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How to LEAP Forward in Your Business (and Personal) Growth

For the first year in my business, I tried to do it all alone. Then I joined a group here and there, mostly free forums and free classes. And they helped some. But the real momentum and shifting came when I joined a paid mastermind group.

It was $5400- and at the time, I couldn’t afford it. And yet, I couldn’t afford not to get the expert help and the group support I so desperately needed so I wouldn’t have to resort to getting a J-O-B.

The first year in that mastermind took my business from $15k to $43k. Ok, so not to a million bucks or even 6 figures, but I was pretty darn happy with tripling my income, considering I was still only working about an HOUR a day on my business, as I tended to my young family.

The second mastermind I joined had some private coaching peppered in, and that year my income doubled, getting me to just shy of that $100k mark, while still only working about 15 hours a week.

Then I took the big leap into a high-level private program, and that pulled me into the 6-figure+ mark, with a net of $127k cash in the bank. And I still only worked less than part-time AND took the entire summer off (again).

I’ve been leading my own successful masterminds since 2010, and I’ve noted three things that seem to help the members make the BIG shifts they’re seeking:

  1. Focus

In our intimate mastermind, you get to focus on monetizing what you already have or are about to create. You get to focus on where you’re headed, instead of staying stuck in where you are. You get to focus on getting crystal-clear on who you’re serving and how you love to serve them, within a structure that honors your highest values.

  1. Implementation

You get the support you need to implement everything you already know (and especially the things you don’t) to get money in the door sooner than later, all while honoring your values and lifestyle. And when you invest in yourself at a high level, it spurs you into taking the big leaps so you get the most out of your investment (that certainly happened for me!).

  1. Sacred Support

You get the kind of support from the other members that may be really hard to find otherwise. Your spouse, best friend, or mom may not ‘get’ what you’re doing but your mastermind members do – and they are available to you in a moment to help you push past your fear, give you that next piece of information you need to take that next step, listen to you vent, offer advice and suggestions on how to move past any challenge, and giving you loving support whenever you need it.

So here’s what I know:

When you’re going it alone, it can be much more difficult to focus, to implement and to get the kind of sacred support we all need to bring our messages out into the world in a much bigger way.

In the beginning, I resisted this – I thought I liked being a lone-ranger. But once I open up to the possibility of allowing a group of lovely like-minded people to support me (and vice versa) everything changed in my business – and my life – for the better.

In my Lively Biz Mastery, you get this kind of personalized coaching and sacred support from an intimate group (max of 12) of other like-minded and lovely lady entrepreneurs.

Interested? Limited spots open in a few days so join the VIP waitlist here.

Make Your Desire Bigger Than Your Doubt

If you’re wondering if you can make your online business work, here’s something I often say to my clients and members…

Your desire has to be bigger than your doubt.

And in order to get there, sometimes we have to MAKE our desire bigger than our doubt.

So, think about why you want to have a successful business? What’s driving that desire? Journal that out. Talk it out with a supportive colleague or your coach. Get deep in touch with that.

Because it’s usually not IF, it’s HOW that causes the doubt.

And when we connect – emotionally and energetically – to our deeper why, we often find the HOW. ❤️

Break the Rules

“Break the rules.”

But I didn’t understand what that meant. Well, not in business, anyway. I’d broken the rules plenty in my personal life over the years.

But in business, I thought I was breaking the rules, by having boundaries and following my intuition and creating a calendar that worked for me, among other things that other entrepreneurs raised their eyebrows at.

It’s been a few years since I’d asked for clarification on what was next in my business when this particular piece of advice came through (quite literally from my guides ;-)).

I’ve only just understood it now.

It’s not just about having boundaries. It’s about tightening up who and what they even apply to. It’s not just about following my intuition, but trusting that my deepest desires ARE my intuition. And it’s not just about creating a calendar that works for me, but also about creating a calendar that allows me to have a much greater impact much sooner.

Breaking the rules means not worrying about what others think about what I’m doing – or not doing. It means standing stronger in my resolution to serve myself first so I can serve others better. It means doing it my way, no matter what, and trusting that as long as my intentions are good, all will be well.

How that plays out going forward is exciting, liberating, joyful and life-altering for me – and I can hear clearly and distinctly, “It’s about time!” in my head and my heart. 🙂

Personally, my priorities are always to take care of my family first, then my inner community, then my outer community. That includes several initiatives that aren’t served by sharing publicly (and frankly would only be self-serving if I did). It’s included stepping back from being online earlier this spring to have the time and energy to dedicate to those initiatives. As they continue on, this is my best and most powerful way to contribute – and it feels right too.

Business-wise, it means letting go of some things that no longer align with who I’m becoming and where I’m going and how I can best contribute. It means being on purpose with my purpose. It means more of what I love to do and unapologetically cutting out the things I don’t love to do – no matter how popular they are or what other people consider ‘musts’. Nope, no more. It’s time for my brain to step aside so my heart can lead.

For me, this is doing it my way.

Want some help with doing it your way?

I’m putting together a practical step-by-step guide on the how (because I am the how-to gal ;-)) for my Lively Biz Business Club members. If you’re interested, go here to find out more when it’s ready.

Cheers,
~ A

 

How Much Money Do You Really Need?

I’ve personally invested over $100k in my own business education
(not including my MBA) and I’ve leveraged that investment into
over $1 million dollars in sales.

I’ve always said that I will make my million – in my time and on my terms. And I’ve done just that. Did I make it in 12 months? Nope. In 3 years? Nope. It took 8 years. But I did it on my terms (keeping my family first) and in my time (less than 15 hours a week on average).

And because I’m sensing this strong undercurrent of desperation in many business owners about making 6 or 7 figures, I wanted to invite you to take a different tact:

Ask yourself, what’s the least income you can make right now and still live a happy life?

Not ‘I want to make a million dollars by the time I’m 40′ and you’re 39 now and the most you’ve ever made is $50k. Not ‘I want to make 6 figures by the end of this year′ and your current monthly revenue is $2k.

What’s the least you can make that will take you to that very next step in your vision – not the BIG vision – but just the next bump up?

What’s the least amount of money you can bring in that will give your current lifestyle the boost that will make you smile, that will make you feel and know you’re moving forward, and that will continue to motivate you onward?

Here’s how you can figure it out for your own business:

Step 1: Get cash clear

Get crystal clear on how much money you really need to live the lifestyle that you’re happy with, not the one you’re striving for (I guarantee when you give up this grip, money will flow more abundantly to you).

This may mean having a conversation with a spouse or partner. Do it. Especially if you are in a financial partnership with someone else, you’re likely not the only one feeling the push and the pressure for more. Do yourselves both a favor and figure out what’s the minimum level for you. You may be able to give up or put aside one or more of your current income streams so you can have more of the time freedom you crave, knowing you still have enough to enjoy your life.

Step 2: Be sure all your eggs aren’t in one basket

If you’re relying on high-end pricing and programs to carry your business, you may be setting yourself up for a financial fall. Your clients and customers are being more and more discriminating about where they’re spending their money.

Be sure to have different ways in which you can serve your market, not just one-on-one. Offer lower priced programs and products to help more people as well as to diversify your cash flow.

Step 3: Build your business around your life

This is a mindset shift for many people. But if you’re in business for yourself, isn’t it so you can design the life you want to live? Not so you can work more, but so you can work less, and still enjoy a great life with the income to support it?

In order to do that, you have to schedule your life first, then your business-building activities around that. This is how I’ve been able to take off 3 months every summer for the last 15 years. My business doesn’t suffer; in fact, it grows because of my commitment to this principle.

Figure out how to make the money you want for the next level of your business (again, not the BIG vision, just the next bump up) in the time that is left after you’ve planned the life you want to live first. Then ask for the support or hire the team you need to help you make this happen.

When you put your life first, the time towards what makes you happy, the focus on just the next bump while you tend to LIVING, all the ‘more’ you want (which we all want, by the way – we are all here to grow and to be, do, and have more) will come. This I know for sure.

How to Take the Summers Off

One of the questions I get asked the most is how I take the summers off, so I thought I’d answer that a bit for you in this post.

The purpose of my sharing this is about much more than just taking the summer off – or any extended holiday.

It’s to help you, the Lifestyle Entrepreneur, to get really clear on your plan for the next 6-12 months and beyond, what it’s going to be about for you, both from a pragmatic view as well as from a big picture view.

Preparing to Take Time Off

You likely know that I take 12 weeks off (half of June, and all of July and August) as vacation to spend it with my family at the lake where I spent my summers growing up.

When I first decided that I wanted to be off for the entire summer, I had to figure out how to make that work and still run and grow my business.

In the beginning, it was a very slightly working vacation, maybe 10% of the time.

The first time I did this, I did certain things to prepare for it:

1. I decided on what main projects I was going to focus on, two in total.

2. I decided what my VA would focus on, all the admin details that I didn’t want to be troubled with, but that I had a hard time letting go of beforehand.

3. I went through all my paper files and only brought those with me that I had to have to work on those 2 main projects. (As a back-up, I used a remote access program in case I had to get something on my desktop).

4. I cleaned up my laptop so when I was online I could focus.

5. I let my clients and customers know (more than once) that I was on vacation, that I would respond to emails but that it might take a little longer than usual, but that I was also living this model.

Those were basically the things I did to get ready.

What happened?

Much to my surprise, because I think I was so busy-busy all the time that I wasn’t moving forward very quickly with anything and spent a lot of time putting out fires, I was actually MORE productive – and MORE profitable – during those summer weeks than I had been the previous 6 months working from my home office.

Here’s What Made the Difference

So what was different?

1. I chose two main projects to focus on that only I could do (writing my book and my membership program) and either let the rest go (absolutely nothing negative happened as a result) or delegated it.

So I was really focused on my ‘genius’ work, which is what will always bring you more money sooner than focusing on fixing your website or other admin tasks you shouldn’t be doing.

2. I had scheduled work time. This was a biggee for me. At home, I worked when the kids slept (naptime or nighttime) and then all kinds of in-between time when they were playing by themselves or when Daddy was taking care of them.

During those early summers of implementing this model, I only worked a total of about 2 hours a day, during pre-wake-up time and post-bedtime, 3-4 days a week. I’d get up at 5:30am and work for an hour or so before the kids woke up, but that was also my time to sit on the dock, watch the loons and write in my journal – and drink my coffee while it was still hot.

When I worked it was only on those one or two projects, and answering emails that were a priority, like those from private clients. Anything else I did was a bonus. I wasn’t stressed at all, and when I was with kids, I was completely focused on them, not on my business.

Since then, I’ve restructured my business so that I don’t offer anything ‘live’ with me while I’m off for the summer, my coaching and training programs end around Memorial Day weekend, and the only work I do over the summer is write the personal note in my online newsletter each week. Almost everything else is done and queued up before Memorial Day or is delegated to my team to take care of while I’m off.

There’s quite a bit more to it than this, of course, but if you’re seeking to take more time off, whatever time of year it is and for whatever reason, this should get you thinking about the first steps to take so you can do it too.

Want to know more details about how I’ve made this work since 2006 and how you can too? Just click the image to download my free guide!

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Where Are You Missing Leverage in Your Business? (Part 1)

 

 

If you’re a female entrepreneur who’s building a leveraged online business so you can keep your family first, this is for you.

As the same, I’m always looking for ways to leverage what’s already working in my business to improve my results so I can grow my business more quickly without more effort.

Where in your business could you do the same? Take this mini-assessment to find out.

__ 1. Do you know your priorities?

You need to know the highest-payoff activities to focus on in your business before you can fully leverage them for a far greater result.

If you often feel scattered, and that you’re too often flying by the seat of your pants, and you would LOVE to have a much more streamlined and simplified process for creating flow in your business on every level, it starts with knowing and focusing only on what matters.

What’s your #1 highest-payoff activity in your business today?

__ 2. Are your sales lacking?

If you’re not making as many sales as you want, there’s likely some missing pieces in your sales flow. I’m sure you know that just putting something out there online does not equal a successful offer. There are several critical pieces you need to have in place first, and then a strategy to convert from offer to sale.

What is the #1 missing piece in your sales process today?

__ 3. Do you abandon your current clients/customers?

It is far easier to sell something to someone who has already bought from you, and yet this is one of the most common places where entrepreneurs leave money on the table.

What is the natural next step you could offer to your current clients/customers?

__ 4. Do you leave your prospects hanging?

70% of your sales are in the follow-up. Don’t leave your potential clients and customers hanging just because your offer went live. Keep touching base with them, making sure they don’t feel abandoned, that you truly do want to help them.

Where in your current or next offer could you add a follow-up process?

__ 5. Do you have an “easy yes” offer?

Do you have a way to work with your market that’s an easy yes for them? I’m not talking about private work at your highest level. I’m talking about being able to experience your work in a way that leverages your time yet supports your client as well?

What simple product or program could you create that walks your client through your process in a do-it-yourself way?

These are just 5 areas to be looking at where you could up the ante on what you already have in place in your business – or what you should have in place to create the success you desire. We’ll cover 5 more in Part 2, but in the meantime, spend some time figuring out for yourself where you can apply the above to start seeing better results for less effort.

If you want to know where you’re not leveraging in your business, be sure to get my free mini-assessment here