It's a problem every successful solo business owner faces…

"How do you keep pace with the demands of a growing business?" Working the long hours when starting the business is no longer the solutions and has become counterproductive.

Your business depends on you staying on top of everything. But with so many things vying for you attention you lose focus, don't know what to do first and you never have enough time to get "caught up." Time becomes your greatest enemy… working against you.

Ann Rusnak, President of Marketplace Strategies Inc. has been helping solo business owner, gain control over their time demands since 2000. Ann, a solo entrepreneur herself, helped many business owners through consulting and mentoring, workshops and teleclasses. She authored 3 books.. Too Busy To Write a Profitable Ezine, Too Busy To Get Anything Done and Flip Your Time along with developing the Thinking Outside the Clock Success System. Read Success Stories

Clearing Out the Bank Account in Pursuit of a Dream

It’s been her goal since childhood to have her own business. She had her first successful enterprise at age 13.

Knowing experience is the best teacher, she pursued a career in retail business management. After fifteen years in the field, her creative side screamed to get out. She returned to school and earned a degree in Interior Design, specializing in Commercial and Disability compliance.

She worked briefly for an architect before clearing her bank account and starting her own design firm, A R Interiors. "I budget the money carefully to get me through that first year." She got her first job renovating an office for General Electric. The years of experience in business paid off. A.R. Interiors was supporting itself the first year and was profitable by the second year.

Fast Hard Road to Business Success

A. R. Interiors grew fast.

But Ann soon discovered working hard would almost cost kill her business not to mention herself. 15 years of business experience and knowledge helped me become profitable immediately. But it still didn’t prepare me to be a business owner… The CEO of my own company. I ran it like an employee with an employee’s mindset. This puritan work ethic approach of working hard long hours left her exhausted.

Feeling tired from having no time just for her to relax. It really took a toll on her health. Ann became very ill, collapsing in front of her young daughter.

An ambulance ride to the emergency room and 3 months in bed gave her time to reflect on the situation.

"This setback almost killed my business. It was upsetting to see all my ‘hard’ work go down the drain.”

A breakthrough came during that year of recovering. She enlisted the help of 5 super achievers. She asked them if they would mentor and showed her a better way to run a business and while maintaining a personal life.

These five became her "Mastermind Group." They taught her how to focus her time on the most important, necessary, and critical and factors for her business and herself to survive. Most importantly, they taught her the techniques, strategies, and activities to create ongoing income for the business.

When my mentor first told me that to take days off ...I thought she was NUTS!!! I put in 16 hours a day... still couldn't get everything done and kept falling behind.

It took collapsing from exhaustion and ambulance ride to convince me take her advice. She was right... you can get more done... earn more without working long hard hours!

Over the next nine months these people helped her get more done in less time. She learned to streamline her work. Because of her illness, she could only work for 15 minutes at a time. Every one of these people helped her make the most of those 15 minutes.

"I could only get out of bed for 15 minutes at a time while recovering, but I got more done in those 15 minutes than working a 16 hour day. Can you imagine running and keeping your business alive working only 15 minutes a day?"

By learning the secret of time leveraging, not traditional time management, but maximizing her hours, putting the clock on her side and turned time into an asset, she began to develop the different mindset about time.

"They taught me that working harder and working long hours is counterproductive. That working less is the answer. I found that hard to believe. But learning to apply the 80/20 rule made a huge difference"

She learned how to focus her time on things that were important, necessary, critical and essential for her business.

A New Road… A New Adventure…

While still working with her design clientele, she started looking at the Internet as an alternative way to have a business.

"The business survived, but I needed something that wouldn't require me to be on job locations. I needed something less strenuous on my health."  

In 1997, she formed Marketplace Strategies, an online shopping service, and started making money.

"I kept getting requests for help from other "solo business owners " on how I could take time off and still run my business... so I started doing more consulting than shopping. There was a definite need out there. The Internet makes it easy to start a business, but you still needed the skill and knowledge to make it successful and profitable."

The company added a web design division the Fall of 2000 and incorporated at the beginning of 2001.

Marketplace Strategies Inc. added the Thinking Outside the Clock Network division in 2007 to focus and provide solutions for the unique challenges of solo business owners.

Ann success secret: "God knows the big picture. You just have to have enough faith and trust that everything will work out, especially during those tough times. When I look back,  I'm always amazed and can see God's wisdom. I wish sometimes He would clue me in on the game plan but then that is what faith and trust all is about."

Check out the many programs and discover how Ann and the Thinking Outside the Clock Success System can help you grow your business without making your life crazy and take days off without work piling up while still increasing your income.

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