Make Your Desire Bigger Than Your Doubt
by Alicia Forest | Aug 16, 2020 | Business-Building, Mindset
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. ❤️
8 Ways to Grow Your Business During a Summer Lull
Have things slowed down for your business now that we’re in the midst of the warmer months and people are on vacation or otherwise taking a break from their usual routines? Use this downtime to focus on getting your business ready to rock for the fall by implementing some of the 8 ideas below:
1. Evaluate your staffing needs.
If you haven’t hired an assistant yet, whether that’s a virtual assistant, an in-person assistant, or a combination of the two, now is a great time to do so. Begin by creating your ideal profile of what you want your assistant to look like, and then start putting out feelers to your networks about exactly what you’re looking for in an assistant.
Once you’ve found the right person for you, the summer months are a great time to train someone so they are up to speed come the busier fall months.
If you already have help, take some time to evaluate their performance. This includes taking a look not just at your current assistant(s) but also any outside vendors you work with, like your web designer, your shopping cart system, your list service, or your copywriter.
If you’re finding their work to not be meeting your needs and expectations, follow the same process as you did for hiring an assistant. Start with creating the ideal profile of who you’re looking for and then put that information out to your networks for recommendations.
In the Lively Biz Business Club, we have a complete Done-For-Your training on Hiring Help, which includes delegation lists, job description, non-disclosure agreement, employment agreement and more. (Find out more about the Club here)
2. Increase your learning to increase your earning.
The summer is a great time to educate yourself on whatever it is you need to know to take your business to the next level.
Choose a business-building project, like building your list or increasing your search engine rankings, and invest some of your education budget into a program or product that will help you learn what you need to know.
Then plan the time to actually learn and implement the material, and you will reap the benefits come the fall.
3. Make-over or create your keep-in-touch collateral.
Take an objective look at how you keep in touch on a regular basis with your market, and ask a few colleagues or your coach to offer you some feedback on it as well. Make any changes you think might help it be more effective as marketing and sales tool.
If you haven’t started a consistent keep-in-touch method for your business yet, the summer is a great time to put one together and start sending it to your list regularly.
4. Clean out and organize your email.
Is your inbox an energy drain?
Mine was! But I was committed to having less than 0 emails in my inbox before leaving for vacation this summer, which I managed by being ruthless with the delete key, answering what was necessary, and delegating the rest.
Take a look at your inbox and either respond to, file in the appropriate folder, delegate or delete. Once I did this, I felt the drain from hundreds of emails just sitting in my inbox slipping away. Take some time each day to delete old emails, reply to ones that only require a quick response, and set the ‘rules’ feature to automatically sort future incoming mail into appropriate folders.
In the Lively Biz Business Club, I just released a video training on How to Detox Your Inbox. (Find out more about the Club here)
5. Revamp your office.
This is something I do just before I leave for the summer as well. I love the feeling of throwing out so many old files and restocking my bookshelves so I can actually see what I own! And by doing so, I’ll be creating space for more clients and more abundance to come into my business!
But revamping your office doesn’t just include cleaning out and reorganizing your stuff. If you also have tools that aren’t working the way they should, get them fixed so they do, or replace them. So, if you’re printer only works when it feels like it, get it fixed or get a new one!
6. Clean up your computer.
Tired of wasting time searching for stuff on your computer? Take some time this summer to clean up your files, delete ones you don’t need anymore, reorganize what you do need into appropriate folders, and remove old software that you no longer use. Your hard drive will thank you!
7. Write down your accomplishments so far this year.
It’s important to pause periodically and recognize your successes. And now that we’re halfway through the year, take some time to write down and savor your accomplishments so far. Then plan out what you’d like to achieve for the rest of the year. This will motivate and inspire you going forward.
While this summer is certainly different than in the past, it’s still a special time of year when life takes on a more leisurely pace, and the weather (at least here in New England) invites us outside more often than now. Make sure you take some time to enjoy this time for yourself too. After all, isn’t time freedom one of the reasons you went into business for yourself in the first place? 😉
If you want to learn more about the Lively Biz Business Club, click here.