Small Business

Tips to Creating Your Action Plan and Business Timeline

Most businesses start out with a dream and an inspiration, but that is where it ends. Even the most innovative businesses can wind up closing their doors because a good action plan and a focused timeline were not in place from the beginning. Tips to Creating Your Action Plan and Business Timeline

There are many benefits to creating your action plan and online business timeline. When you have an action plan put into place and follow it regularly and continue to focus on your business timeline, things will run much more smoothly for your new business, your employees, and your customers.

Tips to Creating Your Action Plan and Business Timeline, tips to create a powerful action plan

Streamline Your Path – If you have a dream and a vision – excellent. Now, you must have knowledge of where your business is heading down the line. It is important to focus on a streamlined path when you first start your business. Otherwise, you are likely to find that your business is “all over the place.” Be sure to be specific in where you expect your business to go in the first twelve months.

Put It in Writing – In the early stages of creating your business, it is important to create an action plan in writing. Without this piece of the puzzle, it can get messy quite quickly. Having an action plan in your head or verbalizing it with other team members is not nearly as efficient as putting it down in writing.

Measure Your Goals Consistently – Make sure to check up on your goals often. By measuring your goals, you consistently marry those goals against where you are at the moment. If your goals are not in alignment with where they should be, then it is time to re-evaluate.

Break Down Bigger Projects into More Manageable Ones – When you create your action plan, make certain to break down bigger projects into more manageable ones. In this way, you will be able to get the whole job done without it feeling overwhelming.

Delegate – Do not be afraid to delegate some of your action plan. If you try to do everything all on your own, chances are all those balls you are juggling will come tumbling down sooner rather than later.

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Tips to Creating Your Action Plan and Business Timeline, tips to create an online business timeline

Create a Timeline for Every Task – You may think it is not necessary to create a timeline for each and every task; however, a timeline is essential for success. Creating a timeline will help you to manage your time and your business.

Keep It Real – A timeline should have a manageable date attached to each task. If you create a timeline goal too soon, then you may set yourself up for failure. By being realistic, you set yourself up for success.

Differentiate Your Tasks – Make certain to differentiate your short-term tasks from your long-term tasks. For example, a short-term task would be to hire employees and a long-term task would be to improve your social media status.

Stick to Your Timeline No Matter What – You have to have integrity in this area. You need to stick with your timeline no matter what, as this is the only way to achieve success.

Stay Focused – It is very easy to let a task go because other “stuff” gets in the way. Stay focused and stick to your timeline. Check your progress as you go along the way.

How to Perform a SWOT Analysis for Your Online Business Idea

If you have an online business idea, chances are that you want to protect that idea. You will also want to do anything and everything you can in order to make that business strive and thrive.

Using a SWOT analysis for your online business idea is a great way to assess your business idea. First, however, let us examine what a SWOT analysis is. Put simply, it involves assessing these factors:

Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats

A SWOT analysis is valuable in evaluating a product, service, new business endeavour or even an employee.

SWOT Analysis for Your Online Business

Strengths – By evaluating your company’s strengths, you do yourself a great service. By looking through a microscope into what is working, you can enhance that performance and its progress and multiply it.

By mimicking a proven formula that already works, you increase your success two-fold. You can also pinpoint specific areas of success and magnify them innovatively in order to grow those strengths.

Weaknesses – The whole point in evaluating weaknesses for your online business idea is to eliminate or at the very least minimize them. Weaknesses are in every aspect of business and if unaddressed, those weaknesses can fester and grow. Eliminating or minimizing those weaknesses will keep them from detracting from your success in an online venture.

There are two major categories of measurement – internal factors, which are within the organization, and external factors, which are outside the organization – with strengths and weaknesses belonging to internal factors.

Opportunities – Evaluating opportunities is useful in seeking knowledge on how those opportunities are useful to gain momentum for your online business endeavours. Taking advantage of any existing opportunities and expanding them to greater heights will provide more success for your business idea.

Threats – Evaluating threats in the environment is crucial to the success of your online business idea.

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SWOT Analysis for Your Online Business

Opportunities and threats belong to the external factors category. If you are on the lookout for threats, warding them off before they occur is key to maintaining optimal success as a line of defence for your project or business.

Evaluate your online business idea for its strengths by highlighting the areas that receive the most positive response. If you have done a test market on a product or service or have a website with a comments section, check to see where the positive highlights are for your online idea.

Evaluate your online business idea for its weaknesses by answering a negative comment on a website, asking for the opinions of others, and checking the competitions’ websites.

Seek out new and innovative opportunities based on existing ideas that you can expand. Search out opportunities within other businesses to grow and expand your own.

By utilizing a SWOT analysis, you protect and enhance your online business idea.

SWOT Analysis for Your Online Business

 

How to Make Your Business Stand Out from the Competition

How to Make Your Business Stand Out from the Competition

Since the creation of the internet and social media, hundreds of thousands of businesses have emerged. Of course, you want your business to stand out head and shoulders above the rest. How do you achieve that goal? There are several ways to make your business stand apart from the competition but you have to start by evaluating your own business.

Stand Out from the CompetitionStand Out from the Competition, laptop on woman's desk

Evaluate Your Own Company

It is often very easy to compare your company to others. The tendency may be to think that they do something better than you. However, it is most important to start from within. Looking within your own company is the place to begin.

Look at where you have been static – Take a good long look at where you have been static in your own company. Has your company become stale and outdated? Is there room for something new and innovative? Can you improve a product or service?

What can you reuse – Is there a sales letter that you can re-circulate or a product that you can enhance in order to gain new clients and customers?

What needs recreating? – Is there an area of your business such as reorganizing one of your departments? Perhaps management and assistant management need to put better communication policies and procedures into place.

Does your product or service live up to today’s standards? – Look and see if your product or service lives up today’s standards. Once you have evaluated this, take a look and see if your product or service is trending according to today’s standards.

Where do you stand with social media? – If your website does not incorporate social media, then it is time to include this all-important aspect into your business. Many times a customer will immediately leave a web page if he or she does not see social media buttons.

How can you reach more clients? – Investigate how you can reach more clients. Perhaps you need to set up a Facebook fan page if you do not already have one put in place. Check to see if you are responding to comments that visitors leave on your webpage if you have one. Engaging with clients is a sure-fire way to bring them closer to you rather than alienate them. Reach out to other businesses and blogs to create a sharing opportunity on each other’s web sites through guest blogging or blog rolls.

how to stand out from the competition

Today’s business is extremely fast-paced and moves at a rapid speed through change. Keeping up with those changes is the only way to stay ahead of the competition.

Taking a look at all these things in your own company is the foundation of a company that is capable of standing out from the competition.

Stand Out from the Competition

30-Day Blogging Masterclass

The internet has an insatiable appetite for information. Billions of searches are conducted every single day looking for everything from how to bake an apple pie to why zebras have stripes. For anyone who conducts business online, these searches represent a steady flow of potential customers who are looking for what you have to offer.  You just need to be very clear on what you offer, in order to be able to provide that value.

What you need to know:

Your Ideal Reader

Who is your ideal reader? What does she want? What are her questions? What does she find entertaining? What could help her right now?

Your Position

Your blog should position you as an expert and industry leader. Are you using your voice and personality to establish yourself as an expert?

30 blogging for business masterclass, woman working on her laptop with a cup of coffee wearing a pink skirt and high heelsDefine your goals

What will separate your blog from the rest will be your ability to visualize a direct and coherent vision, with long term aims and strategies. So, be sure to establish your goals and have them tie into your blog’s brand and values.

Download the FREE Excercise Worksheet

Remember: Blogging is not a fast business-growth strategy but it is excellent for long-term sustainability. Those posts you write this month will continue to work for you many years from now, bringing in more and more traffic and potential clients.

Also, if you haven’t already, be sure to read 52 Blog Ideas for your business, who couldn’t use 52 blog ideas?

[Tweet “Quick Tip: Listen before you blog. It’s not about how smart you are, it’s about how well you serve.”]

Women working together with their business coach, Blogging Masterclass

P.S. Do you know someone that would benefit from this 30 Day Blogging Masterclass? Send them over to the TVS Classroom to sign up.

Blogging Masterclasslogging Challenge

11 Pros and Cons of Working for Yourself

Working for yourself isn’t all rainbows and unicorns, sometimes it is just as hard as working for someone else. It’s up to you to determine whether the good outweighs the bad and if it is something you will be able to accomplish. So, it’s good for you to know in advance what the pros and cons of working for yourself are so that you can be realistic about what you’re getting yourself into. Pros and Cons of Working for Yourself

Cons:

Work and home-life often collide: Due to the lack of planning, and no clear picture of work versus time off, you’ll find yourself working odd hours. This will be to accommodate both, the needs of your family and your business. Because of this, you may feel overwhelmed and feeling as if you never have a day off.

You’ll do a lot of work for free: Much of the work you do for your business is not billable, therefore will feel like free work until you start making a profit. It can be hard to push yourself to do things that aren’t producing income right now, but you must push through so that you can keep your business running smoothly.

Family will ask you to do stuff (“since you’re not doing anything”): Not just family, but sometimes friends will start to depend on you being there for them when they didn’t while you were at your 9-5 job. They might ask you to help them out by watching their child, who’s not feeling well, so they can go to work. Family members might stop helping out as much around the house because you are home all day. It can be never-ending.

You’ll crave being out of the house: Sometimes, when you go out, as you’re on your way home you’ll get the distinct feeling you’re going to work. You will want to do anything but go home, even grocery shop.

Stuff will distract you: Without a direct supervisor, even the most studious and organized individual can go off the rails due to the internet, television, pets, that pile of dirty dishes in the sink, just stuff around to distract you from work. It’s up to you and only you to set up a good working schedule to help you avoid this.

Pros:

No more living by the clock: If you arrange your business right you can wake up naturally without an alarm forcing you to get up when your body isn’t ready. You can also go to bed when you want to as well. It’s freedom very few have, to not live by the clock.

No more traffic jams: One of the best perks is not having to be caught in a traffic jam during rush hour when you need to pee!  You won’t have to do that anymore and it will be a small blessing, most especially on bad weather days when everyone else has to trudge through the snow or the heatwave.

Fewer work-related interruptions: Office chatter can get overwhelming at times and it can be difficult to get work done due to them.  Be honest, did you ever really get work done due to a meeting? 9 out of 10 times, during the meeting you’re thinking about how you could be getting work done, instead of talking about it.

Pros and Cons of Working for Yourself

You really CAN work in your PJs: Oh yes you can. You can wear PJs, yoga pants, or a moo-moo; no one cares. You can even get inspired right out of the shower and work naked if you want to. It’s your business and your house.

A flexible schedule: If you have a parent-teacher meeting you don’t have to ask permission from a superior or manager to attend. If you want to get your hair done, take the time to get it done. Whatever you want to do during the day is up to you – as long as you find time to also get your work done so you can get paid. Your schedule is your own.

You can eat healthier – Going to a 9-5 job, often causes you to eat out for lunch five days a week. That can not only be super expensive, but it is also very unhealthy for you. Working at home, you can take the time to prepare healthy lunches for yourself or eat leftovers from dinner the night before. Save money, and save your life.

Working from home offers many benefits and, like everything, a few drawbacks. It’s up to you to determine if you have the disposition for it. You’ll need to be able to rein in family and friends who want to take advantage of you, as well as taking a good look at yourself, to stay on track for creating a healthy and profitable home business.

Pros and Cons of Working for Yourself

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.

Sign up for the 30 Day Blogging Bootcamp ($27)

Start building your blog and your confidence online. 30 Days. 30 Tasks. One epic month of learning how to blog for your business.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.

Sign up for the 30 Day Blogging Bootcamp ($27)

Build a Business, Not Another Job

Build a Business, Not Another Job
During this crisis, many people dream of working for themselves, being their own boss, and having the freedom to only take on clients and projects they love.

What they don’t realize, though, is that there is a huge difference between building a business and being self-employed. Because business is an art-form.

This is something I learned the hard way throughout my last 20 years of being “self-employed.” A term I no longer use, and you shouldn’t either.

Andy Warhol quote and art of banana build a business not another job

Business owners scale their income. Self-employed people trade dollars for hours.

Business owners leverage the skills and talents of others. Self-employed people rely only on their own skills.

Discouraged yet? Don’t be. Every business owner started out self-employed. Just don’t stay there. These tips will help you build a sustainable business instead of just another job.

Don’t Try to Do It All Yourself

Building a sustainable business requires that you leverage the talents and time of others. While it might seem cost-effective to simply do everything yourself—especially in the start-up phase when you likely have more time than money—it’s a path to burnout and stress.

Instead, separate your tasks into those that you love and are especially suited for (such as marketing) and those you dislike and aren’t good at. Then make a solid plan to get those that you aren’t good at off your list of things to do. If you feel like you can’t afford to outsource it all right now, start with what you tend to procrastinate the most on, even if it’s just a few hours each month.

Don’t Allow Yourself to Work All the Time

The trouble with working at home is that you live at work. And that means that there’s no clear line in the sand between your workday and your home life. No transition from one to the other.

Since there’s always work to do, it’s easy to find yourself working every available moment—often to the detriment of your family relationships.

You can help avoid this by:

  • Setting—and maintaining—clear work hours
  • Having an office with a door you can close when you’re done
  • Scheduling time for family and other activities
  • Taking time for yourself

Vacations and Downtime Are Important

Don’t create a business that requires you to be “in the office” every day. At the start, you may need to be available more, but you should definitely be planning for the day when you can be “off the grid” for extended periods of time.

  • Have trusted virtual assistants who can handle things when you’re not available
  • Leverage automation tools such as autoresponders and auto-webinar systems
  • Create repeatable systems so you’re not always re-inventing the wheel

While you might not be able to hit the road with no internet access for weeks at a time, at the very least you should be able to reduce your workload to a daily check-in.

Sound impossible? It’s not. With some forethought and planning, you can create a team—and the systems they need—to successfully run your business without becoming overwhelmed and overworked.

Business is an art-form, it takes practice and consistency to ensure it’s a success. Go inside the studio and look into my Art of Business Startup Program. It is a crash course on starting your own company off on the right foot.  This 5 module program walks you through big-picture dreaming and planning by helping you create a business plan, define your purpose, set goals and build a strategy.

Be sure to follow the Studio’s Facebook Page! We’d love to hear from you. The page is a free space where you will find business-focused training and support for female entrepreneurs, as well as inspiration and Studio updates!

Build a Business, not another job