Stress and Overwhelm

Elevate 2023: Schedule Your Personal Life FIRST

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When I first committed to putting my personal life on my calendar first, I remember the questions that popped into my head:

  • What if something comes up?
  • How do I know when to go on vacation if I don’t know what my clients need?
  • What if I get it wrong?

So much of this came from years of working a job where other people dictated my time off. And here’s the truth about the answers to these questions.

  • If something comes up, you can change your schedule.
  • Let your clients know when you’re going on vacation.
  • You will get it wrong sometimes, but no one besides you will notice.

All good? Ready to start planning your wonderful life?

Here’s what I put on the calendar each year, to get things started:

1. One 3-day weekend per month (last Friday of the month off)

2. One planning day per month (last Monday of the month)

3. Speaking events

4. Travel for work (conferences, speaking)

5. Vacations

One last thing: while I live and die by my google calendar, I highly recommend getting a wall calendar so you can see everything at a glance for the year!

Step 6 – ask your cat for feedback (this step is optional and actually not recommended)

Elevate 2023: Declutter Time!

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While trying to focus on elevating my business, my attention keeps getting snagged by visual distractions. Stuff on my desk, on my computer desktop, on my ipad…so, I decided to do some decluttering.

When thinking about decluttering, my first instinct is to do EVERYTHING. My closets, my jewelry making supplies, the garage, the closet under the stairs.

Hello? Self-sabotage much?

So instead of overwhelming myself and freezing up before I even get started, I simply tackled my desk. I’ve scheduled time over the next few weeks to clean my laptop desktop, my notes app on my ipad, my jewelry supplies and a few other areas of the house.

Each area I declutter allows me to reclaim my focus so I can be more effective in elevating 2023! Share your before and after pictures, and how it makes you feel!

Before and After!

Clearly, I still have some work to do!

Elevate 2023: Elevate Your Ideal Clients and Messaging

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Elevating your ideal clients and messaging actually means elevating your clarity about both. This clarity sets the foundation needed to attract high-quality clients without a lot of wasted time and effort.

In the video below, I walk you through EXACTLY the method I used in my own business to get clearer about my ideal client and messaging so I can get better results with less effort.

I strongly urge you to make the time to do this exercise! (this links to a template spreadsheet you can download)

Elevate 2023: Let Go of the Baggage

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I attended a phenomenal business retreat given by Lisa Crilley-Mallis, and I had a single, concrete objective: develop my proactive lead generation plan for 2023.

But for a day and a half, I was completely frustrated. The numbers wouldn’t gel. And when I finally did figure them out, they didn’t really align with my goals, as I shared in the kickoff blog in this series… and the crying commenced.

But then something unexpected happened.

I suddenly noticed all the garbage I’d been saying to myself:

  • Business is slow because you’ve been coasting.
  • You haven’t been mentoring your team closely enough: delegation through abdication doesn’t work and you know it!
  • You’re such a slacker.
  • Why aren’t you exercising?
  • You should be doing more.

All these things had been running undetected, like a low hum in the background. So quiet that I didn’t notice, but they were impacting me every single day.

I had to let it all go, and for me, it happened in a flash: it’s like the volume was suddenly turned up to 11 and then went silent as the truth rushed in.

The truth is, I’ve been recovering from being sick for the past year.

The truth is, to fully recover, I needed to cut my hours to 6 hours or less per day. 

The truth is, I had to reserve my energy for healing, even though it meant not exercising.

The truth is, my team has been amazing and kept the business moving as I recovered.

The truth is that I HAVE been coasting. 

And the BIG truth is, I’ve built a business that is so solid that it COULD coast for a year without major repercussions.

There were more tears… but much happier ones. 

Tears of relief and of joy and release and forgiveness.

To truly elevate my business, I first have to fully accept and embrace my starting point, without judgement.

So whether or not you have a “good enough” reason for not accomplishing everything you think you should have, you have got to let it go and forgive yourself. You’re dragging around that baggage and all it does is drain your energy. There is zero return on investment.

Take a minute to identify all the judgement, look it square in the eye, and then let it go.

Goal Setting Reduced Me To Tears

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I set my 2023 goals, then excitedly started crunching numbers to figure out my action plan…

… then promptly burst into tears.

Because no matter how I massaged the numbers, there literally weren’t enough hours in the day to reach my goals.

It’s hard to describe how helpless and hopeless I felt. The sheer panic in the pit of my stomach took my breath away.

Finally, forcing myself to take a deep breath, my thoughts clarified.

The truth is, there aren’t enough hours in the day to reach my goals in the future, if I pursue my goals the way I have in the past.

Was I was going to have to completely reformulate my business? (gulp!)

Luckily the answer came to me quickly and with a rhyme:

Elevate, don’t recreate.

Yes. Yes. YESSSSS.

Because I do not have time to add 3 new networking events to my schedule or triple my referral generation activity. But with planning, I can make small, quality-elevating adjustments so I can reach my goals without working nights and weekends.

Elevate messaging.

Elevate team.

Elevate client care.

Elevate speaking standards.

Elevate mindset.

Stay tuned: I’ll be blogging about the steps I take so you can follow along.

Speakers! Tips that will save you time when working with a VA

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Imagine working with a Virtual Assistant who:

  • Advocates for you
  • Saves you valuable time
  • Gets you the results you need
  • Helps you book speaking gigs

And that means getting you in front of potential clients without you having to do the heavy lifting of sending inquiries, filling out applications and following up.

Wouldn’t that be amazing!?

I often recommend to the business owners in my Simply Get Booked program to hire a VA that will make the process of booking speaking gigs easier for them.

But training a VA can be time-consuming and what’s more, you might not see the results you want.

So how can you make sure the work your VA does gets you the results you want?

Here are 5 tips from Laura Licursi, owner and founder of Elite Virtual Assistants, to help you get the most out of your VA.

  1. Share your vision and expectations

Your VA needs to know what moves you. They need to know the real reason(s) you want to speak in front of audiences and what your vision is as a person and as a business owner.

That way, as they reach out to groups on your behalf, they can deliver that message for you. Having a VA that’s an advocate for you and your business makes all the difference.

They also need to know what results you’re expecting to see from their efforts. Without this, there’s a high chance you’ll experience frustration when they don’t get the results you want (remember they are not mind readers!).

The discussion about expectations and results should happen early-on as it will pave the way for successful communications between you and your VA.

  1. Set your goals with timelines attached (this goes hand in hand with your expectations).

And how essential is it for your VA to know what these goals and expectations are?

Let’s say you want to book a certain number of speaking gigs per month. As finding and applying for speaking opportunities is not a one-to-one ratio, it means your VA will need to send a much larger number of inquiries to get the number of gigs booked you want. 

Share these types of numbers with your VA. Also establish in what timeframe those inquiries should be sent.

But always remember to set realistic goals for both you and your VA.

  1. Set up regular check-ins

A good manager won’t just check-in at the deadline to see if the work has been done. If you want to be an effective manager, you have to check-in regularly.

Based on your goals, you can set up weekly or monthly check-ins to ask your VA:

  • Are there any bottlenecks?
  • Do you need help with anything?
  • Where are we at right now?

And depending on the progress, you might need to adjust your goals or the process you have to reach those goals.

When you’re just starting out with a new VA, it’s even better if you can meet with them at least twice a week.

The more time you put in at the beginning, the less time you’ll have to put over the long-run.

When you take the time to build a relationship with your VA instead of just giving them tasks, you’ll see a massive shift in the results you get.

  1. Keep detailed track of their activity

Once you have your goals and you’re checking in on your VA…

What do you do with that information?

You need to be able to adjust the process along the way. That means identifying patterns. It also means evaluating if you’re reaching out to the right groups for speaking and the only way to do that is to look at the details.

How many groups have been contacted?

What kind of groups are they?

What responses have you been getting?

When you can see all this info in one place and discuss it with your VA, course correcting becomes almost automatic. It all starts with making sure they are set up with a proper tracking system.

It’s not about analyzing a mountain of information. It’s about keeping your finger on the pulse and making it easy for your VA to inform you of any roadblocks and possible changes that can be made.

  1. Have your information ready and available

Again, it’s all about investing more time at first so you can save time in the future.

Imagine missing out on an opportunity because your VA doesn’t know your new talk description. Or because they emailed you to get essential info and it took you a long time to reply.

Have all the info they might need in one easy-to-access spot, like a Google Drive folder. Examples of things you’ll need are your speaking topics, headshots, ideal client description and all the other basic information needed to fill out applications.

They should know where to find all this within the first few days of working with you.

Save ‘future you’ some valuable time and give them as many resources as possible from the beginning. But don’t just bury them in a mountain of resources. Take some time to explain that info to them. Remember it’s much easier for a person to advocate for you when they understand you and your point of view.

Laura shared these amazing tips on one of our calls with our clients and VA’s in the Simply Get Booked program. This kind of educational meeting is one of the many benefits of participating in SGB.

If you’re ready to start booking speaking gigs consistently, book a call today to discuss the Simply Get Booked program and how to join.