Conquer Your Business Goals in 4 Simple Steps
Even non-writers are familiar with the concept of writer’s block; That agonizing, empty-headed feeling of staring at a blank page and believing you’ll never again have a single worthwhile thought to share.
I want to talk about entrepreneur’s block; That dizzying, overwhelming feeling of staring at a meticulously crafted business plan and believing you’ll never, ever in a bajillion years be able to accomplish the tasks outlined therein.
I’ve been there, friends.
Breaking through the block and making headway on business objectives is actually quite simple. Not easy, mind you, but simple.
Implement the following four techniques to achieve your goals.
Focus
It can be hard to channel your energy into long-term goals when you’re constantly scrambling to keep up with the day-to-day. But remember that what you focus on expands: When you carve out the time and energy to work toward those long-term goals, you create space for them to grow and progress and thrive. When you don’t, they stagnate. And so do you.
So choose a point of focus for your business — 1 month, 3 months, 9 months, whatever feels like a reasonable time-frame for your specific goal — and prioritize accomplishment. Make space for expansion, and expansion will happen. Right before your eyes.
Dedicate Yourself to Strategic Action
Moving beyond planning and into action is tough for some … but making that transition is so vital, especially for women entrepreneurs. Once you’ve created space, time, and focus around your goals, nudge yourself toward thoughtful, intentional action. Commit to forging ahead, find ways to make steady progress, and be mindful but agile. If you get sucked into the doubts, the fears, the procrastination, and the overwhelm, seek support. Join the Kula, my Free Coaching Community. Remember, action needn’t be huge. Action can mean ...
Small Wins Every Day
“Slow and steady wins the race” has got to be the least sexy business cliche in the universe. But it’s true. Anyone who looks like an “overnight success” from the outside has undoubtedly put in a decade of blood, sweat, and tears backstage, out of sight, while the world was distracted by other shiny things. Small actions taken daily matter more than frenzied action that leads to burnout. Figure out what small wins you can maintain on the regular, and make them a part of your schedule. I mean it. Put small actions that move you toward huge goals on your calendar. Make them a priority, and do them every day. (I identify my top 3 tasks for the day the night / day before and that’s where I begin first thing).
Stay the Course
Distraction kills goals, especially big, bold, far-reaching ones. And again, I totally get that putting out tiny, daily fires keeps your business from burning to a crisp. But when you eliminate distractions and stamp out overwhelm, you prime yourself for success. Doing so can mean delegation, prioritization of tasks, creating a goal-driven daily schedule, or limiting your social media time. (You can watch tiny hamsters eating tiny burritos after the day’s work tasks are complete. And you should. Because they’re hilarious.) Find personalized, effective, sustainable ways to stay the course.
Love these concepts, but need some real-time support? You’re in luck! Join the Kula.
Your Recipe for Entrepreneurial Success: Action + Accountability
Tell me if this sounds familiar: An idea sparks in your mind, your passion ignites, and you spend hours, weeks, even months planning how you’ll transform it into a reality. But when the time comes to take the big leap, you falter. Mired in details and fearing failure, you head back to the drawing board and re-immerse yourself in dreaming and planning.
No? How about this: “Action” is your middle name, which means you’re constantly scrambling to keep up with your mile-long to-do list. As you buzz from client to client, meeting to meeting, you realize you should dedicate some time to working on your larger goals and planning for the future of your business … but your calendar beckons, and off you run.
These two cycles are simultaneously the same and polar opposites. Endless Planner is avoiding action and Overwhelmed Do-er is immersed in action … but both are engaging in cycles that subtly sabotage their endeavors. Both need goal clarification and goal support, and both could use some help moving themselves toward goal achievement.
If these Endless Planner and Overwhelmed Do-er are ever going to move beyond their self-erected roadblocks, they’ve gotta embrace two of the biggest growth-drivers in business: Action and accountability. Think you might need a little of both in your own work life? Let’s talk about how to get there.
Intentional Action Centers Us
Now, before we discuss the rewards of bold, decisive action, let’s take a knee to talk intention. Because plunging into doing without first contemplating can lead to 15 kinds of disaster. Intention before action keeps us centered in the Why, the huge, soul-centric reasons we do what we do as entrepreneurs. When we tap into the power of that mission-driven motivation, it keeps us on track when we face challenges or consider giving up. It also keeps us from acting for the sake of acting without considering how our choices might impact larger goals.
So yes, I’m urging you toward action. But with a gentle reminder that intention is an essential warm-up activity before a marathon of momentous activity.
Action itself? SO essential for entrepreneurs, especially women in business. It can be tempting to stall out in that place of intention—just keep planning endlessly and dreaming wistfully—but forging ahead is vital. Intention should become the sword of discernment that slices through ineffective or unproductive action, and separates it out from truly potent and progressive action. Moving from thinking to doing can seem like taking a flying leap, and that can be scary. Force it to feel more like a step than a leap by ramping up, tackling small bite-sized tasks first before throwing yourself into the massive ones, and the process will be less daunting.
And if you get sucked into the doubts, the fears, the procrastination, and the overwhelm, you must find a way to get support. Promise me you will, OK? (And if you’re not sure how, stick with me and I’ll tell you!)
Now let’s talk accountability.
Mindful Accountability Keeps Us On Track
We healers, helpers, and heart-centered entrepreneurs are a contradictory bunch. We often get so focused on healing and helping as many people as possible, that we burn ourselves out, drown in overwhelm, and avoid taking essential steps to grow our business footprints. We heal and help until we’ve got nothing left to give. And then we collapse into groaning heaps and wonder what the hell went wrong.
Lack of accountability is what went wrong. And I don’t mean accountability to clients or team members. I mean accountability to ourselves and to our businesses.
Putting the needs of others first in all cases, avoiding achievement because of fear of success, subtle self-sabotage, endless procrastination, weak or poor boundaries, and shiny-object syndrome all screw us over in the end. Because in the end, we’re tapped out and useless. And again, this is especially true for women entrepreneurs since we’re culturally conditioned to see ourselves as givers and caretakers, and fall so easily into the trap of zero accountability.
Accountability keeps us on track, hyper-focused on the goals and actions that will catalyze business success. Accountability protects us from burnout and over-extension. Accountability helps us build healthy, thriving, efficient business models that are truly sustainable.
So think long and hard about what is truly necessary to keep your practice going. Can you cut two tasks from each day? Add a chunk of time each week for outreach, marketing, and brainstorming? What do YOU need to do to change your tendency toward endless, draining activity?
You are NOT alone
I bet all of this sounds totally possible and completely fabulous … in theory. But putting it into practice might feel more challenging. So here’s your friendly nudge toward the Kula, a phenomenally friendly Facebook group where community support is the name of the game! Embracing action and establishing accountability can be a million times easier when tackled with open, supportive, knowledgeable colleagues.
Won’t you join us? We can help you get “straight A’s” in business without pulling ANY all-nighters. Scout’s honor.
Why a Flexible, Personal, Long-term Strategy Will Help Your Business Thrive
Flexible Business Strategy helpS your Coaching, Healing, Helping or Conscious Business Thrive
Let’s be honest: most Coaches, Helpers and Healers aren’t wild about the business-y aspects of entrepreneurship.
Spending your energy on marketing, networking, and concocting promotional strategies makes you feel forced and false.
Self-promotion leaves you feeling smarmy and disconnected from the true purpose of your work:
Using your gifts to ease pain, to increase efficacy, to reduce suffering, or to encourage clients along their personal journeys …. these are the tasks that resonate with us.
If you’ve ever asked yourself:
“Can’t my ‘business strategy’ simply be to help as many people as possible?”
Then, I’m speaking directly to you, dear. (And yes, it absolutely can!)
But if you don’t reach the right people or your messages fail to capture their attention, you can’t help them. No matter how much you might want to.
Your business that exists to solve problems.
Those problems are specific, and a specific group of people grapple with them. They’re googling solutions to those problems late at night when they can’t sleep. They’re buying services and products right now to help them with those problems.
When you promote your classes, products, and offerings to the very people who need them most, you’re actually doing them a tremendous service.
You’re not a plaid-suited car salesman shouting through a megaphone!
You, my dear, are a passion-fueled entrepreneur with unique and valuable skills who thrives on making other people’s lives richer and fuller.
To continue enriching lives in a sustainable, long-term, effective way, you need to strategize. Doing good work and hoping the right clients will “find” you simply isn’t enough.
Luckily, I’m here to tell you that building a business strategy can feel creative and rewarding, even fun. No, really! Here’s how.
Make it personal
Sure, some business tactics work universally:
Never over-promise.
The customer is always right.
If you don’t have a web presence 90% of the world won’t believe that you actually exist
These are general business truths these days.
But that’s where the general one-size-fits-all business approach to planning ends.
It doesn't work in most cases, and it certainly won’t lead to exponential growth and phenomenal prosperity for your unique, one-of-a-kind, unicorn business.
Your business is unique, which means you need to build a perfect-for-you strategy to help it thrive. Discover your own brand of brilliance and use it to fuel your business growth.
Whatever you do, chances are someone else does it, too. And although that may worry you, it’s actually, a very, very good thing because it means there is demand for your classes or skills or products.
To ensure your offerings rise above and reach their intended audience, making your promotions truly personal and bringing your Ideal Clients to your doorstep, tap your Unique Magic.
Your Unique Magic is where your talents, strengths, and skills overlap.
It’s a core skill set that carries through your life like a connective thread, a combination of native strengths, signature skills, and the values and views that drive you. Focusing your business strategy on your Unique Magic attracts perfect-fit customers and clients who recognize, engage and connect with you. It will enable you to differentiate yourself in the market, leverage opportunities for more success, and ensure you are fulfilling your purpose-driven work in the world. Identifying and leveraging the ways in which your Unique Magic makes you truly unique is the path to more meaning and more profit in your business.
And just how do you funnel your Unique Magic into marketing messages, carefully honed offerings, and community engagement that converge into an effective strategy for your business?
Focus on your niche
As a holistic entrepreneur—a yogi, healer, helper, coach, or wellness guru—you have a specific set of talents, skills and experience to share. You likely have services, products and helpful content related to what you offer. But there are LOTS of other [insert what you do] out there in the world, and differentiating yourself in the sea of other [insert what they do], is how you attract more soon-to-be clients to your business (not theirs). Differentiating yourself and defining your target market both help you figure out your place within the industry. Whether you’re a coach, a multi-passionate creative, a massage therapist, or a yoga teacher, chances are there are hundreds (thousands!) of other practitioners out there doing what you do. How do you stand apart from the crowd and effortlessly attract perfect-for-you clients?
Discover, then refine, your niche.
Niching asks the question, “How can I package my purpose, passions, innate strengths, and world-changing ideas into a platform that my Ideal Clients will recognize, identify with, and seek out?”
Part of discovering your niche is uncovering your particular combination of purpose, passion and strengths. When you embrace all of the above—taking your life as your path and your story as a compass—you can easily identify the perfect niche.
Another crucial element of your niche is what people are willing pay you for in the current financial climate. You may be the world’s leading expert in restoring antique clarinets, but if no one is in the market for a clarinet restoration, you will go hungry.
Finally, your niche must address a need in the world and be a reflection of your purpose. Like the example above, if the world has no need for your particular skill set—and it doesn’t light you up inside!—you won’t be able to earn a living. Nor will you be excited about growing your business.
Be flexible
Creating a business strategy is a very mindful, forward-looking, concrete activity, and that can make it feel daunting and immovable. But effective business strategies are NEVER set in stone. Planning the future of your business and how to help it grow should be a flexible, organic process to channel growth. Having a strategy in place is essential for long term success, but that doesn’t mean you must map out every minute step, chart every possible outcome, and refuse to diverge from a rigid set of self-imposed rules. Your business priorities will change, your client’s priorities will change, YOU will change. And if you can’t bend in the breeze and accommodate those shifts, you’ll break.
Focus on creating a personalized strategy, make the most of your niche, and strive to connect with and help your Ideal Clients. But remember that being agile and flexible will only help you. Build a solid strategy, then allow yourself to reexamine and reevaluate it as time goes on.
People like us—heart-centered healers, helpers and creatives—have good work to do in this world. The work that we do is important and needs to be shared. We must do this work because we see the need, we see how we can help, and we step up. But we also need to earn a living…otherwise, we can’t continue to share and serve.
By building a flexible, personal, long-term strategy for your unique business, you ensure that more and more people can benefit from your precious and much-needed gifts.
And since I love to propose solutions, head over here to check out the Holistic Business Blueprint —a step-by-step guide to creating your very own flexible, personal, long-term strategy for your conscious business.
Defining Your Niche as a Business Strategy
Defining your niche is a business strategy.
What is a niche exactly?
The word niche is a French word meaning “place” or “alcove,” and in marketing, your niche is a strategic position you take in business that allows people to immediately identify how you can serve them and why you are the perfect person to do so.
Many of us feel trapped by the idea of narrowing down our offerings and services to one particular area. I can empathize! As a multi-passionate idea-centric entrepreneur, I know how hard it is to decide on WHAT you want to do in your business: you’re constantly being pulled in a million directions by the Idea Factory called your brain. However, this step—just like finding your Ideal Client—is crucial to your professional success as a conscious entrepreneur.
Because once you know WHO you want to serve, you have to discover HOW you can best serve them. This involves looking at WHAT you—uniquely—have to offer your community and customers. The exciting thing about niching is that it helps the perfect-for-you clients immediately identify YOU as the perfect-for-them transformational service provider or conscious business.
In the beginning, niching is mostly about YOU and what it is that you bring to the marketplace.
Are you ready to find your niche?
Take some time with the questions below: the answers are the first step to discovering your niche.
What do you love to do, that people already (or may in the future) pay you for?
What unique experiences, skills and talents do have to share with the world?
Who do you love to work with?
What do they need?
Who seeks you out but isn’t someone who you feel you can truly help?
How do you work best? (Alone, in a group, as a guide, providing one-on-one support, as an educator)
Is there an unspoken need in your industry that your experience, talents, and skills can fill?
That last question is particularly important because it forces you to hone in on what differentiates you from your peers.
In the age of instant connection and information saturation, standing out from the crowd is a strategy for capturing your Ideal Client’s attention.
People (including your potential customers) are weary of bland, watered-down, copycat, or sugar-coated businesses and brands. Now more than ever, people want to connect—they want authenticity, integrity, and originality. They want unicorns.
Good thing YOU are a unicorn.
Let me explain:
Whether you’re selling transformative yoga sessions, integrative psychotherapy, wellness coaching or chakra alignment sessions, there’s a deeper reason behind your business. Sure, on the surface, you are providing [insert the obvious thing you’re providing], but why you’re really providing that is much deeper. How you do that is different than everyone else, too.
That deeper reason (your why) paired with your unique magic (your how) is what clients are really paying you for.
Avoid copycats and cookie-cutter formulas by being the unique unicorn you already are!
Take some time to think and write about your niche. Start with bullet points that pinpoint what you do and how you’re doing it differently. Then try to create a rough mission statement.
Here are some examples:
“I am deeply empathetic Reiki healer who specializes in treating reproductive disorders and personal trauma in young to middle-aged women.”
“My work as an acupuncturist focuses on helping older clients with severe or rheumatoid arthritis regain mobility in their arms, hands, legs, and feet.”
“Through targeted sessions and ongoing consultations, I use my Feng Shui expertise to unblock trapped energy in the offices of small- and medium-sized business client offices.”
Now you! As you write, try to capture the generalities of your business but also how you deliver your services, who benefits most from them, and how.
Once you have this information, it should inform all of your marketing efforts, influence how you speak about your business, and inform the direction of your overall business strategy.
Excited to focus more intently on your niche, but longing for a bit more structure and guidance?
Join us for the Holistic Business Blueprint —a step-by-step guide to creating your very own flexible, personal, long-term strategy for your conscious business, or work with me for customized strategy.
XO,
Kellie Adkins, Holistic Business Coach + Yoga Therapist
Offer Real Solutions for More Clients in your Coaching, Healing, or Helping Practice
Offer Real solutions for more clients in your coaching, healing, or helping practice
For more clients in your coaching, healing or helping practice, speak directly to the problems your services solve.
Framing your offers, packages, programs, and services, as solutions to specific problems your ideal clients have allows them to identify your offers as the right fit (or not) for them.
Ethical client attraction strategies such as these allow you as the transformational service provider to remain in your strengths zone—and most importantly, to avoid marketing tactics that make you feel sleazy.
Are you clear on the solutions your valuable coaching ,healing or helping services provide your ideal client?
This clarity starts with understanding the precise solutions each of your offers provide—and the particular problems they address.
Who has these problems?
How do you solve them differently, better than, faster than, or more uniquely than your competitors?
When you know who you’d like to work with, and you know how your services (or products) stand out in the marketplace, you’re ready to develop your solution-based marketing messaging.
How do you frame your services as an ideal solution?
Start by asking how do your skills, services, and products naturally address those needs and wants? How does what you do and how you do it become a solution to a problem that your Ideal Client already has?
Provide a transformation experience
Know where your ideal clients are before they work with you…and where they will be after your work together. Then frame your services in terms of that transformation.
Tell them the story of how your offerings fill an important and specific need in their lives.
Show them who they’ll be after they’ve worked with you.
Then the act of “selling” simply becomes connecting the dots between what your ideal clients need and what you offer: in an ethical way.
When you focus on value, address a key problem, and demonstrate that you are the person to provide that solution, then it’s merely a matter of figuring out details.
Know What It Takes
Be wary of making unsupported claims or offering specific outcomes when a range of results is possible. Doing so will help you remain in integrity, AND avoid disappointing your customers.
Compose client invitation letters and sales letters ensure you are clear and concise about expected results should they choose to work with you.
A huge part of avoiding the over-promise/under-deliver trap? Understanding what goes into creating a certain outcome.
Don’t create or offer a service that will drain, tax, or overwhelm you … even if you know it’s exactly what certain clients need. Different clients will have other problems that you can solve more easily and elegantly.
Say you’re a yoga instructor who wants to busy professionals who can’t make time for open classes. Offering in-home or in-office one-on-one yoga is one solution BUT be creating that service will mean more intensive scheduling, more commute time, and more intense focus on one client at a time instead of a room full of paying students. If that isn’t your strenght, it isn’t worth it.
Stay in your strengths zone
There are loads of ways to solve your ideal client’s problem.
What’s the best way? The way you do it best!
If you don’t LOVE group coaching / e-courses / live trainings [ insert any “normal” way to provide your transformative work ] then don’t do it.
Break out of the box and provide a solution that suits your strengths.
If group programs drain you, skip it and offer on-demand training instead.
Being an innovator is a strength! Lean in.
If everyone in your industry is offering Retreats but the thought of leading one gives you hives….forget it!
Find a way to do business your way.
That’s the only way it’ll be sustainable long term.
When you find that sweet spot where your gifts and your clients’ unsolved problems overlap, you’ll be amazed by how synchronous your business life will become.
Business as Problem-Solving
How Do You Serve Your Clients?
Have you exchanged your hard-earned cash for services or products within the past week? I’m guessing you have. Consuming is a near-daily activity for many of us, and we consume everything from yoga classes to smoothies and Uber rides to school supplies. Much of the spending we do is moderately mindless, but if we force ourselves to stop and think a moment we can typically divide our purchases into “needs” and “wants”: I need to buy composition books and number two pencils or my kid will start the new school year empty-handed. I want a smoothie because it’s 487 degrees outside and I think my brain is slowly liquefying.
But as an entrepreneur, focusing on needs and wants won’t get you nearly as far with potential customers as focusing on problem-solving.
Every successful business solves a problem for a specific type of person, and consumers are drawn to services they believe will make their lives easier or better. And when you conceptualize business as problem-solving it allows you re-frame the idea of selling your services. If you solve problems for people, telling them about your problem-solving prowess is a service. You’re not selling, you’re helping!
But before you can help, you need to identify the problem YOU solve as a service provider.
What’s YOUR Problem?
Naturally, you don’t want to lean on the idea of your customer or client as a hot mess of problems that need immediate service-based triage. But you do need to determine:
Who your Ideal Client IS
Which problems they most long to solve
And how you can solve them in unique, efficient, or innovative ways
Need help finding your dream customer? Start right here. Not sure how to connect with them?I’ve got loads of tips for you! (no opt in required).
Wondering about those key problems that need solving? Let’s dig into that together. Ask yourself:
What do your Ideal Clients need and want? All humans want to be happier, healthier, wealthier, and wiser. But what else does your perfect-fit client want? Think of core desired feelings, wishes, and dreams. Muse on lifestyle choices, career goals, and favorite hang-outs. What are they searching on TikTok? Asking Google (or WebMD) about?
What general problems plague them? (Examples: Fatigue, joint pain, lack of focus.) What specific problems plague them? (Examples: Too tired to socialize, too sore to play with their grandchildren, too distracted during important meetings.) Sussing out the general problems will get you close but don’t stop there! What’s behind the surface problem? What do you know about that problem that they don’t (yet) know?
What problems are your clients facing that they’re motivated to solve?
That last one’s a doozy, but key. Because there’s a HUGE rift between problems people are willing to ignore and problems so important/far-reaching/onerous that they merit the investment of resources.
Problems Worth Solving
What’s that you say? Won’t your uber-enlightened, extra-savvy Ideal Clients be keen to solve ALL of their problems… especially if you find creative ways to point them out? Heck no.
Let’s rank ‘em:
Problems your Ideal Client doesn’t see: We’ve all got a few of these, and I’m not just talking about tartar on your teeth. (Totally invisible, yet takes FOREVER for the hygenist to scrape off. Ick!) Your Ideal Clients may be aware of a surface problem but fail to see the underlying issue. Alternatively, they may not see any problems at all. Nudging customers to solve these problems can backfire.
Here’s an example: Dove came out with a women’s deodorant a few years back that was meant to combat “unsightly underarms.” Most women, myself included, had never given a thought to how repellent our underarms were. This product purported to solve a problem I didn’t know I had. Did I buy it? Nope. Just kinda hated Dove for making me self-conscious about my pits.
Problems the customer is aware of, but ignoring: In these cases you’ll be battling an Ideal Client’s tendency toward inertia or inaction. This type of problem is often one that feels too large or risky to attempt resolving. People feel frozen and unable to change or address the situation so they stick their heads in the sand, avoid taking action, or launch into non-strategic action without intention.
An issue that a customer is actively ignoring is not one that you can help solve.
Problems the customer is aware of and is attempting to manage: Keyword: “Attempting.” In these cases, customers think they can take the same action over and over, but achieve different results. They’re unwilling to admit that the way they’ve been doing it isn’t working. Think physical therapy that fails to keep pain at bay. Or turning up the car radio to drown out a busted muffler.
In these cases, too, the customer needs to choose change.
Problems the customer is aware of and is actively seeking to solve: THESE are the issues you want to understand and solve on behalf of your clients. This type of problem has the customer motivated to invest resources (time, energy, money) into lasting solutions. And if you can be part of that solution, it can result in massive traction for your business.
Identifying these higher-order problems for the specific clients you serve, and solving them with excellent service and quality products will help you carve out a powerful niche for yourself.