Do Less. Be More. Play Bigger.
Welcome to my blog
How our fears can be our greatest strengths
Back in 2017 ... those pre-covid days of being able to attend conferences with hundreds of other people! ... I had spent an incredible weekend at the One Woman Conference. There were 400+ women at this event and I had the honour of being invited up on the stage as one...
How to start your week off right
There's absolutely no doubt, that what you do on a Monday morning sets the tone for the rest of the week. And often the weeks proceeding. I've learned the hard way. If I start my week faffing about and scrolling through social feeds, the rest of my week will follow in...
Your Dream Team: hiring the right people for your business growth plans
One of the big problems of running your own business, particularly in the early years, is that you will often believe that you are the one to do anything and everything in your business. If you are still in the first few months of start-up, there is no doubt that you...
Happy Revenue (and why ‘get more clients’ isn’t always the answer to growing your business)
"Get More Clients!" It’s the message that many marketers want you to hear. Making money is, of course, an important function of your business but when the numbers in your bank account may feel smaller than you think they should be, money has this habit of taking up...
The Profitability Sweet Spot: a simple pricing formula to use with your next proposal or programme
The problem with selling services, such as coaching, advice and consulting time, is that it’s very easy to get caught up with how much you ought to be charging. Emotional stories such as “I’m not that worth that much” or “There’s no way my clients will pay that” whip...
The 3 onboarding documents to help you set a clear, professional working relationship with new clients
I’m writing about boundaries this month; those often invisible lines that we need to have to protect and fuel our time and energy. Last week I wrote about the 4 work boundaries to increasing profitability and avoiding burnout. This week, I want to shine the light on...
The top 4 work boundaries to increasing profitability and avoiding burnout
As a woman of a certain age, I’ve grown wise to the fact that there are two things that are most precious to us. But too often we can spend our whole lives giving them away without a moment’s thought. When we have lots of these two things, we take them for granted....
Comfort and growth can’t co-exist: a one year reflection
This time last year, life, as we knew it, changed. As I sit here and reflect over the past year, and of course acknowledge the trauma that happened to so many, I am also in awe by how many people have shifted and grown their businesses. Comfort and growth can't...
Why health is the number one investment in your business
Fatigue, stress and hormone imbalances have become serious problems for many business owners, particularly those of us in our 40’s, 50’s and beyond. And it’s caused many to pull back and play small to protect themselves. When we feel exhausted, we can talk ourselves...
Money energy in your business: how to stop chasing pie-in-the-sky figures that burn you out
Your business instinct is far stronger than you give it credit for. However, if you are worn out and feeling frazzled (and hey, don’t we find ourselves at the end of our tethers most days right now!) it's easy to find yourself fire-fighting your way through your...
Using intuition in your business: critical insight or a risky delusion?
You know far more than you give yourself credit for. However, trusting yourself to know this and using your intuition to help you grow a business is not a natural way for many of us. If you are like a lot of people who I work with, you have spent much of your...
Are your referrals today the right clients for your growth tomorrow?
Do you believe referrals are good for business? I'm guessing that that the majority of answers to this are going to be a big, fat yes. It's always lovely to have new clients come to you because you've been recommended. Speaking to these people makes the whole selling...
Dancing with life and letting hope fuel your 2021
Earlier this year, at the start of our first lockdown, I wrote about the dangers of blind hope. A friend introduced me to the Stockdale Paradox, which seemed fitting at the time. We were all in full crisis management, dealing with school closures, businesses shutting...
3 simple ways of preventing a volcanic eruption
Many of us are really great at crisis management. In an emergency, our flight-or-fight instincts kick in and we just know what the right thing to do is in that moment. I look back to March of this year, and I saw myself and many others rise to the occasion to deal...
What does doing less look like?
What does doing less look like? This was a question that someone asked me this week (thanks Linda!). I write and talk a lot about the idea of doing less; my sign-off tag is Do Less, Be More, Play Bigger. And I get that it can sound like a little abstract. Images of...
Trusting the process: coachy smug or good business advice?
Has anyone ever said to you 'trust the process'? I used to hate this phase; I felt it was such a 'coachy' thing to say and it irritated the pants off me when anyone tried to use it with me. It's often said in the context of someone working hard, trying to get...
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 choose to run your business the way that you do? Most people have ended up with a business model based on one of two reasons; a business model based on what everyone else in your profession has or a business model based on what...
![If this then that [Impact Report August 2020]](https://karenskidmore.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/impact-reports-august-2020-karen-skidmore-400x250.png)
If this then that [Impact Report August 2020]
If I make X each month, then I’ll give X to charity. This is what I used to believe; that I had to make enough in order to give enough. But this ‘if this then that’ thinking messed with me. In my first few years of business, it didn’t even occur to me that I could use...
Wintering in a heatwave
The heat has been vicious here over the past few days. Having been a teenage sun worshipper, I have now become a version of Patsy; floating around the house in my beach kaftan, sighing, “I like it hot, but not this hot.” To make matters a little hotter, we are having...
It’s growth, Jim, but not how we know it
One thing you may not know about me is that I am an economics nerd. I took Economics A Level at school, which was the nearest thing I could study to business due to the limited range of topics on offer. Even back in 1987, the growth models taught just seemed to be...
The ONE simple thing that will ALWAYS get things done in your business
I’ve always run my business from my diary. If a meeting or call with a prospect goes into my diary, it happens. Simple. It’s the same with my important ‘get done’ tasks. If they go into the diary, I treat them as I would a meeting or call with a prospect. I show up...
How I decided on which Impact Project to support
Last year I decided to align my business so it can become a real force for good and, in particular, in how I can contribute towards the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. (You can read about these SDGs here if you want to know more...
Planning for the future when you really don’t know what’s going to happen
How do you feel about planning for the future right now? As we work our way through this period of ‘you can go to work if you can go to work, but if you can’t then don’t’, it may feel it’s nigh impossible to plan for the future. There are so many what-ifs, it can be...
Is the bird song louder?
As I write this, it’s the end of the fourth week of lockdown here in the UK. And the question over whether the bird song is louder than previous years is one that I’ve been pondering on for the past few days. I took a break from my hour exercise today and sat on the...
Lessons from live streaming – how our one day event turned virtual
I’ve been running events, in-person and virtual, for sixteen years; ever since I first started up my coaching and training business. My first workshop was in a room above a local hair salon, usually used for training nail technicians. Back in October 2004, they swept...
Pricing decisions – should you be discounting right now?
There’s a lot of fear and worry around right now. I get it. There’s no doubt many small businesses are being hit hard right now. And it’s influencing pricing decisions. I’m seeing a lot of people making free offers or discounting their products and programmes as a...
The Stockdale Paradox – why optimism may kill your business
I know that none of us could ever have imagined our current status quo. Some of you are now at home with children, others have now found your previously quiet workspaces occupied by spouses. We all have friends and family who we know are vulnerable, so there's no...
Why going virtual doesn’t mean you have to drop your prices
We are about to go through one of the most intensely disruptive phases of how we do business. As I write this, countries across the globe have shut their borders and here in the UK, we are realistic about what’s going to happen over the coming days. With the prospect...
Rituals for prospecting
Why is it that some people seem to just love picking up the phone. They relish the thought of speaking to people. They get excited by the prospect of prospecting. But, if you like most people who run their own business, making sales calls, reaching out to potential...
Chasing visibility – what to do first before you start putting yourself ‘out there’
With the set up of each new social media profile, there comes the drive to get noticed. From the elders of Facebook and Twitter through to the new kids on the block of TikTok, you are taught that for them to ‘work’, your content has to be seen. But not all of us are...
