Canadian Small Business Women

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When faced with challenges and constraints ask yourself “what else could it be?”

Perspective matters a lot. It is our brain’s own unique filter through which we take in the world as we encounter it. And it’s unavoidable. We encounter far too much world that, if our brains were to try to absorb every single detail of it, we’d get quite literally nothing done. Imagine you had to re-learn that what your eyes were seeing was a dog every time you saw a slightly different one (like a mixed breed or one that didn’t have the exact same colour pattern that you had seen before?) It would take days to walk a single block of Queen street west because we’d encounter what our brain would perceive to be a “strange new thing” every 30 seconds. (It’s hard enough already just trying not to pet all those cute pups!)

Luckily, instead, our brains are designed to take knowledge we’ve already acquired (“that is a dog breed called Golden Retriever”) and apply it to a new piece of information (“that creature walks on four legs, is medium sized, is golden in colour and has curly hair”) in order to make a justified jump to conclusion (“that is probably a dog that is a breed similar to the Golden Retriever.”)   

Our brains are constantly making those little justified jumps to conclusions as we go about our day. And different people with different knowledge make different little jumps. That’s perspective.  And because it’s always on, it has an enormous influence on what we as individuals perceive is possible and, in turn, what we believe we’re capable of. 

We take perspective – it is not given to us (although it can be heavily imposed upon us by authority figures and other social influences.) And if we choose to be more mindful of what our own unique variety of little jumps are and of what other varieties of little jumps exist, we suddenly gain an abundance of choice when it comes to how we see the world. 

A recent article by Psychology Today describes our perspective as “arguably the single greatest aspect of our uniqueness.” For ambitious entrepreneurs, who know that “what makes you unique makes you valuable”, personal perspective can be an incredible differentiator. 

Entrepreneurs face many constraints on their journey to build and create things. They also face detractors all too often along the way. Ambitious entrepreneurs know the importance of perspective empirically. Every entrepreneur has faced all too many nay-sayers and skeptics who held perspectives that were at odds with the entrepreneur’s own. And yet, these ambitious entrepreneurs pressed forward anyway, oftentimes proving through their actions and resulting success that their perspective was not only valid but valuable. 

That’s the irony (and the take away.) The refusal to accept the current-day rulebook and the constraints it imposes upon us is what ultimately leads to game-changing innovation and differentiation.

And it all starts with perspective. 

This article argues that ‘taking perspective’ is the first step to overcoming constraints and building an enormously successful business.

Mohamad Fakih came to Canada with almost nothing. He worked very hard. Saved a lot. And eventually Fakih found himself in a position where a fellow immigrant – from whom he was simply buying take-out at the time – asked to borrow a rather large sum of money to save his struggling restaurant. That restaurant was Paramount Fine Foods – now a very successful franchise with 76+ locations and, notably, the sports complex in Mississauga formerly known as The Hershey Center, proudly sharing its name. 

Abiding by the current-day rulebook, Fakih could have easily justified ignoring the stranger’s plea for a small fortune. Fakih had no obligation. He had his own responsibilities to tend to and had worked very hard earning that money. No one would have blamed him for saying no. 

But Fakih’s own principles were at odds with the current-day rulebook. He saw himself in that man. He remembered all the help he had benefited from over the years. Fakih’s perspective on the matter led him to invest in the man – giving him a cool quarter-million dollars.

The man did exactly what the current day rulebook would caution against: He almost immediately mismanaged the funds, decided to throw in the towel and leave Canada and handed ownership of the restaurant over to Fakih. 

Freshly disappointed from his last leap of faith, Fakih now faced another daunting current-day rule book constraint: attempting to recover his investment by operating the failing restaurant without any experience in the food services industry whatsoever.

And we now know how that worked out for Mohamad Fakih: really, really well. 

And it can work out really, really well for you too if you leverage the constraints and limitations you face to take a new perspective and build a differentiated business. Here’s one way to get started:

Reframe the constraints you face in as many other ways you can possibly think of. 

Play a game with your management team (or, even better your front-line staff) called “What Else Could It Be?”  Here’s an example:

Constraint: We don’t have enough money to pay for marketing and advertising and therefore can’t grow our top line

Reframe 1: We have time to develop strategic partnerships (because we’re not spending it on marketing campaigns) and therefore have time to develop higher price point products and services

Reframe 2: We have more time to spend strengthening our relationships with the customers we already have, increasing their loyalty and willingness to recommend their friends and family. 

Reframe 3: We can come up with new ways to market ourselves that do not require money, improving profitability and our ability to invest in our continued growth and development. 

To quote curator and art advocate, Sarah Lewis from her book, The Rise: The “key to the great mystery of life and progress” [has been] the ability of men and women to fashion a mental or material picture and let his or her entire world, sentiments, and vision of every other living thing be affected by it.” 

Encourage your team (and your own brain) to develop new mental pictures of the roadblocks and detours you cross paths with every day. Go as far as to translate some of these mental pictures onto paper independently and then present them to each other. Identify what’s similar and what’s different between and what those findings might be able to tell you about how you could reframe and therefore overcome a roadblock or two.

While the old rulebook might’ve claimed that doing the right thing for people and community was inherently a cost and therefore more bad than good for business, Fakih’s perspective was different.

He saw his own humanitarian efforts and generosity in business as a great way to gain trust and commitment from his team and the communities his businesses serve, stating “You don’t only help them change their life. It’s actually beneficial to the company, beneficial to the country entirely. They want to overperform.” 

He credited his success in part to the kindness and charity he received from others stating, “If those people didn’t help me, I wouldn’t be able to be who I am today” and committed himself to paying it forward.

Today, he perceives working in the restaurant industry as “one of the most rewarding experiences” he’s ever had – even though others perceive the same industry to only offer temporary, transient work.

And when he purchased the naming rights of the former Hershey Center, Fakih didn’t see it as a marketing opportunity like others would. Instead he believed the Paramount Fine Food Center would represent what his company is all about: community coming together to celebrate diverse cultures.

Such stand-out success is within reach of any entrepreneur open-minded enough to challenge the “little jumps” their brain has influenced how they view a challenge and adopt a new perspective to leap and bound from. 

By nature, such an endeavour will be tricky to start. Adopting a new cognitive reality is not so simple. Seeing alternatives to the deeply-ingrained status-quo is not so easy. I can help. 

As a human-centered strategist, I collaborate with Canadian businesses to systematically deconstruct problems, uncover new meaning and, ultimately, design more effective customer-facing systems and content.  If you’re struggling to reshape a persistent perspective in your pursuit to solve customer problems, nurture a productive workforce and achieve stand-out success, I can help you overcome it.

 

Stephanie Ruth Grimbly is a ‘human-centered strategist’ and creative problem-solver. She combines traditional business practices with emerging innovation disciplines to reveal insights about customer preferences and develop stand-out strategies for Canadian businesses. 

 

Emotional Entrepreneur – Use your guidance system

Beliefs

In the world of personal development, there is a saying that goes like this: “If you want to grow, open a business”. And oh boy, it is true!

You may be faced with the beliefs you have about yourself, about what you want to do, about what it takes to create a business, and so on. Your mindset. Your self-worth and self-esteem will play a major role in the journey.

For example, if the belief is that women have to work harder than men, well, that will be the experience. If the belief is that it is really hard to make money in a business or at the beginning of a business, guess what?

On the other hand, if the belief is that the Universe supports you at every step, then, that will be the beautiful story you’ll live. If the belief is that abundance is available like the air we breathe, you can only imagine the fun you’ll be having as you create your business.

I know the next question may be: but how do I change those beliefs? A belief is nothing but a thought we have repeated in our mind many times. So many times, that we start seeing the evidence of it in our lives. We sometimes believe that we saw it first and then we believed it but probably, although unconsciously, it was the other way around. When we see the evidence of it, it usually becomes a solid rock belief that we don’t even have to think about for it to manifest in our lives.

So, to create new beliefs we need to follow the same practice but this time we’ll do it consciously. We’ll think and feel what it would be like to be, do, or have what we want. Our mind may try to take us on a ride to the pre-existing beliefs in there but, this is where the work is. Do your best to go back to what you want and feels good.

 

 

Emotions

I truly believe that everything is created from the inside out, including a business. By inside out I mean that we think and feel it first, whether consciously or unconsciously, and later on with our action as contribution, it will come true.

Emotions are how we know what we are creating, or attracting into our life.  Emotions are commonly misunderstood as weaknesses we have to deal with for being humans, even worse for women in many cases. The truth is, emotions are our guidance system!

We are all body, mind, and spirit. There is a tendency to give most of the attention to the body and the mind however, our spiritual side is as important. It is also through our emotions that we know how aligned, or not, we are with our spiritual side whether you call it soul, or God, or Inner-Being, or… the choice of words you may have.

Our Inner-Being is this part of us that sees beyond what our physical eyes can see. Our Inner-Being talks to the Universe and knows us to guide us and inspire us through that lovingly pre-paved path they carved for us. This communication is also known as intuition. As I am writing this, I can feel the infinite love that is projected to us all the time!

The better we feel the more aligned we are with our Inner-Being and the more we are open to receive everything, from guidance to each and every one of our desires.

The way we feel is also called our vibration. And we are naturally high-vibrating unless we are focused on something we don’t appreciate.

 

Focus

Let’s talk about focus now and how it connects with our emotions. What you focus on, expands. Basic principle that we may have experienced already. If we are able to become aware of what we are focusing on, by paying attention to the way we feel, we can deliberately seek to expand what we DO want.

That is the power of emotions.

We have the power to change the way we feel by making decisions of what we want, what beliefs we want to have, or even what we want to focus on, moment by moment. We are a magnet of the way we feel, and the way we feel comes from where we are focusing on, whether in our minds, or in our reality.

This applies to everything we want in life, including an amazing business.

When you think of your business, how do you feel about it? When you think of the goals you want within it, how do the goals feel? Do they feel expansive and fun? Or do they feel overwhelming?

When it comes to your business, your emotional content is worth working on, cleared up, and deliberately driven to those emotions you want to feel with that incredible business idea you want to experience.

Pandemic

Let’s be specific with what we are living right now. We were all hit hard with the news of the pandemic. For us, entrepreneurs, having to close down our business or not being able to do business as usual, was rather scary. Right?

It has never been more important that we take care of our emotional state. Remember, it’s all created from the inside out, not the other way around. So, in order for things to improve at home and in a larger scale, including yourself, your family, your business, your community, your country, the world, we need to evoke, inside of us, an improvement in our emotional state so we start attracting that change.

As explained before, it is very important to remember that emotions are our guidance system! So, let’s avoid anything that will cause us negative emotion and let’s stay focused on useful information, only for the necessary amount of time.

Other than that, try to seek for things to appreciate and if possible, make decisions about what you DO want. If you don’t know what you want, you for sure know how you want to feel. This is the perfect place to start. That is a decision on its own.

In moments like this one, where we may feel like we don’t have much control, our focus becomes even more important. Needless to say that focusing on what doesn’t feel good, which is also what we do not want, attracts more of that. Whereas focusing on what feels good helps you to connect with your inherent wellbeing, to stay in alignment with your spiritual side, to be whole, to align and allow what you do want and, with that high vibration, you are even helping more people than you would ever know.

I truly believe that our power resides in our ability to soothe ourselves! We can be proactive about our emotions instead to only being reactive about them.

It is not about not feeling negative emotions. It’s more about loving yourself by taking care of those negative emotions and then direct them, deliberately, to what you want. Honor yourself as you may need. Seek support, hit a cushion on a sofa, look for a coach, but once that’s taken care of, please move on.

Love yourself. Trust that everything will be all right. Use your focus wisely.

 

Money and the pandemic

Money is not only spiritually “approved”, but it is created spiritually first, internally, like everything else. 

We talked about the premise “what you focus on, expands”. Money follows the same premise, you just need to make sure that you are focused in fact, in the ABUNDANCE of money.

How do you know if you are doing that? You guessed it, by the way you feel, by the emotions you are feeling as you think about it.

During the pandemic, we may have seen a lot of changes and news that do not show abundance, rather the opposite. There are big changes happening to all of us, individually and globally. Even though stressful stories may be louder during these times, if you look deep, you’ll find that there are also many beautiful stories that inspire us that anything is possible, even right now.

Personally, I know of people who got new jobs in the middle of the pandemic. I have heard news of businesses doing better, families getting bigger, and many many realizations that life is more than the busy calendar we used to have before this special time.

So, abundance has been there all along and it is our choice where we want to focus. As I said earlier: use your focus wisely.

As you focus on something that feels good, you are keeping your vibration high AND start to attract that same experience you focused on and enjoying.

It can be that simple. I say that we are “walking magic wands” just by using our focus. We are not magicians to make something appear out of thin air the moment we think of it but we are creators and creating our lives deliberately, I think is the biggest pleasure we came to experience in life.

 

Live intuitively,

Genoveva Vazquez

CPA, CGA, Self-love and Wealth Coach, Founder Intuitive Living Path

Genoveva Vazquez, founder of Intuitive Living Path is a former accountant transformed into a Self-Love and Wealth coach. Genoveva is very passionate about helping people fall in love with themselves and with their lives all over again. Since she went through that moment of “wanting to throw in the towel” she has lived her life knowing that there’s more to life that what is showing up for many of us. We do love ourselves, we do have power, we do create our lives, we just need to start it all from the inside out.

Email: info@intuitivelivingpath.com

Website: https://intuitivelivingpath.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GenovevaVazquez.Coach/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intuitive.living.path/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intuitive-living-path

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw9v_P9dCUJ_E0H0129Aslw

5 Essential Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Mobile-Friendly Website

Mobile-friendly, or ‘responsive’ design is a “big thing” in web design right now. But if you’re not a designer or developer, you might be wondering what this term means, or why it’s important. You might also be wondering if your business’s website even needs to be responsive. Well, let me tell you that having a responsive website is no longer just an option – if you want to keep up with the market and other competitors, it’s a requirement.

First of all, what is responsive design? ​

Responsive design is a way of building a website so that content is automatically scaled up or down to fit professionally on different screen sizes. This includes hundreds of different devices, from phones, laptops, tablets and giant monitors, all with varying screen dimensions. The way that these different devices display information on the screen can be very different because of the dimensions.

The ultimate goal of having a responsive website is to give users a seamless experience when visiting a website. It is often difficult to navigate websites that are not responsive – usually involving a lot of scrolling, missed content, cropped images or awkward formatting. This makes it frustrating for users to get the info they need. Have you ever been looking through a website and had to scroll left to right because the content didn’t fit on your phone screen?

Exactly. This can be frustrating and actually deters people away from websites.

Responsive website design replaces the need to create a separate website dedicated to mobile users – now, one website can be built that automatically matches the device being used.

So, why does your business need a responsive website?

 

1. To target the majority of internet users​

One of the most powerful tools in the new age of web development is having a mobile-friendly website. Why? Because mobile traffic is responsible for over 50% of total internet traffic – and this number is expected to rise. This means that more and more people are beginning to not only use their phone for the ‘gram, but they’re also making more purchases directly from their phone. Mobile e-commerce will be responsible for about 67% of total e-commerce sales by 2021. That’s why now, more than ever, it is imperative that your website is mobile-friendly to accommodate people on their phones. You’ll be able to target the majority of internet users if your business’s website is optimized for phones.

  1. Lower Cost and Website Maintenance Fees

Maintaining and updating separate sites for mobile, desktop and tablet audiences gets expensive… quickly. By the time you do the same update on all 3 different versions of the site, you’re racking up hours with your developer like no one’s business.

Your business can actually save money by using responsive design, and therefore only having to maintain a single site. The edits only have to be done once and will automatically be reflected on all screen sizes. The number of mobile users is only expected to increase, so it’s better in the long run that your business invests in a responsive website before your customers start asking for it. 

  1. Support thumb scrollers

Yes, I see you! I often find myself scrolling through a recipe or blog post on my phone using only my thumb. Since phone screens are getting bigger and bigger, areas of websites are getting harder to reach. Try it real quick – pull out your phone and hold it in your right or left hand. Try to reach your thumb to the top corner on the opposite side. Straining?

Yes, it’s only a minor inconvenience to stretch your thumb to reach a button. But if visitors don’t find your website super easy to use, they might just give up. If there’s an important part of your website in that top corner, for example a call-to-action or button, your users will get annoyed that it’s a little hard to click. Thumb-friendly websites take responsive design one step further to make sure that even thumb-scrollers have a great experience.

  1. It’s all about the UX (user experience)

Having a clean, responsive website allows visitors to navigate through your site easily, and get the information they need quickly. If someone visits your website on their phone or tablet and the formatting is messed up or images are cut off, your business might come across as unprofessional. If your website isn’t built to accommodate mobile users, they might leave the site quickly and head over to a competitor’s website. Responsive web design offers a much better user experience, and leaves your website visitors with a great first impression of your business.

  1. Improve SEO (and your site’s exposure!)

Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is a free way to get your website to the top of Google’s search results. Google crawls your business’s website and looks at a ton of different things in order to rank your website among their search results. Google looks at your overall website structure among a host of other things, and gives preference to websites that are the best of the best. Of course, this includes whether or not your website is responsive. If your website is mobile-friendly, this can give you a giant boost in search results, bringing you closer to the top of that list. The closer you are to the first page of Google’s search results increases your ability to get quality website visitors checking out your business.

 

Does your business have a website? Do a quick responsive test!

Click here. 

Did you get a green light? Sweet, your site passes Google’s responsive test. You might already know why responsive design is so important. Great job!

Did you get red Xs? It’s time to consider a website refresh to make sure that you are accommodating people on their phones, tablets, or other devices.

 

I’m Sydney from SL Creative – digital strategist & director with a passion for good food, and good design. I build ready-made websites and hand-crafted brands for the food and travel industry.

sydney@slcreative.ca

www.slcreative.ca

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Strategically Simplifying ‘MORE’

Last month I began a conversation…albeit it was still largely a one-sided conversation until you stepped into my Mighty Coherent Community. That is not atypical for where “Business” on a whole has evolved over the past 150 years…and some of my key resources tell me that is going to go through some pretty significant changes.

Great! You say…it’s not like we all haven’t been through multiple waves of change and that’s just 2020! Change is inevitable and intuitively we crave it…but the sheer volume and pace of change has become more than most of us really know how to manage and that became evident in 2020…I don’t know a single person who wasn’t impacted by the edge we all came to this year – myself included.

My extensive journey, training and mentoring over the past decade in ‘becoming coherent’ was put to the test this year and I recalibrated time and time again, inside the business & beyond it.

So I want to invite you to check-in…how are you doing? I mean really doing? Just between you and the wall…

Are you doing more, struggling to make it all work or are you able to be really honest with yourself and acknowledge that you might be standing at the edge of chaos?

I’ve stood at every one of those edges and found that there is indeed more beyond the edge AND we can strategically simplify multiple things to step us back from the edge, or move us beyond it, which I touch on in this month’s video.

Connect to more on October 15 **apologies, the date was changed after the video was recorded**

Link: https://bit.ly/bci-events-triciamurray

 

Tricia Murray is strategic guide, speaker, author, and podcast host whose core community is built around change-makers, agents of change and game-changers. She connects the smallest of SMBs to more, and her ‘people’ go on to create more, experience more and create the experience of more inside their business & beyond it.

Her hybrid approach incorporates DIY, group and 1:1 guided pathways each designed to strategically simplify that which has been made incredibly complicated, especially for solo and micro business owners. Her process is backed by universal and timeless wisdom from both science and spiritual traditions, and enables individuals to tune in, sync up and amplify the change they want to create and experience – inside the business & beyond.

Explore more @ www.becomingcoherent.com

Create the experience of more in an upcoming event • https://bit.ly/bci-events-triciamurray

Connect to more inside my Mighty Coherent Community

Link: https://bit.ly/bci-community-LI

Life Lessons From An Entrepreneur

I have now been an entrepreneur for 4 years.  Something that I never really thought I would be growing up.  I had these grand visions of sitting in a boardroom, in a business suit, being in charge of a room full of people.  Never really knowing what I wanted to do didn’t bring that vision to life.  Plus dropping out of University after a sexual assault didn’t help the matter either.

I will admit that when we lived in Ontario, I tried to be an entrepreneur.  By trying I mean that I had ideas and I wanted to implement them but I couldn’t.  It wasn’t the fact that I wasn’t smart enough but more of the fact that I wasn’t in the right mindset to be an entrepreneur.  I didn’t know who I was.  I was lost and confused and had been for many years.  It wasn’t until I was ready to discover who I was that it led me to being a true entrepreneur.

 

9 LIFE LESSONS I HAVE LEARNED FROM BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR

You can’t force anything.  Just like a child who won’t do something when forced to, being an entrepreneur is the same.  We can’t force ourselves to come up with ideas.  We can’t force ourselves to write that blog post.  We can’t force ourselves to move forward in our business.  We need to allow the creative process to work.  The creativity to flow or we become stuck in our own thoughts.

This blog post is a combination of trying to write other blog posts.  I am on a coworking hour with another entrepreneur and it has been about an hour into this working hour.  I only have these 282 words to show for it but countless blog post titles.  I still got work done but I am allowing my creative juices to flow or I will drive myself crazy.

You need an entrepreneur friend.  You thought making friends as a mom were hard?  Try making friends as an entrepreneur.  That seems to be an impossible task sometimes.  I am lucky enough that 4 years into my ride as an entrepreneur, I have multiple entrepreneur friends.  BUT I only have (maybe) a handful of entrepreneur friends that I can go to when I am feeling stuck, unworthy, and completely overwhelmed as a business owner.

The normal person isn’t going to understand the overwhelm that an entrepreneur will feel.  Finding those people will help you to continue to move forward with your passion when it feels like the world is against you.  Find your people and keep them close.  They will be your biggest fighters, your biggest supporters, and your biggest allies.

Your family won’t always support you.  And that is OKAY!!  Not everyone can see your vision.  And that is OKAY!!  It will be hard to move past sometimes but that is why you have your entrepreneur friends.  I think at some point, every entrepreneur has had a family member that didn’t support them.  Remember that this is your vision and not theirs.

The idea of working short hours seems impossible.  We all have this dream that as an entrepreneur we will work these magical hours.  Yes I do have the option to work when and where I want but that comes at a cost.  It means that I may have to work while my kids play at the park.  It means that during the day, I shut my door and let my kids run rampant just so I can try and get some work done.  It means late hours and early mornings.  It means lack of sleep because if I don’t do the work in my business, no one else will.

I wouldn’t change being an entrepreneur and being able to stay home with my children but we have to be realistic.  We have to put the work in or our business won’t grow.

Passion isn’t the only thing you need to have.  Passion is a great place to start.  We need to love what we are doing in order for it to work but there is so much more to being an entrepreneur than that.  We need to be dedicated.  We need to be able to say no.  We need to be able to say yes.  We need to be able to learn and conform to the changes that come up.

We need to be willing to put in the time and effort it needs to build a business.  We need to learn how to be consistent, learn how to motivate ourselves, and learn how to handle rejection.  Being an entrepreneur is an emotional rollercoaster on a good day.

Yoga pants are a totally appropriate dress code.  Now I have been a yoga pants woman for many years.  Even before I was my own boss.  Working at home means that I can look like anything I want.  I mean even right now I am still sitting in my bed, eating dry cheerios out of a bowl while I type this blog post up.  I will admit that I have been here working for about 2 hours.

My girls are in their room playing nicely together.  My son is outside with my husband trying to start the lawn mower.  I am sitting in my bed, wearing my comfortable yoga pants, no bra, and getting my work done.  That may be the best feeling in the world.

Organization is the key.  I have always been a very organized person.  I hate chaos.  It throws me off.  The older I get, the more I notice that chaos takes over very quickly.  Organization has 2 different parts.  Planning and order.

In order to succeed, you need to have a plan.  You need to know what you need to do daily, weekly and monthly to reach your goals.  You need to have an outlined plan so you don’t work every day with no specific intention.  That will get you nowhere.  Creating a content plan and knowing what you are doing each day will help you to achieve success.

Now what do I mean by order?  I mean that you have to organize your work in a way that you will understand.  For me that means having multiple planners on my desk.  A monthly planner that lists my blog posts for that month.  A weekly planner where I break down my content ideas for the different social media platforms that I use.  I even have a daily planner that I can use to keep track of my appointments, my calls with clients and my work hours.

Having order means that you know where everything is.  I have multiple “offices” in my home.  I work from my bed.  I work from my desk.  I work from my kitchen island.  It all comes down to where my kids are in the house at the moment I am trying to get work done.  Having my planners on my desk means that I can quickly grab them when I am ready to work, wherever I am going to be working.

Learn how to do the things you don’t love to do.  We need to fill multiple roles as an entrepreneur.  I truly believe, as a blogging coach, that women should know how to work on their website.  In the beginning it is great to be able to learn it so that you can do it on your own.  If it isn’t something you love to do, hire outside help but first learn how to do it.  That way if an issue ever arises, you don’t need to wait for someone to fix it for you. You can try to fix it yourself so that your business isn’t affected as much.

You won’t love everything about your business.  And that is OKAY!  Someone out there does love that part of your business that you struggle with.  Hiring help is always an option and I believe that when you are ready, you should do just that.  In order for your business to thrive, you need to focus on the parts that fill you up.

What is a life lesson that you have learned through your journey as a small business owner?  I would love to hear them in the comments.

 

Samantha Laycock is a blogging coach for women and a freelance blogger for female entrepreneurs in the self-care industry.  She is a HUGE self-care and self-love advocate, sexual assault survivor, mother of 3, a wife of 14 years, and a believer in the power of sharing your story.  You can find her on Instagram and Facebook as @samanthalaycockblogging and on Pinterest as @samanthalaycockblogger

Holiday Marketing During a Pandemic

The weather is starting to turn colder (I not-so-secretly love fall and winter, so I am one of the few that is super excited). Kids have started back at school. And business owners need to shift into the holiday marketing mindset. If you haven’t already started thinking about it, now is the time to get going on your holiday marketing planning!

2020 has thrown a wrench into so many of the best-laid plans. Most of your customers likely have the pandemic in the back of their minds (or at the top of mind). They have spent 2020 celebrating birthdays and other milestones via Zoom (or not at all) and they are grasping for some shred of normalcy in a world that is far from normal.

It’s going to be different this year. There is no getting around that. The big question is: How are you going to adjust your approach?

Focus on your loyal customers

Customer loyalty is everything. If you already know someone knows and loves your brand isn’t that worth focusing on? Half of the work to make a sale has already been done. There are three ways you can tap into your existing customer loyalty.

  • Revamp existing loyalty programs: Do something new that is a direct response to customer behaviour during the pandemic.
  • Offer exclusive deals: If you don’t have a loyalty program, that’s ok! But you likely have a database of existing customers or a community of followers that you can offer exclusive deals to.
  • Launch a loyalty program: If you are looking to launch a loyalty program, this is as good a time as any. Keep it simple and keep your customers’ interests at heart.

Keep your messaging consistent

There is a lot going on in the world right now. Keeping your marketing messages consistent will ensure that your customers and potential customers keep you top of mind. Competition among brands for customer attention will be different and more intense this year as businesses try to offset losses from early in the year when so many things were shut down.

Your customer needs will be different this year

Across various industries, brands will need to adapt to changing customer behaviour when it comes to the path to purchase and how they will be most comfortable shopping with you. Will your customers want to have the option to do curbside pickup or a call ahead service (The Body Shop has recently added this service as they adjust to reopening during COVID-19), a robust online shipping platform, or will they feel completely comfortable shopping in person.

In general customers will likely spend more time online this year for holiday shopping. While many customers were already doing online research before shopping in-store, many customers may try to limit time spent in-store. As a result, you will likely need to put extra effort into digital strategies so customers can easily discover what you have to offer while they are conducting online research – and shopping.

Let others tell your story

While it is important for you to connect to your audience through storytelling not selling in your own content, it’s equally as important to have other people talk about how great you are. There are a couple of ways you can plan for this:

  • Influencer marketing: Whether you run a largescale campaign with multiple different influencers or you only work with one or two influencers who are really into your brand, influencers will share your brand story in their own unique way to a large audience.
  • Customer reviews: Every time a customer reviews your product/service, they act as a brand ambassador for you. It could be tied into a larger loyalty program or simply asking for honest feedback, but customer reviews are priceless when it comes to your marketing strategy.

Build a safe in-store experience

While there are many government guidelines set out for businesses to re-open, can you go the extra mile to ensure your customers’ safety while shopping in-store? Customers will appreciate the brands that do go the extra mile. Think of creative ways you can do a little extra like exclusive shopping times for loyal customers and high risk groups or even staggered shopping times to minimize the number of people in-store and waiting in line outside as the weather turns colder.

Focus on getting attention, not selling

It should go without saying that you need to focus on building awareness for your brand. With so much noise out there now that everyone is trying to get customer attention, your customers will appreciate if you cut back on the urge to SELL, SELL, SELL! Put relationship-building first.

Social media isn’t a strategy

Social media for the sake of social media isn’t going to cut it. You need to put some planning into it and build out a content strategy that is tied into your overall marketing strategy. If you focus on great design and providing value rather than simply adding to the digital noise, you will see better results from your efforts.

Surprise and delight

Never underestimate the power of surprise and delight around the holidays. Tap into emotions, create memorable moments, and just find ways to do something unexpected.

Remember to have fun with your holiday marketing, especially during the pandemic as tensions and emotions are running high. If you have questions, feel free to check out SongBird’s upcoming FREE Masterclass on Holiday Marketing During a Pandemic to answer all of your specific questions!

 

Candace Huntly is Founding Partner at SongBird Marketing Communications, an award-winning agency working to take organizational and individual brands to the next level. With a passion for all things related to creativity and strategy, she specializes in business intelligence, marketing & branding, content strategy & development, media & influencer relations, and social media. Basically, if you need to put your brand, product, or cause in the public eye, she will find a way to do it, while making the approach unique to you.

Connect with Candace

Sign up for our free 20-minute consultation and we’ll help you figure things out.

A version of this article was originally posted to the SongBird Marketing Communications blog.

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Advocate: Full Time Position Wanted

It was 1999. I was 19 years old. Fresh out of college with an Advertising diploma, I was ready to take the world by storm. At least, in my heart that’s what I wanted.

I recall the first day of my internship. I was so nervous. In fact, the only reason I even had this internship was because one of the professors had connected me with an industry peer that had an opening. Looking back, I’m sure that if the job was to restock the beer fridge I would have happily accepted.

I entered the coolest office I had ever seen, an old warehouse-conversion located in downtown Toronto. There was a palpable energy that pulsed throughout the walls. Lots of jargon, ego, and seasoned industry veterans buzzing around and getting sh#t done. I was so out of my element.

You know the ad world – it’s intense! Deadlines come fast and fierce. There are many egos to navigate and jargon to learn. I was given the job of researching websites of the competition for my assigned account.

I remember sitting down at my desk and digging in. The only problem was, I didn’t really know what kind of information they wanted to know and what would be helpful. Instead of asking my supervisor, I decided that ‘looking busy’ was the strategy that would serve me best. I printed off hundreds of pages that were essentially useless. Day after day, I would sit down and get to work on…nothing important (or helpful).

My second strategy was to make friends with the lovely receptionist. She was awesome and, when I needed to figure out how to get an outside line on the phone or where to get some basic office supplies, she was my secret weapon!

I also had an intern buddy there at the same time. He was great. We would get lunch together and chat about our school programs, etc. However, as the weeks went by, I started to see that he was chatting with the strategy team more. Asking questions, sharing his ideas, making jokes. Suddenly, he had crossed the threshold! He was invited into the client meeting. I was left sitting at my desk.

Looking back, there are only two things that I’m sure of about my time there:.

First, I had no idea what I was doing and I’m 100% confident that everyone there knew it.

Second, I never had the courage to ask (anything). I didn’t ask for clarification. I didn’t ask for mentorship. I didn’t even ask how to get an ‘outside line’ when trying to make a call. I went to my desk every day. I quietly did some work and I went home. I got nothing out of the experience and I gave nothing to them.

I spent 31 days there. And at the end of day 31 I said, ‘thanks for having me’ and I went on my merry (unemployed) way.

The thing(s) I don’t want you to know:

The ‘firsts’ of new things still make me feel anxious – usually, it’s the most trivial things.

When I started golfing, I hated to call to book a tee time. I felt like I would be ‘found out’ for not belonging.

It still takes a big helping of courage for me to enter new situations.

The Guidance of My Inner Mentor:

✤ No one will advocate for you like you. Without a voice, you get the internship (job, raise, timeslot) that shows up, not the one you dream about.

✤ It’s okay to not know things. It’s also okay to ask.

✤ Jump in. Don’t sit on the sidelines waiting for someone to ask you to participate! Have a voice and make yourself visible.​

 

Before becoming a business coach, Jenn established and led a thriving marketing agency – a time filled with challenges, yet great fulfillment. By personally experiencing the highs and lows of business ownership while balancing a family, she gained invaluable insight into overcoming difficulties and achieving goals.

After 13 years, she realized she was ready to expand as an individual and business owner and wanted to assist other female entrepreneurs to do the same. Leaving an established business and embarking on a new path took every ounce of bravery she had, and became one of her greatest accomplishments.

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Pinterest Marketing Strategies – How To Get Started & Generate Leads Like a BOSS

Christina

Christina Willis – West of 100 Interiors
 
Website: West of 100 Interiors | Pinterest Management & Strategy https://www.westof100interiors.com 
Pinterest: West of 100 Interiors | https://www.pinterest.ca/westof100interiors/boards 
Instagram: @cultivationlounge | https://www.instagram.com/cultivationlounge
Facebook: West of 100 Interiors | https://www.facebook.com/West-of-100-Interiors

What are the Business Goals of Your Website?

Every website should be created with a goal in mind. This ensures that the website is focused and can help you achieve your business goals.

Start by asking yourself: “Why am I building a web site?” Is it because everyone else is doing it too? Do you have a specific purpose in mind for it?

Clearly defining your web business goals ensure that your web site is optimized to achieve them. After all, you can only meet your goals when you know what they are.

Of course, defining a web business goal may not be as easy as it sounds. It comes naturally to some of us while it is a lot harder for others. Here is a list of common web business goals:

1. Product Sales

You want to sell products to online shoppers. These products might be your own or you might be selling them as a sales representative of a company. But why would people visit your web site and not thousands of others selling products similar to yours? What makes you different from your competitors?

To create website traffic you need to promote your site. It may also help to offer something useful to your website visitors. This could be special offers or bonuses etc. For example, most web sites selling software offer a free trial download.

One good way to draw visitors to a web site, is to offer unique and useful product related information to them. For example, Amazon.com offers a number of customer reviews for each book it is selling. This serves as useful information for people who might be thinking of buying that particular book.

Observe the sites of your competitors closely and see what they are doing to draw visitors to their sites and make sales.

2. Brand Awareness

Some web sites are built to create awareness for a brand. Let’s take the example of Coke’s web site. Is it there because the Coca-Cola Company hopes to sell coke bottles on the web? No, it is there to create brand awareness and assert its brand identity.

You may decide to bring your business to the web for the sole purpose of reassuring your customers that your company is willing to evolve with the changing times. The web site that you build will center on the purpose of enhancing and reasserting the image of your company.

3. Cost Reduction

Another business goal for building a web site can be cost reduction. A web site can result in cost reductions for you in a number of ways. You may reduce

  • your customer services costs by having an online customer services system,
  • your order processing costs by having an online ordering system for distributors and retailers, and
  • your printing and paper costs by having brochures or product manuals online.

If your business has no offline presence, building a start up business on the web will involve minimal costs as compared to building a brick and mortar store. This is a major reason why many start up businesses are emerging on the web.

4. Providing Information

A web site can be created for the sole purpose of providing basic information about your company. Such a web site can take the form of an online brochure. It will result in cost savings from advertising for you and will be easy to build.

5. Facilitating Communication

You may build a web site to make it easy for your customers or prospects to communicate with you. A lot of television channels and periodicals have web sites where they conduct online surveys on different topics. An online survey is very easy to conduct and compile in comparison to an offline survey, and is a good source of eliciting customer opinions about a product or idea.

Moreover, traditional mediums of communication like fax, telephone, snail mail etc are expensive and time consuming. Through a web site or email, your customer can easily get in touch with you.

6. Affiliate Commissions

Another reason for building a web site may be to make money through promoting affiliate programs, which offer you a commission on sales. If you plan to build a web site for this purpose, do keep the following in mind:

  • Choose a program that offers useful and legitimate products/ services.­
  • Promote programs that cater to the same target audience.
  • Offer information in the form of articles or compiled links that this target audience would find useful.
  • Do not try to over stuff your web site with banners and popups. Visitors find them very irritating.
  • Informative articles and reviews get more attention than a usual ad.

7. Revenue from Advertising

You may want to earn money by advertising other businesses on your web site. However this is not as easy as it sounds. The foremost concern of advertisers is the amount and quality of traffic your web site is drawing. You need to promote your web site well to ensure that it has a high amount of traffic. Moreover, you need to offer information similar to the advertisers’ products to ensure that they are getting the audience they intend to target. A good way to make money is to sign up for Google Ads.

No matter what the purpose of your web site may be, make sure that you keep track of the visitors of your web site. A traffic tracking system like Google Analytics gives you valuable information about your web site visitors. It also enables you to make important decisions related to the optimization of your web site.

Erum Zehra is a digital entrepreneur and the founder of Prestige Interactive. Prestige Interactive specializes in creating stunning business websites for female entrepreneurs to propel their business in the limelight. Download her FREE Website Planning Template today to design your website layout for success!(https://prestigeinteractive.ca/freebies). 

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Follow Your Glimmer

What is Glimmer?! Glimmer is that image or thought that shimmers into your awareness ‘from out of nowhere’. When it comes it is captivating…if only for a moment. Almost like a little seduction…so good and tantalizing. It bleeds through from a life not lived. It grabs your attention, sparks your imagination, stirs your emotions.

In the beginning it comes for only a second…and then it is gone…just a shimmering twinkle of desire or inspiration. Often this Glimmer comes when ‘least expected’…when we are driving home and spacing out, doing the dishes while staring out the window mindlessly, gardening in the perfect warmth of the sun.

I have come to consider these glimmering visitations as inspired sparks from the Soul… calling us, inviting us to imagine a treasure we have not yet found. Sadly, and all too often, it seems we bring our rational mind to this party and everything shuts down. Our Glimmer is gone. We are left feeling silly or even defeated by our ‘daydream’ and we resignedly step back into the grind of our every day life…and the good feeling is gone.

Get practiced at Going for the Glimmer, hunt for it. Pay attention to it when it shimmers into your consciousness. Play with it, engaging in the fanciful potentials…let your imagination roam wild. With this practice the Glimmer stays a while longer, coming into a little more focus…and then it is gone again. Step by step you practice following this luminous mysterious glimmering desire for something more…and it grows in clarity.

We begin to be able to summon it and imagine into it. If we want it to grow into form in our life, it needs our attention. These glimmering thought forms and energy bodies want to find their way into form and function. Their calling on you is designed to inspire and to engage all the resources, skills and supports you have and some you may need to acquire.

Here are three well founded practices to grow this inspiration:

  • Daydream! Let your creative mind wander with all that is possible with this emerging energy in your life. Have fun with this, check your problem-solving mind ‘at the door’ and enjoy the fanciful potential.
  • Collect images that are resonant with what is emerging, what it looks like, feels like, capture some element of it. If it is the new home you would love to live in (even if you can’t figure out how), capture the images and create a collage/vision board or join Pinterest and give your Glimmer its own board!
  • Make a list of all the discoveries you are making about your Glimmer…what are the qualities, the details, the way you feel when you spend time with your glimmering new reality? Get to know it, spend time with it and make it matter.

All of these practices invite the power of your imagination, calls on everything the research is telling us, and supports us into our own glimmering Luminous Life.

 

 

Dr. Shannon Simonelli is the co-founder of the NeuroImaginal Institute a professional development group linking neuroscience to the arts and experiential healing. She is the brilliant mind, guide and luminary behind CreativeWell Consulting and the Luminous Life Maps™ System, neurologically based creative arts experiences for professional and personal transformation. Shannon has devoted more than 20 years of her professional research, education and practice to designing engaging ways to catalyze change for and with her clients.

You can join the journey online by subscribing to Shannon’s LoveNotes and being part of her online Soulful Self-Care Program: Embodied Creativity: Re-Enchant Your Work Life. View all posts by Dr. Shannon Simonelli / View events at: https://luminouslifemaps.com/products/

 

Challenge widely-held assumptions, enjoy enormous success

Business models are just that – models. They help us organize and understand the world around us but they are far from perfect truths. Rather, the models we apply to our business, social and personal lives are simply hypotheses that are (in theory) founded on reason and supported by available evidence. Philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce’s Pragmatic Theory of Inquiry argued long ago that even the best models are inherently fallible and therefore destined to be replaced by future models. Imperfect tools are all we have and ever will have. His views have been echoed by many philosophers, scientists and other deep thinkers before and after him. 

But just because the fallibility of models is a well-proven fact doesn’t mean it’s not a hard pill to swallow. Especially for those of us suffering from the human condition (read: everybody.) Understandably, humans have evolved to crave certainty because it is easier to meet the needs of your people and protect against threats when you operate under the assumption that you know what they are, where they are and when to worry about them. This is why we hold onto our established models so tightly for so long.  Unfortunately, we often hold onto them even when their detriment to society becomes too obvious to ignore. We explain away these detriments in knee-jerk fashion. We fear the uncertainty that would comes with making concessions and, thus, making change. 

But certainty is an illusion. If the year 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that our current working knowledge and beliefs are nothing more than fallible models. As the saying goes, “the only constant is change” and we do ourselves a disservice by believing anything else (as much as we might really like to.)

The good news is that this realization offers ambitious, open-minded entrepreneurs (and anyone else, frankly) a fantastic new cognitive reality to thrive in. A reality in which anything could be possible if we are willing to suspend our beliefs and allow alternative perspectives to enter our consciousness.

The takeaway? Entrepreneurs who challenge and reframe long-held hypotheses that everyone else (ie. your competition) has accepted as truth will be able to solve more problems for customers, create healthier happier work environments and, in turn, differentiate themselves in a way that rewards their risk-taking.

Stand-out Canadian corporation, Shopify, is an excellent case study in how challenging widely-held industry assumptions can lead to enormous success. CEO and Founder, Tobias Lutke, did not set out with the intention of creating an ecommerce platform. Originally, he wanted to sell snowboards. But once he found himself at the helm of a budding technology start-up, having no background in traditional business disciplines, he was faced with a number of industry “truths” (assumptions) about how to grow successfully. 

The first long-held industry truth was that, in order to be successful, a Canadian start-up ultimately had to be bought by a company or move to a technology hub in the United States. The supporting evidence, of course, was the prolific in-your-face history of rapid-growth, global-reaching technology firms coming out of the US: Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon to name a few.  The conclusion and resulting industry “truth” being that the talent, resources and know-how that Shopify would need was only available in the United States. Shopify would have to move south to achieve success. 

However, perhaps because of his outsider status within the “business” world, Tobias rejected that truth. Explaining his mentality in one interview he said: “I tend to think, when everyone says do one thing, you should do the opposite. I’ve found that to be a sure-fire way to be successful. You can build a world class city anywhere. People are no smarter in Silicon Valley than they are here. Some of the smarter people from Canada might move there, sure, but that just means that there’s more competition there.”

There can be great efficiency in starting with a theory or belief and searching for evidence that confirms it. Many business professionals (especially in the management consulting industry) subscribe to the method of hypothesis-led problem solving for this reason. Unfortunately, what all-too-often happens is a tendency to adopt the seemingly-unavoidable industry truth (i.e. only the United States has the talent and know-how to build a billion-dollar technology company) and subconsciously focus on evidence that supports it while ignoring evidence that refutes it. This is a well-documented cognitive process known as Confirmation Bias and literally all of us fall victim to it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t fight – and win – against it.

To avoid subconsciously seeking evidence in support of that pervasive industry “truth” (i.e. location matters) savvy problem-solvers can instead consciously attempt to disprove it.  There are two possible outcomes of taking this approach, both of which are valuable to problem-solvers. First, if, despite your efforts, you cannot find sufficient evidence to the contrary, then you can move forward, assuming the pervasive industry truth, with greater confidence. (Woo hoo!) Second, if you DO find sufficient evidence to refute the pervasive industry truth, you can begin to formulate a fresh new perspective that, in the words of Tobias Lutke, “culturally aligns with what [you’re] trying to accomplish, and then just go for it.”

However, an even more useful and exciting approach for problem-solvers may be to seek evidence for how the industry truth AND opposing hypotheses could be simultaneously true. That’s where the real magic happens. 

A great reference book for this is The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin, former Dean of Rotman School of Management and respected business strategy thought-leader. Referencing his many interviews with leaders around the world, Roger highlights similarities in the way they overcome business problems. Meg Whitman of eBay, told him “it’s this idea of ‘and'” and Nanden Nilekani, of Infosys, explaining how, when presented with two opposing options, he asks himself “are there solutions that satisfy both?” 

Tobias Lutke took such an approach when he faced another pervasive industry truth: the “start-up culture” of a young technology company could not be maintained if it grew to be a multi-billion dollar corporation. In this case, Tobias challenged the understanding of what having a “start-up culture” really meant. When Shopify grew to 1,500 employees, he would receive feedback from candidates who expressed their preference for working at smaller companies. Tobias asked such candidates to deconstruct what that really meant. The bottomline, it turns out, is that these candidates really wanted to feel they had personal impact at work – something that was not inherently at odds with a large organization (or at least didn’t have to be.)

As a result of Tobias’ intentional opposition to old industry truths, Shopify has become one of Canada’s greatest success stories. During a time of social and economic chaos, Shopify stock reached the noteworthy $1,000 per share milestone (coincidentally, just this past Canada Day) growing 159% above last year’s price at this time. 

Such stand-out success is within reach of any entrepreneur ambitious, courageous and open-minded enough to challenge, deconstruct and assign new meaning to long-held industry truths.  To quote Roger Martin in The Opposable Mind, “Explicitly refuse to accept trade-offs that the rest of the world says are “unavoidable”.  

By nature, such an endeavour will be unfamiliar territory to most people. Living and operating in a new cognitive reality is not so simple. Seeing alternatives to the deeply-ingrained status-quo is not so easy. I can help. 

As a human-centered strategist, I collaborate with Canadian businesses to systematically deconstruct problems, uncover new meaning and, ultimately, design more effective customer-facing systems and content. If you keep bumping up against a pervasive industry truth in your pursuit to solve customer problems, nurture a productive workforce and achieve stand-out success, I can help you overcome it.

 

Stephanie Ruth Grimbly is a ‘human-centered strategist’ and creative problem-solver. She combines traditional business practices with emerging innovation disciplines to reveal insights about customer preferences and develop stand-out strategies for Canadian businesses. 
 

Emotional Entrepreneur – Why do I have a business?

Or why do I want to have a business?

Making a decision to have a business is so much more than just making a living or finding a way to make a living.

It is so much more than a way to avoid having a job in the corporate world.

It is a way to make an impact.

It is a way to help or support people in a way you love.

It is a way to create an avenue to allow abundance to flow to you and of course, that includes money.

It is about having a say in what you want to do professionally and exercise that right.

It is about that part that you love so much, your why.

 

For example, for me, it is a way to have an impact.

It is a way to be a channel for the Universe.

It is a way to help people and LOVE seeing the results.

It is a way to have A LOT of fun!

It is a way to partner with the Universe, communicate with it and share its wisdom with my clients and be in the presence of that life being improved, of that impact!

You are inspired the business you have or want to have because you’ll love it, you’ll have a lot of fun with it and there’s more people that will benefit from it.

It’s a win-win situation for everyone! There’s no favours or no convincing, there’s only matching vibrations that will attract and benefit from each other!

Let’s understand, the goal is not only to create a business and be successful. The goal includes enjoying the process of creation, letting creativity flow through you and following it to have the most amazing experience in our business that will be a reflection of us, of who we are, and what we are about. In our own way.

There are few reasons, that I have seen, why people choose to become and entrepreneur instead of following the path of the corporate world.

One of the reasons is autonomy, which includes flexibility. As an entrepreneur you most likely want to be your own boss, you want to have a say on what your goals are and you want to have a say on your hours, and your deadlines. Usually a work-life balance is a key desire when opening a business.

However, it is important that we sit down and make decisions about what we want in our business. For example, do you want to work full time or do you want it part time? Do you want to hire people or do you want to do it all yourself? If you hire people, what soft and hard skills do you want on them, including your type of relationship with them?

It may not seem that important but if you don’t define what you want in your business, you’ll be creating a business that will look very much like your experiences in the corporate world. That could be a good thing. However, it’s not always the case.

Our beliefs about our professional life are there and will kick in if we don’t make brand new decisions and focus on them to allow them into our experience. If your belief is that hard work is mandatory and having a life is not possible when starting a business, well, then that will be your experience unless you make a different conscious choice. At the end, we are creating our business. Let’s dare to create it exactly as we want it, right?

And then of course, set the goals that most people focus on, what kind of income do you want? Projects? Marketing? And so on…

You may not need guidance on these types of goals but, I invite you to make your choices but to make them including your intuition as you make the decisions. Make sure they feel good when you set them. Make inspired decisions instead of the old I-have-to-prove-my-success-with-my-goals kind of decisions.

Another reason why people opt for entrepreneurship is purpose. We spoke about it at the beginning of this blog and it’s true. Purpose is a big driving force for many people in the opening of the business. It is also a big driving force as you grow in your business.

Let’s face it, there will be some times that will make us scratch our head. Hopefully not too hard. But if it hits us in a bad time or in a strong way, continuing with our business can be a consideration. Remembering our purpose can be the clarifying information we may need in those moments. The fuel that will just bring us to the other side of the stress or even, the energy that will help us decide that it is time to close.

Another reason I’ve seen people get into starting a business is financial success. This is a big one. It sometimes is considered as the purpose, the why of the business.

We spoke about it at the beginning as well. It’s not that it is a bad idea to make money your purpose. It’s just that passion may be a longer lasting and more of a driving force than safety and security. Please, don’t get me wrong, I do love money and want to make tons of it. That’s not up for discussion. What I am saying is where are you going to put your focus on when you think about your business?

Now that I actually said the words “I love money”, are you able to say that as well? Money has many taboos and negative charges, if you are using money as your purpose, you better be ok with loving money.

If your purpose is money alone, the way you chose to get it, what you provide with your business, is it fun? Is it at least enjoyable? Do you look forward to it? It can be hard to keep going if those answers are a no or muted. If the only “reward” is receiving money, it can be difficult not only to continue with your business but to actually make the money you want to make.

Again, I am not against money. I am no trying to convince you to be a charity (although you can if you want). All I am saying is look for more reasons than money to start/have your business. For sure the intention is to make money, but let’s spice it up with a reason that will make you put money as an awesome consequence and not as a reason alone.

Lastly, a very important reason I’ve seen people start or have a business is to prove to themselves, although it seems like they are trying to prove others, that they are worthy.

The perceived lack of worth can have many reasons. For some of us, it can be “blamed” on the fact that I am a woman. Sometimes, a role, like motherhood or other female roles can take a toll on our worth. Maybe being an immigrant makes us feel like we need to work harder than others to prove we are worthy of our new home country or to compensate that we don’t speak the language perfectly or our skin color is different and so on….

We usually don’t use those specific words but, when we believe we need to earn what we want, or we need to “pay our dues”, or whatever phrase you may use to justify hardship and struggle just means there’s a part of you that believes you are not worthy, otherwise no earning would be necessary.

What do I mean by hardship or struggle? In the world we live in, we have grown to be insensitive to how we feel. Furthermore, we have learned to ignore ourselves and just “push through” or “work hard” or “suck it up and keep going” in order to achieve what we want. These kinds of experiences are worth earning practices that don’t always deliver the results we want.

What if we are already worthy and deserving and all we are meant to do is to allow our desires to come to reality? For sure we’ll take action and participate in the creation of our business but the Universe does play a part in it and we participate in the plan the Universe has for us, instead of “taking control” of everything and pretend to make it all happen on our own.

It is a completely different outlook of life.

What is the most common dynamic? Struggle, hardship, fighting, and then, when you believe you can’t do it anymore. You may even be ready to give up. Then, what happens? A breakthrough! 

We tend to believe that the breakthrough was a payoff from our hard work but what if the breakthrough happened because we finally let go of control and allowed our desire to happen? We actually got out of our own way.

When we are able to accept and trust that we are worthy and deserving of what we want, inherently, the way life, and in this case our business, develops can be a happy, exciting, and interesting experience.

 

Live intuitively,

Genoveva Vazquez

CPA, CGA, Self-love and Wealth Coach, Founder Intuitive Living Path

Genoveva Vazquez, founder of Intuitive Living Path is a former accountant transformed into a Self-Love and Wealth coach. Genoveva is very passionate about helping people fall in love with themselves and with their lives all over again. Since she went through that moment of “wanting to throw in the towel” she has lived her life knowing that there’s more to life that what is showing up for many of us. We do love ourselves, we do have power, we do create our lives, we just need to start it all from the inside out.

Email: info@intuitivelivingpath.com

Website: https://intuitivelivingpath.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GenovevaVazquez.Coach/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intuitive.living.path/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intuitive-living-path

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw9v_P9dCUJ_E0H0129Aslw

Relationships, Introductions and What Ifs

This is my first conversation with this community…the community of Canadian Small Business Women. Of course it’s not the first conversation I’ve had with Canadian businesses – I come out of a 20-year career in communications, business strategy and architecting customer relationships where I worked with some of the largest businesses in Canada (and the United States), including Mark’s Work Wearhouse & Harley-Davidson. Over time, however, I found myself gravitating to smaller (and smaller) businesses and today I am a Strategic Guide to some of the estimated 70-80% of business owners who are ‘solo’ or working with a team of less than 5-10 employees. 

In this initial conversation, you’ll find what you might expect the first time you meet someone…a little about me and then I turn the microphone over to you so to speak. That’s the essence of strong, two-way relationships. It can’t be all monologues and broadcasting; there have to be purposeful pauses that create the opportunity for dialogue. So I’m going to ask four specific ‘what if’ questions, just as I would if we WERE talking 1:1, and would allow me to get a sense of where you are today – inside the business & beyond. 

Now, ‘what if’ is a tricky question…95% of the time we ask it – there is a connection to three things I mention in this video that have come to shape the culture of Business today and the paradigm, which surrounds a great deal of that culture. 

I think it’s only fair to share what else you might expect over the next few months, my ‘endgame’ if you will. My endgame here is strategically simply, to coherently connect you with a few things that create more inside the business so you can experience more beyond it. 

Tricia Murray is strategic guide, speaker, author, and podcast host whose core community is built around change-makers, agents of change and game-changers. She connects the smallest of SMBs to more, and her ‘people’ go on to create more, experience more and create the experience of more inside their business & beyond it.

Her hybrid approach incorporates DIY, group and 1:1 guided pathways each designed to strategically simplify that which has been made incredibly complicated, especially for solo and micro business owners. Her process is backed by universal and timeless wisdom from both science and spiritual traditions, and enables individuals to tune in, sync up and amplify the change they want to create and experience – inside the business & beyond.

Explore more @ www.becomingcoherent.com

Create the experience of more in an upcoming event • https://bit.ly/bci-events-triciamurray

Connect to more inside my Mighty Coherent Community

Link: https://bit.ly/bci-community-LI

5 WAYS TO INCORPORATE SELF CARE INTO YOUR BUSINESS

Being an entrepreneur means putting our dreams out there in the world.  Not allowing those who question us, disagree with us, or even disapprove of us to bring us down.  

Life as an entrepreneur can be lonely.  Most of the time we work from home, alone, and dedicate many hours a day to creating our dream life.  A vision that we so desperately love we sometimes put self-care on the back burner to get that one extra thing checked off our business to-do list. Many nights I have found myself working until midnight just to finish a passion project and waking up the next morning at 6 am, groggy from the lack of sleep I am allowing myself to have.

Self-care isn’t some passing craze.  It is giving ourselves the dedication that we give to our businesses so freely.  I didn’t realize the importance of self-care until I started adding it to my life.  I was one of those that believed I didn’t need to take care of myself.  That everyone and everything came before me.  I was burnt out, frustrated, and incapable of working my business the way it was meant to be run.  Our businesses suffer when we don’t put ourselves first.

I put self-care first on my list and I began to notice the changes.  Changes in my behavior towards myself and others.  Changes in the way I spoke to my kids.  Changes in the way I spoke about my business.  Changes in the way that I dressed, felt about myself and others, and how I managed my day.  The changes were incredible and everyone around me even began to notice.  

Self-care began to give me the confidence I needed to give my business the attention it deserved.  It means that I can give my clients the best of me, my followers the best of me, and my blog readers the best of me.  

Today I want to share with you 5 ways that you can incorporate self-care into your business.  Whether you work by yourself or with employees, this will help you to regain control and put yourself in among the important to-dos on your list.

 

5 WAYS TO INCORPORATE SELF CARE INTO YOUR BUSINESS

Time block.  

You may be wondering why this is number 1 on the list of adding self-care into your business.  Well, let me tell you.  You are an entrepreneur which means your business is a piece of you.  A piece of you that takes up time in your life.  Working during the day, after dinner, during your child’s bath, once they are sleeping.  Being an entrepreneur means that work NEVER really ends.  At the end of the day, you are the one responsible for your business and it is up to you to grow and expand it.  

By using time blocking, it can free up other parts of the day where you can add in play and some self-care. This allows you to be more focused and driven to get your business to do tasks completed.  You can do it as one big chunk or break it down into smaller chunks throughout the day.  I know personally I have to do smaller chunks throughout the day.  I have a 3-year-old at home so working for 4 hours straight isn’t an option while I am at home.  It may take a bit of time to figure out what schedule works but once you do, it will feel so much better.  Then you can also schedule in self-care.

Begin to use time blocking for everything that you do.  When you time block for work, write down the list of items that you need to complete in that time.  When you time block for family, write down what you are doing together.  When you time block for self-care, write down what you are going to do for self-care.  If you don’t give yourself specific tasks, especially when first starting with time blocking, you will soon find that you waste that time and have gotten nothing done.

Digital detox for 1 hour per day.

This is super important if you are an online entrepreneur.  We often get consumed and sucked into our phones and computers.  Working, reading, scrolling.  We lose track of time and realize that half of our day has disappeared because the online world swallowed us.  

This is incredibly important now.  I am finding that my attitude, my mindset, and my family are deeply affected by all the negativity that is filling my social media feed.  Even trying to keep all positive and empowering women and family on my social media platforms, the world still finds its way in and I can lose myself in all of that.  

Get your head out of all the screens and look up at the world.  Take a walk, play with your kids.  Doing a digital detox is all about living in the moment.  Making memories off-screen.  Shut off of your phone and put it somewhere that you just can’t grab it for that hour.  

Find a group of supportive women entrepreneurs.

We are all looking for connections.  Life can be lonely if we have no one in our life that we can turn to.  Having like-minded businesswomen in our circle creates a powerful connection.  Find a group of women where you feel like you belong.  A place that is safe for you to talk business, talk life, bounce ideas off of each other, and just be supportive of one another.

There are moments when we may think that in our business competition means that we can’t have connections.  There is no room for competition.  Women need to stand together, be strong, and support one another.  If you can’t find a group like that, create it.  Create a group where you get together once a month.  

A book club for business.

I am a huge lover of books and I recommend that every woman entrepreneur read business books.  There is power in knowledge and the insight that you gain through reading is endless.  Get together with a group of ladies and talk about the book that you read.  Meet once a month.  During open discussions, you will find that everyone took away something different from the book and will open your eyes even more to all that you can learn when you surround yourself with powerful women.

A few of the books that I recommend reading are:

  • The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod
  • Leave Your Mark by Aliza Licht
  • Carry on Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton
  • The Monk who Sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma
  • The Secret Letter of the Monk who Sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma
  • The Greatness Guide by Robin Sharma
  • Taking the Leap by Pema Chödrön

Delegate tasks.

I know for me when I started my business, I didn’t realize all of the extra things that needed to be done.  Things that I am just not good at.  We are all created with a different set of skills and there is no need to pretend that we are good at something that we are not.  

Learning to delegate tasks that we don’t enjoy or that we just aren’t good at can relieve so much stress that we put on ourselves.  Delegating tasks doesn’t have to mean hiring someone. It can be an exchange of services with another entrepreneur, asking a friend or family member to watch your child while you get some work done, or hiring an expert where you really struggle.  Plus think of all the time that you will save delegating tasks that leave room for more self-care.

By creating a self-care routine into your business, you create boundaries.  You avoid business burnout and you fall in love with your passion again.  Learn to get out of work mode and into life mode.  Embrace the times where you can live in the moment.  These small changes will help you become a better entrepreneur and at the end of the day, we all want to live a version of life where we feel connected and as balanced as we can be.  

 

Samantha Laycock is a blogging coach for women and a freelance blogger for female entrepreneurs in the self-care industry.  She is a HUGE self-care and self-love advocate, sexual assault survivor, mother of 3, a wife of 14 years, and a believer in the power of sharing your story.  You can find her on Instagram and Facebook as @samanthalaycockblogging and on Pinterest as @samanthalaycockblogger

5 ways to reach Millennials on social media

At the start of 2020, over there were over 3.8 billion active social media users in the world. While 90% of Millennials consider themselves active social media users, 79% of Millennials use social media multiple times per day, choosing to spend their time on multiple platforms. Instagram and Facebook are the most popular social media platforms, but how can you use this information when you are marketing to Millennials on social media?

Here are 5 ways to use social media to connect with Millennials.

Focus on what they care about

Causes and brand values have become even more important in today’s socioeconomic climate. The fact that over 60% of Millennials want their actions to make a difference because they are worried about the state of the world says it all. Every day there are renewed calls for brands to step up and support causes that are important – and do it in a way that isn’t performative. Performative means that you are doing it because it’s something your brand believes in, not just because you think it will sell more products. If you are trying to connect with Millennials, note that 8 in 10 Millennials want their beliefs and values to align with brands they buy from. Social media is a great way for you to connect with them on a deeper level.

Focus on creating a great brand experience

It’s well documented that Millennials are generally more interested in investing in experiences rather than owning things. You need to take this into account when you are building your social media strategy. Think about creating great brand experiences whether it’s through unique and interactive content, interactive contests, or even great takeovers with their favourite social media creators.

Be present. Be social

If you are going to be on social media and you want to connect with Millennials, you need to make sure that you are consistently present and interacting with your community. It’s never a good approach to ignore comments and messages as a brand, but Millennials will lose interest even more than other age groups if you don’t respond in a timely fashion. And the idea is that you should keep it social. While the majority of Millennials are on social media, one third feel that it has a negative impact on their lives. You need to find ways to add value rather than add to the negative feelings.

User Generated Content

If nearly half of Millennials are more likely to trust a complete stranger over your ads on social media, you should consider implementing both an influencer strategy as well as a strategy to share User Generated Content (UGC). If you are concerned that your followers won’t be interested in posting content that features your brand, consider that 44% of Millennials are interested in promoting brands on social media – especially in exchange for some sort of reward. Your challenge is how to introduce UGC into your strategy in a meaningful way.

Social Commerce

Retail is constantly changing and it was only a matter of time before social media created more robust ways for brands to sell through each platform. Judging by the way Millennials interact with brands and discover and perpetuate trends on social media, I’m only surprised it didn’t come sooner. Millennials have huge buying power and are expected to spend $1.4 trillion in 2020. Paired with the fact that almost 60% explore trends on various social media platforms, social commerce has huge potential.

Candace Huntly is Founding Partner at SongBird Marketing Communications, an award-winning agency working to take organizational and individual brands to the next level. With a passion for all things related to creativity and strategy, she specializes in business intelligence, marketing & branding, content strategy & development, media & influencer relations, and social media. Basically, if you need to put your brand, product, or cause in the public eye, she will find a way to do it, while making the approach unique to you.

Connect with Candace

Sign up for our free 20-minute consultation and we’ll help you figure things out.

A version of this article was originally posted to the SongBird Marketing Communications blog.

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