I finally feel like I am back and I ready to take on the world (so to speak)!! After talking to a friend, I decided that it was time to start “practising what I preach”. In the last month, my business has grown so much that I find myself just working through the work again and forgetting about my business. If I keep up this pace, I am afraid that I will quickly fall into old habits so I decided it was time to do something about it. So I thought I would share with you some of the things I did to get back to structure and back to building a thriving business.

The first thing I did was to take a really close look at my goals again and to break them down as far as I could into manageable chunks. Part of doing this was reviewing my long term goals and coming up with a plan to get there. Even more importantly I decided that I needed an “incentive”!! My incentive is to reward myself with a new software program that I have been wanting to purchase. So first I set a time line and a set of goals … then I took a picture of that software program and put it on my bulletin board. Now every time I look at that picture I am reminded of the goals that I am trying to achieve and the incentive to work harder is there!!

The second thing I did was to review my schedule and rework it to what now makes sense for my business. See this was the thing I was forgetting about … I set my schedule over a year ago and a lot of what worked then was no longer working in my business now. In doing this I realized that although setting a schedule is a good first step, the fact I hadn’t been following it was a reminder that a schedule is only good if it is followed!!! My productivity has increased immensely since I have started following this schedule again.

The last and final thing I did was to start using “to do” lists again. I quickly realized that without a good to do list, things were “falling through the cracks” and not getting done. Even more importantly, I took the time to prioritize my list and got back to my system of color coding the work … yellow highlighted items must be accomplished today, blue items come immediately after the yellow items are attended to and the pink items are things that I would like to do, but timing is not crucial. Then I assigned a number to each item within the color coding so I would know in what order they would be completed.

Just getting back to this structure has made me feel so much better about not only my business, but also about myself. I am ready to take my business to the next level and to truly set some goals to make this happen. Without having these three things in place, I truly believe that this would not be possible!!

Many people look at January 1st as not only the start of a new year, but also as a start of other things … a new outlook, a new project, a new idea …

Others view August/September as not only the start of a new school year, but the start of other things.

Without meaning to, I “started” over this September. I was speaking with the coach that is in my business networking group and she asked me when the last time I looked at my business plan was. I told her that the last time I reviewed it was when I wrote it 2 and a half years ago. She encouraged me to have a look at this plan and to “make some changes”. See when we start our business we spend a lot of time planning what our business will look like and how it will work, but once our business is actually started, we forget to take the time to see if it looks like what we had first pictured.

I am not saying that it is wrong if our business isn’t exactly as we plan (as we all know businesses evolve and change), but there is a lot to be said for taking the time to review our plans and “freshen them up”.

We don’t need it to be the start of a new school year or the start of a calendar or fiscal year. Today is just as good a day as any to decide that it is time to “start over”. Give ourselves that chance to try a new project, review our business as it is and determine if there are changes that might grow our business …

I have spent a lot of time since that conversation with that coach doing just that and I have been amazed at the results. Without even trying, my business is moving forward and growing … some of those ideas that were in my head have been committed to paper and I am striving to make them happen!!

So my question to you is this … what are you waiting for? Why not “start over” today and try something new with your business? You might be amazed with the results!! Then take some time to let me know what you tried and how it worked out as I would love to share in your success with you!!

I keep meaning to get back here and write a post and then life seems to happen and it stops me from getting here …

Isn’t that the way if seems to go with everything though? The key is to not let it get in the way. YEAH RIGHT!!

I am a huge advocate of planning and scheduling, but what I struggle with is sticking to that schedule. See I set aside time each week for blogging, but for some reason blogging seems to get shuffled to the backburner, which is funny since it is the thing I love to do the most. I keep telling myself that having a schedule is the easy part … sticking to it - not so easy. So what am I going to do to make sure that this happens?

FIRST STEP - PRIORITIZE
My new schedule is going to work along with my priorities. First and foremost I need to schedule in the client time as this seems to be the thing that is pushing everything else aside. The next thing are those things that I need to do for my business such as blogging, marketing, etc.. Finally I will schedule in time for the fun things for business such as reading forums, learning a new skill, etc..

SECOND STEP - BE HONEST WITH MYSELF
I think my biggest problem is that I was trying to be wonder woman. I was giving myself too many things to do in a week and in a day. I needed to take some time and really look at a typical day for me. I know that dragging myself into the office before 9am isn’t probably likely with two young children that need to get ready for school. I also know that nights and weekends are hard too as the demands of my family are taking precedent over my business. So instead of scheduling in working time then, if I happen to find a few extra minutes I am going to call it a “bonus”!!

THIRD STEP - MAKE IT VISUAL TO REMIND MYSELF
My schedule used to be in my head … now I have written it out and color coded it on a nice excel spreadsheet. Finally I printed it out and put it on my bulletin board. It isn’t there to tell me what I can and can’t do and at what time, but more as a reminder of what I hope to accomplish in a day.

FOURTH STEP - DON’T FORGET ABOUT ME TIME
Finally and probably most importantly, I was forgetting about me. I was so busy worrying about my clients and my family that I forgot that it’s okay to take some time and watch my favourite TV show or take a walk with the neighbourhood girls!! Instead of feeling guilty for indulging in these pleasures, I was thinking that I was straying away from my schedule!!

So one of my priorities will be to indulge in my pleasure of blogging … by telling myself it’s okay to have this time to myself, I am hoping I will be “killing two birds with one stone” and also still helping others that struggle too with the wonderful world of entrepreneurship!!