I recently heard someone offer an exercise to small business owners:

Take your core product offering and develop a version that costs 1/10th the current price, and another that costs 10x the current price.

At first this exercise seems very difficult, maybe even impossible, but intentionally adding a 1/10th constraint or a 10x expansion forces you to look at your offering from radically different perspectives. It opens the door to address potential clients who won’t currently buy from you because you cost too much or too little. 

I want to offer a similar challenge to small business owners who have one or more projects that aren’t being completed:

How would you tackle the project if it had to be completed this month? What about if it had to be completed this week? And finally, what if it had to be completed today?

What would get cut out of the plan and what would be left? What are the essential components and how could you achieve your desired outcome if you didn’t have the luxury of not finishing any time soon?

This exercise will also seem difficult, maybe even impossible, but will help you rethink the unnecessary junk that you allow to clog up the works and impede completion.

Parkinson’s Law states that work will expand (or contract…) to fill the time available and it applies to those open-ended projects you just can’t seem to push across the finish line.

Every project of importance needs a deadline.

Most deadlines could be shorter than they are.

So what would you cut if you had to complete that project before you went home today? If that is simply unfathomable, how aggressive could you get with your deadline? Pick a deadline that seems tough but realistic, and then shave a little more time off and see what happens.

You will be absolutely amazed at what is really possible when you force the work into a shorter deadline.

The new year is right around the corner and I want you to start 2025 with complete clarity about how you want your business to work for you. Grab my new PDF, 3 Questions Every Small Business Owner Should Answer Before The End of the Year, and you’ll not only be primed to clarify how to get more of what you want from your business, but you’ll have a chance to grab 90-minutes of free coaching with me.