How to make success happen

business success

It’s not all about the To-Dos.

One of the biggest surprises for my clients to wrap their heads around is that success isn’t always about the doing.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a big part of that. How else will you get things done. Right? I mean someone needs to take action on things in order to see results.

Yet it’s also about your thinking. As a business owner, how you think will have a huge impact on your success.

I love to watch the show The Profit. Marcus Lemonis is a master at creating cohesive, successful businesses. His big 3 are People, Process & Product. What’s interesting is the product usually can be improved pretty quickly. It’s the people and the process that often trips business owners up.

How business owners trip themselves up.

If you have never watched the show, Marcus comes in and takes a look at all 3 pieces. People. Process. Product. What I have come to see on the show (and working with my own clients) is that these two can often cause the business to stall or come to a complete standstill.

See, it’s usually the business owner’s mindset about the process that gets in the way.

Sometimes they don’t like what Marcus wants them to do, or they feel it’s not going to work, or they have always done something a certain way and they don’t want to change it.

I work with a lot of business owners on process improvement and systems creation and I can speak from experience that it’s not just about doing something differently.

It’s about how the business owner thinks about doing something differently that can make all the difference. You know, in the corporate world, the leaders always look for the buy-in of the employees. If they are on board, then usually a tweak or a change is easily made. If not, well…let’s just say a lot of time and money can be down the drain.

Your way of thinking is perhaps the absolute key to your success in business and in your life.

What have you been doing recently (or forever), that you know isn’t working and that if you changed it you’d begin to see changes in the direction of what you want?

How to change your thought process.

No article or blog is worth anything unless you can implement what you learned. So, below are several ways in which you can right now change your thought process.

Ask yourself:

  • On a scale of 1-10 (1 being no, 10 being yes), how effective am I in my business?
  • If you want to be more successful, ask: How can I be more successful right now?
  • What is one way (or thing) I could do that would bring me better success?
  • If I were to change how I think today, how would that change my tomorrow? (Remember, your thoughts/actions/decisions today, equal your results tomorrow)
  • I I were to improve my processes today, how would that change my business?

We often make things out to be super hard, and truly they are not. Just a few tweaks in your thinking can bring about massive success. Are you up for that? I hope you said YES! I sure am.

Let me know what you think and if you take action (see there’s the action everyone loves), let me know what you did and what your results were.

If you think that you may be the bottleneck to your success, be it your thinking or the ways you do things, I love to help people re-create simple mindset shifts and processes to help them get what they want in their lives and in their businesses. If you’d like some personalized help let me know. Set up a free 30 minute session with me and we’ll work together so that you’ll be able to reach your goals faster, easier and better than before! Click here to be on your way.

How to succeed in business by being flexible

flexible

Flexibility, do you have it?

Flexibility isn’t just for fitness enthusiasts. It’s good to have flexibility in all areas of your life. It will save you a whole lot of frustration, aggravation and disappointment.

In life and in business, one key element is to be flexible.

Let me ask you, are you someone who can easily go with the flow, change on a dime, shift in the moment? Or are you someone who struggles with change, can’t seem to keep up and often frustrated and disappointed with the results you are getting?

If you said yes to the latter, you need to bring flexibility into your world. And the sooner you can do that, the better. Trust me, having flexibility in your life and in your business will make things go so much smoother for you. And who doesn’t want things to go smooth?

The beauty of being flexible.

Who wants to go through life being irritable?  I know I don’t. And I’m going to say that neither do you.

One of the best things about being flexible is that you get unexpected results, fun surprises and fascinating outcomes. And usually more than what you initial wanted. I’m all for that, aren’t you?

I recently did a Facebook Live on exactly this subject, you can watch it here. It’s short, under 15 minutes. It will give you some great examples to maybe use for your own. Are you cracking up over the still photo of me?! I am.

How to not get caught up in frustration when things don't go your way.

Posted by Kim Ravida Coaching on Wednesday, August 8, 2018

How to have more flexibility in your life and in your business.

Let me be clear, when I say flexible, I don’t mean lie down and roll over so that everyone can walk all over you. I mean you are able to shift gears quickly and easily. You are able to think and act on your feet in the moment and get results (and often ones you don’t even anticipate) and that you are not stuck on the outcome.

Here are a few ways for you to be more flexible:

  1. Think Ahead. If you want a specific outcome, brainstorm several different ways of reaching it. Kind of like a Plan A, B & C. This will ensure that you won’t get stuck on just one outcome.
  2. Look at the Big Picture. A lot of the time we can get stuck and inflexible because we are looking at the small picture. Look a the big picture, and ask: in the long run, what is the best outcome and what is the best action I can take right now. Another great question to ask is “will this matter to me in x hours/days/months/years?” It helps you get out of your closed-minded thinking.
  3. Be Present. Stay in the present and ask yourself, “what is the best decision I can make right now that will serve me well and I’ll feel good about?”

Of course, you may have some tricks that you use. If so, I’d love to hear them. You can either comment below or send me a private email at kim@kimravida.com.

One of the things that I love to help people do is to create simple processes to help them get what they want in their lives and in their businesses. If you’d like some personalized help let me know. Set up a free 30 minute session with me and we’ll work together so that you’ll be able to reach your goals faster, easier and better than before! Click here to be on your way.

How to not give in to distractions

Distractions are just a part of our lives.

You probably didn’t want to hear that. I know I don’t! Yet, it is so true.

How then can we cope with them and even overcome them when they appear in our lives?

It’s important to first know that there are different types of distractions that we deal with. There are the small distractions. The telephone calls, text messages and social media bings and bongs. Heck, this blog post might be distracting you from something you should be doing instead.

There are medium sized distractions. If you work from home you might be distracted by your children or spouse or even your pet. Full disclosure, right now Bruin, my 8 month old Bernese Mountain Dog is bumping my elbow wanting his lovies.

And then we have the BIG sized distractions, a sick relative, looming deadlines, things you just have to do and do now or their will be grave consequences.

Oh and let’s not forget odd distractions like your street being paved (I’m raising my hand here as that is also happening right now as I write this). Or an accident that happened in front of your house or things along that nature.

No matter what the distraction is, don’t let it derail you,

Now that you know that there are different kinds of distractions, you can learn how to not let them derail you.

One of the things I help my clients with is to set up solid systems so that if and when (cause ya know it’s gonna happen) distractions hit, they’ll be prepared.

When you are prepared for things to happen they usually don’t have the power to pull you off course for long. Sure they may pull you off for a short time, but with your systems and tools you easily get back on track.

My friend and colleague Ann Rusnak once said to me, when I got distracted and didn’t finish what I wanted to, it’s like sometimes we play whack a mole. That has stuck with me because it made so much sense.

That’s when I set up those systems for myself and what I help my clients with and it made all the difference in the world!

How to not find yourself playing whack a mole in your life and business.

Here are several strategies to take so you don’t find yourself getting caught up in distractions:

  1. Plan for them. Not all distractions we can plan for but the small ones we can. Such as the telephone calls, emails and text messages (even the puppy dog wanting his lovies). Have set times when you will be “doing” what I like to call admin/communicating time. The big ones, if we know what they will be can be planned too.
  2. Follow a To Do and Projects List. Well-thought out lists can help you plan your time accordingly.
  3. Be Mindful. This one is a little less of a step. However, just as important. Do you know when you usually get distracted? When you are mindful of what is going on with your life and business, you’ll be able to avoid them in the first place.

Those are a few ways you can start using to not fall prey to the distractions around you.

Distractions can derail us faster than you can say the word. If you want more personalized help to be able to be productive no matter what is going on around you I can help you do that. Set up a free 30 minute session with me and we’ll work together to create a plan for you to feel good about your change. Click here to be on your way.

Is it time for a refresh in your business?

A refresh might be just what you need!

In life and business, a refresh could be just what you need right now. If you keep doing what you have always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten. That saying is very true for a lot of people.

In fact, so much so that they can’t see the forest through the trees. In other words, they keep doing things because it’s what they always have done. Yet, they aren’t happy with their results.

Many people I work with know that what they are doing isn’t working. And they want to change that. Though there are some who can’t see that what they are doing isn’t working so in that case, we do a little refresh.

How a refresh can help you get different results.

A refresh has you looking at what you are doing differently. Maybe from a whole new point of view. And from there you can see what areas of your life and your business need attention. Once you know that, you can refresh what you are doing and be on your way to having better results.

Here is an example. One client of mine was exhausted. She was frustrated that she wasn’t bringing in new business as fast as she had before. So we did a little assessment. And what she discovered is that she had been neglecting her physical health. You know, she was too busy to exercise and the take time to eat well.

That gave her a starting point. She created a plan of action for improving her health which included daily walks outdoors for 15 minutes and she planned and prepped her meals ahead of time. Just this little refresh gave her renewed energy and a better outlook.

Within a week of doing this refresh she brought in new business. Because her personal energy was so low, she felt ill and tired all the time. So, no wonder she didn’t bring in new business. She did not feel like attending networking events or contacting satisfied clients to do repeat business with her. Just this little refresh gave her different results.

Ways you can get started on your own refresh.

If you get my monthly ezine you may already be doing this as that was my topic recently. Here is how to get started:

  1. Set aside at least 60 minutes in a quiet place and do an assessment of your life and your business.
  2. For your life assessment, review and rate (scale of 1-10 1 being very unsatisfied and 10 being totally satisfied) each of these areas and determine:
    • Your physical health & fitness
    • The personal relationships in your life
    • How much fun you have
    • Personal finances
    • Energy for Life
    • Balance between life and work
    • General happiness with your quality of life
    • Personal Development/Achievement
  3. For your business assessment, review each of these areas and determine:
    • Your business and professional relationships
    • Business building skills and actions
    • Professional Development/Achievement
    • Business finances
    • Leadership
    • Schedule/Organization/Prioritization
    • Time Management
    • Energy for Business
  4. For each of the ones you rated a 7 or less, list out on a piece of paper, separating the life and business ones. You can draw a line down the center of the page and on one side list Life and the other Business. This will help you see the areas you want to improve clearly. Pick ONE area for your business and ONE area for your life that you want to do a refresh in and lay out a plan to do it.

Keep the flow going.

Whenever one area is refreshed, you can move on to the next and so on. As a result, before you know it you’ll have had a whole refresh! And way more of the results you want to see in your life and and in your business!

If you would like to make this even easier to do a refresh, I’m here to help. Set up a free 30 minute session with me and we’ll work together so that you know exactly the right place to start your refresh in order to focus on the outcomes you desire! Click here to be on your way.

Don’t like your results? Change what you are doing.

Don’t like what you’ve got? Change what you are doing.

Oh now I know that is so easy to say and not so easy to do.

But is it? As a coach, I like to challenge my clients’ thinking. When someone says “I don’t like my results.” or “I’m not getting the results I first want to know what their specific results were.

Once that is clarified, it is easy to work backward and find out what they were doing (or not doing as the case may be). This gives us a great picture of what went on prior to where they are now.

Many times what we discover is that the actions they took (are taking) will in no way, shape or form lead them to their end result. And it’s there that they need to change what they are doing.

Change is a good thing!

You may be rolling your eyes. You may be thinking “no change is not a good thing”. But think about it. If what you were doing was working, you wouldn’t need to change. So if it’s not working, then making a change is a good thing.

Most times it doesn’t have to be drastic. A small change here and there could be all that it takes. Of course, there may be times when you need to completely scrap what you were doing and begin from scratch changing everything.

Start looking at change as a good thing and you will more likely feel differently about it.

Start slow, keep going.

A stumbling block to making changes is we often feel we have to do it all at once. In some cases, yes, that is the best way. And it isn’t the only way. There are times when going slow is in your best interest. The key is to keep going. Just like Dory!

Still worried about change? Still not feeling good about changes you maybe know you need to make yet are afraid to make them? Set up a free 30 minute session with me and we’ll work together to create a plan for you to feel good about your change. Click here to be on your way.

3 Simple Steps to Double Your Income

Are you finding it hard to bring in more income?

It’s not. Easy for me to say? No, it isn’t. For a long time I found it hard to bring in more income. I’d have clients, then they would complete (aka reach their goals) and move on and then I’d have no clients and so on. It was in that phase of not having clients that I found it hard. Though truth be told, I was doing three things that set myself up for finding it hard to bring in more income.

And I’m going to share with you what to do so that you don’t have to struggle like I did. If you are a small or solo business owner these three things will make a big difference for you. You can even do them on your own. Meaning, they are very do-able without spending a lot of time on them. Which means, you’ll have lots of time to get out and make more income!

3 Simple Steps to Double Your Income

Before I share them with you, I want to first address “simple”. Things that are simple actually get done. The more complicated you make them, the less you’ll want to do them and so they won’t be able to work for you. So let’s just agree that you’ll keep things simple. Ok? Great, here they are:

  1. Take on a Powerful, Positive Mindset. Your mindset will make or break you. No matter what it is you are struggling with, getting new business in the door, networking, setting up appointments, etc, your mindset is to blame. When you have a struggle on the outside, you always have a struggle on the inside.
  2. Set Attainable Goals. In working with business owners like you, I notice a lot have pie in the sky goals. Things like I want to earn six figures this year. Yes, this is a great goal, in fact it can be powerful, but when I ask them how they are going to do that they tell me “I don’t know.” If you only have two clients who are paying you $250 a month and you have no one on the horizon and aren’t doing any marketing to get more, is six figures even possible?
  3. Measure Your Results. Another mistake I made and I see others making is that they don’t have any idea where they are in the cycle of their results. Take money for example. You say you want to make $10,000 a month. How will you know that you made that $10,000 if you aren’t measuring it. And do you want a net or a gross $10,000 (ah, did you forget to calculate your expenses)? Tracking your results is the only way to know if you have truly met your attainable goals and/or if you need to course correct.

How to put the 3 simple steps into practice

Having a powerful, positive mindset, setting attainable goals and measuring your results work simultaneously toward doubling your income. Next is your assignment to put the three into action:

  • Set time aside to create your own powerful, positive mindset. Take a look at your business closely. Determine how you want to show up in each aspect of it. From the actual marketing, service and/or product delivery, customer service, to your role as leader, use of time management and productivity and other key areas. If you aren’t sure what key areas you need to pay attention to download my OPTIMAL Business Success Free Assessment to get started.
  • Write out your goals to see if they are indeed attainable.  Do a little diligence. Write out a few ideas of how you will know when you have attained them. Make sure you are clear. Write about in detail the things you need in order to reach these goals. Such as hiring team, replacing equipment, getting help such as a trainer or coach to help you reach your goals.
  • Create tracking systems. This will by far keep you honest about where exactly you are in your success cycle. And out of the failure cycle. When you know where you are and what you need to do to get to where you want to be, you will find it’s easy to get there.

These steps will not take you long to put into place. The important thing is that you do them. Everything else you have been doing will fall into place. You may even see that things you have been doing aren’t working for you or you can do differently to get the results you desire.

Here is to your OPTIMAL Business Success! 😊

If you’ve download the OPTIMAL Business Success Free Assessment and discovered that you don’t want to do this alone, I’ve worked with a lot of business women who struggled with trying to double their income (in fact, one of my clients increased her income by 80% with these simple steps!), set up a free private session with me and we’ll get you started!

Are You Faking It Until You Make It Or Are You Being Authentic?

How to tell if you are faking it or being authentic.

Faking it or being authentic? I had an interesting conversation with a client the other day. She had heard someone say that you can’t fake it until you make it because then that meant you were being inauthentic. This bothered her. There were things she was doing to grow her business. And there were some she was doing things that she didn’t really love but knew brought her the results she wanted.

She had been going along working to reach the goals she set and was reaching them when all of sudden she was stopped in her tracks. This concept of being fake threw her for a loop. “I want to be authentic” she told me. So I asked her what made her think she wasn’t being authentic.

Her response was, “well, I’m not doing what I love to grow my business, I’m only doing it because it’s something that works.” I asked her if she felt she was being genuine in her actions, to herself and to her clients. She responded  “Oh, yes!” with enthusiasm.

What does authentic mean? If you Google it you’ll get this: something that is real, genuine. And if you are being real and genuine you can’t be faking it.

There are times I’m not totally genuine…, then what?

True, there may be times when you are less then genuine. Such as “I’d love to work with you, but now is not the right time.” when you truly are just saying that to get off the phone with whomever is asking for your business. A heartfelt, “No, thank you, this is not for me.” would be truly authentic.

I’m not going to get into little white lies here, so let’s just say only you know when you are being authentic or fake. Now, if you truly want to be authentic, it’s time you look yourself in the mirror (no matter how hard that is) and tell yourself that no matter what, you will be authentic in your life.

Let go of the times you weren’t, learn from them and move on. The “then what” is you’ll no longer have to fake anything, you can really be yourself. Now, what a novel idea that is, eh?!

What if I still need to do things that I don’t want to do.

Welcome to life! Will my client stop doing what has been getting her results? No. Not entirely. What she will do though is look at it differently to be more authentic in her actions and that may cause her to do things differently. There are times that you do have to do things you don’t like, exercise anyone?! 😉 Going to the dentist, need I go on? I don’t think so, you get my point.

What I propose you do is to look at it differently, how can you be authentic even when doing things or being in situations that you do not like or do not want to do? How can you find one thing in a situation that you can use to show up as your true authentic self. And guess what, that may be to admit “I don’t want to be here.” Rather than smiling, sucking it up and saying “I’m so glad to be here.”

I can see the look of horror on your face. I can hear you saying “I can’t do that.” But, you can! I’m not saying it’s easy, I struggle with it myself and the alternative is to be fake and unauthentic. So what it is you want to be?

I thought so.

What did you think as you read this? I’d love to hear your thoughts. If I pushed any buttons, what were they and would you like to do anything about them? Either reply below or email me privately at kim@kimravida.com

I’ve worked with a lot of women who struggled with feeling that they weren’t being as authentic as they would like to be and who wanted to change that. If you feel that you are doing more faking it than you’d like, set up a free private session with me to help you find your authentic self!

Are Your Business Best Practices Helping You Succeed?

Setting yourself up for success with business best practices.

When I first began working for myself there were a few things I knew I wanted. I wanted to take off every holiday I had off when I worked for someone else and then the few that I didn’t get. I wanted to take the Friday before a long weekend without having to put in a “request for time off” form that I knew would be denied. And I wanted to to be able to take advantage of nice days and be outside from time to time during my workday.

You know, all of the things that I couldn’t do having to work for someone else, I wanted to give myself the liberty to do. In addition to that, I knew I needed a structure, a routine and a way of doing business. So I also set up some best business practices for myself to help me succeed.

Business best practices make all the difference to your success.

I looked up best practices to see exactly what others define it as and here is what Wikipedia says:

“A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to any alternatives because it produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means or because it has become a standard way of doing things, e.g., a standard way of complying with legal or ethical requirements.”

I know where I got the term best practices, I used to work in a law firm so it made sense to me. And it makes sense to have best practices for a business as well as a life! It fits a lot of scenarios. Though not many people have them. It could be why so many people and businesses struggle or are frustrated because they aren’t living the life they want or have the success in business they expected. By having your best practices in place, you’ll be setting yourself up for massive success.

How best practices can make the difference for you.

Best practices are for you to use to set your business up in a way that works for you. Especially if you are a solopreneur or owner of a very small business and you wear a lot of hats. It is something that helps you stay on track with all there is to do with running a business, accountable to getting things done and seeing actual results.

When you set up your best practices and follow them, your business runs so much more smoothly. It’s almost like you have a secret weapon of success in your back pocket. Best practices help you execute your business plan and day-to-day operating activities. Not to mention it is something that keeps you on time, knowing your schedule, what you can and cannot say yes to and basically running a successful business.

Setting up your best practices.

This is a big topic which I could talk about for a long time. When I work with clients we spend a good amount of time setting up best practices for them to follow. I’m going to share several key ones with you here:

  • Determine your work hours. This includes your hours of operation, when you are open for business to come in and when you will be taking care of any administrative activities like bookkeeping, filing, cleaning and things of that nature.
  • Create your schedule. Once you determine your work hours you can then determine your schedule. If you have a brick and mortar business, when will you be there working and when will you be doing your administrative tasks. If you have an online business, when will you go into your home office and when will you leave.
  • Layout your time off. This one is a challenging one for most business owners. And it’s one of the more important best practices you can lay out. Will you work weekends, nights, holidays? How much vacation will you have? When is your off time when you can be with those you love and do fun things for yourself?
  • Use a calendar faithfully. Now that you know your work hours, the time you’ll need to work on the business, your schedule and time off, put it in your calendar and honor that. Sure sometimes things may need to be moved around, that’s called flexibility, just make sure things don’t get ignored over and over again.
  • Put together an operations manual. This will include everything your business does to market, sell, provide services/products and be profitable. It’s a tell-all kind of manual. If I were to walk in and have to start working immediately, this manual will be able to tell me what to do, how to do it and when to do it.

Best practices as your framework for success.

If you think of setting this up as daunting, I invite you to think of it as setting up your framework for success. It’s a business operations piece that will give you solid legs to stand on and build from.

I’ve worked with a number of solopreneurs and small business owners to set up their own best practices. It’s something that can be started quickly. Schedule a free Best Practices Session with me and you’ll be well on your way to creating success in your business (and your life too =)

What if you just didn’t do it?

Look, it’s easy to get yourself to do things you don’t want to do. Now, what if you just didn’t do it?

Really, what would happen? Let’s think about this.

Possibilities of what might happen

You could die. But that depends on what it is you are contemplating not doing. If you are trying to overcome a serious illness and don’t take your medication, that’s a distinct possibility.

However, there are things that if you didn’t do, you could succeed beyond your imagination. Or you could discover you have been forcing yourself to do things that really just don’t matter.

But, let’s say it has to do with something you want to do with your business. What if you didn’t do it? What really would happen?

Let’s do an exercise. Choose ONE thing you have been trying to get done, or something you force yourself to do regularly but don’t want to do. Now get a piece of paper out (or open a blank document) and list out what you think will happen if you don’t do it.

So, what did you learn?

You learned 1) you really do have to do it or 2) you really don’t have to do it.

What really matters?

If you found that you are forcing yourself because for whatever reason you thought you had to do it, you hit on a goldmine of information.

There are so many “reasons” why we do things in our lives and in our businesses. And until you absolutely, without a doubt know your why – you may just be doing things because…

Reasons for defining your why:

  • You have clarity
  • Clarity gives you direction
  • Direction increases motivation
  • Motivation equals results

And ultimately in business we want results. So what if you only did what you knew would bring those results? What if you didn’t do what didn’t? Where do you think you’d be?

What are some of the things you had been telling yourself you had to do only to find out you really didn’t need to do them? I’d love to hear from you!

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Introducing a remarkable way to get things done

I always do what I say I’m going to do, do you? Although this may have been true, some of the time, it wasn’t true for all of the time.

BUT, I created a new strategy for myself. And now I actually do what I say I’m going to do.

A new strategy to help you get things done!

I’ve been writing a lot lately about time management. One, because so many of my clients struggle with it and two, there are so many options out there it’s hard to find the time to figure out which will work for you.

My goal has been to share simple strategies that work so you can just get to the doing. You can read about fundamental of getting time on your side and several others over on my blog – I try to write short, informative articles so that you can read them and get going on implementing the actions I share with you.

The new strategy that I want to share with you isn’t anything you haven’t heard before. In fact, nothing really regarding time management is. The strategy is taking a NO EXCUSES approach to doing what you say you are going to do.

Excuses will kill your productivity

For the purpose of this article, an excuse is a reason why you didn’t do what you said you wanted to or needed to get done.

It usually shows up when you say things like:

  • I don’t have enough time
  • But I needed to do this first
  • I was tired
  • I didn’t feel like it
  • Ya but….(fill in the blank)

At the same time, you might be thinking ya, but, I have a good reason for putting it off or not doing it. To that I say you may think you have a good reason, but it is still killing your productivity.

Stop making the excuses. Instead, think on the positive side of what will happen for you because you did what it was you were going to do (or even supposed to do).

Your turn, what are the excuses you are guilty of using? And then, when will you stop making them? Leave a comment if you so dare!

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