We’re getting ready to say goodbye to 2021. Did you accomplish what you wanted to? Did you even have goals written down or did you float through the year hoping something would happen that would propel you and your business to higher levels? Don’t leave another year to chance. Don’t let another year pass with you wondering, “what did I even do?” We have insight into how to grow in business & in life in 2022.
Business and life go hand in hand. There may not be a true work/life balance because if you’re home that’s your balance, if you’re at work, that’s where your balance/focus is. That’s natural and normal. What you want is the work/life blend that works for you and your goals.
Ask yourself, have you gone as high, fast and far as you could have in 2021? Do you want to go higher, faster and farther in 2022? You need to push yourself. If you think you did push yourself, but still didn’t get done what you want to get done, you need to push yourself a little harder.
What is your peak? When will you know that you have “arrived”? It’s different for everyone and only you will know when it’s happened for you. But you do need to set a goal and strive toward it.
How To Grow In Business & Life In 2022
You don’t plan to give up do you? Just because you didn’t get done in 2021 what you wanted to doesn’t mean you can’t try to get done what you want to in 2022. Don’t pass up reaching for that brass ring!
Strive. Push yourself. Get out of your comfort zone. Achieve your dream!
How can you do that? Here are strategies that Rex Richard shares with his coaching clients:
Perspective matters. There are times that you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders and you just don’t think you can keep holding it up. I get it. Step back. Breathe. Reach out to a friend, colleague, coach or trusted family member and talk about what’s weighing you down and see if they have a new persepctive for you.
Dreams matter. When you dream you can do anything, right? There is no reason you can’t write down a BIG dream for 2022. It’s your dream. No one can take that away from you, but you need to be willing to declare it and claim it and work toward it.
Attitude matters. Positive attracts positive. Negative attracts negative. The emotions you put out into the world, are the emotions you will attract. Surround yourself with positive people. This doesn’t mean you sweep troubles under the rug. It means that a trouble can be addressed and it doesn’t need to rob you of your positivity.
how will you seize the year and make 2022 the best you’ve experienced?
There’s no getting around it. A blog is not a fad. Your business blog is not going away, nor should it. If you have a business blog and haven’t been working on it, you need to make that a top priority this year. Why? Remember when Facebook shut down and no one could communicate with friends and family? Well, many business owners couldn’t connect with clients. If you had a blog and an email list, you would have been all right with the shutdown. Were you? You need a blog and we have tips to help boost your business blogging efforts.
Some of these tips may seem basic, but if you’re new to blogging or if you have a blog, but don’t write posts, you may need this reminder to motivate you. If you don’t have a blog and know you need one reach out to Rex Richard and his team to discuss a blogging strategy to help market your business to its greatest heights.
How To Boost Your Business Blog
Make sure your content is of the highest quality. If you have typos and grammatical errors, a potential client may think you’re sloppy in the other services your business offers.
Write content your audience/potential customer wants to read. Teach them something. Solve a problem. Show your expertise and how you should be their go-to person.
Make an editorial calendar. This document is worth the time you put into it and will make content creation easier than you’d originally imagined. An editorial calendar will also take away the fear of the blank screen and the thought of, “what am I going to write?” Your calendar lays it all out.
Make the content readable. Use subheads. Bullet points. Numbered lists. Many blog readers will consume your content on their phone or tablet and subheads and lists make it easier.
Use SEO best practices. You don’t need to be an SEO expert, but you should know what your business should be using as its search engine optimization keywords and key phrases. If you don’t know what keywords to use, reach out to Rex and his team for an SEO audit. SEO will help your blog and your business show up in a Google search.
Use video or audio. If you don’t want to write, make a video. Record an audio. Keep in mind though if you just embed a video or an audio on your site without any text, it will not be searchable. Write content to go along with the video or audio. You may want to consider hiring a transcription service to transcribe the audio – this is ideal for those individuals who don’t want to listen to audio or watch a video.
Share your blog post on social media. I know I said that social media is not quite your friend, but if you’re on social media with your business and you’re writing new content you want people to know about it, find it and read it, right? To do that you should share that content on social media. Add a bit of a teaser content on social with a link to “read more.” Your ultimate goal is to get people to your blog.
If you need expert assistance starting or reviving your blog, reach out to us, and let’s strategize content marketing to grow your business in 2022. Rex Richard – Founder and CEO, Peak Dynamics LLC Innovator, WordPress and Multisite “Niche Market Master”, Writer, Speaker, Trainer, Business Coach, Serial Entrepreneur.
Remember networking events? You’d meet other entrepreneurs or like-minded business owners and you’d have coffee or a lunch meeting or even a drink in a bar or a workshop session? We all know that COVID-19 put so many networking events on the back burner or canceled them entirely, and who knows if they will return, but we have tips on how to network like a pro.
If you get to meet in person, these will help and if you’re continuing to meet on Zoom, these tips help you connect and potentially grow your business. But remember, you’re making connections, not going in thinking you’re going to make a sale. That may make you sound desperate.
There are effective ways to network and ways your networking efforts crash and burn. I have seen both and I cringe when I see the person at a networking event who is just trying too hard and isn’t interested in building a relationship first.
You’ve honed your elevator speech, shaken hands and exchanged business cards… now what? Do you talk politics, weather, how much they liked the coffee, what about that coronavirus, huh… or do you say, “hey want to buy my stuff?” You’re better talking politics and religion than saying that — believe me.
How To Network Like A Pro
Why are you attending? Most people attend to find new clients or a new job. A few attend networking events just to get out of the office. Know why you’re going, then make a plan.
If you’re having a one-on-one is this person prepared to buy? Is this your first meeting? Are you just feeling one another out to see if you’re a good fit? No matter the reason, have a few ice breaker conversation starters. You can also — and you should — pay attention to them and and take a genuine interest in what they say.
Listen as much as you talk — maybe more. Conversations are give and take. Don’t monopolize the entire conversation and have the connection go home thinking, “wow I never got to say a word.”
Have a follow up plan, then follow through.
What are your best tips for making the most of networking events?
Here it is. The time of year when my clients and friends and family decide that what they did the past year wasn’t good enough and in order to be happy in 2022 they need to change almost everything. They sit down and write down resolutions that are impossible to keep because they’re impossibly vague, too overarching and aren’t based in reality. I have 5 ways to succeed in 2022 and they involve being true to yourself.
I am a believer in visualization. Visualize your success. Visualize what you hope will happen, how you want to make it happen and then write down how to make it happen. Before you do that though you should look back at the resolutions or goals you’ve previously set and see why, if they didn’t, manifest. Did you not visualize them? Did you not have the infrastructure in place to make it a reality? Before you move forward you need to reflect backward.
5 Ways To Succeed In 2022
Write. It/Them. Down! I cannot stress this enough. Don’t let your goals be vague. Get them out of your head and down on paper because then you can see them — visualize them — and come up with a plan to make them a reality.
Just make a decision. You can lose opportunities when you don’t move on them. If you’re going to make a mistake you will make it today or you will make it a month from now. Make it, learn from it then move on from it.
Remember…the customer is NOT always right. For example if you offer XYZ and you’re great it and a customer insists that you start doing ABC, don’t. They’re not right in getting you to pivot and offer something that may be outside of your core competency. Also, if you have a customer who is rude or is never happy or treats your staff poorly, it’s time to cut ties. That negative energy will drain you and everyone around you.
There isn’t a true thing as a work-life balance and I say that because if your’e at work, you’re at work. If you’re at home, you’re at home. What you need to do is plan for both so you’re having a balance that makes you happy.
Be positive. A good attitude can flip the switch on a bad day to a good day. I am not saying to push all negative feelings under the rug, what I am saying is to embrace your good and when bad comes up, look at it determine the how and why and move on.
Sure you may never stop worrying about cash all together — that is the same whether you’re an entrepreneur or an employee. Cash is necessary to survival and if you’re living outside of your means — which many people do — you may have more money worries and woes than others.
A concern if you are always worrying about the cash flow in your business is that you will say yes to business opportunities that are not a good fit and you could also be underselling your goods and services simply because you’re frantic about making money and bringing in money. That is not a way to run a successful business.
Also, when cash is always front of mind, you can’t focus and fully lose yourself in your entrepreneurial endeavor and that will rob you of the joy of running your own business.
There are steps you can take to alleviate the worry and allow yourself to relax and free yourself to focus on taking care of clients and growing your business.
How To Stop Worrying About Cash
Here are my top three “rules” for helping alleviate cash flow concerns that I discuss with my coaching clients:
Know exactly what you need to make monthly in order to not only survive but to pay your bills and have a cushion for the future.
Know exactly what your total income is — both gross and net. You need to have a clear picture of your finances in order to know where you are and where you need to be. And honestly, maybe you do need to worry about money, but you won’t have a clear picture until you do the background homework.
How consistently are you marketing yourself and your business? You may be in feast mode today, but what if it’s famine next week or next month? If you haven’t been marketing yourself, you will be scrambling to find new clients to nurture.
Plan your marketing strategy at least quarterly. You need to know where you need to be, how to get there and how much money you need to make it happen and to keep your business running smoothly.
Hire a financial advisor or talk with Rex Richard in a client coaching call to gain an understanding of how to price properly and gauge your success.
Do you worry about money? Did you worry about money and now you have a handle on it? I would love to know your secrets to success!
Hire quick, fire quicker — or some such saying. It means, hire when you need someone to expand your staff. Fire as quick as you discover the person isn’t working out. There is nothing worse for a small business owner to have hired someone who is a bad fit. That person could damage your business and its reputation and no entrepreneur can afford that.
We have 3 ways to hire smarter because if you’re fortunate enough to have grown your business to the point that you can expand your staff to be more than just you, congratulations! Another perk in hiring is that you can focus on your core competency and the new hire can take away those items at which you either don’t excel or that aren’t making any money for the business.
Many entrepreneurs look forward to the time when they can hire, but it is a time fraught with stress and the worry of “hiring wrong.” Here are a few ways to help ensure a new hire has your business best interests at heart.
3 Ways To Hire Smarter
What role are you hiring for? Define it as narrowly a you can, but leave a little space to expand the role if the person you hired has complementary skills that could be helpful in the future. Whether you’re hiring a vendor, a freelancer or an independent contractor for either full time, part time or per project, you need to know what you need them to do and what skills they need to have to fulfill the role. Having clearly defined – and written job tasks – with outcome metrics helps the new hire know what’s expected and helps you know whether it’s working out.
What do you need and why AND are you going to be able to delegate and let that person do his or her job? If you have an immediate need for help because you have a quick influx of opportunity, do you need someone on the payroll following that or is it a one time need? Be up front with the prospects.
Formulate an onboarding strategy to assist them in their job and you in their success. If a new hire is floundering and don’t know where to begin or what is expected of them, they will be dissatisfied and overwhelmed and will leave.
I have been fortunate in my hiring that I have had a couple of team members — my copywriter, for example — who has been with me for close to a decade. I have other project based vendors on whom I have also relied for many years. I set expectations up front, train staff, give them the tools they need to succeed and it has been a win-win!
