How to Have a Successful Business and Get to Live More 

When I first started my business, I thought that we needed to – as home-based coaches and consultants – operate the same as we did when we were in our corporate roles: in other words, start work at nine o’clock in the morning and attempt to finish at five or six o’clock in the evening. 

In reality, that actually meant starting earlier in the morning and finishing later in the evening because, when you start a business, you’ll know that there’s a lot of work to do and, quite often, you give up your corporate role thinking you’ll have more flexibility and more time to yourself and actually you end up working longer hours than you ever did when you worked for somebody else.

As you start to develop your business then you start to get more of an opportunity to flex what you do to suit yourself.

But there are still issues.

It’s Isolating

One of the biggest issues I see for home-based coaches and consultants is around isolation – a lack of community, not being used to working on your own without anyone to talk to or chat with or to have those watercooler moments with, like we would do in a corporate environment.

Most people, when they work in corporate offices relish the idea of working from home occasionally to actually get work done and to really focus, but actually doing that day in day out can be really isolating for many people.

Digital Overwhelm and Focus

There’s also an issue, nowadays, with all the digital overwhelm.

There’s so much information being thrown at us through our email, through social media, online generally. And we’ve never really taught people how to manage their time and their activity with all of the bombardment that there is with the social and digital tools and communications.

Working Out What to Do

Sometimes it’s also about not knowing what to do next and getting stuck with certain tasks.

As a home-based business owner, you often have a website or social media activity that you need to do in order to get new clients. That isn’t your core activity, it’s not what you deliver, it’s not the thing that you’re experienced in, but you do need to do it in order to get clients.

And so that can sometimes mean that you have a problem with your website, and you’re not the best person to deal with it but you don’t have anyone that you can call on for those sorts of emergency situations and you do have to deal with it yourself. And then you can get stuck because it’s something that you’ve not come across before and you don’t know how to do it.

Getting the Opportunity to Learn

And sometimes we don’t have time to develop ourselves.

All the personal development that we have the opportunity to do within organisations, because they have training programmes and learning support, often doesn’t happen when we work on our own. It’s up to us to take that action and work out the best route, in order to continue growing and developing, and that often falls by the wayside.

Not Knowing Where to Start

And then it’s also sometimes about not knowing where to start.

Sometimes there are things that we need to do and we need to create a template or we need to write a blog post or we need to do something that, again, is not in our usual experience.

And, working on our own, we’re often starting from scratch and that’s really quite hard to do.

Having the Chance to ‘Live More’

The benefits of solving these sorts of issues are that we then have an opportunity to do what I call ‘live more’, which is get to do more of the things that you want to do.

It’s about having peace of mind that you have a successful business and you’re also looking after your own personal wellbeing and that you’ve got people that you can talk to, your friends and colleagues, who can provide some support to you.

I’ve created an online membership community to help to provide solutions to these challenges that home-based coaches and consultants are facing. The reason I chose an online membership site is partly around that isolation piece as I started by imagining a virtual co-working space.

Many home-based business owners go to co-working spaces so that they can spend some time with other people and so they’re not working in isolation, at home, but not everyone can do that. Some people don’t live close enough to those sorts of places, some people can’t afford them, and sometimes the sort of work that you do is not conducive to be there – you need to be in your environment with your own equipment around you.

So I wanted to create a solution where you can work from home using technology, and work with other people and have an all-round comprehensive solution to the challenges including community, accountability, learning and materials.

And members don’t have to go and research to learn the things that they need to know, because I do that for them. So when people have an issue, I help them to resolve it. It might involve going to find out some information but it’s me that goes to find that out and then I curate that information in such a way that the person can understand it, without having to read around the topic first and get all that detail.

So I’m curating the solutions to issues that you have, and learning for you, so you don’t have to think too much. You can just implement and take action as opposed to having to do all that research and preparation and planning.

So, How Did I Come up With This Membership Community?

I am a home-based consultant and coach and have been for 15 years. And I’ve worked from home for all that time. I’m a jobbing consultant, still out there working with my clients. My strengths are around communicating with people, helping people to learn, and also learning myself and converting that learning into learning for other people.

And I help people all the time. I’ve always done that. If people have issues I try and help them to resolve those issues and this membership community is a way for me to do that in a more organised manner, at scale rather than just 121.

What Is Included in the Community?

To give you some more detail – the membership site is divided into four main areas, and they spell CALM (that should give you some idea of the intended state I want for you in your business!).

So, we have Community, Accountability, Learning and Materials.

Community

This is that bit about not being isolated, about having people around you; about being able to have conversations and share issues and questions and ideas with people and to help other people who are sharing those sorts of questions and concerns with you as well.

Accountability

This is about setting deadlines and sharing those deadlines with people and working towards them together. They may be different goals with different activities but with the same deadline or the same period of time to work towards them.

So, perhaps working over the period of a week to commit to achieving certain tasks by the end of the week, and your friend or colleague will be doing the same thing. It’ll just be different tasks, but it will still be over that period of the week so you can support each other.

Or it might be around habits – deciding what habits you want to develop and working with somebody to help them to develop their habits as well.

Learning

There are a ton of courses on the membership site (though that might be a slight exaggeration!) that are being added to constantly, particularly as I learn what people want, and find out what information people are particularly looking for.

Materials

This is where there are templates that you can take and use and tweak to suit your particular circumstance so you’re not starting from scratch,  so you’re not reinventing the wheel. You’re taking something that exists already and doing some more work with it to make it perfect for you and your business.

You Said, I Did

I did a survey a little while ago with home-based coaches and consultants and I asked them what they liked about working from home and working as a home-based coach or consultant. I also asked what they didn’t like and what the difficulties were – to feed into POWER to Live More CALM, ie this online community.

The two main pieces of feedback that I received were around isolation and lack of focus. They talked about being isolated, not having other people to bounce ideas off and talk to during the working day, and also feeling that there is often a lack of focus because you’re on your own and you’re not getting support from other people and, as  result, you find it easy to procrastinate and not get on with the important things you need to do;  maybe you’re doing the urgent things but not so much the important things.

So there is a real need to have other people to help with that accountability and well as to provide community support.

Having a Successful Coaching or Consultancy Business

I want my customers to be successful. And joining a new community is daunting, especially when there’s tons of content and resources and support available.

The question is where do you start and how do you get the best use from it? And what happens if you don’t like it? What’s my guarantee?

I’ve personally joined membership sites and then not even looked in them. I’ve not really even visited them and, not surprisingly, not got the value from them.

If you are considering joining POWER to Live More CALM, the first thing that happens is you have a 121 call with me so I can help you to plan out your first month’s membership before you make a decision to join. That way we get to know each other, you get to decide if you want to join us, and then, if you do, I can properly introduce you to the community.

I help you to create a personalised route into the community and content so that you can really hit the ground running with all the resources and materials available to ensure you get the best value from them.

My Guarantee to You

I don’t want you signing up and not knowing where to start and then not taking the action and feeling like you’re not getting the value from it.

So the first step of the process, BEFORE you become a member, is to have a 121 call with me where we can plan out how you join the community and what you’re going to focus on first.

And then there are two parts to my guarantee. Once you join you can easily cancel at any time (no hiding the cancel button or making you jump through hoops) and if you decide during the first month that it’s not for you, I’ll give you your money back!

I’ve tried to make this as easy as possible for you to make a decision to join us.

And the other thing to know is that I’m limiting the numbers in POWER to Live More CALM to 100 people. It’s really important to give you the best opportunity to build relationships with fewer people, rather than creating one of those communities where there are thousands and thousands of people.

It’s so easy to just lurk on those sites and this community is about participating, helping, asking questions and really using what’s there to get the best value for your spend.

If you’re interested in finding out more and joining my wait list so I can let you know once the membership community is live and I’m ready to start booking in calls then please use the button below.

When you click ‘Yes please, I’m interested in finding out more’ you will be taken to a page where you can download my new workbook all around Growth Mindset, which is so important to continuing to develop your business and yourself and, by doing that, you will be added to my early bird list so I can let you know when I’m ready to start booking in those (no obligation) calls!

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