It’s officially the end of Q1 of the year, and yet another reason to pause and take stock of your successes from the last quarter and some planning for the month ahead.
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Looking backwards to the last quarter:

• What successes did you have over the last quarter?
• ​What major accomplishments did you have?
• ​What were key lessons learned?
• ​What habits or practices helped you?

• What role did planning play?
• What forms/templates and practices supported your focus and planning?
• What got in the way?
• What do you want to make sure you don't carry forward into this season?

Now turning to the next quarter’s planning:

• What are your goals for April, May and June?

• ​Narrowing it down, what are your top 3- 5 priorities? (Think - by June 21st I hope to have achieved)
• What time are you earmarking for planning?
• What time is earmarked for projects?
• What new habits and practices do you want to put into place?
• What relationships do you want to put more focus around?
• ​What is one thing you could do on a daily basis each day of spring to move your goals forward?
• What relationships do you want to put attention around?
• ​What do you need to, and want to take action on?
• What needs clearing up?
• What else is significant for you this quarter?

Finally...
​What pauses and renewal periods do you want to build in? Grab a calendar and schedule that now.

​What else will help you remain at your peak?
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Enjoy your reflection and be sure to update your Monthly Tracking Forms in the Coaching Business Builder/PlanDoTrack.

You will also want to fill out some new Quarterly To-Dos and do a weekly breakdown (check out pages 140 and 141 of the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner and Coaching Business Builder).

Enjoy the planning and celebrations!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010)
Potentials Realized
Phone: 416-996-8326
Looking to grow your coaching business this year? Check out the Coaching BizGrowth Lab. We meet the 1st and 3rd weeks of the month for 1 hour group coaching conversations. Focus this month is on collaboration and building community. In addition to the group calls you have access to a growing resource library of monthly articles, templates and recordings. Join us this quarter or for the rest of the year!

​This week’s post focuses on renewal. About ten days ago I got back from some glorious time away at March break. For the last few years we’ve tried to go somewhere warm during these breaks. While every year it’s the same mad rush to get things in place, and in line, it is so worth it!
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What are you doing to renew yourself on a regular basis? When you look back at the last few years, what are the breaks you have taken that have been important in creating memories, rather than just working?

As business owners shutting off for a short while may be difficult AND it’s important to know that we too need renewal!  If there’s nothing in the tank, there’s nothing in the tank!

What breaks do you have planned this year for renewal? And note, to renew, you may need longer than a long-weekend.

If you’ve joined me during the summer months, or read my Coaching Business Builder, you’ll know how important my time spent up north is every year. For all of July and most of August I work out of a 90-year-old cottage, river side. While my business is virtual, it’s really basic during these months as I downshift and focus more on time with family. My work days shorten so that most days I work from 6 am to noon, except for Mondays which is a full blown 12-hour day. The balanced between continued revenue and time off works well, and I actually find myself yearning towards these throughout the year.

Hopefully we are enjoying our work, and not just feeling like we always have to do!
What are you planning, and doing, around renewal right now? If it’s not in your spring schedule, schedule it in now, and add it as a tracker item in your Monthly Daily Tracker.

Best,
Jennifer

Happy Spring! As we step into a new season, I hope that you will take a few minutes to take stock of the winter – your accomplishments, learning and achievement. Take a look at the Quarterly Review questions I shared a few months ago here. 

Today I wanted to remind you of the resource available to you here - the Weekly Sweep for Your Business. This is a one-page document you can use on a weekly basis to undertake a sweep of your work or business.
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The “Why” behind this document is that regular actions clear things out. As we move into a new season, there may be more energy to get things organized.

If you haven’t downloaded a copy of the Weekly Sweep for your Business document, download it here.
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As you will note at top of the Sweep for your Business, get you to outline your key priorities for the week around:

• Planning,
• Doing,
• Tracking

As well as key goals in the areas of

• Business
• Your Environment (home, office, etc)
• Yourself

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The next section gets you to outline your goals for the next seven days, with prompts for possible tasks scattered across the week. These include things such as – administrative tasks, outreach to clients/prospects, content creation, and taking 15 minutes to clear some clutter.

On that note, it doesn’t need to take a lot of time to get things into order. 15 minutes at a time can make a big difference to a cupboard, a table, a filing cabinet or your email. Set the timer and see what you get done in 15 minutes!

This is a document you can refer to week after week! Be sure to download it now.

Enjoy!
Jennifer

I’ve been a long-term blogger and writer for almost 15 years now. As someone who is always creating content, it’s interesting to go back and review some of the past posts I’ve shared. Here is one that I think many of you as business owners will find useful. I wrote it back in 2010, and it’s still relevant today:
Six Tips for New Small Business owners – Originally published at the Biztoolkit blog in April 2010

This April marked my 6th year of business. I continue to be reminded of the excitement and emotions of new business owners through regular discussions with participants of the 90 Day BizSuccess program - some of whom are new business owners, as well as seasoned small business people.

In running the program I often get asked, what are some tips for new business owners. Here are 6 tips which have kept business exciting, and successful for me, over the years.

1. Track it! Take notice of the impact of the activities you are undertaking, over both the short term as well as the medium term. What are you noticing about the money you have invested into different marketing activities? Notice what's giving you impact in terms of your activities, networking and relationships.

2. Create Systems so that you don't have to recreate things over, and over again. It's not surprising that even experienced business owners still " have not had time" to create simple processes for their businesses such as invoices, proposal formats etc.

Ask yourself:

• What activities might you need to repeat time and time again (consider finance, people, marketing etc)?
• What systems would benefit your business?
• When will you spend time creating these?

3. Build on What You Already Have, Have Done or Do: Many times small business owners fail to capitalize on what they have already created, designed or know. What can you build upon in your business? Do you really need to start off at 0?

4. Plan it! Time Management and Planning can be a major challenge for business owners. When was the last time you sat down to plan and strategize about your goals for the quarter or even the month? As we know from time management 10 minutes of planning can save an hour of unfocused effort.

When will you spend time creating your plan for the next month?

5. Schedule It! What doesn't get scheduled, doesn't get done. What are your main business priorities right now? Have you scheduled them into your calendar? If it's not written down or blocked off chances are it may get lost.

Activity:
Take 15 minutes this week to identify one or two main priorities for your business and schedule in time in your calendar to get these things done.

6. Be strategic - We can't be all things to all people? Consider the Pareto Principle, or 80/20 rule, which states that we get 80% of our impact from 20% of our efforts. What activities are going to give you the most impact this month?

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

For several years I’ve talked about the Six Factors of High Performing Teams. It's likely that many of you also coach teams, or work with them in team development programs. In recent months I have had a lot of requests from coaches to share more on the six factors, and I thought that this blog post would be a great place to start.

Extending from the Team Effectiveness research, such as Hackman and Wageman, and Katzenbach and Smith, we know that teams which excel have a:

• Shared mission and vision
• Clear goals
• Clear performance measures – what does exceptional look like? What is required?
• Clear Roles
• Shared team practices – common ways to communicate, get clear on results and built relationships

As I have written in past Teams365 posts, the six factors of high performing teams include:
1. Shared purpose or mission (Your WHY) – Why do you exist? What do you take a stand for?
2. Shared behavioral norms - How you do things? What is acceptable and unacceptable on the team?
3. Shared commitment - What are you as a solopreneur committed to? What will you make sure you do, no matter what?
4. Shared performance goals (How are people measured? How do your goals align? Overlap?
5. Shared team practices - Teams that work together effectively share common practices such as a Monday morning huddle, a Thursday night out or some other regular event.
6. Clear Roles - How our roles overlap, align and connect?
(Originally posted November 3, 2014 - https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-307-revisiting-the-six-factors-of-high-performing-teams)
 
Facilitating discussion around these areas helps with the alignment, and clarity, required for teams to excel in today’s ever-changing environment.

I hope that you will take a few minutes today to write out or capture the Six Factors of your business and/or team. For more on these, refer also to my 2017 book, Effective Virtual Conversations, pages 349 – 355. 

How might conversation and focus around team effectiveness benefit the teams you are working with?

​As you grow your team, what's important to keep in mind?
 
Enjoy your week!
Jennifer
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For many years in my former life and work within the global sector as a Program Manager, I was involved in recruitment and hiring people for projects large and small. At one point in my career I realized that I had undertaken several hundred interviews to fill roles on projects in one year alone!
A key part of finding good people for project and work, goes back to being clear on what the role is, and being excellent in communicating that.
In building your team, getting better at defining roles and even writing position descriptions is imperative. This holds true for project roles, sub-contracting roles, as well as full time roles.
Questions to consider as you go about creating position descriptions are:

1. What is the role? Outline what is required. What’s the job title?
2. What type of role is this? Supporting role, customer facing…
3. What are the job requirements? What is needed in order to be successful? Consider the skills, and experiences someone needs in order to be successful in this role.
4. Responsibilities – What will the person be required to do?
5. Tasks – What are the actual tasks people are required to complete?
6. Reporting – Who will they report to? How often? What is required around reporting?
7. Relationships – Who will they need to interface with? What relationship can they expect from you?
8. Support and Resourcing – What support and resourcing can they expect?
9. Feedback and Performance Measures – What are the metrics they are being measured on? What does successful job performance look like? What feedback loops can they expect?

In creating a position description, it can be useful to ask:

• Who else has a business model or team like you do? Do they have a job description you can start with?
• When is it important to revisit this?

Human Resource Management may not be part of every coaches wheel-house. If this is something new for you and you’d like more information, two good “go to resources” or starting points are:

1. The Balance Careers – Susan Heathfield has been writing in this area for many years now. Check out her post on How to Write a Job Description for a Job opening  here.
2. Paul Slezak’s Five Simple Steps to Writing a Concise Job Description at the RecruitLoop blog.

Note that job description/position descriptions may vary from location to location and can have different legal requirements. Be sure to reach out to your local Small Business Centers for more information on local level realities.

Best wishes,
Jennifer

PS – A reminder that this month’s 30 days focus in the 1BizStepaDay series is around Relationships. Download a copy of the 1BizStepaDay series here. What are the daily actions you are taking to build your relationships during this month of February?

There comes a time (or many times) when we are challenged to think about our business models. How is it working? What changes are needed?
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One of the inflection points you may see in your business is the need to build your own team.

I’d like you to return back to your vision for this year. What are the major projects you have planned? Who can help you get there – quicker, faster, better?
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Building your own team takes effort, especially while you are bringing people on board. You’ll want to consider things like:

• What’s important to communicate about the culture, and values of the business?
• What is important with customer service? Around quality? Around outcome? Around the philosophy of the business?
• What are the non-negotiables? i.e. THIS IS how we do things
• What are your expectations in terms of punctuality, quality, feedback, attention to detail, responsiveness, ability to work when you are needing them?
• What are the roles that are going to help you as a business grow, offer the programs and products you want and meet the challenges of the landscape you operate within?

Even before going to hire people, it will be important to consider what you want to communicate about your business, it’s culture and how you do things.

I’ll be sharing another few posts around the area of growing your own team in the next month. Next week we turn to creating job descriptions for team members.

Enjoy
Jennifer
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PS – A reminder that this month’s 30 days focus in the 1BizStepaDay series is around Relationships. Download a copy of the 1BizStepaDay series here. What are the daily actions you are taking to build  your relationships during this month of February?

Last week’s post kicked off our focus this month (February) on relationships.

This week I’d like you to think about WHO is in your web of relationships. As solopreneurs, it’s very easy to think we are “solo”, or alone, when in fact, throughout the day we may be interfacing with a wide variety of others.
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For this week’s activity, consider these questions:

• What are the activities and tasks where you are in relationship with others?
• What are the new relationships you want to foster?

One of the activities I include in the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner is having you create your Top 20 list. Who do you have in your network right now?
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Once you capture people you have in your network, then ask:
Who else would you like to add to your network?
Consider:

• influencers,
• connectors (people who can connect you to others),
• associations you might join to grow your knowledge base, or to contribute to.

My second book was entitled “From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching”. This also means expanding the conversation to more. What are the hubs which can help you connect with, and be in dialogue with, more people at any given time?
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Enjoy your relationship mapping work!
Jennifer
PS – A reminder that this month’s 30 days focus in the 1BizStepaDay series is around Relationships. Download a copy of the 1BizStepaDay series here. What are the daily actions you are taking to build  your relationships during this month of February?

“Tasks expand to the amount of time we give them” asserts the Parkinson’s Rule. I remember first reading about this in the Four-Hour Workweek from Tim Ferris. Think about it - what tasks have expanded to the amount of time you have given them?
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Whether you are a solopreneur or work with a VA or other freelance members, having a variety of tools to manage projects is key. These tools are likely to be virtual so you can share them with others, and you may have different tools for different purposes.
In selecting a tool consider:

• What’s going to work best?
• What are the requirements? I.e. How will we use the tool?
• What’s important to note about this?
• What is the Project Scope – Time, Budget and Effort?
• What is the progress?
• How much time is it really taking?
• What are the project requirements?

Two tools I like to use the capture and communicate projects can include:

1. Asana – Asana is another great project resource, and free of charge (at least at this stage for some functionality). Asana has the advantage of being able to segment what you share with whom, so if you work with a VA and also a graphic designer you can consider what you share with each one or both. Asana allows you to upload documents, set deadlines and also assign responsibilities.
2. Trello – While I use Trello more for program design, I love the visual interface of Trello. It visually breaks down more complex ideas, and tasks into smaller particles. Consider how Trello might support you with your programs or projects. If you are using Trello – please feel free to comment and share with us how you are using it.
3. Good old-fashioned tables – As a new project manager in the early 1990s, it was important to document, document, document. As Word Processors were coming into being, accessible capturing of information was becoming the norm and the priority. Almost three decades later I still return back to the basics and many of my team members say they love the simplicity and clarity of a one-page weekly project outline. It doesn’t have to be super complicated – I usually have 4 columns for:

• Task - What is required?
• Description – More detail about the task – project requirements, what will success look like with the end product? Get granular here and clarify your assumptions!
• Resources needed - highlighting any documents needed, or resources to use, or people to reach out to.
• Deadline – What is the deadline for the task? When it is required? Be realistic and also think about what happens if that deadline is not met. What ripple effect could it create?

What are the tools you want to start incorporating into your work this year, to make projects flow more smoothly?
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Enjoy your week,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010)
Potentials Realized
Phone: 416-996-8326
Looking for some daily focus around your work? Join me over on Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder for a daily question or prompt as part of the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series. 
Check out the November 2018 CBB Book Club Call entitled "2019 Planning. Already?". You can view it here.

This week our attention is going to shift to quickly explore 5 key skills in project management. Whether you are creating an e-book, designing a new program or deciding on new systems for your business, as solopreneurs we are regularly managing projects as a team of one.
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In project management, historically, the foundation has been that for any project there is a triple constraint – time, budget and scope. Like a triangle, it is said that these things are fixed (at least in traditional project management). So if my budget gets reduced, it might take a little longer to do things as we now need to do them in-house OR the scope of the project may change given that we no longer have resources to complete a six month project, so instead we may need to do a three month project.
 
With this in mind the first project management skill I think is important is getting good at identifying project requirements.

• What is the project?
• What are the deadlines?
• What are the milestones along the way? These are checkpoint activities where you can see progress?
• What resources are needed? Project manager of all kinds have operated in this framing of being aware of the triple constraint ….

Other key questions to be asking here are:

• What is the project scope?
• What’s involved with it?
• What is IN focus? What is outside of focus (or scope)?

 
Spending additional time making sure we have this first step of project requirements right, helps to make the rest of it flow more smoothly (usually!).
 
It was in this phase of project identification that I first became aware of the adage that “10 minutes of planning can save 2 hours of unfocused effort”. So true!
 
With this is in mind, let’s look at five key project management skills that solopreneurs will want to boost:

1. Knowledge of self and skills – Self- awareness is key to solopreneurial success. Knowing what we are good at, what we can learn, and when we need to reach out to others, can make the difference between a project that flows and one that gets deadlocked or becomes a source of frustration. In knowing ourselves, we want to be able to identify key skills which are important in the immediate term, as well as ones we will be using regularly. Creating a robust network to reach out to, to find others short term who can round out of skill needs, is critical for solopreneurial success. “No person is an island!”.
2. Time estimation – Estimating the amount of time required for a task is also critical. One part of this equation is getting better at knowing how long tasks really do take. Part of this is experience, and we may have peers and mentors that can advise us. It can be useful to build in some contingency time for our own learning curve, given that tasks will take longer to complete the first few times we do them, or if we do them infrequently. I’m thinking of a recent experience I had where I had to set up a welcome auto-responder for a give-away. I do this about once a year and while I should “retain it”, it was as if the task was totally new!
3. Clarifying what’s required - Given that most of us are working on our own, we will be needing to reach out to others to help us get work done. Whether it’s going to a site like Fiverr or Upwork, finding good experts (graphic designers, financial experts) that can work with us to make our projects happen, is crucial. In making this successful, we need to be good at clarifying what’s required (think – What will a successful end result for this project/task look like? – be specific, get granular), as well as finding people.
4. Relationship Building and Negotiation – At the end of the day, things need to get done and projects need to get completed. If we can’t complete projects, it may have a significant impact on the business. As solopreneurs, we can’t go to a boss to negotiate the triple constraint – i.e. give me more time to complete this or give me more money – we have that under our control. In some ways this makes project management that much easier. What is may mean is that we need to go out and enroll others to our projects – requiring both relationship-building and negotiation skills.

What do you see as essential project management skills for solopreneurs? Which ones have you been leaning into as a project team of one?

Share with us using the comments below.

Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010)
Potentials Realized
Phone: 416-996-8326
Check out the November 2018 CBB Book Club Call entitled "2019 Planning. Already?". You can view it here.