• Survey of Rural Challenges
  • Small Town Speaker Becky McCray
  • Shop Local video
  • SaveYour.Town

Small Biz Survival

The small town and rural business resource

A row of small town shops
  • Front Page
  • Latest stories
  • About
  • Guided Tour
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • RSS

Focus on Your IPA’s: Income Producing Activities

By Becky McCray

When our days are devoured by a million things to get done, we lose focus on the activities that produce our income. Lots of time management tools will help you cope with the million things, but here are two tools to help you do more of the Income Producing Activities.

These tools reward you with points for each IPA you complete. You can add up your points and track your progress. They bring some focus back onto the Important, but not Urgent parts of your business.

The Printable CEO ™
“The Printable CEO is not a To-Do list. It’s an I-Did list,” David Seah, the tool’s designer, said. In The Making of the Printable CEO, Seah give advice on deciding what tasks are worth tracking.

  1. Have a task list that’s tied to the strategic goals, and trust that great things are built from many small steps. Make the steps small, doable, and supportive of your strategy.

  2. Frame measurement of progress in a way that doesn’t encourage perfectionism and completionist thinking. Equate filling out a bubble [recording a completed task] with found money. We like found money!

  3. If you’ve picked the right tasks, the completion of every one them should be a positive step toward achieving your goals. In my case, most of those tasks contributes to managing relationships that lead to new contracts, or tangible assets that attract new relationships. You may have different priorities, such as research or gaining experience. Just make sure that you can show or share what you’ve done. I find mere description and exposition is far less compelling.

You can tell Seah is a designer just by looking at his work; it’s very thoughtfully designed. On the functional side, it gives different points for each income producing activity. It also ties together the list of actions and points with a tracking system that is fun. He has many resources on his The Printable CEO Series page. Being a spreadsheet person, I like the Excel version on The Printable CEO Remixed page.

From Mary Kay
Here’s another IPA tools that could be easily adapted, this one from Mary Kay consultants. A simple version in Excel spreadsheet format is available from Courtney Duvall. I like this version because it includes motivating explanations that would be easy to customize your business. The weekly tracking portion is very, very simple. A daily tracker in PDF is available from Fran Mottern. It is more complex, but makes a monthly review of progress very easy. This one would be a bit harder to customize, but it can serve as a great example to borrow from.

Chart Your Progress
The first step is just tracking every day’s points, as compared to the goals you set. One step further is to track your progress on a simple chart on paper or in a spreadsheet. Go even further, and make it a big chart and put on your wall where you see it every day. Being child-like and fun can work!

Only you can decide what your income producing activities are. Once you have made those choices, these tools can help you to focus your daily actions on producing income by rewarding each meaningful step you take.

[small biz] [rural] [entrepreneurs] [business] [IPA] [GTD] [getting things done] [lifehacks] [Printable CEO] [Mary Kay]

  • About the Author
  • Latest by this Author
Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.

www.beckymccray.com
  • Will trendy axe throwing and escape room businesses last? More experience-based retail: the Hat Bar
  • Create customer experiences online like Open the Shop With Me videos, and in person, like Silent Book Club
  • How to let customers know when changing your business hours

March 26, 2006 Filed Under: rural Tagged With: service businesses

Wondering what is and is not allowed in the comments?
Or how to get a nifty photo beside your name?
Check our commenting policy.
Use your real name, not a business name.


Don't see the comment form?
Comments are automatically closed on older posts, but you can send me your comment via this contact form and I'll add it manually for you. Thanks!

Comments

  1. Dave Seah says

    March 26, 2006 at 8:31 pm

    This is a great site with a great mission…thanks for the mention of the PCEO! I hope people find it useful in the rural small business context. I’ve often wondered at times what the economics of moving to a small town would be, so I’m glad to have found you guys!

    Loading...
  2. Becky McCray says

    March 26, 2006 at 11:17 pm

    Thank you, Dave for sharing your great PCEO tool. And a big thank you for your kind words!

    Loading...
  3. Becky McCray says

    March 27, 2006 at 4:44 am

    Smallbusiness.com Newswire Featured Item

    Welcome, Newswire readers!

    Loading...

Trackbacks

  1. What counts as Income Producing Activities says:
    March 21, 2013 at 10:56 pm

    […] is one outstanding resource that I’ve recommended here since 2006. (In this classic: Focus on your IPA’s.) It’s Dave Seah’s Printable CEO. There are many different versions of it, and even a […]

    Loading...
  2. How to use a checklist to focus your entrepreneurial efforts says:
    April 29, 2013 at 3:35 am

    […] So create your daily checklist, starting with just five items. Post it where you work most often, or where you sit down to plan or review your day. If you like checking things off, make copies, and check off each item, each day. Imagine the satisfaction! You can use a related tool, the Printable CEO ™, which I mentioned before (Focus on Your IPA’s: Income Producing Activities). […]

    Loading...

Howdy!

Glad you dropped in to the rural and small town business blog, established in 2006.

We want you to feel at home, so please take our guided tour.

Meet our authors on the About page.

Have something to say? You can give us a holler on the contact form.

If you would like permission to re-use an article you've read here, please make a Reprint Request.

Want to search our past articles? Catch up with the latest stories? Browse through the categories? All the good stuff is on the Front Page.

Partners

We partner with campaigns and organizations that we think best benefit rural small businesses. Logo with "Shop Indie Local"Move Your Money, bank local, invest localMulticolor logo with text that says "Global Entrepreneurship Week"Save Your Town logotype

Best of Small Biz Survival

A few people shopping in an attractive retail store in refurbished downtown building.

TREND 2025: Retail’s Big Split: what small town retailers can do now

99% of the best things you can do for your town don’t require anyone’s permission

Three kids in a canoe

Get started as an outdoor outfitter without breaking the bank

A shopkeeper and a customer share a laugh in a small store packed full of interesting home wares.

How to get customers in the door of small town and rural retail stores

Rural Tourism Trend: electric vehicle chargers can drive visitors

Wide view of a prairie landscape with a walk-through gate in a fence

Tourism: Make the most of scant remains and “not much to see” sites with a look-through sign

More of the best of Small Biz Survival

Copyright © 2025 Becky McCray
Front Page · Log in
%d