Create a Roadmap for your Business

Create a Roadmap for your Business

What is a Roadmap?

Creating a business roadmap is an essential step for a business to have a big picture idea of where you want to go, where you are now, and the steps that it’s going to take to get you to your final destination. This is a tool that we like to use with small businesses, freelancers, and entrepreneurs to make sure that you are building your business intentionally. We want you building the business you want, not the business that just happens. 

When you started your business, did you have an idea of what your success would mean? Have you defined your goals? I’m big on planning (go figure!) and encourage my clients to plan consistently. We even have a planner system we designed that focuses on this idea of holistic, work-life balance goal setting. Visit our Freebies section to grab a free planner week download and try it out. 

But let’s get back to our Business Roadmap. The idea here is that if you know what success looks like for you specifically, and you know where you are in your business right now, we can put steps in place to move you from point A to point B, ensuring that you stay on track and are building your business with your end goal in mind.

That seems like such a simple statement to cover such big objectives, but honestly if you have a direction in mind for your business, you will find yourself much more mindful of the actions you take day to day.

Building a Business Roadmap gives you Direction

So often we see businesses that grow organically, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, if your idea of success is to be working 20 hours a week, traveling the world, and have a passive income that’s supporting you, then we don’t want to build a business that requires you to be in a storefront 40 hours a week. Those two things are likely to be mutually exclusive.

So when we build a business roadmap we lay out the framework that helps give us direction.

We start with looking at where we see ourselves now. Think about what the pain points and the frustrations are that you face each day in your business. Consider what you’re happy with, what you live doing, and what you would love to not be doing.

Then we can figure out exactly where you want to end up down the road. Each action you take, the time you devote each day, the relationships you build, they all drive where your business is heading. The focus of a Business Roadmap is to ensure that direction is taking you towards your final endpoint. To the place and time where you consider your business a success.

Your Business Roadmap, plus a little business accountability on an ongoing basis, will help form a big picture plan to keep your business moving on the right track in the direction you want it to go.

Business Roadmap Training

Business Roadmap Training 

Check out the video on how to build a business roadmap and grab your free planner to build your own.

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(All resources, downloads, and a copy of the video trainings are hosted in the MentoringU Skills Lab. You will be prompted to checkout, and create a free account to access them. If you are already a Skills Lab member you can find these resources under the Freebies section.)

Now taking profile submissions for our EntrepreDOerzine

EntrepreDOerzineOk now I know that is a tongue twister…say it with me nice and slow… Entre – pre- DOer -zine! See that’s not so hard, but I bet you can’t say it 5 times fast (If you try, catch it on video and send it my way :)).

We are launching a digital magazine that will be published quarterly and feature profiles on Entrepreneurs, industry news, and advertising blocks. I am constantly searching for new ways to create benefit for the members in my local networking group, online network of entrepreneurs, and the amazing people I seem to meet each and every day. Everyone has such a unique gift and I have been searching for a way to showcase the amazing variety of skills and services our members represent.

Fast forward and you have the officially announcement…We are launching a digital magazine that will profile 8-12 entrepreneurs each quarter and will be available for you to read and hopefully share with your customer base. The magazine will also be shared with all North Austin Networking Group Members to share with their customer base and promoted aggressively in social media. I hope to provide great profiles of our network of EntrepreDOers and a section for you to advertise and promote any specials or promotions.

This first issue will be a test run, and will be priced accordingly! If you are interested, be sure to submit your profile at http://bit.ly/EntrepreDOerzinesubmission­ by July 15th. This first series of profiles are offered at no cost! If you are interested in advertising or offering a promotion that will run through the fall, you can do so at early bird rates. (BONUS: If you run an ad now at early-bird rates, we’ll grandfather you in at that rate for a full year). Rate: $250 for full-page ads; $175 for half- page ads; $100 for quarter page ads or less. Payment is due the same date as your ad is placed.

If you’ve been attending meetings, we’ve been talking about this upcoming opportunity and it’s finally here!
The #EntrepreDOit Revolution

The #EntrepreDOit Revolution

How do I…

I’m going to …

I have an idea…

So often we start off strong with a question, a plan or even just an idea. We tell other people about our idea, we dive into research, we get excited, ramped up and even obsessive to make something happen. But just like an ambitious workout plan that you start on the Monday morning after a pizza binge Sunday night, the momentum and dedication often fizzles out far too soon. 

#EntrepreDOit is a movement, a revolution if you will. It’s starting off small like these things always do, but I hope to see it sweep the nation and circle the globe over the next year… inspiring thousands of Entrepreneurs along the way. We’re revolutionizing entrepreneurship and turning ideas into actions!  The idea here is to recognize that actions lead to success so we need to be intentional in our planning, our tasks and our to-do lists, and ensure that what we are doing each day is taking action on what will result in our success. This is a pledge, a voluntary opt-in to join other like minded ambitious entrepreneurs in owning your schedule to make change happen! #EntrepreDOers plan and tackle their to-do’s everyday to make #EntrepreDOit a lifestyle.

A little over a decade ago I left the office to start working from home. I did the same corporate job, just from a home office, but let me tell you everything changed. I had to set different schedules, adjust both my and my co-workers expectations of my availability, and most of all embrace the flexibility that a schedule could provide. I began writing here and there, just chronicling my journey and the chaos that happened as I had three kids, two dogs and a few inner city moves happen along the way. I had to let go of the fluff and be selective about what would help me accomplish my goals. I had to learn to balance both work and life priorities if I wanted any semblance of balance. Most of all I had to learn how to just buckle down and get stuff done! Working from home can be such a productive strategy when you look at it as a tool. 

As time went on I began to get more and more questions on how I made it work. People wondered if I worked in my pajamas or was ever off the clock. They asked how to got work done when my baby had a rough day and if I ever took sick time. I found myself giving advice so frequently I started blogging and just handing out a web address. Recently I decided to pull this all together into a book and fulfill a long time dream of one day being an author. I’m super excited to be in the final stages of writing and soon to be moving on to editing #EntrepreDOit, my story (the good, the bad and the ugly!). I’m hoping to have it available for pre-order by July and ready for delivery to your eager hands by August.  It’s the behind the scences prequel that is my foundation for the #EntrepreDOit Revolution. I can’t wait to share it. In the meantime, if this call to action, this no-fluff, action oriented strategy is speaking to you…then I invite you to join us in a hashtag happy, obstacle overcoming, caffeine fueled mission!

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How MentoringU came to be

How MentoringU came to be

I realized this morning that I had spent months working out the details of how Mentoring Moms would morph into MentoringU and how I would continue to follow my passion of inspiring entrepreneurs and lending support to moms looking to create a lifestyle based business.  There are scribbles and doodles, mind maps and napkins littering my desk with my thoughts, goals and vision for this transition. It was late night work, nailing down the finances, building out the website, setting up my social media profiles and getting my baby launched…and I’m finally ready to show my baby off!  If you are stopping by for the first time, or are a regular visitor, let me say Welcome!
MentoringU is my gift back, my business that offers coaching, mentoring and skills training for small businesses, especially those run by Moms. I work with small business owners to identify their goals, develop strategies, tools or training to teach them how to do what they need and help keep them on track. I also run both an online and in person networking groups called The Village where small businesses can network and work together to support each other and your business goals.

Do you have a business or are you thinking about launching one? Tell me about it in the comments below and join us in The Village!
Goal Planning for EntrepreDOers

Goal Planning for EntrepreDOers

Ever wondered what all the fuss is about coaching? There are life coaches, business coaches, personal wellness coaches, the list goes on and on.  Here at Mentoring Mompreneurs we obviously thinking coaching and mentoring are important…we’ve built a whole business around it! We lead busy lives and it is so easy to have an idea, get excited and enthusiastic about it and then … life happens. Someone gets sick, you get busy, it’s the holidays, the excuses start piling up until one day when you look back and wonder why you were so excited about that idea. 
That’s natural, it’s human, but it’s not a formula for success. If you are committed to being successful, coaching or mentoring can help keep you on track. It helps with accountability, with focus, goal planning, and more. It gives you someone to use as a sounding board and offers you unconditional encouragement as you figure things out. 

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What a Landing Page is and Why Entrepreneurs Should Use them

What a Landing Page is and Why Entrepreneurs Should Use them

office1Landing pages are entire pages devoted to driving a specific action. In fact, you may already have one on your website so be sure to look!  The idea is to capture visitors information so you can continue the conversation with them and promote your business. Have you ever clicked a link on Facebook and ended up on a page that tells you about a specific service, webinar, or offer and prompted you to take an action like “signing up for a newsletter” or “Click here to download?” If you provided your name or email to do so (enabling the company to contact you in the future) then you were on a landing page. 

Landing pages offer visitors a chance to focus on one simple action without being overwhelmed by an entire website. They often don’t have a header bar and navigation options, have minimal “pretty” features and consistently drive focus to one objective (Buy, Sell, Sign Up, Etc)

You have one goal with a landing page…GET THEM TO CLICK! (more…)