As we rapidly approach the end of the year (and before silly season starts), November is a great time to be looking ahead to 2019.
Have you planned your own personal development?
Where do you want your business to be next year?
What do you want to achieve?
What goals will you be setting yourself?
When you work for yourself, only you have the power to make the time you need to make these fundamental strategic decisions. To be proactive, instead of reactive, in the work you do and to move forward at a manageable pace towards realistic goals.
I’ve written before about taking a retreat with your business, but sometimes, especially when you are your own boss, you need something more formal to actually make yourself do it, instead of procrastinating and avoiding it!
Hils Crisp helps independent businesswomen market themselves with courage and confidence. We’ve done work together in the past, so I’m really pleased to host her as a guest on the blog, sharing her insights on the power of personal development in your business.
Be a good boss to yourself, invest in your own professional development and your business will reward you for it.
Over to Hils for some great insights…
The Importance of Planning, Goal Setting and Personal Development for Your Business
Do You Need Personal Development
Starting and running your own business is one of the BIGGEST personal development journeys you can undertake, along with having kids, getting divorced and changing career. It’s huge! It is the most monumental learning curve, you’re constantly pushed outside of your comfort zone, it pushes all your buttons and brings up all your deep fears and anxieties.
So, when you run your own business or are self-employed, doing your personal development ‘work’ (ie practices, exercises, being present to triggers, developing confidence, moving through fears etc) is super important. You are your business and your inner landscape (what’s going on for you internally in any given moment) will have a bigger impact on your business than it would in a larger business with several employees or directors, where that impact gets spread out.
What Does Doing Personal Development Mean
Personal development, particularly developing more authentic confidence and a resilient mindset is a whole range of things including exploring and shifting limiting beliefs (so they don’t hold you back), managing fear (because you can’t get rid of fear, only learn to master it so you can make progress), the balance of yin and yang in your life and business (and your relationship to pushing and receiving), having the right energy/vibration to attract what you want, the confidence to do your best work and the presence to put yourself out there and exploring any blocks around money and how much you can earn.
This stuff is huge actually, and underpins everything I do as a coach, workshop facilitator and course leader, because it’s so so important.
How to ‘do’ Your Personal Development
I advise you to have a regular personal development practice, something which you do several times a week. This could be journaling, meditation (guided or otherwise), EFT / Emotional Freedom Technique (I’m a practitioner of this and it is one of my main go-to tools for moving past fears or doubts), somatic practices, listening to your intuition, and much much more.
In addition, working in a group is extremely powerful, using the group energy and wisdom takes you much further than you can go alone. When it comes to confidence and authenticity you can’t really work on that on your own, because it is in the presence of others that these things get triggered and you struggle. If you want to boost your confidence, you need a safe group in which to do that, as well as plenty of practice in the real world.
Don’t ignore your personal growth work (practices, exercises etc) or it will bite you in the bum as in, it will cause you to have a massive self-doubt wobble, have no one book on your course, have you panic about money and much more! And if business is going well, keep doing it.
You can only create success to the extent of your self-belief and confidence.
Having a Plan and Strategy for Success
Creating a strategy, setting goals and making and implementing a plan are also all extremely essential to running a successful business that grows sustainably.
Even small businesses need a plan.
Having a strategy may allude many business owners in the first few months or years of having a business, with them not understanding what it could be for them, not knowing how to create one or not even knowing how useful it would be! Having a strategy, an understanding and plan of how your business makes money, what it stands for and what it’s trying to achieve is important because it gives you a clear direction and helps you make decisions.
Why You Need a Strategy, to Set Goals and Create a Plan
When you have a clear direction you can set clear goals for your business. When you have clear goals you can make a plan to achieve them. When you have a clear plan, it’s easier to take action and be productive towards achieving those goals.
A strategy on its own is pointless, goals that get set then ignored or that are not linked to the strategy are useless, and a plan that doesn’t get implemented or is not based on what is needed to achieve the business goals won’t work. Without any of these your business will lack direction, cohesive marketing and will likely be a mess!
I believe you need all three (strategy, goals and planning) working together, which enables you to take consistent courageous action, that and having compelling marketing and doing your personal growth work are my 4 ingredients for success.
How You Can Get All This in 2 Days
This is why I’m holding a business retreat in January, in Bristol which will be centred around these 2 key ingredients for success: personal growth, confidence and mindset and strategy, goal setting and planning.
Imagine creating your business strategy in the company of other ambitious businesswomen and setting your goals for 2019 by following my unique process, from a place of feeling really confident, empowered and inspired?
Imagine stepping away from the busy-ness of your working in your business and spending 2 days in a luxurious retreat setting working on your business and yourself in a way that will set you up to have the best year yet?
Imagine walking away with a detailed 90-day plan that you can start to action immediately which will directly work towards achieving all of your goals?
Imagine smashing your goals in 2019 and being one step closer to the life of your dreams?
Would you want that?
Then check out my Business Boost Retreat (https://www.facebook.com/events/251652425700081) for more information.
Feel free to get in touch to find out more about my Business, Marketing & Confidence coaching too on hils@hilscrisp.com
Website: https://hilscrisp.com
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