As a business owner, you want to be able to focus your efforts on the projects that will make the biggest impact, but it can be difficult to know where to start. That's where strategic objectives come in.

By setting clear and specific goals for your business, you can create a sense of direction and purpose that will guide your decision-making and help you stay on track. Here are 7 examples of common challenges business owners face and how strategic objectives can help.

Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of assuming that if they work harder and put in longer hours, their business will succeed. Friends, let me tell you that this is just not true. You can have a successful business without running yourself to the brink of burnout, wondering when you will ever be able to come up for air.

There are 3 specific mistakes that can make or break your business success. Do not panic, though. The good news is that you CAN avoid them. It’s all about awareness and not letting those messy corners of your business get out of control.

Micromanaging is working very closely with team members through every step of the process, carefully monitoring them to ensure everything is done to your exact specifications, rather than allowing them space to work in their own zone of genius using their innate skill set. While micromanaging your team might seem like the easiest way to produce the quality work you desire, this type of leadership makes your team members feel untrusted and ultimately wastes your time.

At some point in your journey, the only way to grow and scale is to start to delegate some of the day-to-day tasks to someone else. If you’ve reached the point where you’re considering your first hire to help with the current workload, congratulations! To get you started on the right track, here are 8 steps you can take to prepare for your first hire.

So many business owners feel that they cannot grow their business because they have become the bottleneck. They are in a state where everything in their business has to be approved by them. Take a moment and ask yourself: What would happen to your business if you were able to delegate more and much better?

Perhaps you have tried delegating in the past, and it hasn’t worked so well. You end up deciding, “I might as well do it myself,” or “I guess I’m not a good manager.”

Truth bomb: The problem isn’t that you are a bad manager. It is that you are “drive-thru delegating.”

When you hear the word “productivity,” do you start to feel guilty? Today, I want you to think positively about being productive. The word productivity should make you think about accomplishing your goals and living out your dreams, rather than unnecessary pressure and unrealistic expectations.

I have one simple, but huge productivity tip to share with you. It's my best-kept secret when it comes to improving your productivity levels. The key is knowing where your time is needed most so you can prioritize and simplify that ongoing to-do list that you face every day.

I am sure you have heard it said before that you must have all Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) clearly laid out before you hire your first team member (contractor or employee). This is of course the most ideal situation, but we all know that entrepreneurship is not always a “perfect, ideal situation.”

Sometimes you may be in a position where you do not have the SOPs in place, and spending the time to create them could be detrimental to your business growth. I believe that in many situations, you can and possibly SHOULD hire without SOPs.

As founders of small businesses, we hear the word delegation all the time, and we know it’s important. But do we do this effectively in our own business? Possibly you have tried delegating things in the past and you did not have the positive outcome you were looking for. Perhaps you feel you can do the task “better and faster” on your own than by trying to explain it to someone else and then managing them to ensure they actually complete it.

However, delegating tasks to team members who are able and ready to help you has a lot of advantages to you as the CEO. Let's talk about 3 of those advantages first and then I will give you some tips on how to delegate effectively.

Being a small business owner with a small or lean team is no walk in the park. You are likely juggling multiple projects with different deliverables, timelines, and budgets at a time, all while dealing with multiple team members, clients, and stakeholders. Is your brain spinning yet? You are probably saying to yourself, “This could easily be done if I had a supercomputer for a brain.”

Listen, I get it. Managing multiple projects can feel super exhausting and make you feel like you are living in utter chaos. Here are 6 tips for how to manage multiple projects at once and see them through to completion. (Hint: it all starts with a strong foundation.)

There is an endless number of answers to this question. Lots of project managers will have a certain tool of choice and avoid using other tools at all costs. Others may have a few tools which they are comfortable with.

The reality is, however, that the best tool to use is the one that works best for your team. There is no one-size-fits-all tool, so it’s better to investigate a few and see which one is best for you. Let’s look at some examples here: Trello, Asana, and ClickUp.