately, we could do far better service and tend to more of their needs.
  4. Have good systems in place that make your business run smoothly. Have a follow up system for your prospects, clients, customer service and marketing funnel. We tend to work better when we have good habits in place and we can make our business systems become part of our good habits regime.
  5. Take breaks and vacations. Yes for those who think working long hours is good for your business there are many statistics to show otherwise and that it causes ill health in the long term. If you work long hours your brain actually gets slower and slower and less effective. Even a short 15 minute break will increase your ability to work more effectively.
  6. Collaborate with others. We can find strengths and better quality business referrals when we collaborate with strategic partners and create a hub of colleagues. When we work entirely on our own it is difficult sometimes to do all the tasks that need to be done, and having others to run ideas by or share ideas can be very helpful in gaining another perspective.