How to Master Your Niche with Market Research

5 ways market research can energize your business You finally decided this is the year to make the dream of launching your business a reality! You’re most likely creating a checklist of all the things that you need to do in order to make this happen. Your list probably looks like this:

  • Create a website
  • How do I promote it?
  • Where should I go to find potential customers?

…and the list goes on with a variety of tasks that you need to complete in order to get this thing off the ground. When you review your completed list the initial excitement you felt is probably starting to turn into a mix of overwhelm, nervousness and panic. You’re left wondering, “I hope my efforts aren’t going to be in vain.” You decide to take the leap anyway and start checking off the items on your business to do list. (more…)

How to stop being your own worst enemy

How to stop being your own worst enemy

Be honest. Have you abandoned your New Year’s resolutions to launch your business? No need to feel ashamed. In fact, according to numerous studies, most people abandon their New Year’s resolution within a month. Now there are a variety of reasons why this happens, but I believe the main forces driving this statistic can be attributed to fear, patience, and consistency.

The good news is that even though you got off to a rocky start, it’s how you finish that truly matters. I don’t want your dreams of launching your business to end up on the sidelines.  It’s time to get to work on how we can go about resurrecting your goals so you to make it to the finish line in style.

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How to reign in your lack of direction

Launching your own business is the best investment that you can ever make. A business allows you to position yourself to enjoy a variety of freedoms that you will never experience working a typical 9 to 5 job.

However, you will never reap any of those benefits if you don’t come up with a routine to help you stay on track. Many businesses fail because they don’t have a plan. Even if they do have a plan, they are unsuccessful in creating and maintaining a routine that will enable them to execute their idea.

If you fail to establish a routine early on in your business journey, you will make one or both of the following mistakes:

  • You have gathered so much information that you now have a horrible case of analysis paralysis.
  • You know what you need to do. Yet, the tasks seem so overwhelming that you start to procrastinate in implementing them.

The reason folks experience this type of anxiety is because they don’t have a system in place. You can’t launch a business without following a routine. A rock solid routine will help you reduce the time it takes to get your business off the ground. Throughout my career,  the method in how I segment my day consists of the following sections: (more…)

How to Create a Winning Goal Setting Formula

How to Create a Winning Goal Setting Formula

When you look back on this year, how many goals did you achieve? If it wasn’t as many as you had hoped for (trust me, I’ve been there) then it’s time to try a new approach. After all, you can’t continue to do the same thing and expect different results.

If you want to check more items off of your to-do list then I’d like to share my goal setting approach system. I’m warning you in advance, some may think this is overkill, but I always achieve my goals when I follow this “formula” for each of my goals (I typically create 3 goals each year):

  • SMART Goals
  • Goal Themes
  • Grateful Notes

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How to create an elevator speech that pushes the right buttons

Is your elevator speech pushing the right buttons

I have been to quite a few business networking events, and I guarantee that if you go, you will hear the phrase,

“Tell me about yourself.”

Many people are able to answer this question with no problem, while others seem to struggle. If you find yourself experiencing the latter, one way to combat this issue is by memorizing an elevator speech.

In case you are not familiar with this term, an elevator speech is a short spiel that enables you to convey to others your occupation and what you represent (i.e. personality) in the same length of time it takes for you to reach the highest floor in an elevator (approximately 30 to 60 seconds).  (more…)