Is your business herky jerky?

Sometimes I listen to the stories that entrepreneurs tell about their journey and it sounds like b.s. Great story telling often leaves out the important – but boring – parts like “then there were 3 months when I got no sales and wanted to cry daily” or “and then we worked the same business plan for a year seeing small but steady growth.”

No one likes to hear about those things because we crave excitement. But it can also lead entrepreneurs wondering what they’re doing wrong.

Not every day can be a 5 star day. There will be boring days too. And that’s okay.

In fact, we need those boring days of just running the business to keep from being overwhelmed or stressed out. I’m not going to give you a bunch of tips on how to “liven things up” because, in all honesty, when you’re doing the right things day in and day out the breaks will come.

Instead, here are 3 things you can do when business seems too boring for words:

1. Take a break.* Yep, now is the perfect time to take a little time off in the form of an overdue vacation or just a day out of the office. When things are boring you have more leeway in your schedule that isn’t possible when there’s a new website build, 17 interviews, a book launch and launch going on simultaneously. Learn to enjoy these times instead of resenting them.

2. Celebrate benchmarks toward your goals.* A lot of times it feels like we’re going nowhere but if you’re working consistently then you’re probably a lot closer to your goals than you think. If your only measurement is the finish line, then learn to embrace benchmarks. Take for example a marathon runner who wants to do a 26 mile event in December. All is not lost if she can’t run that today. If she looked at her running stats and saw that last month she was doing a 14 minute mile and today she’s at 11 then that shows progress. Maybe last month she could only run for an hour and now she’s up to 75 minutes. Don’t just look at your goals and change them if you’re not there yet – measure your progress.

Caveat: if your business seems boring and stale because you have no goals then it’s time to change things up. What are you working towards? How are you growing? Don’t just put the business on cruise control and check out.

3. Improve your systems.* It’s easy to get complacent when things are calm but now is the perfect time to evaluate and improve how you do things for those hectic days ahead. Sure, it might be fine that it takes 6 hours a month to send invoices and follow up with late payments but right now you have the time to improve that process. If you can manage your invoices in 3 hours a month then when business picks up again you have some space for growth.

If you’re currently in crazy business growth mode, remember that it won’t be like this forever. Things will calm down and should level off eventually. And if your business feels slow and boring, it’s okay too; it’s not a sign of failure.

Progress is taking each day and doing the right things consistently every time.