. Today, I want to talk about why you must treat your business like you would a client so many times when you have a couple clients, you're getting money coming in. You tend to go ahead and forego everything that you were working on with an on your business to have that time to work on your client's business, which is great. You are trying to keep your clients happy doing what you said you were going to do, hitting those targets and maybe exceeding those targets and keeping your clients happy, because keeping clients happy means that you will get paid.

But if these are one of jobs, something you need to think about is where is the next job coming from? And yes, you could think, well, if I do a good job at this client, there will be a referral involved, or maybe they'll have another project for me to do or maybe something else will happen. But you can't always rely on that. And so when you first starting out, you should be spending at least 40 to 50 percent on revenue generating stuff, marketing yourself, blog post, getting yourself out there, being a podcast, whatever it is.

But you should be out there trying to generate as much business and drum up as much business as possible. And so the further along in you are in your business is spending less time on generating leads. There are some businesses out there that very much work on. They generate all the leads all the time and they have stuff or a team that will go ahead and execute on the systems and the strategies that they are selling to that leads there other people who might get someone in to go ahead and generate leads for their business.

But you have to be really fine tuned to know what you're going to get them to sell and how they're going to sell and how it's going to work. So make sure now when you have a client on board them and you give them some milestones and you say this is going to happen at this date, at this time and these things are going to happen, you need to do the same thing for your business. So set up some time on your calendar.

That is non-negotiable. This is going to be time that you are going to sit and be like, I'm going to work on X, Y or Z on my business to move my business forward, to get more clients, to make myself more visible, to get myself out there, to write a case study, to write a couple blog posts, to schedule my Instagram, whatever it might be, but set aside this non-negotiable time at least once a week.

And it can be for an hour, an hour, week. It all makes a difference. We go ahead and set up this time in your calendar that is non-negotiable, that you will spend working on something for your business. Now, the other thing is don't just sit down and be like, OK, so this is my allotted time now. What do I do with it? You should have a clear plan of what you're going to do. So, for example, if you're thinking at a summit coming up and so I sit down like, OK, so I could finish the landing page or I could create a form or I could create a feedback loop or I could you know, there's all sorts of things that I should do, but I should have a very clear plan of action, of what needs doing when.

And so I'll sit down and do the first thing. Once I've finished that allotted time, I will go ahead and make a note of what the next step is. So when I sit back down a bit like, OK, now that's been done, I now need to do this other thing. Even if you finish like a part of a project, there's always something else to do. So make a note of what that is. And so, you know, the next time you sit down in your allotted work on your business time, that that happens because you don't want that famine and drought and feast thing go on feast and famine, low time, lots of businesses, one where they have all I have lots of clients and all the things and feeling overwhelmed.

But the money's coming in and then there's a drop off because you haven't been doing those those activities that help keep you top of mind with potential clients and keep you visible. So that is a delicate balance that you need to do and treat your business like a client you would hate if you missed a deadline for your client for doing whatever it might be, the blog post, the Instagram feed, whatever it might be. So why is it so easy for you to say it's OK?

It's for my business. It's OK because you're already working on something else that isn't how it should be. You need to think about your future self and your future self as a client and how you want to do the best for you as your business. Never mind your clients and you can't do that if you're wondering about where the next paycheck is coming from. So set aside time every week, even if it's just thirty minutes, preferably more, where you work on your business and treat yourself and your business like a client.

Treat it like the best client you ever had and you will see results. Thank you for listening. This is janice@thecareerintrovert.com helping introverts build their brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.