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How to Know if Your Vision Board Will Work
How to Know if Your Vision Board Will Work
Creating a vision board is a fun activity and some people hold vision board parties filled with friends, fun, laughter, music, and food. Who doesn’t love a party and what’s not to like about cutting out photos of your ideal life?
However, some people are quick to dismiss vision boards as being “woo woo” or magical or as a creative puzzle that just doesn’t work. Whether your vision board will work for you or not boils down to a few simple tips; follow the tips, and you’ll likely see success. Ignore the tips and you’ll likely get distracted, frustrated, and angry that you wasted time making the board.
Less is More
Typically, people like to fill a gigantic piece of cardboard with dozens of photos of their hopes and dreams, everything from the dream mansion by the ocean to the diamonds and private yachts. But how can you focus on achieving all those big-ticket items all at once? Most people can’t focus on multiple goals at once – especially huge ones – so they get distracted and miss important opportunities. Edit the number of photos you use on your vision board and decide which of those goals you want to reach first.
Prioritize Your Goals
What is most important to you: working a 4-hour workweek or living by the ocean? The fancy sports car or the ability to travel around the world? These are just examples, of course, but you need to prioritize each photo you find and really ask yourself WHY you want this on your board. Is it truly important to you or is it a flashback from your childhood? If a photo isn’t important to you, your subconscious will know that and you will only get distracted or confused about what you should be working toward.
Take Action
Vision boards are not mystical or magical; just because you put the photos together and post it in your office doesn’t mean things will start magically appearing. Even if you want to win the lottery, you still need to take the action to buy the ticket, right? The same is true of vision boards. If you want to buy your first home, take some action: do some research or hire a realtor, talk to a mortgage broker to get pre-approved, and then increase your marketing efforts to find more clients.
Believe that You are Good Enough
Mindset is everything when it comes to making goals a reality. If you fall victim to the negative self-talk that says you’re an imposter or undeserving of reaching greatness, then you will be less likely to take action toward those goals. How many times have you talked yourself out of creating a class or program because you think, “Who wants to learn from me?” Changing your mindset and releasing the blocks that hold you back doesn’t happen overnight but when you hear those negative thoughts invading, say out loud, “Why NOT me? Why shouldn’t I be the one to reach success? If not me, then who and why do they deserve it more?”
If you’re willing to take action, you will reach your goals. If you want things to be handed to you, then you’ll remain stagnant in your business and in life. Vision boards are tools used to visualize your goals and dreams and WILL work if you use the tool correctly.
Did you know TVS has launched the Inspired Action Mastermind?
A premium mastermind for mission-driven, service-based women entrepreneurs who are ready and willing to put in the work it takes to reach the next level!
Inside the Inspired Action Mastermind, we are an intimate group of entrepreneurs, all of which are committed to the success of one another’s businesses. It is a mastermind that provides the support and guidance you need to help you move your business forward. Because, when you’re in the right mastermind group, you can start to see your business and yourself through someone else’s eyes as you support one another and leverage each other’s experiences.
If you are ready and willing to shift your mindset and tackle all the hard questions to accomplish your dreams, then join us.
How to Know if Your Vision Board Will Work
How to Know if Your Vision Board Will Work
Hello, November! This is the month to…
November is the last month of autumn, but the beginning of a new adventure; time to take risks and do the unexpected!
November
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5 Ways Vision Boards Help You Reach Your Goals
5 Ways Vision Boards Help You Reach Your Goals
Do you set goals for yourself, either in your personal life or for your business? If not, how do you know you’re growing or making progress? When was the last time you allowed yourself to daydream about the type of life you want? What is your WHY, the reason behind all the long hours you spend on your business?
Creating a vision board has become a popular activity in recent years, especially as the New Year approaches and people think about the past year and the New Year’s resolutions they want to keep. A vision board is simply one tool that helps you visualize your dreams and your goals. How so, you ask? Let’s explore 5 ways vision boards help you reach your goals…
Vision boards make you focus on what’s important to you.
Whether you combine a personal vision board with a professional one or keep them both separate, thinking about what you want in life or in business forces you to prioritize what’s important. Do you want to buy your first house or move to a warmer climate? Putting a photo of your dream location by the beach will inspire you to work harder and not undercut your prices. If you want to move, you alone can make that happen and you’ll make better business decisions based on that desire to move.
Visualization stimulates the creative side of your brain.
Placing your vision board within sight of your desk or computer serves as a daily reminder of what you want to achieve. Some believe keeping it open by your nightstand helps stimulate your subconscious before you go to bed, which makes you motivated upon waking. With your creativity soaring, keep a notebook handy to jot down any ideas you have for a new course or coaching program you want to create.
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Focusing on goals makes you recognize new resources or opportunities.
Visualizing yourself living in a warmer climate (or whatever your primary goal is) will motivate you to work towards that goal but you’ll also notice new opportunities or resources which can lead you to reach your goal. These resources may have always been present but now that you’re focused on your goal, you will see them in a new light: as a way to help you reach that intended goal.
Break out of your comfort zone by stating a big, scary goal.
Are you stuck in a rut because you’re afraid to break out of your comfort zone? Acknowledging big goals – as scary and outrageous as they may be – will help you step out and take on new challenges, all in the name of reaching that scary goal. If your goal is to speak in front of an audience of 5,000 at your favourite conference, then you’ll start to see more opportunities for smaller speaking engagements. These smaller gigs will give you lots of practice and build your name recognition so when the organizers of your favourite conference advertise they’re looking for speakers, you’ll be well prepared to submit your name.
Seeing a big goal forces you out of the daydream and into action.
Nothing happens without some action on your part. Vision boards are not magic tricks; they are instead a tool that spurs us into action because we finally have clarity and know what we want out of life. Visualize your ideal life then approach each day with action steps that will lead you toward that ideal life.
Aside from these reasons, creating vision boards can be a very relaxing and fun family activity. So grab some glue and some old magazines and start daydreaming!
Vision Boards Help You Reach Your Goals
vision boards help you reach your goals.
Hello, June!
30 Day Blogging Bootcamp – Now Available!
Blogging is a great way to grow your reach and engagement with your target audience. It’s also fun and easy to do and frankly, it can be quite profitable if you do it right. I invite you to join me for 30 days, inside the TVS Workshop for my Blogging Bootcamp. I’ll have a fresh new post for you each day that will help you accomplish two things:
1. Give You Plenty of Ideas for New Content to Help You Become a More Consistent Blogger
My first goal with this challenge is to give you plenty of ideas for things to blog about. Sometimes it is hard to come up with something fresh and unique to write about. So, when you’re stuck with writer’s block or just feeling a little uninspired, look no further than these quick and easy content posts.
Use them right away, or file them away for those days when you’re struggling to post consistently.
2. Tips, Strategies, and How-To Info to Help You Become a Better Blogger
My second goal is to help you and challenge you to become a better blogger. We all have things we can improve and strive to do better. Every other day I’ll have a new tip, idea, or strategy for you. Try them as we work through the Bootcamp and start incorporating as many of them as possible in your blogging.
The reward will be more engagement, more traffic, and more subscribers and hopefully, at the end of the day, more cash in your pocket – results will vary of course, but I promise to share my best stuff with you.
30 Day Blogging Bootcamp
How This Will Work
Once you sign up, each day for the next 30 days I will send you an email and share either a content or strategy tip with you. If you haven’t already, become a member of New Entrepreneurs Workshop in to find inspiration and discuss each day’s content with others that have signed up.
So don’t wait and start building your blog and your confidence online. Learn how to provide consistency, easily keep your commitment and find clarity.
I think you’ll love getting into the habit of blogging consistently and you’ll be amazed at how much your audience and your traffic will grow in those 30 days.
As an added bonus – be sure to bookmark 52 Blog Ideas for your business, to help you with some great content ideas for your blog!
Blog consistently with confidence by signing up for the bootcamp.
Stop Compromising Your Happiness
Stop Compromising Your Happiness
Did you know you could be compromising your own happiness without even realizing it?
If you constantly find yourself feeling unhappy and dissatisfied with your life, it’s worth looking within yourself.
Discover 4 things that could be compromising your happiness right now.
That Inner Critic
We all have an inner critic and sometimes it can be pretty hard to ignore. It’s constantly there judging you and making you doubt your own abilities.
It’s true, we’re often our own worst enemies and listening to your inner critic is only going to crush your happiness. So, how can you stop yourself from listening to this negative inner voice?
When you notice that inner voice telling you negative things, contradict it. Think something positive to counteract that negative thought or judgment. Replacing negativity with positivity will help you to start fighting back against your inner critic.
Playing it Safe
Do you avoid taking new opportunities out of fear? Playing it safe may feel like the best course of action, but it could be really jeopardizing your happiness.
It’s often the fear of failure which stops us from going after the things we want. However, if you start seeing failure as a positive learning experience, you’ll start taking more opportunities. You’ll never know what you can achieve if you don’t even try.
So, stop playing it safe. Take those opportunities. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
Focusing on the Past or Future
While it’s normal and healthy to look back in the past or towards the future, it’s important not to lose sight of the present. The trouble is, if you’re too focused on the past or the future, you’re not going to be able to enjoy right now.
The past cannot be changed, and the future cannot be controlled. However, right now at this very moment, you can choose to be happy. So, stop beating yourself up over the past and stop worrying about what’s to come. Live in the moment and see just how much happier you feel.
Over-Dramatizing Things
In life, things do go wrong. It’s impossible to be happy 100% of the time. However, some of us have a habit of over-dramatizing the negative experiences in our life.
Do you find that when the smallest things don’t go your way, you think to yourself “that’s it, everything is falling apart”? Blow the littlest things out of proportion and convince yourself it’s worse than it really is. It’s a big drain on your happiness and all you’re doing is worrying too much over nothing. (I’ve been there, and live every day making the conscious decision to keep the over-dramatization of things under control.)
These are just 4 things that could be compromising your happiness. What you need to remember is that you control your happiness. So, make the decision to stop making these mistakes and learn to let things go if you truly want to be happier.
Have some more tips on how to not compromise happiness? Join us inside the Studio Workshop Facebook Group and please share! We’d love to hear from you!
Stop Compromising Your Happiness
Stop Compromising Your Happiness
For more great articles and resources – check out my resource page!
10 Tips for Running a Creative Business.
10 Tips for running a creative business.
Creative business owners often have the same challenge. That challenge is how to be creative and successful. This isn’t always easy to achieve, so I’ve put together these ten tips to help you in your venture.
Focus on one area of expertise.
Put your focus into one area and become good at it. If you focus on what you’re good at as opposed to doing what people want, you’ll notice you have a greater chance of success. This is because you specialize in one area, allowing you to offer more value in your specific area of work.
Plan where you want your business to go.
If you have a good vision of what you want, this will be very helpful. You can always change your plan as things in life change, but having your plan written down will keep you focused on your goals.
Do different things.
When you change things up a little bit, people are bound to notice and pay attention to you. Realize that if you only offer the same things as everyone else around you, you won’t stand out in the crowd of businesses. Taking risks gets you noticed.
Pay attention to the numbers.
You may work in a more creative field but that doesn’t mean you can forget about numbers. You have to ensure that you have a regular cash flow and without an organized way to go through all of the numbers, you’ll never know how successful you are.
Share your ideas to revolutionize.
Talking to others is the key to a successful business. Having a great diversity of ideas can help you to adopt an innovative way of doing things for your business. Collaboration helps you to succeed in this world.
Have proper protection of your ideas.
You don’t want to ever run into the issue of someone stealing your ideas. Be sure to be able to defend your ideas if you ever do run into this unfortunate issue. Your ideas are the essence of what you and your business are, so ensure that you know how to protect yourself including use of trademarks and/or copyrights as needed.
Take a digital approach to your business.
Engage with your customers, employees, and suppliers. Learn how to use different social media platforms to help promote your business. This will help you to extend the boundaries of your business and how to appeal to people to support you and your business.
Don’t lose hope.
People always make mistakes but it’s important that you move away from them and learn from them. You need to be determined to run a business of your own so don’t give up easily.
Always strive to improve.
Continuous improvements help to make a business succeed. This includes looking back at things that went wrong and making them better.
Have fun.
You’re supposed to have fun while running a creative business. Having fun makes work enjoyable, even the more routine tasks that form part of any business.
It’s not easy running your own creative business but when following these tips, hopefully, it can help your business run a little bit easier.
Did I miss anything? I would love to hear from you! What are some of your top tips for a creative business owner? Please share in the comments below or join us inside the Studio Workshop Community group!
P.S. Another great article that might help you out is 7 Ways to Plan Your Rate Hikes – A TVS Business Program, check it out!
10 Tips for running a creative business.
10 Tips for running a creative business.
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
We have all heard the saying “don’t sweat the small stuff.” right? I am sure you know that getting stressed over the little things is a significant way to bring unnecessary grief into your life. It’s believed that we can avoid a lot of negative feelings, and even health problems, simply by learning not to let the little things get to us.
I truly believe it so, here are a few things that I try, and I do mean try, to do and hope they also help you not sweat the small stuff!
Focus on the Big Picture
When something small happens that makes you want to get angry, compare the moment’s significance to everything else going on in your own life, and in the world around you. You may have spilled your cake batter on the floor an hour before your guests are due to arrive, but… Are your friends still going to love you and enjoy the evening even if you don’t have a freshly baked cake for them? Probably, so clean up that mess and put your energy somewhere other than berating yourself for this small mistake.
Don’t Forget That We All Make Mistakes
When something threatens to destroy your positive outlook, remember that everyone makes mistakes. Whether it is yourself or someone else who caused the situation that right now, feels like a train wreck, keep in mind that mistakes are a normal part of life and they happen to everyone. Don’t let one bad moment take you by surprise.
Forgive Others
It can be hard to forgive someone else when it feels like they have brought you extra work and stress. If someone rear-ends your vehicle or swings their car door open far enough to bang into yours, you may be tempted to lash out at them verbally. However, stop and think about how it would feel if the roles were reversed. I am pretty sure these types of things are not done on purpose, so don’t act and feel as though you have never made a mistake. React with kindness and choose empathy.
Forgive Yourself
Forgiving others, for the most part, is easy. Forgiving ourselves – not so much. There are many moments that we treat ourselves worse than we would ever allow a friend, client or even a stranger to treat us.
When you are having a difficult time forgiving yourself, think of how you would handle a similar mistake made by a team member friend. Stop and think before bullying yourself, and consider seeking professional help if you can’t stop a cascade of negative thoughts every time you fall short of perfection.
A perfect example would be when a team member falls ill, do you tell them to stay home, rest and get better? I am sure you do! Then why do you push yourself to work when you fall ill? If you are anything like me, you would power through and rest after work is done for the day. It wasn’t until after I started seeing a counselor that I realized that I was not able to treat myself with kindness and forgive myself for the littlest of things.
Ask Yourself Will It Matter in Ten Years?
We all have problems, and usually, at that moment, any problem seems big. Perception is not always the truth, though, and it is up to us to put our situation into perspective so that we can adequately deal with whatever comes our way.
When something negative happens in your life, ask yourself if it will matter in ten years. If it won’t, let it go. Heck, I sometimes ask if I will even remember in 10 days! So, if someone gives you the middle finger in traffic, don’t lose your cool, it’s just not worth it. Save your emotions for things that are life-changing and deserve your full attention. Laugh it off and move on.
I guess, in short, when something goes wrong, you have two choices. You can slip into a range of emotions, or let it go. Making the choice not to sweat the small stuff will bring you life-changing happiness, and you will be thankful for your own shift in perspective.
Now, I’d love to hear from you. What are some of the things that you practice and suggest for others to do, to help not sweat the small stuff?
3 Proven Ways to Market Your New Business
The world is filled with great ideas and broke business owners with fabulous products but no sales. Trust me. So here are 3 Ways to Market Your New Business.
The fact is, ideas are not what drives most business success. Marketing does. So before you quit your day job to branch out on your own, it pays to have a solid marketing plan in place. Start with these 3 ideas to get your creative juices flowing.
Free Webinars
For information product sellers, coaches, and service providers, one of the best sources of new clients is in free training webinars. No matter what your niche, the promise of in-depth training at no cost is enough to entice potential clients to part with an email address (which you’ll be able to market to later) and an hour of their time.
Not only that, but webinars are a fantastic way for those potential customers to get to know you better. And the better they know you, the more likely they are to buy.
Content Marketing
Not comfortable hosting a webinar? Hit the keyboard and start sharing your thoughts and ideas via your blog, ebooks, guest articles and other written content. For internet marketers, this gives readers a taste of what they can expect from your product. If you sell physical products, it provides the perfect opportunity to share useful tips and other important information with your buyers.
Of course, there’s another important benefit to content marketing, too: search engine optimization. Google and other search engines index the words on your website and use the information to present search results to their users. Content marketing is a tool you can use to make the most of these results and to bring more potential buyers to your website.
Paid Advertising
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google and plenty of other sites all offer paid placement, and with today’s powerful analytics tools, it’s easy to create ads and drive traffic inexpensively. Consider starting with Facebook, since the cost is low and it’s easy to target your ads to your ideal client. Once you’ve perfected your funnel, you can branch out into more costly ads with a larger reach, such as Google AdWords or another ad network.
Don’t limit yourself to these three marketing methods though. There are dozens of others you can try, including affiliate programs, JV partnerships, automated funnels, direct mail campaigns, and even television advertising. The key is to keep testing and tweaking to make the most of every marketing effort so that your business continues to grow.
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Rock Star Business Babe…
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