Steps I’m Taking Now to Keep My Small Business Profitable

Times are hard for small businesses. Especially micro-businesses like mine. We can’t compete with the multi-million dollar corporations, and it doesn’t really make sense to try.

Carving a deeper niche, building an audience, and offering something that truly resonates with that audience seems to be the key to surviving the 2020s, whether you’re selling a product, a service, or a lifestyle. I’ve recently listed the steps I feel I need to take to keep my small business profitable right now. Here’s how that list is looking.

Decide What Not to Do

I’m a big fan of making a not-to-do list. It’s just so important to stop trying to be more effective and efficient at doing the things you probably shouldn’t be doing at all.

Fill your not-to-do list with the things you do in your business that:

• Don’t build your audience or customer base
• Don’t impact your bottom line
• Provide a very low ROI
• Distract you from other more important tasks

If something doesn’t meet these criteria but you hate doing it, look deeper. Can you outsource it? Partially automate it? Do it differently? Think outside the box.

Simplify, Then Simplify Some More

Simplicity is always your friend. Or as Richard Branson has put it:

“Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to keep things simple.”

For a long time I’ve been running three niche blogs, three newsletters, three online stores. They’ve served their purpose. I’ve learned a lot from them. Over the next few months, I’ll be winding stuff down. I’ll be streamlining, and eliminating, and simplifying.

I’ll be carving my niche a little deeper, and narrowing my focus, and in doing so, I’ll be making my list of essential business tasks shorter than it has been in years. Keeping it simple will be at the focus of all future decisions.

Examine Every Expenditure

Sit down with your annual accounts and look at what you’re spending and why. What’s the ROI for every expense? Check, don’t guess. There will likely be some surprises in there, good and bad.

The aim here is to eliminate unnecessary expenses, of course. But it’s also about seeing if there are expenses you can cut, or things you can do more efficiently.

Counter-intuitively, this step also involves seeing if there are areas where you should be spending more, not less. It’s about doing more of what is actually working. Which is what the next step is assessing.

Look at Where the Money’s Coming From

The 80/20 rule is always at play. It takes many forms.

• Maybe 80% of revenue is coming from 20% of your clients
• Maybe 80% of click-throughs are on 20% of your paid ads
• Maybe 80% of your social engagement is on 20% of your posts

And no, it’s not often a perfect 80/20. Sometimes it’s 90/10, or an even more extreme imbalance, which actually makes life even simpler. The aim here is to game the 80/20 rule by focusing on the 20 (or 10, or 5)% that’s working, and eliminating at least some of the 80%+ that’s not.

This step (along with the one above) is aiming for one simple but vital change: Do more of what’s working, and less of what’s not.

Running a profitable small business isn’t getting any easier. Our aim as small business owners should be to at least make it simple, and in the process, more profitable.

Karen Banes is a freelance writer specializing in entrepreneurship, parenting and lifestyle. She writes articles, website content, ebooks and the occasional award winning short story. Her work has appeared in a range of publications both online and off, including The Washington Post, Life Info Magazine, Transitions Abroad, Brave New Traveler, Natural Parenting Group, and Copia Magazine. Learn More About Karen