How to plan for business success

What do you need to plan for business success? Is it with a notebook and pen? An online course? A business coach? Recently, while getting ready for one of my workshops, I started thinking about everything needed to plan for business success. Here is what I came up with:

1. Know where you want to go
   
   Without a bit of a roadmap it can be easy to get distracted, start a million different things, and consequently not follow through and finish any of them. Instead, you will feel frustrated that things aren't moving forward. A plan really helps, and trust me, as a person who isn't big on planning, it took me a lot to come around to that.
   

2. Stop thinking you need to know it all
   
   You want to have a plan, but you don't have to plan everything forever. You can start with the next month if that's easiest! You can plan to keep things flexible enough to keep them interesting. You can make money without doing ALL THE THINGS you've heard will make more money. This is especially important for you over-planners out there. Some people keep jumping in with no idea what they're doing and others never jump in because they still aren't "ready." You don't need to have everything figured out to start moving forward.
   

3. Know how much money you want to make
   
   You may not be able to make it from the start but you need to know what kind of money is going to make sure you feel good about running this business. And also understand that running a business means YOU have to save for taxes and you have expenses that people who work for others don't. If you want to make $5000 you need to earn more than $5000 so make sure you know your numbers.
   
   Knowing these numbers will help you figure out what you're going to sell and how you're going to sell it too. They all tie together!
   

4. Do more of the things that feel good and that work well
   
   So many of us fight the stuff that's easy. So many of us feel guilty making money doing things that we enjoy, because "work is supposed to be hard." That is not true and I'll keep reminding you of that until I'm blue in the face.
   
   You're going to do the stuff you love with more heart. You're not going to procrastinate as much if you're selling things you love to do instead of things you know you can do but really wish you didn't have to do. Look for the things that light you up and look for the things that flow to you with ease and do more of those.
   

Take some time and think about how all of these play into your business. If you want ideas on how I can support you with any of them, let’s chat! I have a bunch of things coming up this summer that might be JUST the right fit.

What self-care looks like for me

This past weekend I ran away from home.

After months of pushing really hard in my business and personal life, I was hitting a massive wall.

It was hard to admit at first, after all - I just home from a week in Punta Cana with my family, and the weekend before that trip I was at an art retreat.

But as most parents know, a vacation with three children is not "relaxing."

I put a lot of pressure on that trip to help me unwind and relax. I should have known better, I've been on trips like that before. While the kids are now old enough to not require me to be ON the entire time, we still had to coordinate a lot of people to do a lot of things, and they're still kids with a lot of energy and a lot of feelings.

I was so tired on that trip that between activities I didn't even have the energy to read a book, and I came home even more tired than when I left.

Meeting these pirates was a super fun highlight of our trip to the Dominican Republic!

As an introvert, transitioning to homeschooling my son has meant that I don't have much alone time - and I had been alone for most of the week for the previous six years so this has been a big shift and change for me.

I felt tired ALL the time. I didn't feel like I was thinking clearly any more. I was not working well as a mom or as a business owner.

I was nearing burnout - but it was really hard to admit that when I felt like so many things were going so right. Can you burnout doing things you love? Have you heard people say, “do what you love and it never feels like work.” It’s not true. You can love what you do and still get really tired and burn out from it if you’re not careful.

So, I left Friday afternoon and headed up to the family cottage (which I'm grateful to have access to when needed, but happily would have rented one or an Airbnb for the weekend) and just stopped.

What self-care looks like for me

I took a three-hour nap that went right through dinner time.

I read a book.

I watched Netflix.

I slept whenever I felt tired.

I had meals whenever I felt like it - 11 am, 3 pm, 9 pm.

I ate what I felt like eating whenever I felt like it.

I painted.

I stared out the window at the trees and the water.

I didn't intend to work but I didn't intend to NOT work.

The more I sank into nothing, the more my brain woke up. New ideas popped into my head. I felt excited about things I haven't felt excited about in a while. I had the bandwidth to contemplate next steps instead of feeling required to do it.

What does self-care look like for you?

We don't all need the same things to take care of ourselves, but we all need to make sure that we stop and think about what works and what doesn't, and we need to make sure we’re not getting too caught up in how we think we SHOULD be feeling and operating.

I work better and smarter when I have more time by myself doing nothing. It's not being lazy or self-indulgent, it's being productive and poised to take on the world.

Moving forward I will guard time for myself even more. I blocked off time in my calendar years ago for quiet and down time but over the last couple of years I filled ALL of that time with parenting stuff and/or appointments for myself to work on my health. Important, but not actually the down and quiet rest time I need. So I'm re-jigging my schedule again, this time to accommodate for parenting time, health time, and ME time.

If I want to be productive and effective in my work, this is mandatory; even though it feels counterintuitive to work less to make more money. We've been taught that the only way to make more money and achieve more success is to work HARDER. As someone who has never worked effectively on a traditional timeline, I need to keep reminding myself that doesn’t work for me.

When's the last time you did something to help yourself this way?

Social Media Simplified: Who is my audience?

When you're using online marketing to promote your small business one of the most important pieces of the puzzle is to understand who you're talking to. Why? You need to have a very clear idea of who your audience is if you want to create content that will have an impact on them. 

Be specific about who you want to work with

I've done a lot of work around helping businesses narrow their audience. When asked who their audience is, the inclination for them to say their audience is, "whoever wants to spend money with them" is strong. I get that. We want people to spend money with us and the fear is that if we're too specific we'll alienate a huge group of people with money in their pockets.

The problem is if your content is not specific then it becomes too generic and has no meaning or impact at all.

Let's use an example: If I say "Learn about social media!" it leaves many unanswered questions, such as:

Who should learn?

For personal use or business use?

For entrepreneurs or government?

On a huge budget or a shoestring budget? 

Without all of that information weaved into your content, almost everyone will assume you're not talking to them. A statement like that is less effective than being specific and having a small subset of the population feel like you're talking to them.

HOW specific do you really need to get?

The best way to REALLY figure out who your ideal client is and how to connect with them is to imagine one specific person. Imagine everything about them. How old are they? Are they married or single? How much money do they earn? How do they like to spend their leisure time? What do they like to read? What publications do they respect?

Keep in mind, you won't be sharing this information with anyone, you just want to really narrow down the kind of person you like working with. This information will help you figure out what kind of content they're going to like seeing, and also where you can find more people like that.

What do you do with this information?

Remember that not every audience likes the same kind of content. You wouldn't talk to an 18 year old single student the way you would a 42 year old married professional. The language is different, the content is different, and what they value is different. 

Once you really understand who you're talking to, you can select content that has the right tone of voice, the right kinds of things to make jokes about, and the right kinds of articles that will appeal to them without being directly about your business. By taking the time to do your homework on who your audience is, you're creating opportunity to find valuable content to share with them, and by sharing valuable content, YOU become valuable.

Spend some time figuring this out

Spend some time thinking about your best and favourite customers. This is a great place to start. What is it about them that makes them the kind of person you like to work with? Use that information to start narrowing down YOUR ideal customer. Here are some questions to help you figure it out:

Gender:

Age:

Marital Status:

Income Level:

Do they have a family:

What do they value:

What are their priorities:

Where do they learn new things:

What are their favourite publications:

What do they like to do in their spare time:

What are they struggling with:

What do they want to know:

Now that we've talked about goals and audience, next time we're going to talk about key messages!

Choosing to believe in magic

The holidays are pretty magical, especially when you have small children.

The magic of Santa Claus. The magic of the Elf on the Shelf (let me be real here, this Elf on the Shelf business and his reputation for arriving on December 1st can be pretty exhausting. RIGHT?).

But the excitement in kids’ eyes make it so worthwhile.

I especially love the magical stories my kids have.

"I saw the elf wink at me! Nobody believes me, but I saw it and it's true!"

"Last year at Christmas I woke up in the middle of the night because I thought it was morning and I saw Santa putting the presents under the tree!"

The belief in the magic all around them is simply magical. But, as kids get older, mine are now 9 and 12, the magic starts to fade.

My 12-year-old finally admitted to not believing any more (though I’ve known for a couple of years that he didn't) and one of my 9-year-olds keeps telling me the kids at school say none of it is real and she tells them to stuff it (because she isn't ready to stop believing).

I have thought about the business of believing, and the energy kids put into continuing to believe for as long as possible, and how we need to re-embrace that way of looking at the world.

The older we get, the less magic we believe in. We get black and white about things and insist on proof before believing things.

I am working on reinstating my belief in magic.

I am inspired by the love of life and hope and belief in all good things that I see in kids. We see what we want to see. I want to see more magic.

So, I'm letting go and trying not to control all facets of everything in my life. I'm looking for magic and serendipitous opportunities.

And you know what? The more I believe it's going to happen, the more it does happen.

Believing good things are going to come my way and being ready to receive good things have translated into more money, more opportunities, and more happiness.

If I want to look at the black and white reasons for that, I can probably find them in the strategies I implemented and the hard work I put into it all. But, I was working hard before and I had plans and strategies as well and nothing was really working or clicking.

So, I’m choosing to believe it’s the magic instead.

Where can you find a bit of magic in your life and business? 

The power of believing in YOUR way

What makes one person feel safe, secure, comfortable and confident can be vastly different from what makes another person feel that way. Recently, I was thinking about one way I do things differently than most people I know: when I go on road trips, I hate to pre-book my hotels.

This makes many of my friends and family SO uncomfortable!

“Doesn’t it stress you out to not know where you’re going and what the plan is to get there?”

Nope! I get stressed out feeling locked into things! How am I going to know when I want to stop? My friends get personally stressed out for me when I tell them I don’t book a hotel, unable to separate how they would feel in my situation.

“What if you can’t find a hotel?”

I always find a hotel, maybe not at the first place I stop, but it always works out (and I always feel confident it will while we’re figuring it out). And my measure for “works out” is probably quite different than it is for other people because the thing I’m LOOKING for is not “safety” or “security” or “comfort in knowing” it’s “freedom to change my mind and be spontaneous.”

You may not like to road trip my way, but that doesn’t mean my way isn’t great because I’m getting what I’m looking to get out of the experience! I always believe it is going to work out and it always does. 🙂

This same idea applies to the different ways people run their businesses.

Some people like everything very structured and planned out and some like to fly by the seat of their pants (I fall into the second category).

There is great merit in having a well-structured and predictable business model (and the need for this gets more and more important the bigger you grow) but there is also great merit in having a business that is built to suit the things that are important to you (I need to have room in my business to create new things regularly. If I booked up all my time on the same things in a repeated manner for a year in advance, I would feel claustrophobic in my business).

Now, I’m not saying it’s a good idea to never have a plan, but it’s okay if you’re someone who likes to keep things feeling fresh and different on a regular basis.

You can run your business that way too, you just need to to know where and how to keep the freedom, spontaneity and creativity alive for yourself, while keeping the infrastructure of your business sound (you don’t need to book the hotel but you DO need to know you have money to pay for a hotel and a well-maintained vehicle to get you there).

We all get to prioritize what works for us and what we value and want to create. You can find the perfect balance for you by acknowledging what’s important to you, what motivates you, and what will keep you primed for success in your business. It’s the power of believing what you love and desire WILL work for you and lead you to success.

If you want to figure out how to find that balance for YOU and how you can use that to create success in your business, let’s chat. I’d love to learn more about what is important and motivates you as a business owner and how I could support you in achieving that!