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Two Questions to Change Your Life and Business

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I want to give you two questions I use to keep myself centered and stay organized.

Ready to level-down your stress and get focused?? Here we go…

1. The Question that Leads to Better Bottom-Line Results

There’s a tendency to always be looking for what’s NEXT to do or what ELSE you could add to your plate. The questions, “What should I do next? What else should I be doing?” – these create a perfect environment for distraction and overwhelm.

The question to ask instead is, “What’s working?”

This reminds you to focus on what is already bringing results. You’re going to get more traction when you double down on what’s already working, instead of always experimenting with something new.

The biggest challenge to making this work for you, is taking the time out of the busy operations of a business to actually step back and evaluate your efforts so you can uncover the answer to this question.

2. The Question that Melts Resistance to Challenging Work

When you want to accomplish a project or goal that is unfamiliar or outside your comfort zone, your self-talk usually runs along the lines of, “This is going to be difficult, it’s going to be stressful, and it’s going to take forever.”

And that’s absolutely natural.

Your brain is getting you prepared for any potential hardship. The problem is that by doing so it’s also building resistance that will keep you from moving forward.

In order to melt that resistance, the question instead is, “Am I willing for this to be easy?”

Anytime you find yourself overwhelmed, stressed, worried or apprehensive about a project, about marketing, or even about simply having a way too long to-do list: use this question.

Repeat it like a mantra, “Am I willing for this to be easy? Am I willing for this to be easy? Am I willing for this to be easy?”

Your brain will be redirected from focusing on difficulty to instead consciously finding the path of least resistance.

How I almost messed up an in-person presentation

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Back in May I did my first in-person speaking gig after 2 years of only doing webinars.

As you can guess, it was not all smooth sailing.

There were some setbacks with logistics, setting up the projector, minor stuff. But things could’ve really gone south for me when I was in the very middle of my presentation.

As I looked around, I noticed interest in the faces of the audience, their body language responding to my content in ways that you could never really see during a Zoom call.

I started going with the flow of that feedback, going deeper into details that I don’t normally cover in my presentation. And suddenly I realized…

I was using the time I needed to get to my call to action! (a.k.a. the single most important part of a presentation!!!)

It hadn’t occurred to me that the audience’s reaction could influence my carefully timed presentation, but it did.

The whole point of speaking as a business owner is to do it strategically, and speaking in-person again after so long made me realize I needed a refresher on what details to look out for.

So here are a few tips to help you get back in front of live audiences and get the best possible results:

1. Help manage the event a bit more. The logistics behind an in-person event are a lot different than for an online one, and the group you speak for might be just getting back to doing them after a 2-year pause. So, helping them out a bit more to keep track of details will save you time and headaches.

2. Regardless of the size of the audience, serve them at the highest level. Don’t let a small attendance keep you from delivering the best value to the group.

3. Remember to apply your usual speaking criteria. Your criteria (which btw I HIGHLY recommend setting if you haven’t already) is something that should be top of mind when accepting a speaking gig. Whether it’s the compensation for the gig, or if it’s for members only, whatever you have figured out works best for you, DON’T ignore it just so you can get the win of booking a gig.

4. Remember to practice your call to action. This is a tremendously important part of your presentation and, because you’re not sitting in front of a screen anymore, you can’t read it off a script! So memorize the wording, practice the delivery (10 times more than the rest of your presentation), and make sure you get all those little details right.

5. Be mindful of your expectations around feedback DURING your presentation. Watching people react to your presentation in-person can throw you off your game, and that can be particularly disruptive if you have a short time to deliver your content.

If you want to know how I bounced back from almost messing up my presentation and expand on each tip, watch these videos:

Tips 1 to 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlMn2wN2Y8A

Tip 5 + the full story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zdOS5c-YhM&t=174s

 [Guest blog] Use Your Peak Time!

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When you own your own business, it’s discouraging to feel like you “aren’t doing it right.” A client recently told me:

“Today I didn’t have client calls but I struggled so much the first few hours of the day that really it was just time wasted. If I don’t have calls in the morning, I may as well not go to the office until after lunch…as soon as afternoon hits I am way focused. What do you think about client calls only until 1PM and then the afternoon is office time?”

There’s a simple three-step solution to making decisions like the one my client faced.

1. The first step towards adjusting your schedule to one that works for you is to become aware of your peak (when you are most alert and productive) and trough times (when you are least productive).

2. The next step is to create a menu of those tasks and projects that can go into those peak and trough times. [link to full blog]

For example, projects that require your strongest focus, motivation, and energy should be scheduled during your peak time. Tasks that require less brainpower, like filing, clearing your desk, or some email processing, could be checked off during your trough times.

3. Last, take advantage of as many peak times each week as possible by arranging your tasks into the appropriate time slots. When you plug tasks into your calendar with an awareness of “best times,” you’ll begin to create a new routine around scheduling. One tip I use for scheduling is to color code my tasks on my to-do list, purple to schedule in the morning and blue for afternoon.

I get it – it can be hard to leave a task undone and move it to the next day. What helps me push through that “undone” discomfort is a reminder that in the long run, when I match the task with the appropriate time of day, it typically takes me half the time.

Matching tasks to the right time of day is just one way you can gain more time each day. If you want to tweak how you schedule your peak and trough times, we can discuss in our next session!

Lisa Crilley Mallis MA, COC, ACC  

Helping service-based microbusiness owners eliminate day-to-day busyness. ImpactiveStrategies.com  

5 Speaker Prep Tips for In-Person Events

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After two years of virtual events, even very experienced speakers may have forgotten how to navigate speaking at a live event.

Including this girl.

Having knocked out my first 4 in-person gigs, here are my top 5 tips with details about how to get back in the saddle!

Tip #1: Micro-manage in-person events.

Tip #2: Deliver full presentation, no matter what.

Tip #3: Set your criteria for speaking for free (and stick to them!).

Tip #4: Practice, practice, practice your offer! 

Tip #5: Be mindful of your need for approval.

100% Open Rate, Lesson 2 (an email program I love)

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If you read Lesson 1, you know the lesson is to get started imperfectly.

Lesson 2 is about getting started simply.

And one of the biggest barriers to simplicity these days is technology.

Let’s go back to my client who had just 1 person on her list. Once she made the decision to start sending emails, the next hurdle was: which program to use?

To dip a toe into the overwhelming number of options, do a quick search for “email sending programs.” You will see endless ads and articles that “narrow” down to the top 23 options (ugh).

In the spirit of true simplicity, I’m going to narrow it down to 1 for you.

The program I recommend is Constant Contact.

Yes, I know, it’s kind of old school, but here is why I recommend it:

  1. Customer Service. Seriously, I shouldn’t even write #2 or #3, because this is SO huge. While there are free programs out there like MailMonkey and SendPurple (names have been changed) – the sheer time and frustration you’ll spend on trying to figure out the answers on your own or dig through community forums to get answers… believe me, the $10-20 a month is worth it.
  2. Simple Tech. So easy to build an email, add your contacts, send an email. Years ago, a 70-year-old client of mine who was not super tech-savvy built and sent her first email within an hour (with the help of their outstanding customer service).
  3. Scalable. Start simple with email. Then if you want to add a landing page? Constant Contact can do that. Event marketing? Social media marketing? Integrations with other programs? Yep, CC can do that too.

This is a very specific example, of course. For whatever you’re trying to accomplish right now, here is a quick-start approach to simplifying:

  • What is the goal or project?
  • What are all the things getting in the way? (brainstorm)
  • Regardless of what you’ve done in the past and all of the barriers, what is the SIMPLEST way to reach the goal? In particular, consider how to make it technologically easiest.
  • What is the first step? When will you take it?

100% Open Rate, Lesson 1

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My client got a 100% open rate the very first time she sent an email to her list.

WOW. How did she do that?

Well… she only had 1 person on her list.

So – surprise! The open rate isn’t the lesson.

The lesson came in an earlier conversation after she said to me, “I’ll start keeping in touch with my list once it’s bigger.”

To which I replied, “Start now. Build the habit and systems. Create a container to put great people who want the gift of your content and resources into.”

Too often the pursuit of perfect, polished, ready, or even just “good enough”, derails getting started.

But the truth is, it’s the trying, the trial and error, actually putting yourself out there and DOING IT, that gets you the result you want.

So send the emails before you have a big list… and you will grow your list.

Do the speaking inquiries before your presentation is perfect… and you will get great at speaking.

Record that video before you fully understand how it fits into your strategy… and you will get comfortable in front of the camera and attract a following.

My client will likely never get a 100% open rate again, but she embraced the lesson of getting started imperfectly.