Business 101: If Your Business Were a Pie, How Many Wedges Would It Have?
You probably hear people talking about setting up your business with multiple income streams. How we simply can’t afford to put all our eggs in one basket when it comes to growing a sustainable business. It’s just too risky. We not only need to diversify our product offerings, but how we generate revenue as well.
Let me explain. Imagine your business as a pie cut into wedges with each wedge representing different avenues of generating revenue, how many wedges are you using? And what percentage of your whole is each one occupying?
Simple Ways to Add More Wedges to Your Business Pie
Consider adding one (or more) of these business models to your current business pie:
- One-on-One is the simplest service model that any entrepreneur can offer without anything technical behind us. We all have the ability and knowledge to offer the one-to-one service in our particular niche – whether you’re a graphic artist, virtual assistant, marketing consultant, etc. One on one means working directly with your clients, typically trading service time for an hourly rate.
- Expand to Group Work. Moving into the coaching and consulting role, you can still deliver what you’re delivering in a one-on-one model, but now you can leverage yourself by working with more people in the same amount of time. Examples include live or prerecorded teleseminars, group coaching sessions, or group workshops.
- Creating a continuity membership program generates a monthly income from those who pay a monthly fee to receive something of value on a regular basis. The challenge is to create value that attracts people and keeps them coming back for more.
- Affiliate revenue is generated when a business in your related niche wants you to reach your audience. Because you’re driving traffic to their product or program, they pay you a commission in exchange for generating sales.
- Add train the trainer to your business pie. Instead of you delivering the One-on-One or Group coaching or consulting services, you license your program or systems to others. In essence, you train them how to teach your system to others.
- Information products and/or regular products help you to leverage your time by offering a bigger market of people the opportunity to benefit from your knowledge. They can sample your expertise through an eBook or a home-study audio course, and if they like it, they will come back for other things you have to offer, including your One-on-One programs.
After reviewing all the wedges your business could be using, which of them makes sense for you and for your ideal client? Maybe it’s time to get out of your comfort zone and add a whole new dimension to your business!
Want more tips on making your business profitable? Learn from Get It Done Girl Kim DeYoung by grabbing your copy of her free report “3 Productivity Secrets Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know to Get It Done and Make a Profit“.
Business 101: What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You? The Tortoise or the Hare?
Remember Aesop’s fable about the race between the tortoise and the hare? The hare sprints off, gleeful that he’s far outrunning the tortoise, but he soon gets tired and stops to take a nap, thinking he has all the time in the world because the tortoise is miles behind. The tortoise, however, walks at a slow and steady pace. It may seem like he’s never going to get to the finish line, but because he’s learned to pace himself he passes the hare and wins.
In your business, which are you? The tortoise or the hare?
So often, home-based entrepreneurs can fall into the trap of being the hare. You zoom along totally focused on accelerating your business, building your team, growing your list, or reaching out to prospects. You go 90 miles an hour trying to build your business – often to the detriment of everything else around you. Then you get to the point where you’ve burned yourself out and you stop dead in your tracks.
It can make you feel like your world is falling apart! You have to stop and try to catch up on all the other things you’ve been ignoring like spending time with your family, doing the household chores, or attending to other necessary aspects of your business, like the dreaded administrative work. You can get to the point where everything feels out of control and hopeless.
Why You Need to Develop a Work/Life Rhythm
Many people talk about achieving a balance between work and life. And realistically there never is a time that you can find a 50/50 balance. Life just doesn’t come out that way.
Instead it’s more like creating a rhythm in how you handle things. Be like the tortoise and find a pace that allows you to consistently and sustainably keep moving forward. And if it doesn’t seem like you’re achieving as much as you’d like, don’t beat yourself up. That doesn’t accomplish anything.
You’ll find that in the big picture you’ll accomplish your goals without sacrificing all the other important things in life and without burning out! This can be a really hard lesson for Type A personalities who want to do it all now! On the other hand, don’t use this as an excuse to procrastinate.
When you create a work/life rhythm that works for you, there’s going to be an ebb and flow. There will be busy times, then quiet times. There will be times when your family life demands more of your time and attention and others when your business needs it. That’s how life is.
And if you find yourself not accomplishing everything you have on your daily list of things to do, maybe it’s time to get more organized about how you do things instead of sprinting ahead only to collapse from burnout and not be able to finish the race.
Want to know the productivity secrets that make a huge difference in your ability to get it done? Learn from Get It Done Girl Kim DeYoung by grabbing your copy of her free report “3 Productivity Secrets Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know to Get It Done and Make a Profit“.
Business 101: Personal Effectiveness Made Easy – 7 Ways to Increase your Personal Effectiveness
Are you a get-it-done go-getter or do you need to kick-start your personal effectiveness? Your daily habits determine how much you are able to accomplish in a day. Are you ready to put your personal effectiveness to the test?
Take the Personal Effectiveness Test:
- You wander from room to room looking for lost items like keys, paperwork, cell phone…
- You try multi-tasking, jumping from one project to the next and end up not doing any of them well.
- You’ve been working on a project when an idea for another project pops into your head, so you find yourself starting the new project rather than finish the first.
- You have days where you go round and round checking emails, making phone calls, doing paperwork, and not getting anywhere.
- You leave home during revenue-generating working hours to run to the store, drop off work or do some other errand only to forget one forcing you to go out again the next day.
If you answered, “Yes” to 2 or more of these questions, you need to up your organizational habits! Your lack of organization means you to can spend all day being extremely busy, but at the end of the day, you have nothing to show for your efforts!
7 Ways to Increase your Personal Effectiveness
Personal Effectiveness Tip #1: Everything in its place and a place for everything
Take a day and go through your office and create a specific spot where everything belongs so you can find what you’re looking for easily. That includes tidying up your electronic desktop and creating a logical filing system.
Personal Effectiveness Tip #2: Separate your calendar into work chunks
Work in small chunks of time to maximize your efficiency and stay focused. I personally color-code my calendar in small blocks of time for all different activities, from personal to professional to kid-related. Examples of work blocks include “Time to make calls” or “Pay bills” or “Journal” or “Manage household tasks”.
Personal Effectiveness Tip #3: Always set the priorities for the next day
At the end of the day, write out the priorities for the next day. Not only will you wake up energized because you have a plan already for the day, but it lets you get right down to the business of getting stuff done.
Personal Effectiveness Tip #4: Batch errands and tackle all at once
Group errands that take you out of the office so you can get them all done in one efficient outing. Consider taking it one step further and arranging tasks by location or preplanning your route.
Personal Effectiveness Tip #5: Focus on the project at hand until it’s complete
Stay focused on the project at hand and finish it before moving on to the next one.
When you come up with a new idea, quickly jot it down, and get back to your priority task. That way you don’t lose your great idea, but at the same time, you’re not sidetracked from the task at hand.
Personal Effectiveness Tip #6: Outsource administrative tasks
Outsource all that you can. Don’t think you have to do everything yourself to save money. Let someone else be your courier, virtual assistant, or bookkeeper so you can concentrate on revenue generating tasks.
Personal Effectiveness Tip #7: Get in the daily habit
What you do on a daily basis matters. Get in the habit of taking consistent, daily action!
It only takes a few shifts in your daily organizational habits to make a big difference. Getting organized and approaching tasks in an organized manner will help you to accomplish so much more.
Want to add PEP to your growing business? Grab your copy of Get It Done Girl, Kim DeYoung’s latest eBook, Productivity, Efficiency, Profit! to learn how to get more of the RIGHT things done!
Business 101: Put the Power Behind your Personal Productivity – Tips on Creating a Daily Action Plan
Do you put the power behind your personal productivity or do you fritter away your day, cluttering up your calendar with busy work?
Let’s compare the work habits of twin entrepreneurs, Silly and Sally…
Silly: Silly gets up, grabs a cup of coffee and sits down at her desk. She thinks “Hmm… I wonder what I should work on today?” and then wanders off to check email and Twitter while she continues to decide what to work on.
Several hours later, it’s time for her to get off the computer and she thinks, “I didn’t get anything productive done! There’s never enough time in the day. I just don’t understand. I was busy all day!”
Sally: Sally gets up, grabs a cup of coffee and sits down at her desk. She picks up her action list of 6 items that she wants to get done for the day, and determines which one to tackle first. She then spends some focused time and finishes 5 of the items on her list.
After that, she decides that she’s almost out of time for the day, so she quickly checks email and Twitter. Then, she makes her list for the next day, making sure to transfer the one item that didn’t get done to the new list.
Which work scenario sounds the most like your day? It doesn’t take an efficiency expert to see that Sally has set herself up for success by planning ahead and focusing right away. I am certainly the most efficient on the days when I plan my day BEFORE sitting down at my desk.
Creating a Daily Action Plan is the Difference between Busy and Busy Work!
It’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we’re being productive when in fact we’re just doing busy things.
#1: Do it at Night – A good day starts with a good night. At the end of the day, get clear on which tasks will move your closer to your goal, and start those first thing in the morning.
#2: Keep it Simple. Keep it Short – Focus on the key tasks that will really make a difference in your business. If your goal is to make money, then only focus on tasks that will support your revenue-generating efforts.
Do NOT list everything that you need to do on your to-do list or you’ll get overwhelmed. Consider using listing your top 6 to-do’s for the day on an index card or using an online task management tool like Teux Deux to keep track of your list.
#3: Finding your Way Back – A daily action list also serves a busy entrepreneur in another key way. When you get interrupted (and undoubtedly it will happen), you can very easily find your way back to productivity with one glance. Which of the six things were you working on?
Lack of productivity results from a lack of clarity and just as success leads to positive feelings and more success, an unproductive day doing a lot of nothing leads to all sorts of bad feelings and a negative success loop.
Get in the habit of making your list of to-dos BEFORE you call it quits for the day. That one simple shift in your daily habits will have a big impact on your results!
Want to add PEP to your growing business? Grab your copy of Get It Done Girl, Kim DeYoung’s latest eBook, Productivity, Efficiency, Profit! to learn how to get more of the RIGHT things done!
Business 101: Put a STOP to the Daily Distractions – Managing Interruptions and Distractions When You Work from Home
If you work-at-home, you are confronted with an entirely different set of challenges than people who work in a traditional office environment – from your 4-year-old interrupting you with “Where’s my toy?” to the laundry and sink full of dirty dishes screaming for your attention.
If you want to move your business forward and successfully juggle your responsibilities, you have to learn a few basic work-at-home survival skills that address the two core challenges of working from home: external and internal distractions!
External Distractions: Interruptions from Family and Friends
- Schedule your work hours while the children are asleep.
- Hire a nanny to care for the children during work hours, and get dad to watch them in the evening work hours.
- Create a separate work area so you can either shut the door or teach people that when you’re in your office, you’re not to be disturbed.
- Set firm work boundaries. For example, when people call to chat, kindly but firmly remind them you’re working and will call them back when your workday is finished.
- Set regular office hours and make sure family and friends know them.
Internal Distractions: Personal or Household Business and Temptations
- Remove all non-work related items from your separated work area.
- When ideas come up, jot them down on a sticky note to do later, and keep focused on your work project.
- Make a commitment to your work hours and stick to it.
Interruptions and distractions are a fact of working at home and like it or not, they usually happen at the most inopportune times. The key to managing daily distractions is to create a concrete plan on how to avoid or overcome them and stay on task.
Want to learn how to stay focused on growing your business? Grab your copy of Get It Done Girl, Kim DeYoung’s latest eBook, Productivity, Efficiency, Profit! to learn how to get more of the RIGHT things done!
Smart Start-up Tips: Are Time Vampires Sucking your Productivity? How to Stay Away from the Most Common Time Suckers
Are you the victim of a time vampire?
Time vampires are any and all activities that suck the productive time out of your day – minute by minute, second by second. These distractions sometimes disguise themselves as work, making the evil doings of time vampires all the more insidious.
Identifying and putting a stop to time vampires is an essential survival skill for entrepreneurs. It’s time to start saying “no” to time vampires and “yes” to your life!
How to Stay Away from the Most Common Time Suckers
#1: Cut down the “Chatter” – If you have Instant Messenger, Skype, or Google Chat open, set your status as “away”, “busy”, or even “invisible”. If there’s an emergency, people will find you. If there isn’t an emergency, you’ll cut down on the unnecessary interruptions and instead be able to focus during that time block.
#2: Turn off email notifications – If you get a little flash, beep, or any type of interruption whenever a new email comes in, turn that off. Every single time that your eye gets drawn to the flash it distracts you and causes you to lose your train of thought. Even if it’s a split second, it adds up and cuts into your productivity.
#3: Unsubscribe from email notification lists – Choose a select few that you really enjoy reading and dump the rest. If that’s a scary thought, then set up a new email account and re-subscribe with the new email address. Plan to check it once each week. You may find that the new email account never gets opened.
#4: Use your Caller ID – Turn off the ringer on the phone while you’re working so you can focus without interruptions. To stay available for kid’s emergencies, set the phone by your desk so you don’t have to get up and run to answer it. Check caller ID and ignore everyone that you can. Call them back later – on YOUR schedule. You wouldn’t call them at work to chat — don’t let them do it to you.
#5: Set Office Hours – If you have a client who is calling you at home, give them certain hours when you’re available. Don’t allow that person to interrupt your family life.
#6: Don’t Twitter your Time Away – Avoid Twirl, Tweet Deck, and any other Twitter applications that flash and beep and keep Twitter in front of your face all day long. Log in to Twitter, check your “@ replies” and answer them. Play for a bit and then log back out.
The key to defeating time vampires and preventing them from draining the productivity out of your day is keeping the “noise” down and focusing on getting things done.
Want to add PEP to your growing business? Grab your copy of Get It Done Girl, Kim DeYoung’s latest eBook, Productivity, Efficiency, Profit! to learn how to get more of the RIGHT things done!
Smart Start-up Tips: How to Get Out of Entrepreneurial Overwhelm and Get More Done
Most entrepreneurs don’t have a shortage of ideas when it comes to things they want to accomplish in their business. This is especially true when you’re first starting up! It’s the millions of ideas that can cause us to create our own bottleneck. You don’t know which project is the most important project to do… so you end up doing nothing – STUCK on square one!
It’s painful when you’re not clear about what you’re doing. It’s like you’re floundering. When you’re not clear, and purposeful, you can waste a whole day on the computer doing “stuff” but not really accomplishing anything that matters in the big picture of what you care about.
If you’re not getting important projects done, you don’t get your work out to the public that could benefit from it. PLUS, you’re not getting paid for all that you’re worth. And you don’t feel that great about yourselves or your business because you’re stuck instead of moving forward.
So how do you figure out WHICH project will create the best results?
When I think of “getting it done,” it’s not just getting done the junky, to-do list kind of stuff. We all have piles of stuff to do. Here are some questions that will help you determine whether a particular project should be a priority for you this year.
Ask yourself…
• Will this project generate momentum in my business? (Choose a project that will open up the bottleneck and give your business a real jumpstart. For example, do you need to focus on generating income, list-building, gaining credibility as an expert, etc.?)
• Does this project mesh with the vision I have for my business? (Think about the big picture of what you want to accomplish over the next year. Where do you want your business to be and will this project help you get there faster?)
• Will this project make a meaningful difference for me and for those I serve? (Don’t be distracted by the bright shiny object – something that sounds fun or that everyone else is doing, but won’t really benefit YOUR business.)
• Is this project fun and purpose-filled? (It needs to be something you believe in and you’re excited about or you’ll lose steam before you get it done.)
• Is this project big enough? (Choose something that scares you a little bit, and gets you out of your comfort zone.)
When you’ve got a clear vision on the project that will really make a difference you’ll find that you’re more focused and more committed. As a result, you serve a lot more people, increase your income and get out there in a bigger way. That is what I experienced – all good things.
Struggling with finding focus? Learn the 3-Step ‘Get It Done Girl’ formula that will help you narrow down your ideas so you can focus your time and energy the projects that will create real results. Join Kim for a free teleclass on Thursday January 6th at 1 pm EST on Revolutionize Your New Year: How to Choose the RIGHT Projects for Your Business that Create Real Results, Real Fast.
Business 101: What Value Do You Place on Your Time?
Everybody has the same 24 hours in the day. It just seems like working moms have less because there are so many demands placed upon us. It’s easy to feel like you have to be at everyone’s beck and call—your boss, your friends, your mate, and your children. But if you don’t place a value on your time then no one else will either. You’ll end up feeling under appreciated and taken for granted.
How do you show your time is valuable?
Have a plan of action. As much as I love hanging out and chatting with my friends, I have to place limits on the time I spend. There are things in life that absolutely have to be taken care of otherwise I’ll feel like I’ve wasted my whole day. So I have a list of what is priority for the day and then I stick to it.
Get involved. Many times we hold back from doing something because we feel we can’t do it perfectly. It’s so important to just do something, even if it’s not perfect. At least you’re taking a step forward and getting something done.
Weed out the distractions. A big distraction could be checking emails. Before you know it, a huge chunk of time has been eaten up and you haven’t gotten anything accomplished. You’ll find that if you unsubscribe from most of your mailings you’ll have a tremendous sense of relief. There won’t be that huge amount in your inbox making you feel like you have to read them all. If unsubscribing seems too drastic, set up a second email account and reroute many of the emails to it and check it once a week. You might find you don’t really want to read them after all.
Hire someone to help you. There are many things in life that could be outsourced to others. Pick the activities that are eating up your time, but that someone else could be trusted to do for you, for example, housework, running errands, etc.
Rely on your support system. We all need to have people to bounce our feelings and thoughts off of. Many times they can help you see things more clearly and can give suggestions that will be helpful. Knowing you have their support will renew your spirit and energize you for the important things in life.
Limit how much of yourself you’ll give away. Women love to help others and when we’re asked to volunteer to do things we often will agree before we’ve given it enough thought. Then we find we’ve spread ourselves too thinly and our family and our own selves suffer because we’re trying to do too much.
Learn how to say “No”. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person to tell people you can’t do something. You have to remember every time you say “yes” to someone you’re saying “no” to something else you need to do. You need to figure out what is a time waster and what will help you accomplish what is important to you.
This doesn’t mean that you become self-centered, but you do have to have a realistic sense of your own worth. When you place a high value on your time, you’ll find that you accomplish so much more and are much happier. And others will see that your time is valuable and will appreciate you more.
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