Social Distancing Solutions for Small Businesses

Social Distancing Solutions for Small Businesses

by | Mar 15, 2020 | Productivity, Technology, Training, Vision and Goals

Social Distancing for Small Businesses

Social Distancing is affecting small businesses in a bad way, especially those that rely on customer traffic in a physical location. The hardest hit are those like restaurants, cafes and concerts where cancellations or lack of attendees can cause major issues for businesses that have small margins, but all small businesses are being affected as consumers focus shifts to the current atmosphere during the Corona Pandemic. It can be hard to get people’s attention right now with everything going on and it can be very difficult for small businesses to make ends meet with consumer traffic downshifting with the recommendations for social distancing. It can be difficult to figure out how to continue to reach your audience when recommendations for social distancing, flattening the curve and laying low are continuing to come out.



I did a quick recording this morning talking about how to combat this for small businesses. It’s important right now to come up with new ways to reach your audience. In this video I talked about a few of my recommendations to continue reaching your audience, including:
    • Zoom Webinars
    • Facebook Lives
    • Recorded Videos
    • Online Facebook Events
    • Skype or Zoom Coaching, Consulting, Sessions
I encourage everyone who runs a small business to take a little time today and think about who you teach or reach with your business. There are platforms that are easy to get setup and be active on and with a little time invested, you can create a different track for your business where you deliver your product or service virtually. Some of the platforms I recommend in this video are:
      • Udemy – Great for teaching adult learners, can leverage video courses
      • Outschool – Great for teaching young/child learners, does require a background check.
      • Thinkific/Teachable – Great for setting up an online course, mini course, digital downloads. Handles all payment processing and can be branded like a mini website.
Do you sell a physical product? If so is there a way to make part of it virtual? Every day searches are made for those looking to become an entrepreneur. I’ve included quick recommendations below for the Top 20 Entrepreneur Search Categories:
          • Clothing Line: Can you offer personal styling advice online, capsule wardrobes, Closet teardown – show people how to mix and match what they already have.
          • Restaurants: can you offer online cooking classes, Make our meal at home, Gift certificate with delivery order offers?
          • Food Trucks: This is one the top searches. Can you create a mini course on how to start a food truck business, How to layout your food truck, Ways to market your food truck. Create a simple course that will help others and sell it to help yourself.
          • Record Label: If you’re in the music business can you offer bonus buys, virtual recording prep, if people can’t come to the studio what can the prep to get ready. Can you make a mini course on recording your first album?
          • Daycare: Can you create a download of the best schedule for preschoolers, Offer short learning videos for preschoolers, or activities to keep them engaged at home.
          • Coffee Shop: Disclosure I’m a coffee fanatic. I would be all over a short mini course on how to brew the perfect Latte at home.
          • Farm: Mini course or ebook on urban gardening tactics, Grow your own garden bundle, How to start seeds tutorials.
          • Catering Business: Meal plan downloads usually sell well, Recipe ebooks, Freezer meals plans and shopping lists
          • Landscaping Business: DIY Landscaping plans, Mini course on landscape a bed, or xeriscape your yard.
          • Trucking Company: Mini course on how to start your own trucking company.
          • Bakery: Signature Recipe ebook, How to Tutorials or mini course, how to decorate a cake, online cookie decorating classes for kids
          • Brewery: Getting started with Home Brewing Mini course, E-book on Brewing at Home
          • Construction Company: DIY video on how to build projects, Skill building Video course
          • Bar: Mix your own drinks course, Ebook of Cocktail Recipes
          • Property Management Company: Style your apartment like the Pros Course, Everything you need to know about the lease agreement…before you sign ebook or course.
          • T-Shirt company: Getting started with T-shirt Business Mini Course, T-shirt designs – create designs and sell the rights to use them
          • Group Home: Activities to do with the Elderly, Activities for Seniors with Dementia
          • Real Estate Agency: Strategies for Selling High E-course, Ebooks for those Listing, Styling Your Home for Maximum Sales course
          • Dog Walking Business: Recipe book for home made dog treats
          • Gym: Personal training via Zoom, Workout videos on demand
          • Author:  Can you sell your book online, or convert it to a Kindle book. Hold an online book tour via Facebook events,
  • Links to Tools to get you started
The Importance of Technology and Automation for Entrepreneurs

The Importance of Technology and Automation for Entrepreneurs

by | Oct 26, 2018 | Marketing, Productivity, Technology

The Importance of Technology in Small Business…that’s a concept we could spend all week on!

We’re two weeks out from opening the doors to Marketing Content Wizard! This has been a long time coming, and except for a super soft launch last year when I rolled it out briefly and got some awesome feedback (THANK YOU GUYS), this has been a tool I built for myself and my clients. I’ve used this strategy for years because when I first started my business I was on maternity leave from corporate work and not too sure what kind of work life balance I would be going back to. (Check out the whole story in my book Chasing Balance, available on Amazon).

I wanted a way to market my business using only a few hours, once in a while, so I could spend the rest of the time with my new baby and enjoying my maternity leave. Once I went back to work, it was even more important that I could batch my marketing in a weekend and know that the next three months were set to roll on autopilot, building income around the clock, while I did my corporate work during the day.

 

Sound familiar?

I work with so many women who are juggling a passion project, a side hustle, or are working on launching a dream…all while working a regular job, juggling demanding children and home responsibilities and trying to find a little time left over for themselves. Ladies, let me tell you… it is possible, but you have to be strategic. The same way you plan a birthday party weeks in advance, or plan a vacation, you have to have planned marketing. You have to have a guiding roadmap to get you and your products to a profitable destination. If you are building content and not marketing it…you’re your own worst obstacle to success.

Get out of your own way!

Let me show you how to devote four weekends A YEAR to creating great content and setting your business up for success! I am passionate about this system because I have seen the value. I have seen how sales roll in while I’m on the couch with sick kids, volunteering at the school, out at girls night, or even on vacation! This isn’t a magic, instant solution, but it is a solid strategy that with a few days of intentional work…you can build out your marketing for the entire quarter!

Can you even imagine what that would feel like? Sitting back and relaxing on Thanksgiving day, knowing that your Black Friday promotions are set and have been for weeks? Or knowing that you can enjoy New Year’s Eve, with the comforting knowledge that your Jan 1st motivational challenge will kick off right on time and run on autopilot?

Here are FOUR reasons why you can not wait any longer to invest in Marketing Content Wizard!

REASON NUMBER ONE: You can stop running from solution to solution, guru to guru, one fake promise to the next and finally start seeing results. When you invest in Marketing Content Wizard, you get instant access to everything, you can start using it within the next 30 seconds and start seeing results in as little as one day How’s that for motivation?

REASON NUMBER TWO: Marketing Content Wizard is THE ONLY system that allows you to create 30 days of content in just one day That fills your feed in less than a day. That eliminates the mad, frantic, chaotic rush to find content that makes sense for your marketing. And that makes your marketing on topic and targeted for your audience

REASON NUMBER THREE: Marketing Content Wizard is THE most comprehensive, system out there. Here are just some of the things you get when you decide to invest in Marketing Content Wizard: Video tutorials on how to brainstorm, write, illustrate, and schedule your content Customizable template for your annual plan and monthly marketing content Step by step instructions on how to use productivity strategies to create piles of content in just 8 hours You also get some mind-boggling bonuses (that are frankly worth more than the product itself) Free tools to fill your feed mini-course Graphic Design Batching Strategies Productivity for Procrastinators – Strategies for Success I challenge you to find something that has ALL of these goodies…at this price point…at any price point… but seriously for $47, what are you waiting for?

REASON NUMBER FOUR: One day is all it takes to get started – perfect for procrastinators and those seeking instant gratification. Just $.12 cents per day to go from struggling to fill your feed with engaging marketing to relaxing and watching the Likes, the Love and the Comments roll in on the marketing you had done and posted weeks ahead of time.

When you really think about it, how much is your time worth? Is it worth $.12 cents/day to create 30 days of content at a time and save yourself up to 20 hours per week? Yep, the average small business spends 20 hours or more per week working on marketing! Who has that time?

Within the next few months, you can either save this tiny amount of $.12 cents per day, or you can invest in Marketing Content Wizard. Invest in YOURSELF!

Get the forever solution that…

Fills your feed in less than a day AND eliminates the mad, frantic, chaotic rush to find content that makes sense for your marketing
AND
makes your marketing on topic and targeted for your audience!

I rest my case, hop off my soapbox, and sincerely hope you’ll join me in becoming a Marketing Content Wizard!

Cheers, Traci

Why Every Entrepreneur Needs a 90 Day Plan

Why Every Entrepreneur Needs a 90 Day Plan

by | Oct 8, 2018 | Marketing, Productivity, Vision and Goals

It’s October, and while the rest of the world might be dreaming of pumpkin spice lattes and planning their holiday menus…as an entrepreneur, you are likely focused on closing out the year strong. With less than 90 days to go, it’s time to ANALYZE, ASSESS, and ALIGN your actions for the next 90 Days to finish successfully!

That brings me to one of my favorite productivity strategies and tactics…The 90 Day Plan. In 90 days you can accomplish amazing things, profitable things, direction changing things! If this year hasn’t turned out like you wanted, or if the numbers just aren’t hitting the goals you’ve set…it’s not too late! Let’s buckle down and make it happen! Plan your next 90 Days like you would plan a vacation you can’t wait to go on!

In 90 days you can Brainstorm, Plan, and Execute. Sometimes getting started is the hardest part. A lot of the resources that I develop at MentoringU are intended to inspire action and are free for you to use. If getting started is an obstacle for you, try my action planner.

Break Down Your Goals Into Tasks You Can Take Action On

Ready to Take Action? Need help breaking down your goal into tasks you can take instant action on? Give the MentoringU Free Action Planner a try!

Give the Action Planner a Try!

When I first developed the action planner, it really was an effort to help entrepreneurs think through what they needed to do to make a difference in their business. It will help you break down your goals into actionable tasks that you can quickly put into action.

For instance, if you want to build your email list to 5000 people… what are the actions that you take to get there? Your 90-day goal likely would not be ‘build my list to 5000 people.’ That’s not realistic for most entrepreneurs. However if the actions that you’re going to take to get to that final goal of 5000 people on your list include things like – conduct 3 webinars, develop a new lead magnet, and run $200 worth of Facebook ads…those are actionable items that you can put on your to-do list that will eventually help you get to your goal.

The action planner helps you take one goal and break it down into what tasks you need to do to be effective. Every one of those items that we just listed has other actions that need to happen before they become an effective promotion. You’re not just going to hop on to zoom and hold a webinar. You would be holding it to crickets.

You might need to

  • Develop an outline of what you’re going to teach
  • Begin building your presentation
  • Create advertising graphics for social media channels and email
  • Create advertisements on Facebook and Instagram
  • Create a marketing email campaign
  • Hold a trial run of your webinar
  • Hold your webinar

What this really shows us is that even something as simple as ‘hold a webinar to grow my list’ has multiple steps and actions that will all take time and effort. Using a tool like the MentoringU Action Planner, or even just pen and paper, you can back out things to the lowest common denominator, the smallest task where you start and then begin to put that in play. To-do lists become difficult and we feel like we’re not accomplishing anything because we put big multi-step tasks on our to-do list. We can’t cross off hold a webinar to grow my list until we have done everything else that it takes to lead up to having a webinar, to maintain momentum and motivation, we have to start thinking smaller.

My single-minded, somewhat obsessive focus at MentoringU on the 90-day Plan is really an effort to help you start thinking smaller. If we work on the small tasks we begin to see big results.

Even better, we can identify tasks along the way that we can automate, taking the task off your plate! Right now we are just under 90 days from January 1st. This is the time to start thinking about where you want to start your business in 2019.

What do you need to accomplish in the next 90 days to consider 2018 a success?

  • Do you need to grow your list
  • Do you need to develop new content
  • Are you launching a new product
  • What is going to make this year a success for you? (And be sure you are defining success in both financial and emotional ways.)

Once you have aligned your goals and know what you will consider a success, let’s back it out and figure out what steps you can take to accomplish that in the next 90 days. If you haven’t already, go ahead and give the free online Action Planner a try. It’s going to prompt you to define a goal and a timeline, and then begin to break that down into actions that need to happen and tasks you need to tackle. When you finish it’s going to summarize all your inputs, and send it to you via email so that you can plug it into either your MentoringU planner or you can plug it into an online calendar like Google Calendar, just be sure to use something that’s going to hold you accountable.

If you need more accountability, or just want to keep on track, come on over to the EntrepreDOERs Facebook group and let us help you. I’ll be challenging you to keep on track and finish strong this year! Whatever method you prefer…just start somewhere!

Pick a goal.

Pick a task.

Take action.

Entrepreneurs need a 90 Day Plan to keep us on track and working towards a goal that brings us the desired end result…cash in the bank. When you are a small business or a one man shop, it’s more important that ever to have a plan that keeps you on track. We’ve all been there. If you need help getting started, don’t forget I offer a 30-minute strategy session on me, and we can use it to map out your next 90 days!

Be More Productive with a Decluttered Computer Desktop

Be More Productive with a Decluttered Computer Desktop

by | Jan 19, 2017 | Productivity

Ready to be more productive?

Time…it’s the one commodity we can’t easily buy more of. Now you can delegate, outsource and hire on but that’s not really getting more time. Over the next few months we’re going to talk all things productivity. How to be more productive, of course, but also how to do you get in a productive mindset, how do you figure out what derails your productivity and where do you learn to fix it.

How to do we make productivity a back burner habit that supports your efforts easily and with out a great amount of forethought?  Productive people don’t have more time in the day, they just make the most of each and every minute. I’ll be sharing some of my favorite productivity hacks, along with resources and tutorials to help you get the most out of your day!

Over time you’ll notice that as you focus on these individual habits, distractions will decrease and hopefully your stress level will too. 

Today’s strategy – Decluttering your Desktop…the virtual kind!

Don’t let a messy desktop slow you down. Clear your desktop, file those files, delete the icons you don’t need and get rid of any random files you saved to your desktop once upon a time. Want to know why this helps? Check out this article on how messy desktops can affect your computer processing speed. All those files saved to your desktop are eating up your operating memory and slowing you down!  Create a productive desktop in five easy steps.
  1. Delete any files are are not necessary or needed any longer. Be sure to empty your trash when you’re done.
  2. Look through the remaining files. Are these active projects? Create folders in your my documents or on your external hard drive to file these into. A clear project or client based filing system will help you locate the files when you need them in the future. 
  3. Archive any files that are not being used for active projects, but that you don’t want to delete. Create an Archive Folder in your My Documents or external hard-drive and file them by topic.
  4. Organize your icons – visual symmetry will help you locate files quickly in the future instead of searching through a hodge podge of random files spaced out all over the screen.
  5. Reboot your computer
Want to take it a step farther? Grab our desktop wallpaper to help you organize your icons and keep your desktop in tip top shape! There is something very freeing about creating a decluttered environment that leads to a more productive session‼️

MentoringU Bonus Wallpaper

Click on the image to open the wallpaper in a new tab. Right click and save it to your computer. There you can upload it as your desktop background image.

Productivity Hacks for Entrepreneurs Short on Time

Productivity Hacks for Entrepreneurs Short on Time

by | Aug 2, 2016 | Marketing, Productivity

Ready to stop wasting time and start making money?

Time…it’s the one commodity we can’t easily buy more of. Now you can delegate, outsource and hire on but that’s not really getting more time. Over the next few months we’re going to talk all things productivity. How to be more productive, of course, but also how to do you get in a productive mindset. How do you figure out what derails your productivity and where do you learn to fix it. How to do we make productivity a back burner habit that supports your efforts easily and without a great amount of forethought?

Productive people don’t have more time in the day, they just make the most of each and every minute. These are skills and strategies that even the smallest business owner can put into place. 
Productivity Hacks
Over the next month I’m going to bring you a different productivity hack each day. Use this knowledge like a buffet! Pick what works for you, what you can take action on and put in place and then commit to actually making this a habit. Over time you’ll notice that as you focus on these individual habits, distractions will decrease and hopefully your stress level will too. At the end of the 30 days take stock and see what really made the most difference and be sure to keep those habits front and center moving forward. In September our new Productivity Hacks series will be converted into an e-course with in-depth tutorials on some of the tools I reference. Stay tuned, or head on over to Instagram for daily sneak peeks!
The #EntrepreDOit Revolution

The #EntrepreDOit Revolution

by | Jun 6, 2016 | Business, Efficient Entrepreneurs, Productivity, Vision and Goals

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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