Resisting Rest – why we don’t rest even when we know it’s what we need
I'm feet up, watching Netflix, and when I hear the sound of my husband’s car on the driveway, I jump up and switch the TV off. I was exhausted, feeling like an extra on The Walking Dead. I hadn’t slept through the night for months, waking up at 3 a.m. and finding...
The Myth of Busyness: Why success doesn’t have to mean constant doing
Being “busy” has been a badge of honour for many years. We’re surrounded by messages that equate busyness with productivity and worth, especially as women. We often try to balance life, business, and family responsibilities: from work deadlines to family obligations,...
How to trust yourself to make good decisions
Being able to make good decisions is one of the keys to growing a successful business. But decision fatigue is real; the more decisions you have to make each day, your ability to make decisions becomes worse. We’re faced with thousands of them every day, from the...
Business planning when you don’t feel in control
How do you feel about business planning? As we work our way through the year, there are times when life can feel more manic; less controllable and too many balls in the air. Life can spin fast at times, and then there are periods of time where you feel you are...
A simpler way to become a better decision maker
The number of choices you have to make each and every day can add up to the thousands, from what clothes you put on in the morning and what you eat for lunch to which email to respond to next or what meeting to prepare for. And if you also have a family household to...
Revenue streams: how many different ways can you make 6 figures?
No, it’s not a trick question nor am I about to launch into some passive-income, work-from-the-beach way of turning on the money tap whilst lounging back on a Caribbean sundeck. It’s a serious question that all experts and service-based professionals need to answer at...
Why doesn’t motivation work?
Everyone doubts themselves at some point in their business journey. Sometimes these feelings of fear and doubt can come from nowhere; one day, you feel great about your business growth plans, and then the next, you feel overwhelmed by your ever-increasing to-do list,...
Marketing with your cycle
Have you ever considered the timings of your monthly cycle when planning your business or deciding when to launch your next programme or speak at an event? (Yes, this article is written for women, but if you're a guy with women in your team, please read on because...
The top 4 work boundaries to increase your profitability and avoid burnout
As a woman of a certain age, I’ve grown wise to the fact that two things are most precious to us: time and energy But we can often spend our whole lives giving them away without a moment’s thought. When we feel we have lots of time and energy, we can take them for...
How to choose the right business model (and why 80% of your profession are doing it wrong!)
Have you ever stopped to think why you run your business the way you do? Most people have ended up with their current model based on one of two reasons; It's because it's what everyone else in your profession is doing You've followed advice to teach you what is the...
5 Small Business Trends You’ll Want to Jump on Board With in 2024
There's always a lot of talk at the start of each new year of business trends and predictions. But in recent years, so many are focused only on technology and speed. Yes, there's no doubt that technology has imploded in recent years, especially with the advancement in...
Selling the right things to the right people at the right time
How strategic are you being about what you sell to your clients? When you are struggling to attract enough reliable and predictable business, it can mean you do your best to stay flexible and open for any new work. It can feel that by offering a big menu of services,...
The Do’s and Don’t’s of Payment Plans
There are many good reasons to offer a payment plan to your customers, but there are also a lot of assumptions that many business owners make about how they go about offering them, particularly whether they ought to be charging their clients more for taking up the...
How can your business operate without you?
If you run a busy business, it’s easy to feel responsibility for not only getting new leads and winning over new clients, but also for delivering the work and all the admin tasks that go along with that. For most business owners I speak with, having a business operate...
No time to business plan? It may be that your brain is overloaded.
Are you an over-thinker? Does your brain only know how to solve short term tactical problems? One of the biggest barriers to growing my own business over the years hasn't been because I didn’t have enough clients, or good enough products, or even enough time; it's...
How to fire your client
It’s not nice, but it happens! No matter how good your selection process is for winning clients, you will find yourself working with someone you don’t want to work with anymore. They may not be paying their invoices on time, are consistently late to meetings, or, on...
The 3 simple rules for sustainable business growth
There are lots of ways of how to take your business to the next level, but having been working as a business coach for more than 15 years, there’s no doubt that the general theme to most business growth strategies and tactics is ‘how to have more’. This is why I...
How hanging out with safe people can hold your business back
Having people around you who support what you do is important; it can be a very lonely job running your own business. Being able to pick up the phone, meet up for a walk or coffee and talk about what’s been going on in your week with someone you trust and feel...
Why down-sell products rarely work
There’s plenty to think through when deciding if your new product idea is going to be worth investing your time, energy and money in. Is it something that your clients *really* want? What price should you charge? How do you go about marketing it? But there’s one...
Do we over-egg the life shit stuff?
We have the habit of overestimating the life shit that comes our way. And underestimating the power and influence we believe we already have. This was the hard truth that I was told yesterday by one of the world’s leading experts on mindset and women’s leadership. As...
Breaking the YES habit
Last week, I was writing about the difference between being a freelancer, business owner and CEO, and the phrase that seemed to get the biggest reaction was … “You may think you are a business owner, and call yourself a business owner, but your current work schedule...
Being CEO in your business
Wow, what a week! I’m writing this just as I come to the end of our first week of our next new Momentum planning cycle, which is always a high energy, back-to-back week of calls, and I wanted to share with you today my thoughts about being a CEO in your business....
How to write a business proposal that wins you the work
“Send me a proposal” When you’re ending a great sales call with your ideal client, these are the words you want to hear. You’re excited. They’re excited. You both just want to get started on working together. So why do so many of us grapple with writing a business...
How and when to hire an Operations Manager for your small business
Having a good Virtual Assistant (VA) to support you in your business is an essential first step to building your support team and releasing yourself from the trap of being a busy freelancer. Not only does a good VA free you up from day-to-day admin tasks, they also...
Relearning Lessons: What was on repeat for 2021
It is said that the lessons we *really* need to learn in life, show up time and time again. We don’t learn it once and be done. Life has a way of circling back and giving us another experience or challenge to navigate to make sure we *really* get the lessons. Many...
The Big VAT Ceiling Problem (and how you can avoid getting stuck under it)
If you are struggling with the thought of VAT registration, you need to read this. Perhaps you have a fear of losing clients if you have to put your prices up 20%, or you simply don't know how to approach the whole situation. You can become VAT registered at any time,...
Your Dream Team: who do you need to hire to help you grow?
Do you believe that you are the one to do anything and everything in your business? In the first few months of start-up, there is no doubt that you do almost everything yourself. From answering your emails and sending out proposals and brochures, through to writing...
The Growth Ceilings: what to do when your business growth plateaus
Have you wondered why you are not making the progress that you thought you ought to be making by now? It doesn’t matter how much harder your work, how many more hours you put in or what money you throw at your marketing, there comes a point where your growth gets...
Energy tracking and how to achieve more, with less stress
Our work culture is not working for us anymore! For the past thirty years, our obsession with doing more in less time has exponentially increased. The access to the first home computers and the World Wide Web has opened us to an endless stream of technology to make us...
Shifting with the seasons; why we can’t stay in spring or summer all year
image Hi Karen Walking into my Plotting Shed this morning, there was a distinct chill in the air. For the first time this season, I shuddered and realised it was time for ceremonial switching on of the wall heater. I love the shift in seasons. It reminds me that...