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Getting Your Business Ready for the New Year

business-graphic with sticky notesCan you believe that it’s December? We’re all rushing around, trying to meet our goals for the past year and  preparing for the holidays. And whether you’re a working Mom or an overextended business owner, it seems as if there are not enough hours in the day.

So how do you make sure that you have taken the appropriate steps to prepare your business and your life for 2020. The classic wisdom about achieving a dream is to set a goal and develop a plan with steps to achieve it, but some of my most successful friends cringe at the mere mention of the word “goal.” That doesn’t mean they don’t plan, it’s just that they have their own systems that work for them.

I’ve been exploring this topic lately because some of the strategies I have applied in the past have proven less than effective in achieving some of my biggest goals lately. For example, I have been working on a book for several years that is still unfinished. And my efforts to redefine my business haven’t gone as well as I planned.

In fairness, I moved across country to be near family, and I live in an area that has faced two wild fire scares and a mass shooting recently. Clearly, I have suffered with overwhelm, so it was vital for me to take time to reflect.

To jump over my hurdles, I have explored every topic from procrastination and mindset  to planning methods that work for busy people and for individuals who hate the  thought of setting goals. I have tried a bunch of things like bullet journals, planning books with stickers, online planners and mind maps. They all worked to a point and I fared best any time I was able to write down my plans and check on them periodically to monitor my progress.

One of the most useful approaches for me  was to get clear on what I want to accomplish and why. It has also been helpful to take a hard look at the year we are about to wrap up to determine what worked in 2019 and what needs to be improved.

In my goal to achieve clarity, I found a great little guide that raised all of the issues I needed to plan for 2019. I’d love to share it with you here, along with the information and services I plan to share with my followers in 2019. Grab your copy of Make 2019 Your Best Year Ever while it is still available.

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How to Prepare for Challenges that Push You Beyond Your Comfort Zone

Often when we start a new venture or try something we find difficult, our mindset plays a key role in the ultimate outcome. Our ability to succeed can turn on whether we believe we can do it or not.

Water Athlete flounderingPart of plotting success in that new venture means facing our limitations and finding ways to overcome them. We know by observing athletes who achieve seemingly impossible feats, that the mind and body can exceed limits far past what we may expect of ourselves. We all have that power within us.

An obstacle may seem insurmountable, but rather than ask yourself if you can overcome it, it’s vital to challenge yourself to figure out how you can do it.

I am in the middle of planning a new coaching business with a membership site and other features to help the small business owners I want to work with. Like anyone facing a new challenge, it’s natural to feel a little insecure and overwhelmed. Rather than throw my hands up and walk away, I have been learning from successful people who have already succeeded at what I am trying to do.

Currently, I am participating in “The Quick Start Challenge” with Dean Holland and Craig Crawford. This five-week challenge is designed to help prospective internet entrepreneurs get going quickly.

I also participate in several groups where I can network with other individuals who are pursuing their own dreams. I’ve worked with a number of small businesses and larger ones for a number of years and I’m always curious as to why some individuals give up without really trying, while others push through their limitations to reach success.

Endurance events that athletes face are no different than the challenges we face at work, in relationships or in completing goals and realizing our dreams. When you surrender your dreams to the limitations you place on yourself, you’ll never reach the vision of your true destiny.

There’s nothing deep or mystical in lifting the limitations we face in life – it just takes persistence and continuous results. One thing you can do to challenge those limitations is to list what you want to accomplish and then think about what you have to do to get there.

Start by Dreaming Big

The first step in overcoming your limitations is to dream big. By setting goals that are outside your comfort zone, you face challenges that will spur you on to even greater things. Your dreams might change as your mindset changes, or because of injuries or life-altering situations. But if you focus on the finish line, you have the best opportunity to achieve the goals you set.

Next, Prepare for the Challenges You will face

You wouldn’t swim the English Channel without preparing months (or even years) ahead for the challenges you’ll face across those treacherous waters. You need to prepare for your own journey through training, gathering knowledge and getting your body and mind in shape or anything else you can do to make sure you’ll be successful.

You may need to adjust your strategy from time to time as you learn, but eventually you’ll be on your way to the success you envision.

Now it’s Time to Put Your Plan into Motion

This can be a difficult time for some because you’re afraid of failure. After all, you’ve been thinking and preparing for the race – and now you have to make it happen. But it’s far worse to hold back and do nothing than to fail because you didn’t even try.

This is a great time to participate in a challenge with well-planned steps and activities, or to network with a support group that will force you to move forward. You need to believe in yourself. Keep in mind that you are the biggest obstacle in your way of achieving greatness and you never let self-doubt keep you in a box because you are afraid of failure.

Think like a child. Children boldly believe they can climb the highest tree or venture out into the middle of the lake. Thank goodness adults are there to hold them back. Those are true limitations.

Whether you have convinced yourself that you can’t succeed or others have made you think you can’t do it, you must move past those limiting beliefs to cross the finish line.

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Ten Things You Need to Know about Your Competition

After evaluating your own business, it’s time to take a detailed look at the competition. Without such an evaluation, you may miss opportunities and threats that might affect your success. Here are ten things you need to know about your competition to identify your path to success.

Competitors1. Identify your competitors – The first and most important aspect of checking out your competitors is to identify who they are. Start by doing an internet search of similar products or services. Search the local magazines and newspapers to get a feel for how many businesses of this type there are in your area.

2. Know their strengths – Knowing your competitors’ strengths is important, as it can highlight your own weaknesses. If you know your competition’s strength then you will be able to improvise and be innovative with your own products and services.

3. Know their weaknesses – If you know your competitors’ weaknesses, chances are you will be able to use that knowledge to maximize your company’s strengths.

4. Know their products, services, or goods – What products, goods, or services does your competition provide? Are they similar to yours? What unique twist might they offer on their services? How do they market them; is it through traditional advertising, online, or through video sales?

5. What their social media status looks like – Does your competition get many likes or comments as feedback on their blogs or websites?

6. Who owns this business and what kind of individual is he or she – Does the business owner stand out on the front line or behind corporate walls? Is the business owner someone who is philanthropic and altruistic? Does the persona of the business owner maximize its sales? Are they out in the public eye a lot?

7. What their price points are and are they competitive to yours – Do they have a lower price but cheaper quality as well? Do they mass produce, saving money for their customer? Are you able to compete with that?

8. Know their annual earnings (if this information is available) – Are their annual earnings public or private? Can you see their growth or decline in business over the last year?

9. Management analysis – Does this company or business have a quick turnaround of management professionals? If so, can you spot why and where their weaknesses are?

10. What types of guarantees and warranties do they put forth on their product or service – Does each competitor valiantly offer beneficial warranties and guarantees on their products and are their customers satisfied customers? Do their social media comments, tweets, and likes show happy consumers?

Only by studying these aspects of your competitors’ businesses will you identify opportunities to bring added value to the marketplace. When you identify things your competitors are not doing, that you can add, you will find a way to set your business apart.

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Vision Boards – Creative Ways to Develop a Business Plan

If you read my last post about planning your business and creating a timeline, you may have lost all of your enthusiasm — especially if you are not a numbers type.  Before you throw up your hands and give up on your entrepreneurial dreams, look for creative ways to capture your thoughts.

We talked in an earlier post about mind maps. If you didn’t read that post, you can find it here. There are other ways too. Some people use vision boards to capture their vision before attempting to turn their ideas into written plans.

What is a Vision Board?

A vision board is a collection of images, quotes and symbols that have meaning to you and which bring out feelings of joy, peace, love and happiness. They represent your dream life.

Vision boards come in many different formats, both digital and physical. We’ll talk more about that later, but for now, let’s take a look at the types of content. Images – by far the most common item to find on vision boards – can be photos, drawings, mind maps, sketches or anything else that has meaning for you.

In addition to images, people often include inspirational quotes, motivational messages and anything else that embodies the vision of the company you are trying to create.

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Mind Mapping to Assess Your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats

Running a business successfully will require that you tap all of your strengths, while finding ways to minimize or overcome your weaknesses. You will need to be as innovative, productive, and forward moving as possible, while anticipating the threats and opportunities your business may face. There are many tools you can use to boost your creativity. Mind mapping is one of those tools.

mind map to discover strengths

First, let’s examine what mind mapping is. Mind mapping is a way of brainstorming on paper. It is extremely beneficial as it is a visual tool that stimulates creative thinking preparing you to organize, evaluate, and analyze data you create for your business ideas. It is sort of like brainstorming with yourself on paper.

To begin with, you place a key word in the center of the paper that is a sort of main character in the mind mapping system. Next, you branch out ideas from that internal word and continue to branch out new words in a circle around that original word or theme.

It is similar to choosing a theme and several subthemes or topics and subtopics. The more you extend the circles and branch them out, the more creative you will find yourself being. Mind mapping is similar to choosing a niche and then a sub-niche and then another sub-niche within a sub-niche.

What Are the Benefits of Mind Mapping?

Mind mapping offers several benefits. For one thing, mind mapping is a visual tool. It helps you to organize information, create new concepts and themes while stretching your imagination, and offers the possibility of analyzing and visualizing ideas on paper in a new and creative fashion.

Mind mapping is an excellent tool to evaluate the strengths of your company or business. By placing several key themes on paper, you can visually pinpoint where your company’s strengths are. From there, you can gain momentum by brainstorming creative and innovative ideas to enhance and maximize those strengths.

Mind mapping is also useful in examining weaknesses. Weak areas are highlighted when using mind mapping. This is useful because sometimes a discussion about weaknesses does not produce any tangible results for improvement. However, using mind mapping creates a visual board for where weaknesses lie.

If you want to explore opportunities that you can take advantage of, mind mapping is an excellent tool for this. If you have one or two tried and true ideas for success, you can create sub-categories and sub-topics for those opportunities. This, in turn will create even bigger and more advantageous opportunities.

If your company or business has the potential for external threats, using a mind map will clearly hone in on those threats and spotlight them. This has a benefit because you can now see where you need to put your attention to ward off potential outside threats in the future.

In the business world, this assessment of a company’s strengths, weaknesses opportunities and threats is often described as a SWOT analysis. Mind mapping is a useful tool for visualizing your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It also can be a creative way to record the information visually in a meeting setting with your team, advisory board or mentor.