Do you have clarity about what you want from your business, and do you have a step-by-step plan to achieve that?
Winston Churchill said during World War II that “He who fails to plan is planning to fail” and I for one agrees with that. I believe that a good plan will not necessarily guarantee success, but it will definitely help you to succeed.
Planning is not only confined to business. You can do that in any real life situation as well. For example: When you decide to go on an overseas vacation, will you just hop on the first flight that takes you to anywhere in the world? Or will you determine the destination first, set the date, buy the plane tickets, plan what to pack and what you want to do on vacation?
You’ll probably take the second approach, because it can be quite an expensive endeavor if you end up in a place you really don’t want to spend your vacation in. So even when you go on vacation, planning and knowing the destination upfront, is quite important
Yet, many entrepreneurs start their business without really knowing what the end destination of their business journey should be. So they have a difficult time creating a workable plan to build and grow a profitable business.
However, when you want to take your business from merely surviving to thriving in 2013 it becomes important to plan the journey, prioritise the tasks and to take daily action.
The process of creating this success plan starts with clearly defining what you want from your business and where you want to be in six months, one year, or even ten years.
Then it’s about:
Setting goals in terms of how much money you want to make; how many clients you need to work with to earn that amount of money and how you market to find these clients.
Then, identifying what you need to do to reach those goals, in other words breaking your goals down into smaller, doable steps, pinpointing all the obstacles you need to overcome and identifying who can help you reach those goals faster.
Lastly, taking action daily, weekly and monthly to bring you closer to what you want.
To make your planning even more effective, it helps to prioritise your action steps so you can focus on what is important and what needs to be done first.
Prioritizing your tasks saves massive amounts of time since you always handle the important stuff first and don’t waste time on things that don’t really take you closer to your goals.
One thing is for sure: you will end up somewhere by the end of 2013. Why not determine your destination for this year today. Create the plan, prioritize the steps and take action – one step at a time.
That will be a great strategy to take your business from merely surviving to thriving this year.
To Your Success
P.S. As always, I love to hear your thoughts… Share it with us below.
When you’re building a solo business from scratch, the key word for many months or even years is ‘surviving’. In the beginning, your main focus is normally on getting enough clients, keeping the bank manager happy and being able to pay the bills.
The truth is your business is literally in survival mode until you can find your groove, kick things up a notch and start implementing strategies to take your business to the next level.
So, over the next 6 weeks, I want to give you 6 easy and cost effective, but crucial strategies to take your solo business from merely surviving to thriving in the next 12 months.
Okay, so let’s fire away with…
Strategy 1: Discovering YOU First
May I ask: How well do you know yourself?
When I ask this question to my private clients, we always have a good laugh, especially when I compare them with onions… and illustrate the question on the hand of the movie Shrek.
Can you recall the situation where Donkey and Shrek had the following discussion?
Shrek: For your information Donkey, there’s a lot more to ogres than people think. Donkey: Example? Shrek: Example… uh… ogres are like onions! Donkey: They stink? Shrek: Yes… No! Donkey: Oh, they make you cry? Shrek: [peels an onion] NO Donkey! Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. You get it? We both have layers.
Like ogres, there’s a lot more to you than meets the eye. You have layers too. How well do you know your layers? Are you prepared to peel back a few and see for yourself… you may be surprised at what you find.
Truth is, we often think we know ourselves pretty well, but when we are confronted with some thought provoking questions we sometimes choke on the answers. Questions like:
What are you truly passionate about?
What gives you untold energy when you do it?
What motivates you to keep going when the business road starts to creep uphill?
What are your values and those things you won’t compromise on while doing business and marketing your services?
What are your fears and the things holding you back from playing a bigger game?
What is your greatest strength or weakness in your marketing?
Why do you want to be in business for yourself?
What do you ultimately want from your business?
Building a thriving business while marketing your services fearlessly and effectively starts with knowing yourself. It starts with being aware of who you really are and what you truly want.
So take some time out today to really, really answer those questions about yourself. The answers might surprise you, but will also give a lot of insight and self-awareness on how to operate your business and how to market it successfully.
For example, when you know what motivates you, you can build it into your marketing plans to help you keep momentum. When you know your fears, you can start working on overcoming or eliminating them from your marketing to move forward. When you know your strengths, you can build on them to attract more clients.
Thus, self-awareness and the knowledge of what makes you tick is the starting point of building a client-rich business and taking your business from merely surviving to thriving….
Love and Success
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In Part 1 of lessons learned I’ve shared with you 3 important things about mindset and attitude towards business that I’ve learned in my business over the past years.
Today, I want to share some thoughts on the business & marketing lessons learned.
Lesson 4: Consistent Marketing Bears Fruit.
For me, marketing is like planting a seed.
When you put a seed of a tree in the ground, you do not eat the fruit of that tree the next day. The seed needs time to grow. You need to give it water and fertiliser and you need to nurture that seed and help it grow into a big tree. Eventually you will be able to eat the fruit. However, if you stop to give it water, the seed or the tree will die before you can enjoy the fruit and you will have to start all over again.
It’s the same with marketing. It is something you need to do daily, consistently. When you plant the first little “seed” into a prospects head, you can’t just leave it there and think you’ve played your part. You need to water it frequently with more follow-ups and valuable information so that it can grow into a giant tree and start bearing fruit when that client is ready to work with you.
The truth is, marketing rarely gives instant results. It is a process and the marketing effort you put in today, will mostly reap results in future. So consistent marketing will bring consistent results.
Lesson 5: Clarity Goes a Long Way
There are many things in business you have to get clear about, but for me the most important ones are clarity about what you want; what you do; who you work with and how you help them.
When you are clear about what you want, you can set goals and put plans in place to reach those goals.
When you are clear about what you do, who you work with and how you help them, you can tailor your marketing to consistently attract the clients you want.
A mistake many solo-preneurs make is to work with all sorts of clients because they are not clear about who they work with and how they help their clients. This not only results in a struggle to market your services effectively, but you often get clients you just don’t want to work with: people that drain your energy; people who do not pay; people that do not commit to your programs; people who always complain. This makes your business un-enjoyable and is not why you started it in the first place.
When you are not clear on what you truly want from your business and who your ideal clients are, it is an uphill struggle. However, when you become clear about what you want; what you do; who you work with and how you help them, the whole situation changes. Your marketing becomes super easy, you start to attract the right clients, they get better results from working with you, they recommend you to other people, your business and income grow and you at last have fun doing what you love to do.
Lesson 5: Align Your Plans And Goals With What You Really Want.
One of my mentors always says: “When you are clear, you can be clear”
It is so true, because when you have clarity on the things discussed above, you can set some pretty clear goals and then start creating plans and making decisions that are aligned with those goals.
It often happens that entrepreneurs are spinning their wheels in one place. They are doing a lot of stuff and are working really hard, without progressing. In some instances they even miss huge opportunities to progress faster or they say yes to an opportunity that does nothing more to their business apart from giving them more work.
For me, the problem here is because they have no real direction or end goal in mind. They often do not really know what they want, so they cannot put any worthwhile plans in place… and this goes all back to having clarity.
When you are clear and know what you want, you not only set clear goals and create better plans, but it also becomes easier to start saying yes to the right opportunities that fit your plans and will help you achieve those goals faster.
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Do you know the saying: “A donkey doesn’t bump his head against the same rock twice”?
Well, I don’t think that saying is particularly true for humans, because since I’ve started my business, I’ve probably made every mistake in the book – and many of them twice. Although some of these mistakes were often very costly, I can now say I learned valuable lessons from each – especially when I made the same mistake more than once 🙂
So, as I reflected on my business of the past year, I thought of sharing some of those lessons with you. Perhaps these valuable business lessons learned can help you smooth out your own business journey and help you reach the endpoint faster.
Lesson 1: When the going gets tough, the tough must pick up her pace
Having a solo business is never smooth sailing and there are many times when you wonder: “Why on earth am I doing this to myself? Wouldn’t it be easier to go back to corporate or to just throw in the towel?”
These types of thoughts usually surface at times when for example you have only a few or even no clients and have an uphill struggle to get more clients and earn a decent income or at times when you start getting too many clients to handle comfortably and it feels you work yourself to death.
The truth is, no matter where you are in business, there will always be rough patches that you just have to go through. That’s business.
In those times, think of yourself as gold going through fire. Gold must be put through the fire to burn off all the impurities. Only after this “brutal” process it is pure enough to be used for the best jewelry.
So, when things get tough, don’t throw in the towel. Rather pick up the pace and start doing things better and differently to pull through. When you do not have enough clients, look for better ways to do marketing; when you work way to hard, get some help into your business. Truth is, when you persevere and pick up your pace during the difficult times, an amazing thing happens…. You get through it!
Best of all, many positive things always follow the difficult times – especially when you pick up the pace and play your part.
Lesson 2: Procrastination is your worst enemy
In business, the worst thing you can do is to procrastinate, and sadly we all do it.
Napoleon Hill said in his book Think and Grow Rich: “Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.”
When I look at procrastination, it’s not even the things that you’re putting off until the day after tomorrow; it’s the things that you’ve got on your list for weeks and weeks and months and even years. The things you never get to; the things that you keep saying, “One of these days…” and “one of these days…” never happens.
Some reasons why people procrastinate is often because of fear – fear of what other people will say or a fear of not being good enough or a fear of failure, and it’s hard to motivate yourself to do something if you’re not sure you’ll succeed. For example you might not pick up the phone and call that potential client because you fear they won’t like you or what you offer and say no.
So, being a solo-preneur can be quite scary, because you are often taken out of your comfort zone. You frequently have to do things that you’ve never done before. It all makes it easy to procrastinate and thus preventing you to take action.
What I however found is that every time you take action in spite of the fear or in spite of the difficulties standing in my way, it becomes easier to do it the next time. You also progress and move forward.
Ultimately, the success or the failure of your business is up to you. You have to take personal responsibility to defeat the enemy of procrastination and to start doing things in spite of fear and in spite of the obstacles in your way.
Lesson 3: The “Why” is more Powerful Than the “How”
I can still remember the time when my daughter was about 3 or 4 and constantly asked me “why” on every single conversation (or sentence) I said. It drove me nuts. But, I recently realized there’s a lot of wisdom in her curiosity.
In business, you need to ask yourself “why” regularly to really understanding the things that drive you and the reasons behind why you do what you do. E.g. Ask yourself: Why am I doing this? Why does it matter? Why do I care? Why does my heart tell me this is right for me?
Asking these questions help you to clarify if you make the right decision. It also gives you a strong sense of purpose as it often highlights the reasons why you should do something.
The mistake many of us make however, is to get stuck at the “How”: How on earth will I be able to afford this; How can I make this happen; How should I do it? How will I reach that goal? The problem with focusing on the how is that you might never get started.
In reality, once you focus and get clear on the “why” of doing things, the “how” to do it often falls into place. Because when your why is a strong enough reason, you are motivated to take the action to do it. Only when you start to take action, you attract the right opportunities, people and resources!
Francis van Wyk is an experienced business and client attraction mentor who supports women solo-preneurs with planning and achieving business success online.
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