Olivia now has a better understanding of managing her life plan and who she is via gaining focus. She’s created a budget, organized her finances, took note of what she valued most, de-cluttered her surroundings, scheduled in “me” time everyday, and really examined and identified what she’s passionate about. Remember, she initially wanted to create wealth from her passions but had lost focus on how to achieve it. She’s now on a much more successful and manageable path…but how is she going to take action on it?
Well, when starting out a business, many always discuss creating a business plan first. I’m all for it, but I also believe a one page plan should do the trick for a start-up as in Olivia’s. She needs to focus on the essentials…and a small outline of the “who, what, where, and why” of her business will do the trick.
The outline should answer such questions as:
1) Company Name
2) What benefits will this business provide to others?
3) Who are these others-what market is she targeting?
4) How is she going to provide these benefits to her target market? In other words, what’s the product or service (based on her passions) that she plans on selling to others?
Before answering question 4 too quickly, I had Olivia make a list of all the possible avenues she can use to generate income. Remember, you don’t want to place all your eggs in one basket. Her particular business was a service in the beauty industry. We knew she had to generate $2800 a month. We also knew this could be achieved in a number of ways. For example, she could set up 28 income streams, each generating $100 a month. Or, she could set up only 14 income streams, but have them each generating $200 a month. Similarly, she could set up 7 income streams with a monthly income generation of $400 each. Or, she could focus on only 2 income streams, each bringing in $1400 a month. You get the picture. While each income stream is not enough to survive on, the income streams together accumulate to a happy living.
Olivia decided to focus on 4 income streams:
1) Providing her service
2) Writing a short self-help/how-to book and self publishing it through LuLu.com to sell via Amazon and online book retailers (i.e. Borders).
3) Set up workshops (where she can also sell her book)
4) Sell other products within her niche (including affiliated marketing)
Let’s now look at part 5 of the outline.
5) How will awareness be created? To answer this question, I had Olivia create a list of the top 4 ways she plans to let others know about her business. For example, she decided to create a word-of-mouth, content marketing campaign utilizing social media channels.
After creating this outline/brainstorm, we focused on creating a to-do-list. The list would include all the tasks necessary to execute her services/products in the most profitable and efficient manner. On a side note, we decided to have her write it on paper as opposed to an electronic device because one of the reasons she kept losing focus was because she would get distracted online. So, similar to earlier, she would focus on tackling one task at a time…and guess what? It has been working! Olivia has now noticed earnings from her income streams. She’s living a more focused lifestyle with clarity externally and internally. Many are in a similar predicament…lost and confused. But that doesn’t have to be. Hopefully Olivia’s story will inspire you to gain clarity and achieve success!