Connecting to Your Why & Vision Archives

Tools for Creating a Growth Mindset

April 19, 2022February 23, 2022 by Michelle Mitchell

In order to grow your business, you’ve got to cultivate a growth mindset.

Building a growth mindset is basically a two step process:

Connect everything you do to your why and your vision.
Expand your capacity.

With the right tools, you can work your way towards a growth mindset that will do wonders for your business. The best part is, none of the tools I’m going to recommend are unattainable or difficult to use. They may stretch you on a personal or professional level but only so that you can expand your capacity for success.

You always want to start where your heart is. What made you want to start this business in the first place? Where do you want to see the business go in the future? Guide your business based on your answers to these questions and you’ll have a solid foundation.

Tools that help you connect to your why and vision (Get in touch with your why and vision here.): a planner, an online presence, and your network.

How: A planner gives you a designated place to connect everything you do and are going to do, whether big or small, to the reason why you’ve built and continue to build your business. You need an online presence on social media and/or a personal website to establish your personal brand and share your skills and knowledge to a greater community. Your network also creates a community, where you can support each other in times when you may have lost your way or are feeling like giving up.

Expanding your capacity means making room for abundance. You have to smash through your limiting beliefs (read about smashing your limiting beliefs here) and move forward with the assumption that your business will pick up speed and you’ll need to establish efficient practices for the long term.

Tools that help you expand your capacity: QuickBooks and a calendar

How: QuickBooks is great for small businesses that are in need of a financial management system that can grow with them and know what they’re numbers look like at all times. Combine QuickBooks with an accountant and watch your profit margins improve (find out the difference between an accountant and a bookkeeper here). A calendar is another tool for increasing your efficiency, especially if you use scheduling software. Keep a calendar and you won’t bog yourself down with a bunch of busy work and put more of your focus on the tasks that matter.

I love to see women becoming empowered CEOs that are confident in their businesses. I hope using those tools gives you that confident feeling. That’s my why for Mitchell Consulting Service. It’s because I’ve kept that purpose in mind all these years that my business has seen the longevity that it has. My why also has to do with my family. My family has always inspired me to expand my capacity for financial freedom and happiness. I’ve implemented systems, gained efficiency, and created boundaries (read about boundaries here) so that I could be there for my kids as they grew up. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

How to Take Time Off with Your Peace of Mind

April 19, 2022January 26, 2022 by Michelle Mitchell

There was a time when it was just you in your business, running all the systems and delivering every service. Now, that time is over.

Now you’ve got employees. Each member of your team has things to learn and you’re responsible for teaching them. You’re also overflowing with clients and projects. As stressful as it was to wear all the hats, you sometimes wish you could go back to being a solopreneur.

Not so fast! Once you get your employees trained and acclimated, there’s only one thing left for it to be smooth sailing: trust.

You can’t build trust in your team overnight but there are steps you can take to ease into it.

Step 1: Slowly delegate more projects and responsibilities.

Step 2: Make sure your systems can run without you.

Step 3: Document this progress and make sure to give them feedback.

I consider that the initial trust building phase. Your ultimate goal is to be able to take time off from your business and not come back to everything on fire. The next series of steps are for right before you take time off.

Step 4: Get a better sense of where they are at in their work and ask them what they still need to accomplish.

Step 5: Using that information and what’s on your to-do list and clearly state the outcome that you expect from your team by the time you return.

Step 6: Make sure they have everything they need, like information and permissions, to reach that outcome.

The last piece is about you. You need to trust in yourself and your business decisions. That may be scary but the confidence comes with practice. Eventually, you’ll be able to step away on a more regular basis without panicking or feeling the need to put up as many guardrails for your team.

For your own sanity and the sanity of everyone around you, you need to take a break. After all, you started your business so that you could realize the vision you have for your life. That vision probably involves travel. You can finally make that trip to Italy you’ve been dreaming about since high school a reality, which will require you to take time off.

If your business finances are the crutch holding you back from that break, you could benefit from a virtual accountant. I’ve laid out even more reasons to hire a virtual accountant in my blog, Why You Need a Virtual Accountant.

If your greatest hurdle is imposter syndrome, read this article instead: Say Goodbye to Imposter Syndrome.

3 Financial Habits That Will Help You Reach Your Goals

April 19, 2022January 12, 2022 by Michelle Mitchell

If you’re like many of the women entrepreneurs I work with, you might not feel very confident when it comes to your business finances. You might be stuck in one place or maybe you’re scrambling to get a handle on things as you grow. Either way, your finances are a source of stress instead of what they should be, which is something that makes you feel like an empowered lady boss.

Luckily, I’ve got the secret to becoming the boss of your finances and reaching your financial goals: practicing healthy money habits! Healthy habits are the key to staying on top of your money now so that you can reap the benefits later. Incorporate them one at a time so you can sustain them in the long term. Here are three you can tackle in no time:

Track all of your expenses. This includes anything and everything related to delivering the services offered by your business, from contractors to the supplies you use. Your expenses play into many aspects of your finances. They’re important to track for filing tax deductions so you can earn back what you deserve during tax season. They’re also relevant to how you price your services. You don’t want to get into a cycle where you aren’t earning enough to cover what you’ve already spent.

Some financial goals this habit will help you reach: Reducing expenses (of course), taking home a higher revenue, paying yourself, improving your profit margins, being prepared for taxes

2. Track your time. When time tracking, you’ll want to pay attention to a couple different timeframes: your time on operations, your staff’s time on operations, and the time spent on each service. There’s so much you can learn from this information, whether it’s seeing where you could be more efficient or taking time into account when pricing your services. You might notice areas where you feel you’re spending more time than you’d like or realize tasks you haven’t made time for. As the CEO, you get to arrange things so that you work primarily in your genius zone. However, you still have to make sure to set aside time for working on your business like looking at your finances and creating systems.

Financial goals this habit will help you reach: Pricing for profit, increasing the amount of services you deliver for higher revenue, creating a better budget

3. Use your numbers to inform your decisions. You should understand your money so well that you know when to stop offering a service and when to put more resources behind a service. Don’t spend any more time on things that aren’t benefiting your business or your finances.

Financial goals this habit will help you reach: Making more confident financial decisions, improving your profit margins, managing your cash flow

Believe it or not, you can get in control of your finances. Even as you grow, maintaining healthy money habits will keep you on the right track and allow you to remain sustainable for years to come. So go on and set those goals because they’re more attainable than you think!

The Top 2 Reasons You’re Feeling Stuck

October 20, 2021 by Michelle Mitchell

You’ve taken the leap and decided to start your own business. You’ve been able to make money from your passion in the past but you suddenly hit a roadblock. You’re feeling stuck in your business. What do you do?

Let’s talk about getting unstuck. Sometimes the problem lies in the very foundation of your business. Other times, your time and your money are not being well spent. I want to give you the blueprint for analyzing areas of improvement so that you can break through that barrier and get unstuck!

Your foundation. It’s best to start from the bottom up. There are several pieces of a business that need to mesh with one another to create a solid foundation. Like a house, the infrastructure can’t be maintained if the foundation is shoddy. Central to your foundation is knowing your why: your guiding motivation and your core values. You also need to be in tune with your genius zone. Additionally, you want to have a solid vision for the future, something to work towards.

You’re likely to get stuck if what you want to do fails to align with what you are actually doing. You might have an idea of your why in the back of your mind but you might not be acting on that motivation. When it comes to making a profit in a business you are wholly responsible for, it feels silly not to take every opportunity you are offered. This is not only unrealistic but it won’t get you closer to your purpose. You’ll end up stuck on a hamster wheel continuously taking projects that are uninspiring and not in your genius zone.

Your finances. You may be experiencing the opposite problem. Perhaps, your business activities are focused within your foundation but it just isn’t bringing in enough money. I knew I was working within my wheelhouse but I couldn’t seem to break the $50,000 a year mark. Our approach to our finances can have a major impact on our overall success. I understand that the financial side of your business can be overwhelming – that’s not why you started your business in the first place! – but your finances can give you much needed insight into where you might be getting stuck.

You’ll want to address several different areas, namely: organization, income, and expenses. Using the right tracking software is key to understanding your financial data and being able to act on it. Once your finances are organized, you can gather information about your income. You might not be charging as much as your services are truly worth and in turn, not bringing in as much money as you could.

Alternatively, you could be pricing too high for your ideal client and not getting as many clients as you could. You also want to be aware of what services are bringing in the most and the least money. You may want to adjust your service offerings to focus on your more lucrative offerings. There’s a balance needed within your expenses. Is everything you are spending money on bringing you the proper return on your investment? If not, cutting back on such expenses could be a gamechanger for your business.

I hope I’ve given you the tools you need to get unstuck in your business! Pay attention to your foundation and your finances and you’ll be on your way to newfound growth in no time.