I work with people who want to make a living doing what they love, using their creativity to build a business and passion to drive it forward. Although my clients do many different things from fashion to film, they tend to have two things in common.

1. They often believe they don’t have enough money, clients or time.
2. They are unaware they could be sitting on a goldmine of untapped resources.

This problem of scarcity is rife in both life and business – especially with the current state of the economy, but if we spend all our time focusing on what is lacking we are actually in danger of missing out on potential treasures.

Luckily there are some simple steps you can take to help shift your focus so you can start to make the most of everything you’ve got.

Focus on what you want

The first step is to focus on what you actually want, rather than what you haven’t got.  How much is enough?  How much money, how many clients or how much more time is going to make the difference?  This is a question I always ask my clients and the answer I usually get is that they don’t know.

They say that the quality of an answer depends on the quality of the question – and it’s true. If you tell your brain you need more money, the usual response is panic!  But, if you can get more specific your brain has something to work with and starts looking for solutions.  Try it yourself, you might be surprised at how little you need.  For example if you want two more projects where could you get them from?  It could be as simple as asking existing clients for a bit more work.

Focus on what’s working

The 80/20 rule was created in the 19th century by Pareto an Italian economist but is surprisingly still very relevant today. It states that just 20% of what we do has 80% of the total impact and this applies to every area of our life.

We might have a cupboard full of food but eat the same 20% of items 80% of the time by having cereal for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch everyday.  Or have a wardrobe full of clothes but wear our favourite jeans most of the time.  In business it means that as a rule of thumb 80% of sales could come from just 20% of your customers or products.

The key is to focus the majority of your time and resources on the 20% - not waste them on areas that aren’t working.  Most successful businesses are niche – they offer a high level of expertise in a specific area and are very clear about who their customers are and what they offer them.  As the American comedian Bill Crosby puts it ‘I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody’

Focus on what you’ve got

In this digital age having loads of friends is de rigour. We are more connected than ever meaning that it should be easier to get our message out or ask for help.  However, how many of your friends, contacts and colleagues actually know what you do?  Let alone how they could help you grow your business?  Based on my client’s experiences – not a lot.

Often the tendency to look for new business focuses on trying to convince complete strangers to buy your products and services.  As word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing this isn’t always a great strategy.

If you've got hundreds of friends, acquaintances and clients then maybe you could consider applying the 80/20 rule to identify the key people to start talking to.

I have suggested this process to hundreds of clients and without fail they have suddenly remembered someone who could give them what they need, be it the person who works for a blue chip company they want sponsorship from, or a friend who could help them get their online profile up.

By undertaking the first two steps and focusing on what you want and what’s working you should have a much better idea of what you still need, if anything at all.  Once you know – get it out there, tell everyone in your network about your exciting plans and what you want and you could be amazed at how quickly you get it.

At a Personal Branding workshop this week at City Business Library, the discussion, as ever, turned to social media.

The presenter, an advocate for using social media for self promotion, was asked how she kept track of hundreds of followers in her Twitter account. (For anyone who is following more than a handful of people on Twitter, a twitter application is essential - TweetDeck is my application of choice). The presenter enthused about Hootsuite, a Twitter application that sits in the 'cloud'. But she had found one small problem - Hootsuite only allowed her to set up 5 columns to 'group' those she was following into categories. When I suggested that TweetDeck might be a more appropriate solution for her, this suggestion was dismissed. Instead she planned to set up multiple Hootsuite accounts as her columns grew. (On further research Hootsuite does actually allow up to 10 columns in one 'tab' - multiple tabs can be set up to host more columns).

This is a text book example of how using the wrong tools, or not using them fully, can hamper your effectiveness. It a waste of time setting up and managing multiple accounts of a tool when the functionality you seek may be there but you can't see it. Or perhaps there is a more appropriate solution altogether for your situation. Hootsuite is great for teams for example and heavy social media users. Of course the potential benefit of any tool must be weighed against any potential loss. This is why blogs such as Mashable and Lifehacker are invaluable for comparing and contrasting tools.

This week I have been re-reading Leo Babauta's Focus: A Simplicity Manifesto in the Age of Distraction. He talks about the Tao concept of 'wei wu wei' often translated as 'action without action' - something Leo takes to mean in today's context as 'effortless action'.

For much of our working day we are struggling. We struggle with finding focus in a day full of digital distraction. And how we struggle daily with our digital tools - who amongst us has not spent hours trying to fix something on our website or trying to send a bulk email? Every new tool brings a learning curve. Last night I spent hours playing around with different ways of uploading footage from the Enterprising Women event onto my YouTube channel. Frustrating because the software with the camera (a Kodak Zi8) is supposed to upload automatically to YouTube but kept failing. I specifically choose the camera as the most appropriate tool because of this functionality.

By using appropriate tools (when they work!) we can really see the power of effortless action. Just like water flowing, we can calmly make our way to where we are going. When the water finds certain pressure points, moving forward takes very little effort. If we can find these sweet spots of maximum effectiveness with minimum effort, we can truly start to reclaim our time and work effectively.

Using an appropriate tool for a particular situation is a perfect example of a 'pressure point':

Why struggle with sending bulk email through Outlook or Gmail Contacts when you can open an account with a mailing list provider such as MailChimp or my favourite MadMimi in seconds, import in your list in a few minutes and be sending out great looking emails with opt-out capabilities for your subscribers within the hour.

Abraham Maslow famously once said: “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” This is called the 'Law of the Hammer' - an over-reliance on a familiar tool. Email, as an example, is an incredibly useful tool but we use it inappropriately to have back and forth conversations. Why not see if there are more appropriate tools for communication that will allow you to get out of your Inbox. For external conversations Instant Messaging (IM) is excellent. So is the amazingly disruptive, but much neglected technology, the telephone. For internal communication between teams a free tool such as Yammer is an easy and effective way of grouping all the shared conversations. 

My request for you today is to have a think about what digital tools you are using in your business and how appropriate and fit for purpose they are. Please leave any ideas in the comments below and I will be happy to verify or suggest alternatives.

[Image with thanks to Horian Varlan via Creative Commons]