From Vision to Execution: How to Stoke Your Motivational Fires

While those around us are indulging in holiday-season nostalgia, we heart-centered entrepreneurs tend to look forward instead of back. And while I encourage all business owners to make the most of the current year before it ends, I also know that we’re neck-deep in prime planning time. The year is ending! SOON! And very few of us are so organized that we can sail through December without pausing to formulate a few key strategies for January and beyond.

But it can be overwhelming to contemplate those strategies without guidance and structure. So today I wanted to share a simple but effective checklist that can help you sort through your priorities and begin taking action on them!

Let’s dig in, shall we?

Create a vision

If action is the finish line, vision is the starting line. And you can’t have one without the other, so begin by letting your creative juices flow however they flow best. Whether you use an art journal, a vision board, or good old-fashioned pen and paper, creating a vision for your business is essential for crafting your plan.

Before goals, before action, before anything else, you need a vision for your business.

Think about how you want your work to impact your own life, your community, and the world. Think about what you love doing, and how you can do more of it while still making a profit. Think about what you’re best at, and which aspects of your business naturally thrive. Think about who you want to help and why. Think about the standard of living you’d like to maintain or achieve. Think about the things you do that make you feel proud and accomplished and just plain good about your work. Do your best to incorporate as many of these things - plus anything else that rises to the surface as you ruminate - into your vision.

Want help?

• Defining Your Niche as a Business Strategy

• Why a Flexible, Personal, Long-term Strategy Will Help Your Business Thrive

• Business as Problem-Solving

Have a plan

After the vision, comes the plan. You need to outline the steps you’ll take to bring your dreams into fruition, and refine any steps you’re currently taking that aren’t proving productive. You need to create something that makes many holistic entrepreneurs tremble in their shoes: A business plan. (Dun dun duunnnnnn!) I PROMISE that crafting a business plan doesn’t need to be traumatic or dull or overwhelming. It can be an enlightening, invigorating, even enjoyable process, if you let it! And if you just feel ill-equipped to tackle the task on your own, there are several free tools available around the web to guide you, including my own free resources and the Holistic Business Blueprint. Take your time, and imbue your work with the care and love it deserves. A business plan is an organic, living and breathing thing. You are free to change things as needed and your plan should allow you to be responsive—rather than reactive—in business.

Want help?

• Conquer Your Business Goals in 4 Simple Steps

• How to Get More Perfect-fit Clients (and Fill Your Current Offers!)

• Or work with me

Turn amorphous dreams into time-sensitive goals

The jump from plan to action can feel like a giant one. Tackling action a bit at a time by setting small-to-medium, concrete, time-sensitive goals will make the transition feel more seamless. But be aware: as humans, we often underestimate how much we can accomplish in a year and overestimate what we can accomplish in a day. Narrow down your focus to your annual achievables then begin dividing those into quarters, months, weeks, then, finally, days. (You’ll be amazed how manageable your business plan suddenly feels!)

As humans, we often underestimate how much we can accomplish in a year and overestimate what we can accomplish in a day.

And remember that what you focus on expands: focus is practical magic. What do you truly want to create in your business in the coming year? You can do anything you want, but you can’t do it all at once. Prioritize your business dreams, decide when you’ll do what, and carefully select your focus for the coming months.

Use time-chunking to tame your to-do list

Still feel like you’ve got more to do than time to do it? There are many, many secrets to crafting productive work-weeks, but time-chunking is one of my all-time favorites. If you tend to overload your to-do list and find the weeks flying by with little progress toward your long-term goals, consider using this strategy yourself.

Time-chunking is using the same timeslot each week for the same task. So blocking off 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. every Tuesday to create your digital content, allotting two hours every Friday to populate your social media scheduler, scheduling a weekly payroll review on Monday from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. This only works if you actually block off the time in your calendar! Don’t just make a mental note, create a repeating event in your calendar of choice. With reminders.

Time-chunking is an effective method to schedule business growth tasks that propel you toward success in the coming year.

Turn vision into action through discipline, dedication, devotion and determination.

If you’re a yogi, you’ll recognize that those are the four D’s of Ashtanga yoga. What works on the mat works in business, too. The most admirable vision and carefully crafted business plan in the world will fall flat if you don’t adjust your mindset. Set tasks and stick to them. Constantly recommit to your goals and vision. Pause every day to remember why you do this world-changing work. And never, ever, EVER give up on yourself, your dreams, or your ability to help people live more fulfilling lives.

Want help?

• Being Good Isn’t Good Enough: How to Push Your Edge

• Productivity + Focus for Conscious Entrepreneurs

• Your Recipe for Entrepreneurial Success: Action + Accountability

How to Make the Most of the Year Before it Ends

There’s a shiny new year on the horizon. So exciting, right?! And so tempting to train your eyes on that not-so-distant future, brush aside what remains of this year, and pin high hopes for better times on January 1. (Especially if this year has been a frustrating one, and you’re eager to leave it behind and make a fresh start.)

The cliches about being doomed to repeat history and learning from our mistakes are cliches because they contain a hard grain of truth.

Reflection is essential to growth, so I’d like to invite you to take a conscious pause and cultivate mindful awareness of the things in your business that are going right. Now is the perfect time to get centered in the right head- and heart-space for a great new year. Let go of the reactive and illusory "next year will be better" attitude, and access gratitude for your wins, lessons, and achievements in the year that is coming to a close!

Focus on gratitude as an inner action

Speaking of cliches, I know you might be up to your ears in gratitude-themed musings … but this is one of those rare times I’m gonna let myself be an unabashed bandwagon-jumper. Because cultivating gratitude during a time when everyone around you is also focusing their energies on gratitude practices amplifies everyone’s intentions. The gratitude mindset is all around you, resonant and supportive. Take advantage of that, and take time out for introspection.

… Then project thankfulness outward

On the flip side, business is all about relationships, and this time of year affords a wonderful opportunity to strengthen those relationships through the practice of gratitude. Do your utmost to express gratitude for every person your business has touched this year. And I mean every one of them—from members of your email list to people in your tribe to clients and colleagues—has encouraged more positive affect. Recognizing and appreciating their support grounds and centers you for the next few steps.

Count your business blessings

Since you’re an entrepreneur, you probably have mile-long lists of To-do’s and To-achieves. Ambitious goals are your forte, and that’s fabulous! But even if you didn’t meet this year’s stated goals, you likely had some big business wins. What were they? Count your business blessings and hand out gold stars where appropriate. Because wherever you are in business, there’s always a “next step,” always a new set of far-reaching, comfort-zone-pushing goals to tackle. But remembering to stop and appreciate how far you’ve come is one of the ways you keep your inspiration tank full and your passion for your business alive.

Take stock of what went right this year

Did you have offers, services, or products that really nailed it this year?

Did your promotional campaign blow your expectations out of the water?

Did that new VA you hired work out better than expected?

Cataloging and celebrating what went right for you in business this year is a great way to keep yourself focused for next year.

… And what went wrong

True, some endeavors in your business this year may have fallen flat. The retreat didn’t fill, the workshop didn’t go as planned, the group course wasn’t a success. Or maybe life got in the way and derailed your best-laid plans. But as any teacher will tell you, not all “failures” are bad things. Most failures are lessons in disguise. So, what did you learn? How did you show up in the situations you consider to be “failures”? How did you handle the business ventures that didn’t go as planned? What valuable lessons will you carry forward into the new year?

Failures aren’t fun, but they can be lessons.

Ground and center

It’s always the right time to ground, center, and re-vision. But before you whip out your vision boards, calendars, and rainbow of colored highlighters, take a moment to truly center in and listen to your intuition. Ground into your body with a yoga practice, a meditation practice, or a long walk in the woods to tune into your inner monologue.

Explore the edges of your vision for your business and note what you see there. Does your gut tell you that you’re still aligned and on track for your 5-year or 10-year vision? Is intuition pointing you in a different direction? Listen to yourself, take notes, and make adjustments as needed.

Because the amazing thing about a time of transition—like the limbo of a calendar year in its twilight weeks—is it brims with flexibility and possibility.

As you take stock of the year that’s passed and embrace gratitude practices, you will also gather insights for your business strategies for the year to come.

Gently and mindfully.

Want support? I’m here for you.

Women Entrepreneurs, NOW is the Time For Change

I launched my business as holistic business mentor to make waves. I wanted to empower my clients to empower their clients to live happier, healthier lives using the principles of conscious lifestyle. And I’ve dedicated the last 15 years of my life to that mission.

I believe in change. I believe in the power of a community, a dedicated and motivated group of people on a shared mission to transform the world in actionable, concrete, lasting ways.

I hope you'll agree that the world needs more of your voice. More voices speaking up for tolerance and speaking out against tyranny, more voices banding together, more voices supporting one another.  But also more voices sharing the messages of conscious lifestyle, connection, healing, and harmony. Messages of renewal and self-care, consciousness and wide-open worldviews that are so essential during times of great upheaval.

And that's where you come in.

Whatever your specific modality, your work is transformation. As a healer, a helper, a coach, a guide, a mentor, a teacher, or a leader, you work for change and you believe change begins with you.

@@ Healers, helpers, coaches, guides, mentors, and teachers, you work for change and change begins with you. @@

I believe that, too.

And for too long, I've kept silent about some of the real challenges facing female founders + holistic entrepreneurs who want to earn a meaningful living doing the purpose-fueled work of transformation. In no particular order, I’ve seen brilliant, gifted, driven women entrepreneurs grapple with:

• Fear of worthiness, prominence, and power

• Lack of trust in their abilities (and its cousin, Imposter Complex)

• Difficulty setting boundaries and saying, “No”

• The energetic toll of work that supports clients with deep-seated emotional needs

• Fear of visibility, and of the intolerance that often comes with being a visible woman

• Uneasiness with marketing

• Distaste for self-promotion

• Limiting beliefs around money

• Choosing comfort over the discomfort of bold, intentional action

• Putting others’ needs and desires first, letting business take the back-burner

I've worked with clients deeply in debt or on the verge of bankruptcy who were still under-charging, convinced they couldn’t ask clients for more money for their transformative services. I've witnessed despair and exhaustion in women entrepreneurs 10+ years into building their businesses, burned out and with no tangible assets to show for their hard work. I've listened to stories of women walking away from their heart-driven work because their ethics and their bank accounts felt misaligned. I've heard from hundreds of women entrepreneurs working in the transformative arts, eager to build sustainable incomes doing what they love … but failing to first learn the basics of business.

And I’m over it.

I want you to get a little mad. I want you to use the energy of that anger to reshape the reality of being a female entrepreneur in the business of personal transformation. I want you to get revved up and prime yourself to make some tough changes.

Because the world needs your work now more than ever. This is your moment. Our moment. And we need to embrace it with both arms.

Every single one of you who feels like you’re stuck in a tape-loop of repetitive suffering in your business, it’s time to break free.

Every single one of you who’s ready to effect real change in the world—and who feels driven to do that by sharing your purposeful work—it’s time to step up.

Every single one of you who’s ready to break through to better business—ethics intact—it’s time to push forward.

There’s no time like the present. Let’s do this.

Together.

Supporting each other every step of the way.

If reading this lit your inner flame, but you're not sure what to do next, I'm here to help stoke that intention into a fire of action. Apply here for a complimentary Breakthrough to Clarity coaching call and I'll listen, process, and advise. I promise to find ways to unlock phenomenal personal success while simultaneously continuing the work you do to heal our world

Keep Business Sweet, Simple (and Sustainable) for the Holidays

We holistic entrepreneurs and small business owners know that the winter holiday season can be rough. Hectic. Overwhelming and incredibly hard to manage. It’s meant to be a time of celebration and relaxation, but many of us opt for worry and stress instead. We get anxious over year-end numbers, scramble to throw together customer appreciation events, pressure ourselves to add new offerings, and gradually pile more items onto our already-full plates until we’re ready to keel over.

We’ve already chatted about maximizing your time during the holidays to fill offers and secure new clients, and I certainly don’t want you to abandon those tactics! But today, let’s look at the all-important flip-side: Simplification.

If—like many of us—your stress levels creep ever higher the closer we get to singing “Auld Lang Syne,” then clearing the decks, paring down your activities, AND planting seeds of intention for the new year are all beneficial practices. Let’s talk details.

Create a DON’T List

We all have time-sucking tasks that creep in when we’re avoiding harder or more complex work. Plust tasks that we enjoy and justify as important, even when we secretly know they’re non-essential. So if you’re someone who’s subject to Holiday Inundation Syndrome, force yourself to make a DON’T list of projects and activities that can be temporarily abandoned.

MICRO: List out three things you will NOT do today. Either make a new list each day, or enforce a single list throughout the season. (You’ll know what will work best for your specific business model … and bad habits!)

MACRO: Take a hard look at your business now that we’re rounding out the year. What worked? What didn’t? Slash what didn’t work, and you instantly have more bandwidth to build on what did work.

EXAMPLE: Streamline your offers to reduce the amount of confusion (for your clients) and overwhelm (for you). If you have multiple offers, packages, or services but several of them aren’t performing, now is the ideal time to slash the ones that don’t generate income. Train your focus on your top performers, and let the rest go.

@@The holidays are the PERFECT time to streamline your offers to reduce confusion (for clients) and overwhelm (for you). @@

Get Back to Basics

After you’ve considered what to put on hold or jettison entirely, ponder your non-negotiables. And I’m not talking about “paying the rent” or “making a profit,” I mean higher-level goals and deep-seated needs. Think back to why you love your work, and which aspects of it feel utterly essential. Then force yourself to simplify.

MICRO: Ask yourself, “Which self-care needs must be met for me to feel the way I most enjoy feeling—in business and in life?” Find ways to meet those needs every single day. Seriously.

MACRO: Ask yourself, “Which basic business practices MUST be in place for me to have a happier holiday season?” If you need help keeping those practices humming along, prioritize finding that help.

EXAMPLE: To give yourself more breathing room for self-care and the energy to focus on essential practices, front-load some of the promotional and back-of-office processes that need to run in the background. Pre-write blog posts, pre-schedule social media, automate your billing and invoicing, hire an assistant, do whatever it takes to ensure you can pare down your activities without missing a beat.

Take Baby Steps Toward World Domination (for the Greater Good)

As the year draws to a close, we all end up doing some goal-setting for the year that approaches. But typical resolutions don’t always work for conscious entrepreneurs. So instead, I’d encourage you to gaze into the (near) future by portioning your big visions and dreams into achievable action steps. And challenging yourself to take action on one thing every day.

MICRO: Define your primary purpose in this world for more inspiration and energy. Take time to journal, self-study, or reflect on what you feel you are truly meant to do. Try boiling it down to a single mission statement or summary. (Mine is “I am here to be the person I needed.”) Stuck? Try this formula: I'm a ___. I help ___ [do]___ so they can _____.

MACRO: Once you define your big dreams for your business (and life), the next step is putting a timeframe around them. What aspects of your Big Vision will fit into the span of a single year? How about 2 years? 5 years? 10 years?

EXAMPLE: If your goal is to help as many people as possible heal their relationships with their bodies, make a list of organizations doing similar work and connect with them via email or social media, one per day. When you run out, research individuals doing similar work, and connect with one per day. Soon you’ll have a robust network of like-minded healers, and the ability to reach and help a much larger pool of people.

It’s so easy for me to command you to simplify your practices, and far more complicated for you to actually DO it. I know, and I want you to know that I know. But here’s the thing: If you want to make it through this holiday season with less stress, more focus, and a mindset that will prime you for a truly amazing year to come, simplification is the only way to fly. And I hope these suggestions will help you do just that.

Need help finding more concrete examples of how to pare down your practices? Come on over to the Conscious Kula and hit us up for ideas!

Want more clients as a Coach Healer or Helper? Solve problems

Business is about solving problems.

The more clear you become on the specific problems you solve for particular clients, the more success you’ll have in your business and marketing efforts.

As a coach, your focus is to help your clients achieve their goals. To connect with potential clients, it's essential to identify the specific problems they want to solve. Good businesses solve problems, but not just any problem – a specific, urgent problem that the potential client is actively looking to solve.

By conceptualizing your business's products and services as solutions to specific, urgent problems that your perfect-fit clients want to solve, you've already done half the work of selling your products and services. Besides, when you are able to reframe your marketing efforts from “all about you” to “all about the problems you’ll solve for your clients” it becomes much easier to show up consistently and share your message.

To attract your perfect-fit clients, you need to identify the problem you solve as —and for whom. The specific problem your business services solve might not be the problem other coaches, healers, or holistic practitioners solve: or you might solve the same problem but for different perfect-fit clients.

Before you go any further in planning your programs, services, or packages ensure you are addressing problems worth solving:

Problems your perfect-fit clients know they have

Your potential clients have hidden problems that they may not know how to fix. Or that they don’t even know are the cause of the surface problems they KNOW they have.

Attempting to solve these “unknown” problems will backfire if your potential clients aren't motivated to find and fix the underlying problem.

For example, if you are a Life Coach who helps clients transition to a healthier mindset, you need to target clients who are motivated to improve their outlook on life. The chronic complainers need your services but they don’t know they have a problem (yet).

Problems your customer cares about addressing

Your potential clients must be aware of the problem that needs solving and care about solving the problem.

In fact, these are the most valuable types of problems for you as a coach to solve because your client is motivated to solve them.

For example, if you are a coach who specializes in career transitions, you need to target clients who are motivated to find a new career path, who are on every job search platform, and who are actively seeking support in their career transition.

What problem(s) do you solve?

Identify the higher-order problems your business solves for a particular client.

Once you clarify these problems, you can develop your unique solution (which is the fun part!).

Solving a valuable problem that your perfect-fit client is aware of, in a unique way, while providing excellent service, is a recipe for success.

By identifying and solving specific, urgent problems that your perfect-fit clients want to solve, you can attract more clients to your healing, helping or coaching business.

How to Stay Proactive When Life Gets in the Way

“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” - John Lennon

Eloquent words from a modern poet-prophet, to be sure. But sometimes, life isn’t limited to the swirl of activities on the sidelines of your work and ambitions. Sometimes life actually monkeys with the plans you’ve made. Life can be hurricanes and broken legs, busted carburetors and cancelled flights, sick kids and lost dogs. Sometimes life is an unexpected mini-disaster that brings everything to a grinding halt. Sometimes life is the hulking bully who runs down the beach to stomp all over the exquisite sandcastle you’ve been building all day long.

You can be meticulous and careful, have capable staff on-call to help in emergencies and a half-dozen backup plans … and still get screwed by natural disasters, germs, or planned obsolescence. No matter how diligent you are in your business plans and entrepreneurial actions, sometimes life steps in and derails you.

I watched this happen to a dear friend of mine just last week, so it’s top-of-mind for me now. And I realized that many of you lovely readers could likely benefit from the advice I gave to reassure her that all was not lost. (And to prevent her from constantly hyperventilating.)

Here are some simple, smart actions you can take when life throws roadblocks onto your path to success:

Simplify your business plan

Remember: 80% of your income is the result of 20% of your efforts. Your top-performing classes or offerings are always exponentially more profitable than less popular ones, so when life gets hairy, cut the dead weight. Identify that uber-profitable 20%, and simplify your business to that / those offers. Even if this is just a temporary switch, it can make life in emergency mode SO much more manageable. Need support identifying that 20%?

Choose one point of focus per week / month / quarter

Conscious entrepreneurs are chronic multi-taskers., and we tend to try to do everything ourselves. It’s a risky way to operate, but many of us make it work right up until the studio floods or the server crashes. When that finally happens, we are forced to focus. Focus is practical magic and the more you can laser in on the things that need to happen to move your business forward, the easier juggling everything else will become. Separate the day-to-day operations tasks from the growth tasks, and assign out the former to trusted employees. Pick a single item from the latter group to tackle each week, month, or quarter. Just one. That’s plenty. And focusing on it will help you feel productive and forward-looking even when you’re functioning in the wake of catastrophe.

Stay narrow and strong

Which of your regular responsibilities, roles, or offers are causing your now-limited energy to dissipate? The more you stay in your strength zone—your zone of genius where your unique magic lies—the less of a drain your business will be. And it’s essential that you conserve and manage your energy in times of crisis. Not sure what your zone of genius is or how to identify your unique magic? I’ve got you covered right here!

Let it go

Let’s be real: Sometimes life happens and you absolutely have to breathe into the holes that it creates in your business. Let it go and ride the wave: this too shall pass. (Even if it feels like it never will.) Remember to be gentle with yourself as you put the pieces back together. Ease yourself back into the swing of things when you can, but don’t apply any undue pressure.

Self-care is a business strategy

Speaking of which, never forget to listen to your needs and ask for help when catastrophe comes a’callin’. You are the beating-heart center of your business, so self-care is absolutely a business strategy! Identify three or four self-care practices that encourage you to feel vibrant, healthy, capable, and strong. Then stick to those come heck or high water. Promise me!

Find a community

If you’re in the throes of a business-derailing disaster right now, I sincerely hope some of these tips feel do-able to you. But if not—or if you could use an extra shot of support and empathy—come join us at the Conscious Entrepreneur’s Kula. Don’t go thinking this is “just an online community.” This amazing group knows how to help, heal, and nourish its members, and we’ve always got room for one more.

Crises can teach us essential lessons and illuminate what’s most important in our lives. But that doesn’t make them any more fun to live through. The next time life gets in the way of your plans, use these strategies to keep yourself moving forward.