3 Things Your Business Plan Must Have

3 Things Your Business Plan Must Have

by | Blog, Business Plan, Time management

Businesses of every type, need a business plan. Don’t think you can skip by on this important step because you have a service based business instead of a physical product. Every business can benefit from a business plan.

Here are some steps you can take

Focus.

When you create a business plan you need to focus on the reasons for the business:

  • Who do you want to serve?
  • What do you want to provide?
  • When do you want to start?
  • Where will you set up shop?
  • Why do you want to start such an endeavor?
  • How will you meld all these things together to create a prosperous business?

These are the primary reasons why you’re going into business and they should always be at the forefront of your mind when making decisions.

Something else to focus on is your big dream. How much money do you want to make over the next 5 years? Do you want to sell multiple products or have several locations? Everyone’s big dream will be different but you should write it down as part of the plan.

 Plan.

Think of your business plan as a mountain. Your mission statement is at the base of the mountain while your big dream is at the peak. Everything in between is what you need to plan and these steps should also be incorporated into a business plan.

  • What products do you want to create?
  • How often do you want to produce a product?
  • How can you implement some passive income or affiliate income into your business?
  • Are there any speaking engagements or online summit opportunities that will expand your reach and your followers?
  • What can you add to your sales funnel for those not yet ready to commit to coaching?

Action Steps.

This is where your planning steps are broken down into smaller, actionable steps. Instead of just saying I want to write a book, break the process down further.

  • How much time can you dedicate each day to writing?
  • Do you want to self-publish or find a publisher?
  • You’ll need to hire an editor and someone to design the cover.

These are actionable steps that can easily be crossed off your to do list once completed.

Don’t be thrown off here, it can sometimes seem overwhelming. You don’t need to plan 5 years’ worth of action steps at one time. The idea is to plan a year at a time, keeping your focus in mind, so that the action steps become a pathway or a blueprint to your big dreams.

I think it’s important to plan the year ahead, I suggest you prioritize the time needed to put together a clear and detailed business plan for the next 12 months.  This will help your business as well as your personal life because you will have more time for family, friends or whatever it is you choose to do in your off time.

Website Security 101: Keeping Your WordPress Site Safe from Hackers

Website Security 101: Keeping Your WordPress Site Safe from Hackers

by | Website

Security concerns keeping you from enjoying the flexibility and power of WordPress? If you’ve bought into the hype that WordPress is inherently unsecure, then you’re missing out on all the great things WordPress has to offer, for no good reason.

The fact is, while WordPress sites do get hacked, they are no more dangerous than other php-based websites. The problem is that WordPress is open source, which means that anyone can read the code—even the bad guys who spend all their time looking for vulnerabilities they can exploit. Couple that with the enormous popularity of WordPress, and it’s easy to see why you hear about hacks on a regular basis.

But that doesn’t mean WordPress is unsafe. By implementing just a few security best practices, you can greatly reduce your risk of being hacked.

Keep Your Site Up to Date. This is by far the biggest risk when it comes to security. New vulnerabilities are discovered in WordPress and its plugins and themes on a regular basis, and if your site is out of date, it is at risk. Hackers actively search for outdated websites they can attack, so make it a point to keep your site up to date. That includes plugins, themes, and the WordPress software itself.

Use Strong Passwords. Second only to out-of-date installations when it comes to inviting hackers, weak passwords are regularly exploited with a technique called a “brute force” attack. Simply put, a hacker sets a computer program to repeatedly attempt to log into your site using thousands of the most commonly used passwords and what are known as “dictionary” words.

This type of vulnerability can be easily avoided simply by choosing good passwords. Ideally, your passwords should:

  • Be longer than 12 characters
  • Contain upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols
  • Never be used for more than one site
  • Never be stored in plain text on your computer
  • Never be sent by email

Also, consider using a password manager such as LastPass to generate and securely store good, strong passwords. You’ll never have to worry about remembering your passwords, and you’ll greatly reduce your risk of being hacked.

Be Smart About Your Hosting. Unlimited domains! Unlimited space! Unlimited bandwidth! And all for around $8 per month. You’ve probably seen the claims, and may even have a hosting account with one of these companies.

Here’s the problem. This type of shared hosting is inexpensive only because they overload their servers with thousands of websites. Just as close proximity in crowded classrooms allows human viruses to quickly spread, close proximity of websites on a shared server means one infected site is a risk to all the others.

Rather than looking for the least expensive (and riskiest) hosting option, choose a host that allows you to isolate each site on its own cPanel. Doing so will greatly improve the security of your website.

In the end, the safety and security of your site and its data is entirely up to you. Keep your software up to date, use good passwords, and choose a secure hosting environment, and you’ll be well ahead of the curve on this.

The Only Website Builder You’ll (Probably) Ever Need

The Only Website Builder You’ll (Probably) Ever Need

by | Blog, Webinar, Website

In business? A website is a must have asset. It’s where potential clients will find and get to know you. It’s the first place referrals will turn to learn more about you. It’s where you’ll sell your products and services, invite contact requests, brand yourself in your niche, and show off what you know. It might also be where you host your webinars, offer group coaching programs, publish a podcast, create a blog, and even set appointments with clients.

Whew! That’s a lot of jobs for a single website to do. If you choose a versatile content management system such as WordPress though, you can easily incorporate those tasks and so much more.

Fast and Easy Website Setup
In the time it takes to finish your morning coffee, you can have a website created and live on the Internet using WordPress. Most hosting companies offer “one-click installs” for WordPress, meaning it will take only about 5 minutes to create your website. From there, it’s a matter of choosing a theme and adding content.
Even if you’re not technically inclined, WordPress is simple to use. And with a huge, helpful community of users, you can quickly find the answer for everything from “how do I install WordPress” to “how can I create a membership site” with just a Google search.

Your Site, Your Style
With thousands of free and premium themes available, it’s easy to find a look that’s just right for your brand and business. Want something more customized? Many themes offer easy, drag-and-drop editing of layouts, colors and more, but if you want something designed just for you, there are thousands of capable developers to build you a custom design.

Plugins add Greater Flexibility
Originally designed as a blogging platform, WordPress earned its early popularity by making this rather technical chore easy for thousands of new bloggers. Today it’s no longer known as just a blogging tool. Instead, site owners use WordPress as the basis for:

  • Shopping carts
  • Membership sites
  • Sales pages
  • Wikis
  • Personal journals
  • Online directories
  • Non-profit fundraising
  • Video blogging
  • Podcasting
  • News sites
  • Recipe blogs
  • Photography sites
  • And dozens of others

The combination of themes and plugins—small software add-ons that install directly into your WordPress site—make the possibilities nearly endless, so no matter what you need a website to do, chances are good that WordPress can handle it.

Click here to sign up for my webinar WordPress Website Client Attraction Formula – Discover 5 Ways Your WordPress Website can Help You Attract a Steady Flow of Potential Clients with Ease

Not all tasks are created equal

Not all tasks are created equal

by | Time management

It’s unavoidable. As an entrepreneur, you will need to work in quite a few areas to keep the wheels turning in your business.

  • Marketing manager.
  • Accountant
  • Blog writer
  • Coach
  • Technical support staff.

While understanding that these tasks need to be performed, you still need to realize that not all tasks have the same purpose. For instance, marketing outweighs accounting, because without marketing, there will be no money to manage.

In addition, you also have to think about the amount of time it takes you for each task you are doing. If it takes you the whole day to tweak a design on your web page and delay sending an email to your list, you have basically lost a whole day without doing anything constructive

While it’s true you may have a nicer looking web page or website, you missed your chance to send traffic to your offer on your website.

Ah yes! In a perfect world, you would very easily put on your CEO hat and assign the tasks, but in actual fact, we don’t always have that choice. Usually, we need to be more clever and use our time more wisely.

Sort your Daily Tasks that need to be dealt with first

Everyone has their own special capabilities and expertise that they like and prefer to do. Perhaps you love to do Technical Support but dislike Marketing. One thing is very clear, you must put those tasks that will make you money at the top of your list. Whether it’s creating your own products, or contacting potential clients, or hosting a telesummit or something completely different. Pinpoint those specific money-making tasks in your business and make sure to put them at the top of your list each and every day.

Know the Difference Between Important and Urgent

In his classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey recommends prioritizing tasks based on a time-management grid. Every task is assigned to a quadrant of the grid, based on whether it is urgent, important, both, or neither.

Once you have classified a task on the grid, you’ll instantly realize what you need to be working on. As an illustration, marketing and planning are important but not urgent. A ringing phone is urgent, but not important. The sales page for your new program, which is launching tomorrow, is both urgent AND important.

Before you sort out your daily to-do list, think about where each of your tasks falls in the grid, and assign them appropriately.

Will you always be working on the ideal job for right now? Most probably not. Neither will you always use your time as ideally as possible. But by making a mindful attempt to coordinate and sort out your days, you’ll find it’s a lot less difficult and overwhelming to manage your small business.

Scale Your Business with these 4 Automated Systems

Scale Your Business with these 4 Automated Systems

by | Time management

There comes a time in every entrepreneur’s journey where you realize you simply cannot do it all by yourself.

I know that when you’re just getting started you need to be the “chief, cook and bottle washer.” But as your business grows, it becomes obvious that trying to do everything is only going to lead to:

  • Frustration (when critical tasks don’t get done and deadlines are missed)
  • Burn out (when you’re working yet another 12-hour day)
  • Overwhelm (when your to-do list is longer at the end of the day than it was at the beginning)

I know that there are many ways to combat this business-growth obstacle, but one of the best is automation.  I want you to imagine a completely hands-off system that works for you even when you’re spending time with your children or even hiking on a remote mountain.

But there’s a more important reason to automate: it helps you scale your business. Think about it, the less manual work you have to do, the more time you have to do the money-making tasks such as networking, marketing, and client support.

1. Paid Traffic

Chasing organic traffic is a true exercise in frustration. You’ll spend all your time creating content for your blog, other people’s blogs, YouTube, social media, and other web properties. All that content creation leaves you little time to work with the clients you’re trying to attract.

Instead, you can invest in some quality paid traffic, and get off the endless content creation train. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

2. Email Funnels

What happens when you get a new subscriber or if someone buys a product? Do they just sit in waiting on your list until you have time to send an email?

While broadcast emails have their place—especially in time-sensitive promotions—be sure to also set up an autoresponder/sequence series to:

  • Welcome new subscribers and help them find their way around your site (and your offers)
  • Nurture buyers so they know they’re in the right place
  • Make additional offers based on what someone has already purchased or shown an interest in

And the best thing? Once your autoresponder is set up, it will continue to work even when you’re not.

3. Social Media Management

Yes, it’s important to be personable and engaging on social media. But that doesn’t mean you have to log in to Facebook just to post a link to your latest blog or YouTube video. Automate that kind of update and save yourself hours of time each month. Not only that, but you won’t have to worry about missing an update, either!

4. Calendar Management

If you have clients, partners, a team, or are often asked for interviews, then an automated calendar is a must. Rather than endless back-and-forth emails trying to find a mutually available time slot, simply send your calendar link and let your client, project manager, JV partner or anyone else choose a time that works for them. Your appointment will automatically appear on your calendar, and you’ll even get reminders (if your calendar supports that).

There are dozens of options for automating every aspect of your small business. As you grow, you’ll find new and better tools to make everything run more smoothly. For now, though, implementing these four ideas alone will save you hours of time every month.