What are you doing to grow your business this year? Wait. Let me guess: You're doing more. Doing more is rarely the answer to the question, "How do I grow my business?" But... it seems like it should be the answer. So it's the first tactic we consider....
Welcome to the first What Works episode of 2021!
This episode is going to be a look behind the scenes of my two companies and how we’re planning for 2021, some of the choices we’re making, and what we’ll be looking for as the year progresses.
Not only is this the kick-off episode for 2021, it’s the kick-off for our January series on “working the plan.” This month, I’m going to be sharing conversations about planning for parental leave, leveraging LinkedIn, and writing a book—all things that have taken intentional planning and execution!
But before we get to those, I wanted to share not only how I’ll be working the plan this year but how the plan got made in the first place.
I recorded this episode in mid-December 2020. And in that time, I’ve already discovered some things that are altering my plans. After all, the very act of working a plan means you’re gaining new information and even discovering new ideas.
Planning is a learning process.
It’s not about getting the plan right, it’s about finding a starting point and then learning from the result as you go.
My plan is never set in stone. Adjusting my plan doesn’t mean I’ve failed or done something wrong. It means I’m learning. So start with my best guess of what I want to do and then adapt from there as I gain new information and experiences.
In this episode, I’ll share how I’m reallocating my resources this year to better serve my companies, what commitments I’ve made for the year, the Strategic Priorities we’re focused on, and what projects we’re kicking off the year with.
Here’s what works for me when I’m working the plan!
Messages urging you to fix yourself or fix your business are all around. It's all part of the annual ritual of improvement that is the New Year. Most of these messages revolve around invented or exaggerated “problems” that can be easily solved if only you’d buy this...
2020 has been a year of reacting. We’ve reacted to the shock to our economies. We’ve reacted to injustice. We’ve reacted to the fear of getting sick (or spreading sickness to others). We’ve reacted to lost contracts and unexpected surges in demand. We’ve reacted to...
The way you think about your "job" can hold you back as a small business owner. But you probably won't notice the problem until you're feeling frustrated that your business keeps bumping up against a ceiling. Your ceiling might be how much you work, the number of...
Photo by Grovemade on Unsplash One of the top questions I get every year is: How do I make a plan I can stick to? Everyone wants to know a magical formula for choosing goals and making plans that they can glue themselves to for a month, a quarter, or a year. After...
Today, we’re talking to Melissa Emler, who leads a community of educators & administrators over at Modern Learners.
As you might guess from the name of her company, Missy has been through the wringer this year! The pandemic brought an intense urgency to the work she’s been doing and the change she’s been trying to create in education for years. Suddenly, schools all over the world knew they needed a new approach to learning.
But that wasn’t the only thing creating twists & turns for Missy this year.
In this conversation, you’ll hear how Missy balances leading her company with working in the “lab” of a day job, the 3-part framework she’s used to lead educators through big change, and how she created space for conversation about injustice and systemic racism in education.
Plus, you’ll hear how Missy uses a key question about change and figuring out who we want to become to meet the moment to lead herself and others.
This week, we’re continuing our series on leading yourself with Alethea Fitzpatrick, the founder of Co-Creating Inclusion—a diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting practice.
Alethea told me that her go-to practice for navigating the twists & turns of this year has been focusing on what she can control and letting go of what she can’t.
As you might guess, Alethea’s consultancy has experienced massive growth this year—which has been its own challenge—while she also had to deal with pandemic life with 2 kids in New York City.
I’ve watched Alethea navigate big emotions, uncertain outcomes, and limited capacity and her openness & grace in the midst of oppression and violence has been astounding.
So you want to grow your small business in 2021? Awesome! But... how exactly do you do that? In the past, I would have tackled this from a purely marketing standpoint. I would have written about developing new relationships, growing your audience, and creating more...
We have just about made it to the final month of 2020. Which is the perfect time to look back on what you've created, what didn't work out, and what you learned. And, it's understandable if maybe that annual ritual is something you're thinking about skipping...
Host of What Works
Tara is a podcaster, small business community leader, strategist, and speaker. She’s been helping small business owners build stronger businesses for over a decade.
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