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The 5-Step Process for Your 2020 Planning by @JThiefels

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The 5-Step Process for Your 2020 Planning

by Jessica Thiefels | Featured Contributor

I’m starting to hear the 2020 planning talk, but I’m not a big New Year goal setter. In fact, it stresses me out as January 1st gets closer and it’s all anyone can talk about. I’m more a year-round goal-setting kind of girl. This allows me to ebb and flow with changes while staying excited and on track—rather than putting undue pressure on one time of the year, which inevitably leads to giving it all up… but that’s a topic for another day.⁠

Even still, I go into each year knowing what I want to accomplish and I realized recently that I hadn’t painted a clear picture of what 2020 looks like for me. Someone asked: “So, what do you hope to accomplish speaking-wise next year?” I was like, “Ummm, to do it?” Not a great answer.⁠ I’m traveling the world, running a business and writing a book—planning for next year hadn’t quite crossed my mind with all of that going on.⁠

A few days later, I was talking with my coach and he said, “What’s possible if you start planning 2020?” My first thought was, “Well I’ll have a roadmap. Just like I talk about in my book. If you don’t know where you’re going, how can you get there?”⁠⁠

As I kept thinking about that question though, I realized: With a plan, I can do the work, visualize the outcome, and manifest my way there—and baby, I’m manifesting some seriously big things!⁠ 

If you’re ready to kick ass in 2020, now is a great time to start thinking about what you want to accomplish and manifest into reality. You don’t need to have specific, quantifiable goals. Simply outlining what you want to do is an important step toward committing to create the life you want to live. 

To start this new decade off on the right foot, use my 5-step planning process. I do this myself and love the flow and exploration of the planning experience when done this way.

Step 1: The Dream Dump

2020 planning

My 2020 Dream Dump

Start with a brainstorm, or what I lovingly like to call, a Dream Dump. Separate your plans into the various areas of focus for planning. For me, these are:

  • Book
  • Business
  • Speaking
  • Writing
  • Personal

List out all the things you want to accomplish within those areas. Then, let it sit for a few days so you can come back and add to your lists as more ideas come up. Remember: this is a list of the WHAT, not the HOW. So don’t hold back. If you want to accomplish something in 2020, it belongs on this list.

Step 2: The Action Steps

Once your list is complete, it’s time to look at the HOW. Start on a fresh page and break each area of focus into lists of action items. Some of the items on my book’s action list are:

  • Improve speaking (I.E. should I hire a coach?)
  • Create website
  • Outreach to podcasts

Your lists will likely be long, but this is your chance to get it all down on paper. Big or small, add the task to your list. We’ll come back and refine later.

Step 3: The Resource List

This tip is from my upcoming book and it’s crucial if you want to be successful: create a Resource List. This is a list of all the people and things that you can leverage to start moving toward those goals and checking off those action steps.

Think about people you know that can help along with things like a Udemy credit that hasn’t been used yet. My Resource List includes: 

  • Previous speaking connections at local college
  • Editorial relationships
  • Someone I met on an airplane (yes, I’m serious)
  • Client connections
  • Networking groups that I find beneficial

You may need to create a list for every area of focus—for me, many of them overlapped. You’ll figure it out as you start brainstorming. 

Step 4: The Refining

Now that your general action steps are written down, and you have a big ol’ list of potential people, places and things that you can leverage, it’s time to refine your action list and prioritize. This way, when January rolls around, you’re ready to hit the ground running. 

Start with the refining. Take the big action steps and break them down into smaller ones. Don’t forget to add action steps based on your resource List. I.E. Reach out to old boss or Buy tickets for conference.

Now, you need to prioritize. A prioritized list ensures that you know what needs to happen first. If you’re like me and have a lot of action steps, this will help reduce that overwhelm. Much of my initial 2020 work will revolve around my business and lining up experts to tap into when my book gets published. Then, when my book is out (and on the bestseller list!), I plan to move into the next area of focus: speaking, workshops, and general book promotion.

Consider how your action steps can be refined and prioritized in this way to head into 2020 with a plan you can rely on.

Step 5: The Manifesting

You know what you want. You know what you have to do to get there. Now it’s time to manifest your goals into reality. To do so effectively, follow a simple equation:

Visualize + do the work = manifest

I’m giving you this “equation” because I want to make something clear: visualizing alone, won’t allow you to manifest what you want. Not to mention, doing the work without a vision doesn’t get you far either. To manifest the big-amazing-holy-shit things, you have to do both! And you can start right now.

Start Your 2020 Planning

Now’s the time to start thinking about 2020—before the holidays hit, along with the stress, chaos and distractions that come with them. Use this 5-step process to get your big plans out of your head and onto paper. With a crystal clear picture of what you want to accomplish, and even better, how to make it happen, 2020 will undoubtedly be a year to remember.

The Magic of Delegating and How to Start Today by @JThiefels

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magic of delegating

by Jessica Thiefels | Featured Contributor

Delegating work to other people sounds great in theory. You spend less time doing the nitty gritty and get more time to focus on the big picture details you actually care about.

Despite the obvious benefits, when it comes to giving work to other people, we business owners struggle to hire help. Not only do you have to trust someone else to do the work as well as you, but it takes time to send out assignments and onboard someone. Plus, paying a contractor or virtual assistant means less money in your pocket.

I get it—I struggled at first too. Both onboarding and paying people to work for me was a hurdle I didn’t want to deal with. I’m particular about my writers because they ghostwrite for me. What’s more, as a writer and editor myself, I know that you get what you pay for and letting go of a couple thousand dollars each month seemed absurd. 

Despite my resistance, it came to a head. I’d reached a point where I could no longer do the work myself, and still make time for rest and growing my business. My business was running me, and I had to ask for help if I still wanted to maintain my client load and enjoy my life. I branched out to my network to bring on writing and marketing support and haven’t looked back since. My best months, financially and mentally, are when I delegate more work to my writers and marketing coordinator.

Having help not only allows me to get more done every month, but it gives me greater freedom in my day. With less work on my plate, I can take an afternoon off if I’m exhausted or take a full day to work on my book instead of being stressed about client work. I now rely on my writers and marketing coordinator and am grateful to have them on board. 

If I can do it, you can do it too. So, if you’re ready to build your business and take some of your time back too, use the following tips to delegate your tedious tasks. 

Start Small

magic of delegating

You don’t need to delegate $5,000 dollars in work right now. Start small to ensure that you find the right people or person. I always start new writers with a test assignment. If it’s something I can work with, I pay them and use it. If not, I’m upfront that they won’t get paid for the work. 

This allows me to get a feel for their writing as well as their work style. Do they communicate well via email? Do they submit the piece on time? Do they need a lot of handholding?

You can do the same, no matter what line of work you’re in. For example, if you want to hire a virtual assistant, start with a simple project. See how they do on that one project and assess their work style based on your own criteria, like I do with writers. From there, you can add more work to their plate or try someone new. You can also look for someone more specialized via sites like UpWork. I have five writers that I pay because I do a lot of content work. To me, that’s a lot more valuable to me than a VA. 

Make a list of where someone could feasibly provide support and then consider the best way to accomplish those tasks. Once you find someone, document the onboarding process so you have a record for the next person you bring on.

Follow the 70 Percent Rule

One of the greatest challenges with delegating is knowing that someone else won’t do it as well as you. That’s where the 70 percent rule comes into play, which says: if the person in question can do the job 70 percent as well as you can, you should delegate it. While this may still be a challenging concept to accept, Jim Schleckser, CEO of Inc. CEO Project makes a great point:

“To let go of perfection, you need to decide what’s more important to you: having the work completed to ‘perfection’ (the way you would do it), or having it completed successfully in a different way. You may even be surprised to find that when you give your team members [contractors] a little leeway, they discover new—and better—ways to do things.”

My writers are always coming up with angles I wouldn’t have thought of and digging up research I wouldn’t have looked for. I’ve come to prefer delegating as much as possible to them because my definition of perfect has evolved. My way isn’t always the best way and letting go of the need to have something a certain way has made my life much less stressful.

Give Feedback

If you don’t want to get subpar work, give feedback. I’ve been working with some of my writers for a few years now and they know what I like. They’ve turned my feedback into even better writing, which makes my job easier. Plus, feedback makes their lives easier because they spend less time guessing and more time producing great work.

Make this part of the process. Give feedback in real-time or do it in chunks, like one feedback email at the end of each month. If I need to do heavy edits on an  article, I’ll simply send the final article to the writer and ask them to compare their version to mine to see where they can do better next time.

Delegate What Someone Can Do Better

delegate to experts

This is so important as a business owner with a growing business. There’s a lot that you do better than the people you delegate to. There’s also a lot that you don’t do better, and that work should also be delegated. For me, that’s accounting and bookkeeping. Hiring a CPA and bookkeeper is the best money I’ve spent in my business because financials are not my forte. 

Looking at Profit and Loss statements and dealing with invoices is just not something I want to deal with. Plus, experts are experts for a reason. If I do it, I’m more likely to make a mistake. When they do it, I have the added peace of mind that everything is taken care of. This allows me to focus on what I do well, which is growing my business.

Start Delegating Now

It may be hard to spend the money or release control, but you’ll quickly find it’s worth it. Not only can you focus on bigger picture work by delegating small, tedious tasks, but you can also find more time to rest, which is crucial if you want to run a business long-term.  

How to Access the Untapped Power of Choice by @JThiefels

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the power of choice is yours

by Jessica Thiefels | Featured Contributor

The power of choice cannot be underestimated. We make 35,000 choices in any given day. I believe that each and every one of those choices gets us closer to or further from where you want to go, from the mundane to the serious. For example, choosing to eat a chocolate croissant rather than a rice cake with almond butter at 3pm is a choice that will affect how productive you are for the duration of the day. The croissant will make you feel sluggish in an hour or two, as your blood sugar drops, which potentially leads to the following:

  • Slowed productivity
  • Staying late at work to finish
  • Choosing an unhealthy dinner in your rush to eat late
  • Waking up feeling heavy and stressed because of unhealthy, late-night food.
  • A bad day at work the following day

And the cycle goes on. Big or small, your choices every single day dictate where you end up at the end of the day or even five years from now. When you tap into the power of your choices—something that you can start doing this minute—you take the wheel. 

  • You get to choose which job you keep and which one you leave. 
  • You get to choose who you spend your time with. 
  • You get to choose whether you start writing that book. 

For example, imagine the life that might come from finally choosing to leave that job you hate: 

  • You’re happier at work, so you’re working harder
  • You get a promotion in the first three months
  • You start making more money, so you buy a house

That’s the power you hold—already. You have the power to get from an unhappy junior employee to a fulfilled executive homeowner, if only you start taking your choices seriously. From the seemingly innocuous to the big and scary, the power of choice is your untapped superpower. Don’t let it go to waste.

Rethink Your First Choice of the Day

first choice of the day

More than one-third of mobile users worldwide check their phone within five minutes of waking up, and 39 percent of Americans are specifically guilty of doing this. I did this for many years and found that my days always felt more hectic and stressful when I started by scrolling Instagram and checking my email in bed. 

That immediate dose of stress, sensory overload, and all the mental hang ups that come with it, always ended the same way: dragging myself out of bed feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders—all before I even turned on the light. This then affected every choice that came after: 

  • I snapped at my husband as we crossed paths in the kitchen.
  • I was frustrated when my boss didn’t answer an email.
  • I worked myself up into a fit when traffic didn’t go my way.

I attribute this to the law of attraction, which is a significant factor in how one simple decision can have so many implications. In this example, I chose to take on the stress of social media, email and the demands of work first thing in the morning—and thus, I attracted it, creating more stress throughout my day. Living in this perpetual state of stress was not only frustrating, but it hindered my ability to make powerful choices. I was choosing from a place of frustration, not contentment and clarity.  

Now, I don’t look at my phone until I’m out of bed. I give my eyes a chance to open and my mind a chance to adjust. Instead of jumping into technology right away, I take time to enjoy those first few blissful moments of the morning, comfortable in bed and happy to be unburdened, if only for a few extra moments that day. I check my phone only after I’m up and about or after taking at least five minutes to lay in bed.

Play With Your Power

Experiment with this simple shift. Leave your phone on your bed stand until you’re out of bed. Better yet, charge it in another room, so you’re not even tempted. If you have an alarm, simply turn it off and put the phone back down. Don’t take a peek at the notifications, which you will be tempted to do. This will still get your mind going about today’s to-do list, what you forgot yesterday, and all the other stressors we’re prone to feeling.

Create a Choice Roadmap

choices roadmap

A “choice roadmap” is what comes out of goal-setting. When you set goals, the choices you need to make are clearer, and therefore, you can be more intentional with each and every one. For example, if you know you want to leave that job, you can start making intentional decisions to do so. This might include:

  • Saying no to a promotion that will keep you at a company you don’t like. 
  • Spending 15 minutes each day looking for and applying to new jobs.  
  • Attending networking events so you can start making valuable connections. 

In this way, your goal is helping you harness the power of your choices because you know which ones will get you closer to that goal—and which ones will take you further away. By creating goals, even just one, you give yourself a choice roadmap to follow.

Play With Your Power

Set a specific goal for yourself—like, create my business website by [insert date]. Figure out what you have to do to achieve that goal and then start making choices from that place. For example, instead of spending the night watching Netflix, you might choose to write the copy for your homepage and reach out to a few web designers. Suddenly, you’re moving toward what you want, not away from it—or worse, simply standing still.

Access Your Untapped Superpower

You have the power to get where you want and create an epic life you love, you’re just not leveraging one of the most powerful tools you have to do so: the power of choice. If you’re ready to tap into your superpower, I challenge you to start today. Will the first choice you make after reading this article take you further from or closer to where you want to go? You decide.

3 Rules to Live Powerfully Every Day—And Why It Matters by @JThiefels

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3 Rules to Live Powerfully Every Day—And Why It Matters

by Jessica Thiefels | Featured Contributor

What does it mean to “live powerfully?” It means to live with intention. To make sure that every choice you make is getting you closer to where you want to go—whether that’s to bed after a long day of work or to travel the globe for a year. If you want to love your life, you have to move with intention to create it, but doing so  is hard.

Here’s a simple example I’m sure we’ve all experienced: You get out of work after a long day, and all you want to do is go home, put on sweats, and relax. Your friend calls as you walk out the door with plans of happy hour. She really wants you to go—she’s had a great day and wants to celebrate. So, instead of making the best decision for you, to stay home, rest, and show up as your best self at work tomorrow, what do you do? You say yes and go out anyway. Because you don’t want to hurt her feelings or leave her hanging.

That’s the crux of it: we’re so focused on other people—living up to their expectations, afraid to hurt their feelings—that we don’t make the best choices for us. When we live for other people, and not ourselves, we drain our power. Instead of using it, we give it to other people.

The example I shared above is relatively harmless. However, when passionate entrepreneurs don’t start that business, and instead stay in a job they hate for fear of letting co-workers down or because they have no support network—that’s when living without power and without intention stops you from living a life that you love.

My Life-Changing Moment

Life changes when you embrace the ability to make the best choices for your life. I know this because I had 5 jobs in 5 years. I was making conscious and intentional decisions at every step of the way. To make the best move for my career. To say no to bad bosses and being treated poorly. At each job, I could have stayed, been miserable, and dealt with it. But I refused.

So much so, that in one case, I left a new job after just a week and a half. While I didn’t leave feeling fine, of course I felt bad and guilty for doing so, I knew I had to go. I made the decision to leave, on a Tuesday, and when I told my husband he had the reaction I was expecting: “I just don’t feel comfortable with you leaving when you don’t have another job.”

In that moment, I understood where he was coming from—and that my decision to live as intentionally as possible was going to affect both of us, but I knew I needed to leave. I told him I’d try to get a job between Tuesday and Friday, and I did intend to try—crazier things have happened—but I knew I had to go by Friday, either way.

When I made the decision to leave, despite how hard I knew it would be, the magic happened. The next morning I had an email from a company who saw my resume on indeed. It was a dream position for me at the time: working remote, managing my own time, and building a skillset that is now the most popular service I offer clients.

We had an interview on Thursday and by Friday I had the job. I told my boss that I needed to go that Friday afternoon and walked away feeling a massive weight slide off my shoulders. Making the choice to live with intention—knowing that that job was not right for me—opened me up to something new, and that something new ended up being a gift in so many ways.

How You Can Live Powerfully

Three years after taking that job, I’m running a six-figure business while traveling the world for eight months. Making the decision to live powerfully and with intention got me here, writing this on the Adriatic Sea in Croatia, and letting my dreams unfold before me.

living powerfully while traveling the world

The good news is, you can start charting your way toward a life you love too. You can even start today. Here are my three rules for doing that.

#1: Find the people who lift you up and ask for their support.

Whether you’re 15, 25 or 52, the people that you surround yourself with play a critical role in the life you create for yourself. Look at the people around you. Do they support you, or burden you with expectations? If you said, I’m leaving my job tomorrow; I know I’m just an admin right now, but I want to run a virtual assistant business and I need to do this. Would your closest friends or family support you or fill you with doubts?

If you don’t know that they’d support you, there’s one simple step to take: start networking. You love your friends and family, there’s no need to find new ones, but look for the people that will lift you up.

I started networking actively with women’s groups around San Diego just one year ago and my network of supportive women has quadrupled. People want to support you and show up for you, I promise. You might just need to do a little work to find those people.

#2: Start doing what YOU want to do.

This may sound straightforward, but you can imagine from what I’ve already said that very few of us are actually doing it. Start by making a list of things that you want and don’t be afraid to walk away from anything that doesn’t get you closer to that. A new job? A better apartment? To travel the world? Once you know what you want to do, you can start making decisions to get to that place.

Perhaps you want to go to law school but you have to pass the bar to get in. Suddenly, it’s a lot easier to say no to that happy hour. You know what you want, and it’s not to get drinks after a long day of studying or be exhausted for your practice exam the next day.

Most importantly, remember: you don’t have to know your entire life plan right now. You may want to leave your job in six months, so step one is to have a conversation with your boss and decide what’s next. Get clear on what you want and then start tuning in to how your decisions are getting you closer to that.

#3: Say no.

So often we are too afraid to say this very small, yet very difficult word because we don’t want to disappoint someone, let them down, make them mad. So we get the college degree our parents want for us or go to that party when we don’t care about.

The sad thing is, when you say yes to someone else, and you don’t want to, you’re saying no to yourself. That means someone else is writing your story—and who knows how that will end. But when you start saying no to others and yes to yourself, that’s when you begin making intentional decisions to build the life that want to live.

Go Live Powerfully

Living powerfully has helped me build a life that’s fulfilling, exciting and challenging all at the same time. It hasn’t been easy for me every step of the way—I’ve said no a lot, I’ve hurt people’s feelings, and I’ve taken the hard way out every time the easy one presented itself. And if you want to create a life you’re excited to call your own, can do the same—I know that with total confidence. If you need a little push, follow me, @HowtoMastertheArt, on Instagram where I’m sharing all the motivation you need to create a life you’re stoked about. You’ve always had the power, you just didn’t know it.

5 Things I’ve Learned From 8 Months of Networking by @JThiefels

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5 Things I've Learned From 8 Months of Networking

by Jessica Thiefels | Featured Contributor

In July 2018, I was able to turn my side gig of 2.5 years into a full-time business: an organic content marketing agency. The day that happened I knew I needed to start networking. I needed to meet people, learn from them, and soak up all the entrepreneur vibes I could. 

I signed up for four events, one for each week of July and I’ve been networking ever since. I’ll admit, I’m not a “networking” person and the thought of attending all of these events at first scared me—a lot. Don’t we all despise the awkward situation when you walk-up to a group, and then stand quietly until someone asks you something?

While there’s been plenty of that in the last year, there’s also been so much that I didn’t anticipate. Not only have I met some incredible women and started my own monthly gathering, but I’ve earned clients, gotten speaking gigs and and been lucky enough to learn from other successful entrepreneurs. 

I’ve gotten so much out my experience of networking that I’m here to implore you to do the same. Spend time doing the awkward standing, the nervous talking and life-changing learning and you will undoubtedly reap the benefits.

#1: New Service Offerings Can Come From Other People 

If you want to expand your business, networking is a great way to find new ideas—and new clients. My newest service offering didn’t come from me. It came from someone I met at a networking event. After the event, she told me that she was looking for 1-on-1 social media coaching. Though I had never offered coaching like this before, my response was: “I can definitely do that!” 

Jessica and Justine

I had never even considered that as a service offering, but I left with a new client, for a brand offering. We worked together for 7 months and she was the perfect first client for this new service. Along the way, I created a new page for my site and have had a variety of clients since. 

#2: Networking is a Chance to Learn

I look at networking as less of an opportunity to pitch myself—though it is, and I do—but more as a chance to learn from others. There’s so much collective wisdom in a room full of business owners. Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or running your very first business.

The key is listening to other people’s stories and tuning in for nuggets of wisdom as they learn about your story too. Instead of jumping right to the pitch, let the conversation happen naturally. Not only is this a chance to learn from them, but you may be able to provide value before asking for something from them too.

#3: It’s All About Making Connections

People often put a lot of pressure on networking. “I must meet a new client or sign a new deal or it’s not worth it!” When you take the “network” out of networking, though, you miss the value of it. 

Jessica and friends

For example, I’ve had lunch with people who I met at business networking events, but we don’t talk business. We talk about life and the things that light us up. Those connections—the ones that have expanded past business—are the ones I now rely on regularly for advice and support. If you’re authentic and open to truly connecting, you’ll find you get much more out networking.

#4: A Lot of People “Need That!”

I can’t tell you how many people have learned about my business and said, “Oh! I need that so bad!” Exciting, right? Kind of. It’s exciting to hear that your service is in need, but it doesn’t mean the person who said it is a great lead. I’ve had calls with a number of people after events and very few have panned out to a client relationship. 

That’s not to say networking isn’t valuable for driving leads. The key is keeping your expectations neutral. This allows you to be more relaxed, open and conversational, which drives great business down the line. 

#5: It’s Refreshing!

If you’re a solopreneur like me, you may quickly realize that sitting in your office, behind a screen all day, can make you go crazy. Not to mention, it’s easy to doubt yourself and your success when the predominant voice you’re hearing is your own—we’re our own worst critics.

TLC

One of the first things I learned when I started attending events was how refreshing it is. Talking to other business owners and entrepreneurs always brings such important perspective. I quickly realized that everyone has the same doubts, worries, and fears as me. 

Networking: Just Do It

I didn’t do networking for a long time because I was too nervous. I’m so glad I stepped out of my comfort zone because the experiences have been life-changing. You can find networking events on MeetUp, Facebook and through your own personal network. Sign up for one, go in with a courageous heart and an open mind, and let it work its magic. I have a feeling you’ll be glad you did.