Goals

  • What do You Want in Life?

    Are you clear on what you want from life and out of your business?

     
    “On Wednesdays, we wear pink”. That line will be forever associated with Wednesdays for me. But no. I don’t wear pink on Wednesdays as a rule. On Wednesdays, I take time to make sure my weekly and monthly goals are still in line with my vision. It’s my time to check in and make sure I am on track. Part of that process is to focus on what I have going on with my vision board. I believe majorly in the power of visualization and setting goals. When I first started my business, and for years after, I had no concrete vision of where I wanted my business to go, where I wanted my life to go, or what my definition of success was. I also didn’t make any money. Or much money anyway. I highly encourage you to get clear about what you want from your business and from your life! I have my vision board right above my desk so I can look at it every day and remember my ‘why’ in business. It is one awesome feeling to see goals reached and get to create new ones.  

    I believe in three main points when it comes to life and business.

     

    Where focus goes energy flows. 

    Thank you, Mr. Tony Robbins for that quote. And as simple as it sounds, it is true. If you focus on the negative, you tend to accumulate more negative. If you put your focus on problems, then your energy is going toward those problems. If you focus on solutions, instead, you are going to get a different result than if you just focus on problems and the negative that surrounds them. Once I started focusing on gratitude and being thankful for what I had, I felt a rise in my day to day life, and I started noticing I was getting more. So I intentionally set my focus on everything that was good in my life, and being grateful. It is a simple shift but the impact is huge. Once I started getting serious about my goals in business, I put my focus there and noticed how my business did better, especially financially, and I had a clearer purpose.

    You don’t get what you don’t ask for.

    Now it took me awhile to get this one. It’s easy to think business is all about marketing, strategies, social media, email lists, and on and on… And while it is, mindset is a HUGE factor in a successful business. Stay with me, grasshopper. If you don’t know what you want, you are going to have a hard time finding it. One of the best things you can do for your business is to get intentional about it and ask yourself what you want. Include God in on your plans and the desires of your heart. I knew I wanted to make money to be able to support myself and my kids, and I liked designing things for people, but beyond that I had no clear goals. But it came to a point where I was tired of waffling through business, and not seeing enough return for my efforts. I started to get serious and ask myself what I wanted. I prayed about it and started making plans. I spent a good year getting really intentional about what I wanted out of life. And that is when things started changing for me majorly. I remember reading on Pinterest one day something about once you ask the universe for something it starts working in your favor to make it happen. And that just makes sense to me. I started presenting my plans to God, praying about it, and I started working toward it. If you keep moving forward, and have a plan, God is going to bless that plan somehow – whether it be moving you toward it, or away it from it if it’s not where you are supposed to be. I read an article by Deepak Chopra that said something along the lines that when we keep moving forward in our lives that is when blessings show up.

    Not too long ago I found a book thru my church called  The Circlemaker: Praying Circles around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears (aff. link). And in the book, it talks about how “God honors bold prayers because bold prayers honor God”. That really blew me away. Well, the whole concept of the book did. Anyway,  don’t be afraid to ask for the BIG stuff.

    Trust your business to provide.

    I had to learn this concept in a somewhat scary manner. For years, the income from my business did not really provide for me. It did to some degree but I also relied on my children’s father to make up most of our income. Until one day it no longer did. He got laid off from work and things got ugly. We parted ways for the most part, trying to work at it somewhat for months, and I was left to figure it out for myself. And I had no idea if my business was going to be able to meet my financial obligations. And I had no idea if I was going to be able to feed my three children, pay for my house, car, utilities, etc. Oh. My. Gosh. I was terrified. But then I was also really determined. I had been wanting my business to fully provide for some time now and I was about to see if this little bird was going to fly or fall hard. (I still get butterflies in my stomach just thinking about all the emotions I was feeling at the time). Long story short – I got really courageous -the kind of courageous where you are gritting your teeth through the fear and pretending you are brave to get through it. I worked my butt off, invested in business coaching, listened to Youtube videos of business gurus every morning (I still do this every day), made goals, prayed, and prayed some more and… it worked.

    This I attribute to God because I don’t even know how it works to this day. How do the sales show up month after month? I sure as heck didn’t know how it worked back then when the month before I couldn’t have paid all the bills. But I put my focus toward making it work, and asked for it to work, and trusted it would. And it did. Please don’t think it’s all gravy for me every day because I still run a small business and it is a continual roller coaster. BUT I know the money will show up when I show up. I work toward big goals, and I ask God every morning to take the lead.

    So, in conclusion, I encourage you to:

    1. pay attention to your focus and get it where it needs to be (start with gratitude).
    2. ask yourself what you really want out of your business (and life).
    3. start trusting your business to provide (take a leap of faith).

    Not sure you are on the right path with your dream business? Read this.

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  • The Quick and Easy Way to Proofread

     

    If you are short on time and attention span but know proofreading is a must then let me share my quick hack on proofing the quick and easy way.

    Once I write out my blog post, or other lengthy write-up, I then copy the entire text.

    Then I hop on over to  Google Translate (https://translate.google.com/) where I paste my text into the left side box. Then press the speaker icon and listen to your story. Sweet and simple!

     

    As I was publishing this little post, my 15-year-old son walked by and told me about Grammarly. It’s a free Chrome extension and is very easy to use and install. I just installed it and used it on this post. I’m impressed. So there are now TWO Quick and Easy hacks to proofreading. Is the word ‘hack’ overused? I bet it is but ‘tip and trick’ is old too. I’m leaving as is because I think you will understand.

    Have any tricks you want to share? Let me know in the comments and/or follow me over on Instagram or Facebook.

     

     

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  • Why Selling on Social Media is Hurting Your Business

     

    Hi! Okay, I am going to make this quick and painless. Hopefully. Here are 3 reasons you are potentially doing damage to your business and stunting your own business growth if you are selling on social media:

    Selling only on social media and not being able to send your customer to a real live website hurts your appearance and professional standing. It’s like going to the mall and having one of those girls in a kiosk asking if you want to have your hair straightened or maybe have a massage. In the middle of the mall. My first thought is that if their product is so great why aren’t they investing in a real store front? Same with social media selling. If you have the good goods and you are going to be around for awhile, set up a real store front online (AKA a website). Are you a running a business or are you playing around with a hobby/sort of business? If you are running a business – get a website.

     

    When you sell on social media and you ask your customer to leave their size, state, and email in the comments you are putting their information at risk. If (and when) a spammer, spambot, creepy hacker type automated program gets a hold of their very visible email address you just bought your customer trouble in the form of a ton of nasty spam to something worse. I am sure you value your customers so stop doing this at once if you are guilty of this.

     

    When you post on social media the goal is to get them to your website. When you send them to your website the goal is to get something from them – whether it be a purchase, a newsletter signup, an entry to a giveaway, etc. And it’s even better when they do multiple things on your website. When I see a post on social media selling a cute t-shirt, as a consumer, I go through one of two processes (yes, I buy t-shirts online way too much. Follow me on Instagram and you will see me often giving shout outs to businesses and showing off the t-shirt I just bought from them). Stay with me. This is good insight here.

    Scenario one (the almost sort of winner): I see a post on Instagram where this business is selling a t-shirt and I want it. (I almost always do because I am an easy sell). If they ask for my email address and size, I cringe because I don’t leave my email address on social media because of Reason 2. So sometimes I skip on by because it’s too much work to buy their shirt. If I really want it, I will DM them and give them my info. Not a great sell because they left money on the table. Tsk! Tsk! Where did they miss out on more money? Well, they missed selling me more. They did nothing to retain me as a customer and no relationship was formed. Read below.

    Scenario Two (the real winner): I see a post on Instagram of this must have t-shirt. They give me all the info in the post and tell me to click the link in the bio to visit their website. Sweet. I skip on over to the website, see the awesome shirt I want, and add it to my cart. Am I done? Nope. I check out their other products because while I’m here I might as well scope out the store. And I might find more t-shirts I want and therefore spend more. Even better is they offered an incentive to sign up for the email list/newsletter. So now in two weeks when I have forgotten about this store because I have moved onto something else they send me a newsletter to my email inbox telling me about a sale they are having. So, I have just been reminded of this business and I remember the last time was a great shopping experience so I click on over to their website again and potentially give them more sales. Winner winner chicken dinner. I win as a customer because I have found a great little place to shop and they care enough about me to send me info on their latest happenings so they win, too.

     

    If you are in it to win it and you want to see your business become something solid take the time to learn the best strategies for selling on social media. I know you have better things to do than to guess what works on social media. If you want to dive in further, download my free guide here. It won’t launch you into making millions overnight (I so wish!). But it will show you 5 successful things I do for my own business on Instagram.

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