“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”

~ Theodore Roosevelt

In pulling together the curriculum for my group mastermind, I’ve identified 4 key areas of your business to work on over the coming year. In this blog, I share what those 4 areas are and a few things under each that you might want to consider planning in for 2022. This blog is jam-packed with links to further reading, so I recommend that you bookmark this blog and take some time to really work through it, doing so will really give you a sense of the approach I teach to my paying clients.

The four key areas are:

1. Purpose
2. Marketing
3. Operations
4. Business Model

It’s my firm belief that when you take time to work on each of these, your business will grow. Let’s take each of them in turn.

1. Purpose

This is all about the reason your business exists and the ideas and big why upon which it is built. It’s the message you share with the world. Under purpose it’s important to explore and identify those very things that makes your business unique — it’s what separates you from others in your field and helps people to know that you are the business owner they want to work with.

Under the umbrella of purpose are various components you’ll want to consider here.

• Your niche, which I describe as the problem(s) you solve, who you solve it for and how you solve it. Read more about my take on niche here.
• Your core message, which I describe as the big idea behind your business. Not sure what yours is, consider what business related idea you would share if you were to give a TED talk. Mine for reference is this: When you change the way you do business, you change the world. You can read more about what I mean by this here.
• Your point of view, which is basically your take on how to solve the problem the problems your clients have. It’s your opinion on the best possible course of action to get the results people are looking for. To read more about point of view head here.
• Your framework, this is the how of your business, it’s your particular approach to facilitating the transformation your clients seek. What I’m sharing here in this blog is, in essence, my framework for building and growing a conscious and sustainable business.

2. Marketing

This as an “area” to focus on can often feel huge and overwhelming, especially given how much conflicting and toxic advice there is out there on the internet. Personally, I like to keep it simple. First of all I like to reframe marketing from marketing to our audience to connecting with our audience. Often the first step we need to make is to change how we think about marketing. Click here for more on that.

It may seem like a subtle difference but actually the shift in intention is big. When we stop trying to sell to people and instead try to connect and serve people, not only does the act of marketing feel much more easeful and joyful for us as business owners, but it feels better for the recipients of our marketing. The purpose of our marketing ceases to be about closing the sale and much more about developing deeper relationships, which is a much more fulfilling way to do business.

Under marketing, I recommend that you carve out time in your schedule to do the following things:

• Create high value content that serves your audience and demonstrates your expertise. If you want to delve into my approach on content marketing, you can read this post or you may even want to consider purchasing my low cost Kinder Content Marketing training here.
• Practice regular outreach, which essentially involves reaching out to people 1:1 and developing meaningful relationships, which over time inevitably lead to sales as well as a host of other opportunities and friendships. To watch a presentation I gave about outreach, head here.
• Conduct audience research. I can’t tell you how many people fail to ask their audience what they think, what they are struggling and what they want. Conducting audience research is a wonderful way to build relationships, get invaluable information about how to help our ideal clients and a great source of the specific language we can use to better connect with our ideal clients and get sales. To read about different ways to do this head here.
• Offer a generous freebie. I’m not a fan of pithy email opt-ins designed to get people on your list but I am a fan of generous freebies, such as full, pitch free gift sessions or high value free workshops (as opposed to time-wasting webinars). In my experience when you wow people with a generous freebie, both sales and loyalty are much more likely. To read more about my approach to gift sessions head here.

3. Operations

This is the back-end of your business, the side of things we don’t share with our clients and audience but that directly impacts their experience of interacting with us. It covers what you might want to consider having in place to give people a good experience of coming into contact with your business, as well as give you the best experience of running your business. It’s possible to run a business in overwhelm and chaos and it’s also possible to run with ease and simplicity. Having a well organised back-end is crucial to achieving the latter.

Under operations you’ll want to take into account the following:

• Your schedule, having a clear schedule that outlines your working hours, your breaks and time off and dedicated time for individual activities like content creation and client sessions is crucial to ensuring that there is sufficient time for key activities as well as enough breaks to make your working life sustainable.
• Your processes and systems. As my business has grown, I’ve had to get serious about having strong systems in place. If I didn’t it would be chaos over here. Often we think that we don’t need systems (because we’re still small) or that systems will stifle our creativity but I promise you that having solid systems in place allows you to focus on the important work of delivering your services without wasting countless hours on unnecessary admin and busy work. To access a systems checklist I use with clients, head here. (If you make a copy you’ll then be able to edit).
• Your support system, i.e. the tools and software you use, the tasks you outsource (or could) and any people you employ and how these work together to save you valuable time.

4. Business Model

Your business model is the way you bring money into your business and as such covers the following:

• Your suite of products and services. What do you actually sell? Have you paid enough attention to what services your people need and want as well as taking into account how YOU want to work on your business? If, for example, you do a ton of 1:1 but it leaves you feeling drained and depleted then you’ll want to look at your business model.
• Pricing. This is where you’ll want consider your positioning. Are you a business that offers premium services or do you favour affordable and accessible pricing? To read my thoughts on authentic pricing head here.
• The customer journey. Some people might call this the sales funnel, but I hate the thought of squeezing people through a funnel. I much prefer to think of the path my potential clients take to the front door of my business. You’ll also want to consider what kind of marketing you’ll need for each individual product or service. How you market a group program that happens once a year is very different to how you might need to market an ongoing membership. To read more on pathways head here.

To read more of my thoughts on business model head here.

And there you have it. Four key areas to pay attention to as you build and grow your business. I get that this might feel like a lot, I’ve spent close to five years putting all of these in place for myself and I spend a whole year going through these with my Mastermind participants so don’t feel you have to this at once.

I’d love you to schedule some time to read through all of the additional resources I share with you here and then just pick one or two things from each of the four areas to build into your business plan for 2022.