Don’t forget to invest in the most important business – yourself

As many of us get closer to the last weeks locked up in our homes, trying to do our work in innovative ways that we might never have thought about before the Coronavirus, let me make a suggestion that you might not have thought about before — do a SWOT test on yourself.

In case you haven’t come across this term before, it’s an old business assessment strategy where you look at the:

S — strengths of

W — weaknesses of

O — opportunities of; and

T — threats for the business.

It’s great to do this when you’re designing a business plan or updating your business’ current business plan and it’s especially important if you think you’re underperforming or determined to take it to the next level.

Getting clarity about a business and what’s holding it back (or what could really turn it into a great operation) is such a good idea.

But some really high-achieving individuals have used this SWOT analysis in different ways to make them better business performers, as individuals.

And the self-improvement it encouraged transformed their respective businesses taking them into the fast lane of growth and made them legends on Australian business.

Famous restauranteur, Neil Perry, was told by his mentor to do a SWOT analysis on himself and then look at how he used his time. In simple terms, apart from his great cooking, he was terrific at getting publicity for the business. And building his brand was a strength that he sacrificed, time-wise, by doing work in areas where he wasn’t strong, such as bookkeeping and administration.

He decided to give half of his business to his cousin who was an accountant. She took over the jobs where he was weak and she was strong, which meant that Neil operated in his strength zone. That business boomed after that SWOT analysis innovation and the action that followed.

Real estate agent John McGrath actually wrote a book called ‘You Inc.’ where he effectively explained how he looked at himself as a business that could be objectively assessed, fine-tuned and improved.

John read and tried to meet the best business-building minds of the time because he wanted to be successful. He pioneered the idea of the one-page business plan. I recommend you do that for yourself in these final weeks before we get closer to normalcy.

Of course, only do this if you want to make yourself a better you, who can perform better, be paid more income and be largely seen as a success. If you do a one-page plan on yourself and it helps you lift your business-life game, you then could use the same successful process of a one-page plan to build your wealth.

Success is a process. Few people commit to it. That’s why there are more wealth-strugglers than wealthy people who are living the good life.

And when you look back on this time locked up, I hope you eventually see it as the opportunity of a lifetime where you created a new and better YOU.