Last week, while running my regular local micro biz mastermind session, I took my game-changers on a business planning journey.
For most, it was the first time they’d ever put pen to paper and mapped out their vision for their business and their life.
Now I wasn’t surprised by this as I know the stats on how many people just don’t write down their dreams and their goals, but our dreams and livelihoods are kind of important…. We need to know where we’re going.
Without a map for your business and life, where will you end up? Antarctica?
For many of my clients locally, the make or break of their business is their “get out of Roxby (the small, remote town we live in) ticket” and a chance to buy their partner out of their time-sapping job and create the life they want, where they want.
I know this dream isn’t exclusive to my local clients, it’s my dream too and indeed, so many conscious business creator’s dreams as well.
But what is a dream or a plan if it’s not shared?
During my local workshop last week I was surpised by a few things……
- Firstly the absence of a mention of their partners in a couple of my clients “perfect days” (a visioning exercise I took them on).
- Secondly the ongoing comments about partners not knowing much about their businesses and not really being supportive.
and thirdly….
- The blank (and even scared) looks on my clients faces when I encouraged them to go home and share their business plans with their partners.
This one knocked me about the most.
How can we can’t expect our partners to support and believe in our businesses if they have no idea what we’re up to, why we’re doing it or what we want to achieve?
In fact, if they don’t know these things our partners, supposedly our no.1 fans, can actually de-rail not just our business dreams, but our confidence too.
Before you ask, know that this affects me too…..
Last weekend my husband was asking me those annoying questions about my biz and I literally wanted to punch him.
You know the questions…..
- How many sales have you had this month?
- When (and how much) are you going to transfer more money from the business onto our mortage / household bank account?
- How long are you going to stick at this before you give up? #ouch
- How are we going to afford this, that and the other?
- Blah blah blah blah blahdee blah blah………..
My response?
While I was tempted to crack it at him and accuse him of losing faith in me and not believing I could pull this online biz thing off again (like I did in my first online biz), I realized that it was actually my fault he was asking these questions.
While my hubby Paul is all over my business plan and goal, I hadn’t shared how we were tracking recently, and given we’re in the middle of building a new home and he’s jittery about the dollars side of things, it’s no surprise he was losing patience with my biz thing.
So I showed him my biz plan for this year and my budget and predicted trends. I showed him how much my list has grown in recent months and how it should transfer to sales in my current Home Detox launch.
And I reminded him that my “new” personal eco brand wasn’t even a year old yet (this time last year I was yet to sell my online eco retail biz).
The result?
He saw all the numbers he needed to see to calm the F down and leave me alone again.
But more importantly, he once again bought into my our dream of creating a profitable conscious business and life we absolutely love.
So, have you shared your dreams and business plan with your partner lately?
Are they 100% on board with you?
Please please please get onto this if you haven’t already as a business plan shared is a business plan halved if you get what I mean. 😉
P.S. Don’t have a biz plan yet? Biz planning is one of my most fav things to do (plus I’m kind of freakin’ good at it) and I’d love to help you nut out yours. In addition to my 1:1 Conscious Coaching packages I’m now offering one-off business planning sessions (via Skype). If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, join the FREE Conscious Biz Creators Community on Facebook.
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