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Turn An Idea Into An Online Business

Turn An Idea Into An Online Business

by | Online Business

When I started my business in 2016, one of the first things I did was research how do I turn my idea into an online business? My idea was to work from home as a virtual assistant. I researched all the things such as; writing a business plan, figure out your niche, who is your ideal client, what services you want to provide, the list goes on and on. All the information can be overwhelming. How do you turn your idea into an online business?

My struggle

As a newbie to the online world and entrepreneurship, I thought that I had a really good idea for my work-from-home business I went out and did all the hard stuff that turns out was the way easy stuff.

I did all the research on the competitors that were offering similar services.

I spent extensive time building a business plan. I invested in online learning. I thought I had everything figured out logistically such as contracts, invoices, proposals, software all the things like that I needed to onboard the clients and make an impact.

Don’t get me wrong, those pieces are essential when you turn an idea into an online business. As it turns out, I also believe those are the easy part of starting your online business.

Yes, I do know that sounds crazy. But stay with me here, the actual hard part is getting out of your own way. That was my struggle when it came to turning my idea into an online business.

I can almost hear you thinking what the heck is she even talking about. The problem was as a new online entrepreneur I let my monkey minds get in the way of the things that I wanted to achieve in my online business.

No Stones Coming From Here

If you are experiencing the monkey mind, let me assure you that no stones will be coming from this direction, LOL. You see it takes one to know one, am I right?

This was me when I started out going from an employee to an entrepreneur. I did all those things, all those easy things. Thinking they were the hard things.

Here’s the main issue with that, doesn’t matter how fabulous your business plan is or your onboarding process if you do not have the confidence to put yourself out there and find clients that need the services you are offering.

Turn An Idea Into An Online Business

All the things

If you take months to get everything on the back end figured out, you have zero money coming into the business. That’s the problem.

How do you even know if people want what you have to offer?

The solution is simple, start with a beta test for your idea.

When you start with a beta, it allows you to figure out if there is actual interest in your offer.

Here’s why it’s important to validate your offer, you will bring money in the door and it builds your confidence to actually provide that service or create that course.

With a beta, you’ll figure out if you’re on the right track. Are you giving people what they actually want versus what you think they want? Because they are truly two different things.

Stops the Worry

Because the thing is when you build that confidence piece of what you have to offer, your idea is desirable for people.

This my Friend, in turn, helps you to not worry.

Worry about saying the wrong thing, worry about putting the wrong social posts out on social media, worrying about all those things that come along when you aren't confident in what you're doing, what you’re saying, and putting out there in the world.

The hard part to Turn An Idea Into An Online Business

The hard part is when you're just getting started and you do not have that confidence to getting out there and tell others about your offer.

The hard part is staying focused when you hear no to your idea.

It feels so personal. But, it is not. It is the feedback to tweak how you are presenting your idea to others.

It's having the confidence to keep going even when you do not get the yes.

Fortunately for me, as a former sales rep, I understood that you have to get a lot of no before you hear a yes.

As long as you have the confidence that you have a solution to a problem. You don't have to worry about any of the other things.

The result of worry will get you absolutely nowhere to turn an idea into an online business. It will only keep you stuck in worry and questioning if you're doing the right thing or not.

Say You Can

Guess what, I believe in you, I know that you can go out and have the confidence to turn an idea into an online business.

l

Little Side Note

I have a mean girl, how about you?
I can hear her whisper to me anytime that I’m having doubts in regards to my ability. She is attempting to keep me safe, really she only keeps me stuck.
Because I know that I’m a mean girl, I’m able to do the work need to shut her down to change my thinking about myself. If you’re a new online entrepreneur, this work is essential to your success.

✁ Just a Snippet

Here is just a snippet of the important points, you know for the skimmer in you. 🤪

  • I researched all the things such as; writing a business plan, figure out your niche, who is your ideal client, what services you want to provide, the list goes on and on.
  • I found out that the actual hard part is getting out of your own way.
  • It doesn’t matter how fabulous your business plan is or your onboarding process if you do not have the confidence to put yourself out there and find clients that need the services you are offering.
  • If you take months to get everything on the back end figured out, you have zero money coming into the business. That’s the problem.
  • How do you even know if people want what you have to offer?
  • Because the thing is when you build that confidence piece of what you have to offer, your idea is desirable for people.
  • The hard part is when you're just getting started and you do not have that confidence to getting out there and tell others about your offer.
  • The hard part is staying focused when you hear no to your idea.
  • Get your offer out there!
Quarterly Review & Planning

Quarterly Review & Planning

by | Planning-Organization-Productivity

Oh my goodness, quarterly planning is one of my favorite things to do. Let’s go ahead and step through a quarterly review and planning! Why are these days so important for your online business? Because what you focus on improves. Taking a few hours each quarter to review the previous quarter and plan for the next gets you out of the day-to-day and strategically focused on growing your business. 

If you’d like here is the perfect opportunity to download my planner. It will walk you through this!

This is non-negotiable! 
 

You must have enough time set aside for reviewing and planning your quarters. Block off two hours on your CEO day to get this done, preferably before the end of the quarter. However, this can be done at any 90 Day increment. Copy and paste the link for this blog into your calendar event. (: 

Set the tone

Grab a cup of coffee, water, or your drink of choice. Also, have a timer handy you’ll want that. If you don’t have a timer, simply Google the word timer, and one will pop up in the browser.  

If you like essential oils as I do, here is an article on 10 Essentials Oils for memory improvement and better focus. Read it here. https://www.wellnesstoday.com/be-well/mind/10-essential-oils-for-memory-improvement-and-better-focus 

Limit your distractions

Turn off all the distractions because it's time to get focused on your online business. Let me elaborate, turn off your notifications, put your phone in do not disturb mode, and close all the application and browser windows. 

If your business growth is unimportant to you, then who is it important to? Put on your CEO hat and be the person your future self will be proud of. (: 

Unlock the Secret to Business Growth: Learn How to Plan Your Next Quarter!

Start with Reflection

Now, this is important for your quarterly review and planning to begin reflecting on where you’re coming from in your business. You need to look back to look forward. 

I can almost hear you thinking, what the heck do I reflect on?  No problem, I’ve got you. 

What worked really well?

What are the areas of improvement?

Umm, total feedback – not doing that again!

Woohoo, review your win jar (in case no one has told you lately YOU’RE AMAZING, just sayin’)

Did you achieve your quarterly goal? If not, why? 

Are you on track to hit your yearly goals? 

Reflect on this last quarter, this last month, this last year, your whole time in business, whatever pops into your head. 

Go ahead now, and set the timer for five or ten minutes, whatever you feel comfortable doing. Grab your journal or notebook and get to writing. 

Mind Sweep

Stay with me now; I want you to do a mind sweep and get all of your thoughts that are distracting you out on that paper. This provides for a clear mind while you’re planning. With a mind sweep, it lets your brain know that all your thoughts are in a safe place and you don't need to worry about them while we're moving forward in the quarterly review and your next quarter planning. 

Revisit Your Vision

Moving on with our review, what's your vision? Pull that out and read it. 

What if you do not have a vision? Now is a perfect time to write one out. 

Does your vision feel in alignment with you still? Do you feel like, oh, yeah, that's my vision! 

That's exactly where I'm going. 

Your original vision for your business, is it still where you're heading now that you've grown as an entrepreneur?

Bottom line, does your vision still feel in alignment with you? Great. 

Let's put your vision on paper; what are your three-year and one-year goals?

If it's the same, beautiful. Write it out exactly the same and step into your future self that is already living the vision of your business. 

Pause and set your timer for about five minutes. 

What is your vision for the next 90 days? Pause and tap into your vision of how the next 90 days will go in your business. 

What are your goals? 

What goals do you want to achieve for the next quarter, the next six months, and the next year? Whatever it is, you can achieve them! 

 

This is where I really want you to focus. What is your goal for the next quarter? 

Will what you what to accomplish in the next quarter will push you toward your one-year goal? 

Here’s what I mean, if what you want to accomplish in the next quarter will not directly impact your one-year goal, that is pushing your business towards your vision. 

Ask yourself, why am I trying to accomplish this goal when it is not in alignment with my vision? 

As a follow-up question, would achieving this goal make you feel like you’re living your good life?

Get that timer going! You may want a bit more time for this one. 

The next thing, what do you want more of in your life and business?

For example, would you be on cloud nine if you were to do this daily in your life and business? What is it? What do you want more of in your life and business? That will make you feel like, yeah, this feels wonderful. 

Now, knowing what you want to do less in your life and business is important. The problem is there are things that you're doing that you don't need to be doing that drain your energy. 

What are those? Go ahead and write them out. Here’s why that’s important those draining tasks will be the items we look at potentially outsourcing to somebody else that would not find it draining.

And the best part is it will preserve your energy for things only you can do in your business as an entrepreneur.  

Those tasks draining your energy and focus need to get off your plate if you hope to grow your business to six figures. 

What is that? What can someone else do for you? 

Circling back to your goals, what would make you jump up and down with joy if you were to achieve them? Or have it happen? Or come across? What would that be? 

Don’t forget what your top three personal, financial, and business goals that you have for the next quarter are. 

Here’s how to filter your goals

Now, this is the kicker; this is the goal-filtering question I ask my clients.  

Read those goals that you just wrote down for your life, your business, and your finance. 

Looking at those goals and ask yourself, are you committed? Are you committed to those goals? By committing, are you willing to devote two hours a day to achieving those goals? If not, they are not meaningful to you. 

Map out important dates

Time to pull out the calendar. What dates do you need to plan around?

Here’s why this is important when planning out how to reach your goal. You’ll reverse engineer from the end date. You need to understand you’re runway. If you have two weeks out of the office for a vacation that will play a huge factor in getting stuff done.

Block all the time you’ll be out of the office. In your paper planner, you can use stickers or wasabi tape to make it fun.

  • Vacation Days
  • Important Kid Events
  • Holidays
  • Launch Dates

Breakdown the Goal

Here’s how it works, in order for the goal to be a success, there must be a commitment to follow through.

This is plain and simple, you can hope all day to reach your goal. Here’s the bottom line, if you’re not committed to creating a plan, following through, and taking action you will not have success. This is accountability Friend!

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution it’s breaking down the goal into a plan by figuring out who, what, when.

This is actually breaking down the project. Digging in and figuring out what needs to be done, who will get the work done, and when it needs to be done. You may need to figure out the where too if it needs a physical location.

👊 Quick Tip: With the project plan, depending on how much needs to get done creating this in a spreadsheet and importing it into a project management system can be a lot easier and faster.

Business Pulse

The final thing, what is your business pulse? What I mean what are the numbers telling you about your business? Do you have a healthy thriving business? Or do you have areas that need to be focused on in the next quarter?

If you’re not tracking your numbers weekly or monthly, do that now. What gets measured gets improved. Here are a few common stats.

  • Website Traffic
  • Email Subscribers
  • Engagement
  • Number of Clients

✁ Just a Snippet

Here is just a snippet of the important points, you know for the skimmer in you. 🤪

  • Looking back is the best way to move forward.
  • Are you still in alignment with your vision?
  • What are you actually committed to doing?
  • Add all the important out of office dates to your calendar
  • Create a plan and commit to your success
  • How do you know you’ve improved without having a business pulse with all your numbers?
  • Go get ’em, tiger! You’ve got this.
  • Schedule time on your calendar for your NEXT quarterly review and planning.
Step Into Clarity In Your Online Business

Step Into Clarity In Your Online Business

by | Online Business

Is this ever you? It’s the end of the day you’re reflecting on the stuff that you worked on in your online business. Even though you were busy bee looking back your heart sinks as you realize that time and hard work were directed at items that will not push you into the six-figure club anytime soon. Heck, you’d be lucky if it brought you a coffee at your local coffee shop. How do you step into clarity and stop wasting time on stuff that is not moving you forward?

What is stepping into clarity?

You must be wondering, what do you need to do to actually step into clarity and why is it even important as an entrepreneur.

Stepping into clarity is getting crystal clear on your actual topic, the thing that you love to talk but it is so second nature you don't realize that you love to talk about it.

Here’s the interesting part discovering your thing that can be hard. I had a coach tell me it's really hard to read the label from inside the bottle. That one phrase has stuck with me.

Because it is really hard to read the label from inside the bottle. Sometimes you need to have somebody else to guide you through that in order to figure it out.

Figuring Out Your Thing

And now you’re thinking, what is my label? Fortunately, there’s a simple solution pay attention to the thing that people seek you out for to ask about.

What do you have so much life experience with that you could talk about it for days. Or is it the thing that you think you’re not an expert in but really you are? The thing that you love so much even though you’ve taken hundreds of online courses you can’t help yourself to sign up for 101. Is that your thing?

Step into Clarity

So what is your thing?

So instead of starting and stopping, or trying to do too many things, what is the one offer that you could focus on to actually make your business easy, and to make everything else come easy to you?

Stepping into clarity on want you want to offer allows you to put you're focused on one thing.

And the best part is, with all your time and energy focused you’ll know what is that next action to create an offer.

You have the idea

How do you know if your idea is the right offer? Stepping into clarity on your offer will be something that people want, need, and ask you about. You will feel comfortable and confident talking about it.

Stay on your path

Stay with me now, please not get discouraged if clients aren’t knocking down your door in the beginning.

Focus on one person at a time. That's a perfect place to start. Keep on putting your offer out there for prospective clients. Sales it's really just a numbers game. It is making sure that you talk to enough people to be able to find the ones that actually resonate with your message, your offer, and what you have.

It's getting clear on your path to know when you start to stray off of it. When the next shiny object starts to pull you away from your offer before you’re finished. You're creating that clear path of where you need to go in your business.

Once you have a plan in place, then you can tell when you start to get off track a little bit. That’s okay step back into that clarity.

It boils down to this, gaining that confidence and belief in yourself.

Because you can do this, you absolutely can do this.

We all have our stories

We all have our stories that we tell ourselves when stuff feels difficult in our business.

Case in point, this stepping into clarity happened during a coaching session with a client.

She’s been struggling in business for the last few years. Frustrated, stressed, and overwhelmed with all the decisions.

She was jumping from one offer to the next without taking the time to understand what makes her shine. She was only focused on finding an offer that made money.

She loves to talk about simple living, her garden, her farm but never truly stepping into clarity or confidence on her offer. Instead, she was going back and forth with what she could offer that she thought people would want to buy.

Her list of coulds was long. She had so many things, so many half-built ideas she could do and offer. Not one of those offers truly made her shine with the energy of excitement.

But what was happening is she wasn't actually stepping into her clarity.

She wasn't looking at what people were seeking her out to asking how she does that. The things that when she talked about it came naturally and you could tell she was excited to talk about it.

So what happens is, that is the intersection of clarity at that point was when she actually figured out what it was that people asked her about and what it was that she truly loved doing. Amazing, isn’t it?

When you get to the intersection of what people seek you out for and a topic that brings out your energy of excitement, That is stepping into clarity of your offer.

Once that became clear, everything else became very simple for her. Her offer became easy to create.

She knew exactly the next actions to take.

I was able to help her fill in on the few that she wasn't sure about or missing.

She finally understood business can feel really simple and easy. When you figure out what you want to offer that brings the energy of excitement, what you love to talk about, what answers your sought out, and what you feel confident doing.

When you're not continually running into self-doubt.

When you step into clarity then all the other pieces seem to fall into place seamlessly without much thought or effort on your part.

The days of wasting time and energy thinking about what you could create seems to go away when you step into clarity as an online entrepreneur.

I hope you found this post beneficial, I look forward to seeing you next week and I appreciate you.

l

Little Side Note

Where are you not clear in your online business? 

Spend time journaling out your thoughts to get clear on what you love to do. 

Start with a mind sweep and use those as your journaling prompt. 

✁ Just a Snippet

Here is just a snippet of the important points, you know for the skimmer in you. 🤪

  • Stepping into clarity is getting crystal clear on your actual topic, the thing that you love to talk but it is so second nature you don't realize that you love to talk about it.
  • What is your one thing instead of starting and stopping or trying to do too many things.
  • It is getting focused on what comes easy to you.
  • Getting clear on next actions to create an offer
  • Understanding that sales are a numbers game
  • Creating a clear path when you start to stray from your path
  • That is stepping into clarity
  • Having the confidence to believe in yourself
  • One of my coaching clients had a clarity breakthrough. She has been in business for a few years and loves to talk about simple living. But never was finding the right offer for her.
  • She has so many ideas she could do and wasn't stepping into her clarity.
  • During our session, we broke down what she loved to do and what people asked her about all the time.
  • That is the intersection of clarity.