You’ve heard me say it before… you can do it all, you just can’t do it all right now. And by that, I mean all of your business ideas and passions at the same time.

But I recently had a conversation that extends this idea beyond business to all parts of life. It was with Positive Psychology Coach, Corporate Well-Being Facilitator (and lovely human) Julie Fischer.

When we spoke, she shared her belief that work-life balance is a bunch of bologna and she subscribes instead to what she calls harmony.

What do you really want? No matter what stage your business is at, it’s a good time to (re)visit what you want it to be.

What YOUR vision is. What YOU want to be doing. Because it’s so darn easy to get caught up in what everyone else is doing and achieving.

Because it’s all too easy to lose sight of, or not even have caught sight of, what you truly want.

As a solopreneur, it may be time to sow, in order to grow. Because there comes a time when to continue to increase revenue, you need to get help.

No, I’m not talking about hiring a business coach (though that’s ALWAYS a good idea :). I’m suggesting that you start to outsource some of the tasks you do each day…

Many of which may take you far too long to do and are not your “high-value activities” — those things that only you can do to serve your clients and ensure you attract more of them.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve counseled clients who’ve found themselves in situations where they are seriously crunched for time.

They’ve begun calendar blocking, which is great, but their calendars resemble the colorful version of Jenga. Leave it as is and there was no breathing room, literally and figuratively. Pull one piece out and the whole thing falls apart.

While some of the scheduled activities were must-dos with little flexibility in terms of timing, others weren’t.

The topic of pricing for profitability comes up a lot with the founders of service-based businesses I work with.

How do you value what you do? | How do you stop trading time for money? | And confidently set prices you can stand behind”?

On a recent episode of the “Pulling the Thread with Elise Loehnen" podcast, she discussed the challenge of valuing and pricing creative work. Her ideas resonated.  

I have the privilege of working with highly creative founders. Many of whom have many ideas, passions, and interests.

And they want to do them all. And they come to me to help them figure out how. When they share their ideas, they’re excited. And I get excited when I hear them. Because they’re GOOD, and they’re interesting.

So, we get to work. And the first thing I do is put on the brakes. Why? Because they can quite possibly do them all. They just can’t do them all right now.

I caught a recent episode of “The Tim Ferriss Show” with his guest, American author and filmmaker Soman Chainani.

Soman Chainani is best known for writing the children's book series com Netflix movie “The School for Good and Evil.” Because it was Tim Ferriss, the conversation was long, wide-ranging, and in-depth. And worthy of note-taking on multiple topics.

One bit in particular resonated — playing your own game.

As a business owner, you need to leverage the power of self-belief. It’s real and it matters.

An example from the sports world… If you watched the Super Bowl a couple of weeks ago, you were not alone. It was the most-watched event in US television history with over 123 million people tuning in worldwide.

And if you were one of them, perhaps you read or heard the backstory of the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Brock Purdy.

A couple of weeks ago, I caught a LinkedIn Live Audio event hosted by two LinkedIn experts. During the Q&A, they were asked about the most effective practices to increase awareness and reach on the platform.

One of them recommended spending time commenting on other people’s posts as one of the best ways to do this. Specifically, he said that we listeners should spend at least 30 minutes a day on this activity.

I caught myself thinking, “Wow, 30 minutes a day. I can’t do that.

For busy business owners, time-blocking your calendar has become a thing. And there’s a good reason for that… it works.

What exactly is it?

Time blocking is an approach to time management that involves dividing your day into blocks of time, each dedicated to accomplishing a specific task or group of tasks.

Last week, I shared my “one out of ten” approach to creating lasting change in your team members (and yourself). What I didn’t share then is that this approach was implemented in a “culture of ownership.”

That was the foundational element that made the process work and one of the reasons it was so effective.

What I mean by “ownership”.

Many (many) moons ago, I managed a team of 12 direct reports at a Fortune 500 company.

In that position, I was charged with making sure this team delivered in a way that delighted our customers, both internal and external.

This meant developing processes and systems to minimize errors, ensure products were delivered on time, create programs that helped our partners sell, etc.

As a business coach and strategist, I encourage my clients to uncover their “why.”

We discuss the importance of knowing your “why” and the positive impact it can have on your business growth, your overall life trajectory, and life satisfaction.

It’s one of the key elements we use to help you move forward in your business and life.

As a business owner, I’ve never felt compelled to pick a “word of the year.”

I’m not sure why that is. But this year's different. As 2023 closed out, I felt the pull to pick not only one word for 2024 but two.

Because who made the rule of one word? And why on earth do we need to follow it?

I know you want rave reviews. For the reviews themselves, yes.

But also because you want to delight your clients and customers. You want them to be excited by all you deliver that is beyond their expectations.

Here are some questions to inspire you:

• What do you promise when you market and sell your offerings?

• What is your onboarding or delivery process?

One of the benefits of travel is that it puts you outside of your comfort zone.

It forces you to be in a new place with new customs, food, driving patterns, and quite possibly a different language, to name a few of the ways life gets shaken up when you leave your home territory

It forces you to get uncomfortable with discomfort. Which really is the only way to experience anything new, in business and life.

A short story on the value of persistence in small business and life.

This is another travel story. The other, real side that doesn’t make glossy Instagram posts.

After a beautiful vacation week in Ischia (highly recommended!), I set out for Salerno on the southern end of the Amalfi Coast. It’s a trip that should have taken 4 hours door-to-door. It didn’t.

Do you, like me, often find yourself rushing through, well, everything Rushing to get onto the next thing out of urgency or anxiety?

I ask this question because I was so busy “going fast” that I didn’t realize it. It wasn’t until someone uttered the words my father used to say to us when we were kids, “piano, piano” or “slowly, slowly” that I began to be aware of this tendency. And that it needed to change.

For two weeks late this summer, I allowed myself to indulge in tennis - a lot of tennis. It was the U.S. Open.

I even checked off a bucket list item — attending the night session for two quarterfinal matches.

As I shared back In July, when the major in play was Wimbledon and the story was the run of American Christopher Eubanks, there are business lessons in tennis.

When it comes to business coaching, it's the behind-the-scenes work, the soft stuff, that often makes the difference.

You can have the best idea for your business or plan to bring a new offering into the world. But...

— if you can't see how you're getting in your own way

— if you're getting bogged down or held back by perceived limitations

we can create the best strategy for you, but you'll never execute to the level you're meant to, at the level at which you're capable.