2020 has surely been a wild ride for most of us if not all. It probably threw all of us off our game at some point or another. On the one hand, it’s hard to believe we’re approaching the year’s final quarter; on the other, it can’t come soon enough.
No matter what complications, challenges, or struggles you and your business have encountered this year, it’s still possible to wrap up the next few months in a way that will benefit your business and set you up for success. All you need is a proper plan, a clear understanding for how to follow through, and the trust that your business is worth it.
Here are my 5 Tips for Finishing the Final Quarter Strong
1. Learn from the Past
This might be a strange year to look back and try to learn from, but there’s always something you can measure to help you prepare better for the future. For businesses to create success moving forward, business owners must be willing to look back and note things that didn’t work out, could be done better, or those that were a huge success. So, what goals did you have this past quarter? What worked and what didn’t? Are there strategies that could be duplicated, or do they need adjustments?
2. Set Your Goals
Once you have some clarity of what’s worked before and what hasn’t, goal setting is key. Goals drive your business. As 2020 clearly shows, you never really know what life will throw at you and your business, and you never know how your goals might change, but that shouldn’t keep you from setting objectives and pushing after them.
Take some time to really think about your goals for this last quarter. Where do you want your business to be? How do you want it to maintain or grow? What do you want to see more of or less of? Don’t make it too complicated, but feel free to stretch yourself. Once you have some, break the big goals into smaller, bite-sized goals you can work on weekly or even daily. Then focus on accomplishing those smaller pieces.
3. Get Some Accountability and Actually do the Work
It’s way too easy to decide what you want, set some goals, and determine a plan for how you’ll accomplish everything… and then let that organization sit in a drawer somewhere while you distract yourself with other things. Don’t let disorganization and lack of prioritization keep you and your business from having a killer final quarter. Instead, find a buddy who you can talk to who will keep you accountable.
This can be a friend, a business associate, a mentor, or even a coach. Tell them your goals. Let them remind you of the direction you want to go. They might end up being what helps you get unstuck during your most unmotivated, uninspired moments.
4. Give Yourself Grace and Balance
You can’t possibly work or be business motivated all day, every day, for the rest of the year. That’s okay. There are going to be times when your body needs rest, when your business lags, or when you need to take a step away for family, social activities, exercise, or other rejuvenating opportunities. Make room for these respites. Embrace them. By allowing yourself to rest and enjoy other things, you’ll find yourself better able to handle what your business needs you to handle and push through the hard work ahead.
5. Relax and Enjoy!
Seriously. You’ve learned from the past, set your goals, are doing the hard work, and you’re making progress. Don’t forget to enjoy where you are. You’re a business owner who’s making their way through one of the craziest years yet and that’s something to be proud of!
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Last week I shared with you how I set myself up for success when it comes to planning my goals, and I shared with you how my main goal for 2020 is to buy a house! But this week, we’re going to switch things a bit and talk about setting your business goals.
I think that setting goals and developing a plan to achieve them is what sets successful businesses apart from unsuccessful or sedentary ones. Regardless of your business’s age, history, location, industry, or profitability, goal-setting helps you stay focused, motivated, and on track.
Goals prevent stagnancy. I believe goals set the stage for success.
I want to share with you 5 goals you need for your business to have a successful 2020!
1. Increase traffic to your website, blog, and/or social media pages.
The more traffic you get to your platforms, the more opportunity for your sales and customer loyalty to improve. In order to accomplish this traffic increase, you need to first increase the quality and perhaps quantity of your content marketing strategy. Understanding social algorithms and your website SEO, or consulting with a professional who does, is a great first step! Developing a valuable, relatable content strategy for 2020 will help you drive more targeted traffic and build a warmer audience.
2. Delve into new networking opportunities.
If you are not actively networking your business, then you need to set a goal to start. Get yourself and your business in front of more people and start making more genuine connections. This might come in the form of attending conferences, more online networking, sharing your expertise at speaking events, or hosting events yourself. Whatever the case, get outside your comfort zone and start talking about your passions. The more people you know and who know about what you do, the better for your business!
3. Schedule in times of rest.
This might be hard for some, but it can be as simple as dedicating one day of the week where you will not work on your business. It might be as extravagant as planning a couple of weeks in the year where you’ll go on a vacation with your family. Whatever the case, making sure you have time to rest, reduce stress, and get a bit of space from work, this will help you avoid burnout, and it will also help improve your productivity overall. Hopefully you’re passionate about what you do, and you actually enjoy it, but you must be sure to get some downtime where you disconnect from work completely to not get overwhelmed.
4. Perfect your personal brand.
Often when we start a business, we’re focused on gaining clients and starting work, leaving a lot of other important details untouched. We start having some real success, which forces us to leave these details on the sidelines for longer than anticipated. However, there are certain things you should be doing for your business to make sure you stand out from your competition. Branding is one of these things. If you haven’t determined your brand yet, laid out your vision and mission statements, decided on your colors and brand “personality,” then this is the year to do it. Become memorable to your clients. Boost your credibility. Represent your brand for how unique and amazing it is!
5. Increase productivity!
This goal is pretty broad, so you’ll want to break it down into more achievable goals for yourself and your own business needs. Analyze your business and determine places where you’re slacking on productivity. Maybe you need to get more organized to get more done in a day. Maybe you need to automate some processes. Maybe you’d do better to outsource some tasks so you have more time to do what only you can do. Whatever your areas of poor productivity are, identify them and come up with goals to solve the problems.
Dive Deeper into Goal Setting with Goal Setting Bootcamp
I’m releasing my Goal Setting Bootcamp; It contains 4 content filled modules along with a workbook and checklists to help you stay organized. This home study class fits easily into your schedule and there’s no pressure to finish it by a certain date. Simply work on it as your schedule allows. If you do this planning work, you’ll be set in the new year to make massive strides in your business! Click here to get the Goal Setting Bootcamp
Have a great week! Robyn
PS: If you’re ready to dive deep into goal setting and set yourself up for success in 2020, then the Goal Setting Bootcamp is for you. You’ll be guided step by step though the process of making goals that are important to YOU and help you create action plans so your goals will become a reality. Get access here
Is it just me? I’m seriously looking forward to the holidays. This has not been my favorite year for different reasons, but I don’t want to wallow in that feeling, I rather concentrate on what’s ahead for me and my business in 2020.
I’ve been working on a few things to get ready for the coming year and I’m excited. 2020 promises to be a great year! I’ll be launching a new course in January that will help you make a huge impact in your business, but I’ll share more about that in a future email.
Keeping with the New Year’s theme, it dawned on me recently that we’re not only starting a new year but… a new decade!
Today’s post is about goal planning for the new year and what I do to make my goals happen.
I have a method when it comes to goal planning… I start writing them down in broad terms.
For example, in 2020 I want to buy a house. Then, I start breaking the goal into chunks…
How much do we want to spend on the house?
What neighborhood do we want to live in?
How many floors do we want?
We need a backyard for the dogs.
The list goes on…
I try to get as clear as possible because when I’m clear things happen… When I’m not clear things don’t happen, they just stay in my head…
For instance, maybe I like the idea of owning a house BUT… I rather rent because…
Less responsibility.
More money to travel.
I can leave when the lease is up and change neighborhoods.
You get my point.
As long as I’m clear in what I want and break it down, I can work towards making that goal happen.
I can go on and on with examples about goal clarity and its importance. If I’m not clear stuff doesn’t happen, plain and simple.
Naturally getting clear on your goals is not going to automatically make them happen, once you get clarity, you have to work towards them and that’s when I do my second set of chunking, I look at what are the things we need to do to make this goal happen.
Making sure we have a deposit to put down towards the house.
Get pre-approved for a mortgage.
Start visiting houses in different neighborhoods.
and the list goes on…
There’s one more thing I do… I imagine myself living the goal… I’ll use my new house as an example.
I close my eyes and imagine how it will feel when I’m there in my new house sitting on the patio outside on a sunny summer morning, the birds chirping and my husband and I are eating breakfast laughing while the dogs play outside and the cats are sleeping in the sunroom.
or… I imagine what it’s like to sit on the porch at night with my husband talking about the day’s events and hearing the crickets sing.
I could go on… but I think you get my point…
Get clear on your goals, make sure you really want them, break it down and take action… and envision what it would feel like if you had attained that goal…
Our world is filled with distractions, more than ever before with constant access to an internet overflowing with news, information, and entertainment. It’s so easy to get lost on a rabbit trail of information or to find a reason to be discouraged and unmotivated. Having the mental determination to remain focused and motivated is crucial!
Here are five tips to get yourself focused, stay motivated, and watch as your productivity and profits increase!
Boost Your Productivity and Profits With These 5 Ways to Get Focused
1. Learn From Others; Don’t Compare
Comparison is the thief of joy. When you find yourself studying how to be better at your craft, learning new ways to market yourself, or simply trying to build your brand, free yourself to learn from other people in your field but never let yourself compare your world to theirs. Don’t look at how many customers or clients they have, how much money they make, or how many likes their social posts get and compare that to what you get!Learn how they got to where they are! Learn what they do to be so accomplished. Learn how they stay motivated. Focus on being inspired by their success and not discouraged that yours might be different.
2. Don’t Assume That Money Will Always Be Motivation
Towards the beginning of your business or even while you might be financially struggling, it’s easy to think that the profits you could bring in will be motivating enough to work through anything. Unfortunately, this way of thinking quickly drags. If money is your only motivator, then it’s the only way you’ll be able to measure your productivity. If a day, week, or month goes by without you meeting your monetary goals, you’ll easily lose focus. Look at the whole picture and focus on all the things it takes to get there.
3. Get Organized!
One of the easiest ways to lose focus and motivation (and consequently see your productivity spiral) is to be disorganized. Keep your tasks organized and scheduled. Keep your calendar clear and understandable. Organize your processes so they’re as simple and fluid as possible. Good organization will help you save time, effort, and money, which will all work to help you stay focused and less stressed!
4. Set Your Own Goals; Don’t Copy Someone Else’s
This might sound like a no-brainer, but you should really consider it. Set goals that you want to achieve, not just because you heard someone else say it was important. Don’t decide where you’re going based off of what you “should” do, but rather where you want to be. If your goals are inspiring and desirable to you, then you will be so much more motivated to focus on them and work towards them!
5. Surround Yourself With Likeminded People
While you shouldn’t discard old, valuable friendships, you should make sure you have a solid community of people who believe in and support what you’re doing. They should challenge you and inspire you to do better and improve at your trade. They should help you regain focus when you lose it, just as you should help them focus when they’re distracted or stressed. Motivate each other. Grow together. Don’t settle for a lifestyle that’s keeping you distracted and unmotivated.
As a business owner or entrepreneur, I’m sure you know that it is incredibly difficult to find a healthy balance between living your life with family and friends and taking care of your business and business responsibilities. There is a constantly-growing to-do list on the business side of things and it’s difficult or nearly impossible to “leave work at work.” It’s altogether too easy to eat, sleep, and breathe work since your success is dependent upon your ability to hustle and accomplish tasks.
That being said, one of the most important things you can do for yourself, your business, and your success is to establish a healthy, effective business-to-life balance. Here are three tips for doing exactly that.
3 Tips for Establishing a Business-to-Life Balance
1. Invest in your health It’s difficult to lead a company, inspire others, build a team, or grow a business if your mind and body are unhealthy. You might be bringing in record-breaking sales for the time being, but if that’s at the expense of your health, then it’s unsustainable. Plan time throughout your week to exercise, stretch, meditate, and go for walks outside. Don’t skip or rush meals; rather, pay attention to nutrition and fuel your body properly. Make sure you’re getting the sleep your body needs. Get your head out of the craziness that is your business every once in a while and remember to live life, not just do things in it.
2. Clarify your vision
There’s no sense in working crazy hard on your business if you don’t have a clear goal as to what you’re working towards. Most business-life imbalances are due to murky clarity. If you’ve lost sight of your vision, then take a day or two to recenter. Figure out what you want, and then go after that. If you don’t know what your vision is, then you might want to take some time to really think about that. Consider what your ideal day would look like and put together a plan to make that happen. Start going in the direction you want, taking it one step at a time, and cutting out steps that are distractions. There will always be a lot of good ideas and great opportunities, so narrow it down in order to accomplish what you want. Remember that success rarely happens overnight.
3. Deliberately leave work and restore yourself with family
As a business owner, work doesn’t end. There’s always something you could be doing, even if it’s just improving something you already did. This can lead to intense stress as well as an inability to stop working, creating a perfect recipe for imbalance. Rest and restoration won’t happen automatically, you must deliberately make them happen. Pick a day or few evenings per week to close work and invest in family time, social outings, or something you consider fun. Get rest, restore your energy, do something you enjoy, and you’ll be far more able to do great work afterwards.
Conclusion
Balance will always be hard, especially since it can fluctuate so easily. Something that was well-balanced last week has to be adjusted when workload increases or if a family emergency arises. Just remember what your priorities are and keep them in place. Sacrificing one thing for another is fine for a little while, but balance is needed if you truly want to sustain regular growth.
If you need help to help create more balance in your business, click here and and sign up for my Goal Setting Bootcamp!It’s Time to Set Goals that Grow Your Business and Make Your Life–and the World–Better!
Everyone wants their business to grow. They want to see progress in revenue, reach, impact, and more. To an extent, that’s the whole point of business! That makes it both frustrating and discouraging when—no matter the amount of hard work and effort you pour in your business refuses to scale. In the case of lackluster business growth, you might begin to doubt your product, services, or work ethic when you really might just need to tidy up your systems!
Have you ever heard the term “messy systems don’t scale”? If you find yourself and your business in a place of constant work, dedication, and planning, but no forward progress, then it could be time to look into your business’s operation for solutions. A solid foundation is critical to business growth. It’s important you check your systems to be sure things are in proper order before you, A) allow the discouragement to swallow you, or B) quit on all your hard work.
Here are 3 foundational aspects of business you should check on to be sure they’re set up well and operating properly for your business to succeed. If you find they’re not well organized or running smoothly, then you might have a messy system and that could be what’s holding you back from reaching your fullest potential.
3 Things That Could Be Keeping Your Business From Scaling
1. Accounting
This might be one of the most complicated (and also boring) aspects of business, unless you’re an experienced accountant who enjoys paperwork and comparing numbers.That being said, making sure that all of your accounting is in order is key to a successful business. Without keeping track of the money coming in and and the money going out, you have no way to determine what’s successful, what needs tweaking, and what’s simply not working. You don’t know where to invest or where to stop investing. You don’t know what you can afford and what’s losing you money.
If you have little to no idea what’s up in the accounting department, then it’s best to get some systems in place as soon as possible. That could mean hiring an accountant or getting better at balancing your own checkbook. Be sure you know all of your expenses as well as all of your revenue!
2. Targeted Marketing
It’s important that you truly know who your business is, what your business is offering, and who your business is offering things to. Without these things, it’s harder for you to sell products and services, but it’s also harder for your desired audience to find (and therefore buy from) you! While you most likely know what you do, you might find that you don’t know what problem you solve for your customers or clients. While you most likely know some people who purchase from you, you might not know who your target market is. Take some time to truly get to know your business and your client base in order to develop a better plan for moving forward.
3. Other Systems and Procedures
Every business has its own unique way of operation. While it’s great to be able to find procedures that work for you and your business best, it’s important that these procedures actually do work for you and don’t create work for you. Look into the way your business operates as a whole and also all the nitty gritty pipelines and flows. Keep an eye out for outdated systems, procedures that take longer than necessary, or any way you can save time and money without compromising your business success or value. Do you need to hire someone to help projects not fall through the cracks? Do you need to get rid of standard steps just clogging up business flow? Do you need to update your programs or technology? Efficiency is critical.
If you need help identifying aspects of your business that are operating improperly and holding back your business growth, then schedule a call with me and get a clear perspective of your business and operations.
