Wow, thank you all to everyone who came out to the training webinar last weekend! We had a great turn out and talked about how to sleuth for content in your site that could be ready to turn into an online course, eBook or other premium content.

Doing my first webinar was a great reminder of how knowing the difference between what’s important and what’s urgent in your business is crucial to your success.

So what’s the difference between urgent and important?

It is hard to stay focused on the big picture when you’re knee-deep in writing, putting out fires and helping your customers or clients. Usually these are in the urgent category.

Urgent work is loud, has firm deadlines, is hard to ignore, and flashes notifications on all of your devices. It hits your inbox, makes your heart beat a little faster and you can probably knock ten of them off your to do list every day. (Only cause you’re so pro!)

But what’s important for building your business, whether you’re an Etsy artist or a brick and mortar store owner, generally looks very different. Important things are relationship building, product creation, leaning new skills and setting up systems to run your business.

Important things can wait, or fade into the background. Sometimes they look optional, or like they’re a good idea that would add too much to your plate if you jumped in todau. Important things are harder and need more effort. They take up one line on your daily check list, but can take hours to make a dent in them.

One isn’t better than the other but they both need your attention if you want to find customers or clients, create something they love and build an online presence that they love. For my business, the webinar was a big step in the right direction that I’d been putting off, and creating a public deadline was the perfect way to guarantee my follow through.

[Tweet “To make big things happen you’ve got to call on your daring & say goodbye to your comfort zone! http://wp.me/pxZWv-422”]

I think it’s crucial to get comfortable making choices about what to focus on, taking chances and challenging yourself. And when I start moving away from that, this is what I remind myself:

I have to act like my business life depends on what I do today. Because what I do each day matters.

This isn’t about how much you have in your bank account, or your followers. This is about good old fashioned numbers that sometimes we creative types are too upbeat and aspirational to talk about.

I’ve worked for myself and written online since 2008 and only a handful of the blogs, businesses and incredibly talented people I followed just five years ago are still doing their thing. 

I’m sure that you have a similar experience as a reader, too. To be clear, pivoting or doing different things doesn’t mean that someone has failed. Working for someone else isn’t settling, and working for yourself isn’t the answer to all problems. But if you want to start a business or work for yourself and stay that way, this is something you have to consider:

If you want to be a small business success story, you can. But first you have to start questioning the common knowledge about how to do business.

Most people work hard to look successful in the short term, but then ultimately fades out because it doesn’t share the whole picture. This is why so much of the popular advice that’s out there won’t help you grow a business you can rely on. And I’m excited to have an amazing resource that’s going to help you create that!

What you do matters. Focus on what moves the needle for you, instead of following what other people tell you want to do and you’ll be ahead of the pack.