Tag: business success

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Balance and Boundaries Equal Freedom When Running a Business

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Here’s something that no one tells you when you go into business for yourself and that no one who DOESN’T go into business for themselves can even comprehend:

Balance and boundaries are not luxuries; they’re necessities.

Entrepreneurs can build businesses that either serve or enslave them. If you’ve started your own business and have been run ragged by all the things you felt you had to do to accommodate clients, you’re not alone. When just starting out, most people are willing to do just about anything to get the proverbial ball rolling.

Spoiler alert: This is not sustainable. No one can keep up such a rigorous pace forever. You need time to rest and cultivate clarity and balance.

What’s more, as your business grows and the details of your life bloom, it becomes absolutely impossible. Do you remember being in your 20s and actually having extra time when you had nothing to do? Blank space on your calendar?

If you own your own business, chances are those days are gone. When you grow as a person, so does your capacity. What doesn’t change is the number of hours on any given day.

So how can you find blank space on your calendar now? The secret is balance and boundaries, and here’s how you can get started being less busy and enjoying some much-needed free time.

Tips for Finding Balance and Setting Boundaries

Chances are, if you’re a business owner—especially a new one—you’re thinking there’s absolutely no way you can set boundaries with people. After all, you’re trying to get business. You need to be everything to everyone, right?

This statement isn’t only false, but will land you in hot water when you experience burnout after a few months or years of doing this. Get started setting those boundaries by taking the following steps:

1. Identify tasks you can delegate to others.

These may be customer service and sales-related tasks, among others, so you can focus on big-picture business development. Pro tip: you can even automate tasks!

2. Audit the relationships in your life.

If anyone—a client, a team member, a sibling, a neighbor—is eating up all of your energy or time, they have to go. It sounds harsh and we’re certainly not suggesting a Tony-Soprano-style “gotta go”, but if you want to change what you attract and accept in your life, you need business boundaries and life balance.

3. Remember that you are not obligated to help everyone.

Of course you’re trying to start a business, get clients, and be successful. But doing all of these things doesn’t mean bending over backwards for people. It means choosing your clients carefully and referring out the ones that aren’t a good fit for you.

So where do you lack boundaries? Where do you feel off-balance? We all struggle to maintain the right balance in our business and personal lives sometimes.

If this philosophy resonates with you, you’re not alone. So many others have come to realize that balance and boundaries are necessary to have freedom when running a business.

That’s why we started the Facebook group Get More Clients (You Love). We keep it real. We believe in real connections without people sucking energy from other people, and no BS. If all of that works for you, then we’ll see you in the group!

Tags business ownership, business success, client relationships, small business

Small Business Marketing

Setting Boundaries for Ultimate Business Success

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Did you know that business ownership is one of the most stressful choices you can make in your career?

Did you also know that you can manage your stress even as a business owner? That feeling of being enslaved to the company you’ve created is not a requirement for success.

Here’s a way to manage your stress while building a foundation for success: setting boundaries with appropriate positioning and targeted marketing and you’ll get to work with your ideal clients with less burnout.

The Benefits of Setting Business Boundaries

We know what you’re thinking: why should you limit your client opportunities by setting boundaries before you’ve even had the chance to talk to them?

This is a fair question. However, you’re not setting rigid boundaries in that you won’t speak to many prospects. Setting business boundaries helps you laser focus on the perfect client for your business. Doing so will benefit you in the following ways:

Decrease your competition. The more clear you are with your boundaries in regards to who is a good fit for you and who is not, you’ll decrease your competition. To that end, you’ll have time and energy to focus on the clients that will help you build your business.
Gain better traction. Every business needs momentum to get started and continue growing. Crystal-clear business boundaries make it so much easier to gain traction and get going!
Easier marketability. “Jack of all trades, master of none” is not an effective marketing strategy and a one-way ticket to burnout. Clear service offerings to specific clients is the best way to make your business life infinitely easier.

Now that you’ve seen the benefits of setting those boundaries, it’s time to get started creating them!

3 Steps for Setting Boundaries

So what’s the best way to establish boundaries with people you’ve never met?

Know who you want to work with. From the kind of work you want to do most to the personality type of your ideal client, be clear with YOURSELF before you ever write a piece of marketing material for your clients.
Seek to understand the pain points of that ideal client. Not how you can help them, but rather how they need to be helped. How will what you offer them impact their life? Their business? Their bottom line?
Position yourself as a specialist or as an expert in your field. If the word “specialist” or “expert” is problematic, you can still use words like “focused” or “expertise” to outline the framework of what you do and for whom.

Believe it or not, specificity will actually increase your close rate. You may reach fewer people, but the number of people who choose to move forward will go up. It’s the very definition of work smarter, not harder. Added Bonus: No more burnout.

Need Help Nailing Down Your Target Audience?

GoBeyond SEO helps small businesses reach their ideal clients every day. Schedule a free discovery call with us to learn more about how we can help you narrow your focus so you can have the business you’ve always wanted.

Tags business success, Entrepreneurship, narrow target market, small business marketing, target audience

Business Blogging Entrepreneurship

3 Ways Being Too Busy Hurts Your Business—And What You Can Do About It

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Being super busy is still a woefully outdated badge of honor for so many business owners. We equate busy with successful.

Why do we do this? Because we also have an outdated viewpoint of what success looks like.

We all need clients to be in business—the word itself reads like busy-ness. But being too busy will actually make your business suffer.

It’s understandable that you don’t want your business to be slow or have to worry about where you’ll get your next client. But that doesn’t mean we need to glorify being busy.

Here are three ways being overly busy hurts your business.

1. Being Too Busy Shortchanges Your Clients

When you’re busy, you tend to forget all the superior service details that set you apart from your competitors, and you end up shortchanging your clients. When your clients don’t get the attention they’ve come to expect from you, you risk losing them entirely.

2. Being Too Busy Isn’t Sustainable

Your business is reliant on your health and well-being, and, even if you have a team in place and can delegate tasks, you’re still ultimately in charge of it all. Studies show that we’re not using all our vacation days and are working longer hours. The stress to perform at top capacity is not sustainable physically or mentally.

3. Busy Leads to Burnout

When you’re in a place where you’re starting to hate your job and it’s a job you created for yourself, you’re in burnout or close to it. If you’re too deep in the day-to-day, you lose sight of the big picture and why you started your business in the first place.

Tips to Be Less Busy and More Successful

So how do you climb out of the burden of busy? Here are a few tips that can keep your business moving forward, but not buried in busy.

Stop Running Away

This tip may sting a little. Some of the time, being too busy is a symptom of low self-esteem. We can inflate our own importance and make ourselves unreachable by simply being “too busy”.

If you’re finding yourself overwhelmed and too busy to engage in the things you want to do, you need to do some soul searching and ask yourself why. Maybe you’re a people pleasing person or maybe you want your competitors or frenemies to think you’re important.

Spoiler alert: You already are. Sit with this for a while and ask yourself what being too busy satisfies in you.

Watch Your Mouth

Stop saying, “I don’t have time.” You do have time, but just not for everything. When you use your language to prioritize the things in your life, your perspective changes. When you reframe time by priority and not by activity, the game changes.

Try switching out the phrase, “I don’t have time to go to the doctor” with, “Going to the doctor isn’t my priority.” It changes the game, right? You’ll start to notice how “not having time” has been your go-to for everything. Only then will you be able to separate the things that are unproductive and useless from that which matters.

Raise Your Prices

If everyone wants what you do, that is fabulous. However, that does not mean they are entitled to it. If you offer different kinds of services that serve different needs for your clients, you need tiered pricing. What’s more is that, if you’re sought after to the point where you can’t take on new business, you’ll never scale. Growth is one thing; scaling is another. Your pricing should always focus on scalability.

Find Out How We Can Help

Being busy can be a symptom of a good business and a significant shift in the market. That said, busy should never be a substitute for running your business correctly. As business owners, we create our futures. Prioritize your time before you fill it!

GoBeyond SEO can help you automate some of your marketing processes and create a better way to sustain your business without jeopardizing the quality you offer your clients. Schedule a free strategy session with us for more information.

Tags business success, client services, Entrepreneurship

Business Blogging Entrepreneurship

6 Bull$h!t Free Success Hacks

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Let’s say you’re still working your regular job, but you’ve started offering your professional services on the side.

Your clients are people you know, such as neighbors and friends. Although making some money, you don’t believe you’ll ever close new clients because you’re less than stellar at sales. You don’t think you’ll make any money because talking about money is too scary. You don’t believe anyone would want to work with you over your competitors because they’ve been in business longer.

Spoiler Alert: You’re gonna need to believe in yourself. The survival of your business depends on it.

If you don’t believe in yourself, why should anyone else? Of course, it’s normal to feel like you won’t make it sometimes. It’s normal for your competitors to kick your ass, or a global pandemic to turn everything you thought you knew upside down. Sometimes “believing in yourself” really DOES feel like a bunch of BS.

Here’s a list of non-negotiables to manifest success, and NONE of them are BS. Pinky Swear.

1. Rest

Have you ever been on a roller coaster? Can you focus on anything other than the immersive experience you’re having?

It’s nearly impossible.

On the other hand, have you ever been to an amusement park and watched a roller coaster? You can sit on a bench, snack on some chips, fill a toddler’s sippy cup, talk to your Mom on the phone, and make a decision about dinner that night.

When you’re in the throes of entrepreneurship and self-doubt, you’re on the roller coaster. Take some time on the bench. You’ll make clearer decisions and be better equipped to manage emotions.

2. Embrace Discomfort

When did being uncomfortable become such a deterrent? Discomfort is a sign of progress. Discomfort can show you your boundary so you can find the best way to expand it.

When you’re faced with the discomfort of pursuit, focus on what you’ll miss if you don’t go for it, not what you’ll risk if you don’t make it.

3. Honor Your Dreams

Many people send their dreams and goals away in the name of helping or pleasing others. This can feel like the right thing to do.

Spoiler Alert: It isn’t.

When we don’t honor our dreams, we demonstrate to ourselves and others that they don’t have value. This is a breeding ground for bitterness and resentment. It will also keep your entrepreneurial goals completely out of reach.

Honoring your dreams isn’t just an activity to get you started. You must practice and honor your dreams every day to make them a reality.

4. Take Radical Accountability

Famine, drought, hurricanes, global pandemics, a new Google Algorithm (this one may be just us). All of these things can potentially blow up your business.

You think, “Why me?”

Totally understandable to feel that way. None of the above roadblocks are your fault, but now your business is in shambles. No one will make it better for you. It’s still on you to take responsibility. It’s not your fault, but how you choose to manage difficulty is your responsibility.

If you want your business to succeed, you need to maintain the mindset of radical accountability. When you practice radical accountability, trusting and believing in yourself becomes much easier.

5. Practice Active Gratitude

This step is crazy easy when things are going well, and wildly difficult when they are not. Active gratitude check-ins are a foolproof way to find calm, grace, and cultivate a healthy state of mind.

The best way to manage chaos is to avoid becoming a part of it. When you’re feeling down, defeated, foolish, or failing, start counting the things that you’re grateful for. If your mind is racing, be thankful for air in your lungs and food in your belly. Be grateful for access to coffee, a blue sky, or the opportunity to go to the beach that one time you and your friends had a blast.

Gratitude isn’t just for greeting cards and kitschy coffee mugs. Gratitude is literally fertilizer for the life you want.

6. Be Passionate and Optimistic

Passion is one of the most powerful emotions available to the human soul. Passion builds relationships, launches careers, and inspires those around you. Finding your unique passion can be difficult and can send you down that path of self-doubt if you don’t take the time to find it.

Get quiet. Write lists about things you love about yourself and about life. Cultivate optimism. Optimism helps us see the beauty of our dreams and all that is available to us.

The list of non-negotiables above aren’t meant to be exhaustive or executed perfectly. It is in the wandering that we find the path directly. It’s absolutely possible (and even commendable) to implement everything above flawfully and still absolutely believe in yourself, even while battling your own moments of doubt.

Success is within your reach—let these mindset hacks help you on your way!

And while you’re cultivating your passion and building your belief in yourself and your business, schedule a free strategy session with us at GoBeyond SEO to learn how we can help you implement the right digital marketing strategies to support your business’ success!

Tags business success, entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship

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