As I wrap up Week #1 of this fabulous brand new year, I thought I would check in with all of you….

Have you set your Main Goal(s) for 2012?

More important, How do you plan to hold yourself accountable to your Goal(s)?

That is the kicker with goals.  You can make as many goals as you want, but Accountability is what makes goals actually count.  A Goal is only as good as the plan for holding yourself accountable to it.

I have found a number of ways to infuse accountability into your plans and goals:

Incorporate a Mastermind Group. A Mastermind Group is a small group of other professionals that meets together (in person or virtually) and helps promote one another’s success.  If you are not in one, think about forming one!  Look at it as a circle of Business Best Friends.

Hang a Written Mantra or Vision Board. A mantra is your very own words or goals that you want to keep repeating to yourself.  If you are more visual, create a picture, drawing, or roadmap to hold you to your goals.  Tape this vision high above your workspace to keep you motivated.

Set Alarms in your calendar. Program your computer or phone to ding on particular days, times, etc when you WANT to remind yourself of checking your progress on goals.  This is useful when you get stuck daydreaming about the possibilities because it makes you get back to reality.

Engage a Business or Life Coach. If you find yourself really struggling with holding yourself accountable, hire someone to help you.  This will cost you some money, but if you match up with the right coach, he/she will certainly help you monitor progress.

……Still looking for some accountability inspiration?

Check out what some other amazing Entrepreneurs are doing in 2012!

Nicole Fende is a credentialed actuary with experience as a Chief Financial Officer, Investment Banker, and successful entrepreneur. Nicole (a.k.a. The Numbers Whisperer™) helps her clients learn how to effectively and enjoyably run the financial side of their business.

Main goal: Killer launch and sales of my first book, How to be a Finance Rock Star.

Plan for Accountability: As an entrepreneur, my bank account balance keeps me accountable.

David Shirey has been training, inspiring, and leading sales teams and workforces to incredible new heights for two decades, and now is the author of the new book, Rare Confidence.

Main goal: Spread the message to as many people as possible that the secret to attacking your dreams is CONFIDENCE!

Plan for Accountability: Doing the right thing is not a some of the time thing; it’s an all the time thing!

Heather Allard is a mother of three kids and the founder of The Mogul Mom, a free daily email for moms who run a business, raise a family and rock both.

Main goal: To grow The Mogul Mom’s free daily email for mom entrepreneurs to 25,000 subscribers.

Plan for Accountability: Through a small group of peers who know my goals and hold me to ‘em. I hold myself accountable by sharing my goals and actions taken with a couple of mentors who’ve accomplished what I’m trying to accomplish.

Haralee Weintraub is CEO of Haralee Sleepwear, ‘Cool Garments for Hot Women.’

Main Goal: Have 2 National exposures on our company.

Accountability: Target the avenues where I think this goal can be achieved, and work on it every week.

Now, let’s hear your Goal and Plan for Accountability!

Looking forward to sharing your Goals and Accountability in 2012, Rachel

http://backngroovemom.com

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Summer is a time when kids can take the lessons that they learned in school all year and apply them to life…..and, GROW.  In summer, kids are heading out to different camps and activities, meeting new people, vacationing with their families in various places, and if a bit older — applying for a seasonal job.  It is a time to take their new skills and use them.

My boys are preparing to be in a whole new grade, but as biz owners, we can also GROW in the summer. We have been knee-deep in planning throughout the first part of the year, lining up presentations, working on our pitch, cold-calling, etc….It is time to put everything into action.  There are also new people for us to meet, new groups and conferences to attend, and a little bit of summer fun.

I know that it may not make tremendous sense because naturally during the summer, we want to work less and play more (just like my boys).  That is the point exactly - sometimes when we want to be more precise in our work, we actually accomplish more.

We want to finish work in time for a walk, a bike ride, or a game of golf, so we work with minimal goofing around.  We may be finishing an hour earlier in the summer, but honestly, I bet you will be more productive than during the winter months.

This is one way that we GROW….we put into use all the planning, research, methods, sales, and madness of the first part of the year and attack our goals.  Another way that growth comes in summer is during all the magnificent time we are enjoying outdoors.  There is nothing like a gorgeous hike or day at the lake to really put goals in place in our mind!

This past weekend, as I sat in the yard reading and watching my boys shoot hoops, I came up with 3 summer personal growth goals.  I know that I will set my mind to accomplish them.  First, because I have been researching and dwelling on it all winter.  Second, I am going to reward myself with an early quit here and there for a walk as I cross them off the list.

My personal goals are:

1. Develop a newsletter for my subscribers (growing subscribers along the way, too).
2. Better Use of Analytics.
3. Get involved with 2 Linked-In Groups, which will help me with networking.

Take some time in the sunshine, ponder your goals, and share with us!  Remember, when you share goals, we can help you be accountable! - Rachel

And join me for a virtual glass of lemonade at http://backngroovemom.com

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There are quite a few offices in your city which are not filled to capacity. You can utilize these spaces if you are looking to get your team into offices where they can work together. You can also use these spaces to hold meetings in. Of course, it is important to pay attention to what the cost will be to use these spaces so that you are getting what you need at a price you can afford. By having these kinds of spaces at your disposal, it is possible for you to be able to be more productive and feel more like a team than ever before.

Office Space

One of the ultimate things you can do for your business team is to provide office space in which you can work. You can look through websites like Loosecubes.com to find the office spaces that you are looking for in your city. These spaces can provide you with access to internet and service through VoIP service providers. This way you will not have to set up any services under the company name. You will only be responsible for paying the cost of the office rent to get access to everything your team will need.

Meeting Space

Even if you cannot afford to get an actual office space for your team, it is possible to at least get a place in which you can all get together as a team for business meetings. You can look in the same places which offer offices for rent to find meeting spaces which are cheaper than going to a hotel to utilize their meeting spaces. No matter what the expense, it beats having meetings in the coffee shop where you feel awkward brining in a whiteboard to strategize what is going on in your business.

The Cost

One of the things you are likely to wonder about in all of this is how much it will cost to get the space that you are looking for. It will all depend on the city that you live in, the amenities you will need such as a VoIP phone service or a complex printing system in the space you are renting and the amount of time that you are renting for. The longer that you rent, the less you may have to pay per month. All in all, it is possible for you to cut the cost of having a professional place from which to do business in half.

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Do the Important Before the Urgent
Let’s say you’re working on a very important proposal that is due in a week and you also need to return a DVD today. Finish the proposal and pay the late fee for the DVD. Remember: do what’s important first.

Do ONLY What’s Really Important
Ask yourself, “what is my main goal?” At any given moment there are two or three things that will get you closer to that goal. Those are your priorities. That’s what you should work on. Go back through your to-do list and eliminate all the items that aren’t very important (i.e. Organizing your music files). You can put all the irrelevant items on a separate list; I call this list “Maybe One Day”.

Also learn to say NO. Most people; myself included- want to please everyone. Don’t do it. Say no more often.

Avoid Multitasking
Now that you know what your top priority is, work on that and don’t let anything else interrupt you. I let calls go to voicemail, I asked my co-workers not to send me text messages or instant messages and I disabled email notifications. I start doing something and I don’t do anything else until I’m done.

Don’t multi-task; “single-task” instead.

Good Enough Is Good Enough
Most things don’t need to be perfect. If the letter you just printed doesn’t have symmetric margins, don’t print it again. Use the one you have and move on. If your website color isn’t the right one, who cares? Leave it as it is and focus on bringing in more clients. Good enough is good enough. Get things done fast and move on. You can always correct or improve something if necessary.

Use Parkinson’s Law to Your Benefit
Parkinson’s law says that things take as much time as you have available. If your boss asks you for a report by next Friday, you’ll have it done by then. If she asks you for the same report by tomorrow, you’ll finish it by tomorrow. Having limited time to do something is a good thing. It means that we stick to the very crucial and don’t worry about irrelevant details. Give yourself deadlines and meet them. For example, I have a limit of one hour per day answering email. That forces me to answer the very important email and I can use the rest of my day to create value for my clients. If I were to answer every email I get, I’d spend 6-8 hours per day just doing that.

Break It Down
Almost every time you find yourself in front of a project you don’t know what to do about, it’s because you haven’t broken down the project into smaller pieces. Let’s say you need to find vendors for your new business. That’s overwhelming! Let’s break it down:

1. Do a Google search for “wholesale chocolate supplier”.

2. Find 50 companies and gather their email addresses.

3. Make a list of things I want to ask them.

4. Write a template email.

5. Send the email to the 50 companies.

The 5 tasks above are really easy to do. Remember the old saying, “the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.”

Process Tasks in Batches
When you group similar tasks together, you save a lot of time. Make all your phone calls all at once, process your emails together and run all your errands at once.

Learn From Your Mistakes
When you find yourself wasting time, stop for a second and think about why you’re doing it and how you can make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Set Realistic Goals
There’s no bigger morale killer than never achieving your goals. Set realistic goals and celebrate when you finish each day’s to-do lists.

Rest
In order to chop down a lot of trees, you need a sharp axe. Spend some time sharpening your axe. Rest every time you need it, re-charge your energy levels and go back to work.

Do It!
When you are blocked and can’t get anything done, just do something. Do a small thing. It doesn’t matter if it’s something important. Just do it. That will get your juices flowing. Don’t worry if you do something wrong; you can always correct it later. “Every journey begins with the first step”. The best way to stop procrastinating is to do something.

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It is because of all of these reasons that document management software was created in the first place. Of course, just knowing that the software exists does not help you to understand which one is the best for your growing company. There are a few different brands out there all telling you that they will meet all of your document management needs. If you are willing to invest just a little bit of time on research, it is possible to find the exact software that you have been looking for and you can get on with your life.

Look into Efficiency
One of the main reasons why you are likely investing your time and money into document software is because you are looking to save some time out of your day. The only way you will be able to accomplish this is if the software you install has the ability to provide a good workflow. Workflow is the ability to find and access information in a streamlined manner. It includes going through the security phases in order to gain access to the documents as well as the procedures for finding the document.

Look into Hosting
The right software will allow you to host your information where you want it to be hosted. You will be able to choose between hosting the information locally on your own system, in a managed system or on your system but allowing access from anywhere. Many prefer to allow another company to host the information for them because of the added layers of security. Others believe that allowing anyone else to have possession of secured documents is a security risk. If you do decide to host your documents, it is highly important that you encrypt your files properly.

Look into Ease of Use
The software will not be very efficient if you cannot figure out how to use it. Test out the software yourself by uploading a few documents to it. If you have any employees, ask them to test out the software. If you do not have an employee, ask your spouse or a friend to test it out. If someone else finds it easy to use without any instructions, you may want to choose the software. It is important that you are not tempted to install the cheapest one no matter how low your budget is. Lower grade software can be riddled with problems or it simply will not meet your needs. Tally your list of demands first and choose based on price last.

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Many people think of self-discipline as being strong enough to resist all temptations and just do all the work we need to do. But I’ve discovered that the best way to be disciplined is to help yourself, by removing all temptations from the situations where you need to get work done.

For example, I play rugby and need to train six times a week. Sometimes I train with my teammates but twice a week we’re supposed to train on our own. I had been skipping half of those training sessions. When I talked with my rugby friends about it, it turned out that they had been skipping some of their self-training sessions too. So we made an agreement: instead of training by ourselves we’d all get together at the park and train. If someone didn’t show up, they’d have to pay the four of us $20 each. That’s $80 for missing practice! In two months, only one of us missed a session.

Here’s the funny part: because everyone lived in different parts of the city, we all had to drive 30 minutes to meet up at the park. It would have been much more convenient to train on our own. But we had already tried that and it didn’t work.

Most of us face situations like this one every day. We try to convince ourselves that driving an extra 30 minutes to do something that we could do at home is stupid. We think that we should just be strong enough to get our work done without any extra incentives. But you’re a human being. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Temptations exist. You can either make it really hard for yourself or manipulate the situation you’re in so things are easier for you.

This is how I manipulated some situations in my life to make things easier for myself:

• I used to check my email several times a day and that was killing me. There’s no way to focus on something and be productive if you check your email every five minutes. I decided to tear up a $1 bill every time I checked my email during the day. Six months later, I’m out $3 and I’m 200% more productive. Not bad, huh?
• I wanted to eat more fruit and less junk food. So, instead of buying both at the grocery store, I only got fruits and no junk food. Now, every time I want junk food I need to drive a whole mile to the closest gas station. I’ve probably reduced my intake of junk food by 90%.
• When I get really stressed out, I start sniffing. This gives me headaches and stomach cramps. I used to think that it’s part of me and I couldn’t change it. Last month I did an experiment: every time I started sniffing, I’d take a 5-minute break from work. The first week of my experiment I was really pissed at myself. I’d work for two minutes, start sniffing, take five minutes off, then work for 30 seconds, start sniffing again, take another five minutes off and so on. I couldn’t get any work done. But little by little I started associating the sniffing with the punishment and I stopped doing it. Now it probably happens once or twice a day, but I don’t have the headaches or stomach cramps anymore.

When you run your own business being disciplined is incredibly important. But if you manipulate your situation, you can make it a lot easier to avoid temptation and get your work done.

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Employees want to do a good job. And what the boss often needs to do is get out of the way and let them perform. Of course, when I became a business owner, I fell prey to the kind of thinking that trips up so many entrepreneurs: You have to work endless hours, you have to micromanage every aspect of the business, you have to make every decision. Ack!

I don’t know if my businesses would have survived if I hadn’t come up with what I call Go Theory. (”Go” as in “just go away”.) Go Theory is not about where you go or what you do while you go away from the office. Go Theory is all about what you don’t do:

• Don’t send your employees lots of little reminders by email.
• Don’t keep checking your smart phone.
• Don’t miss the spectacular view or the interesting presentation or the quality time with friends because you were stressing out about what might be going on back at the office.

Instead, enjoy your time away. Because you’ve got great people taking care of the business while you’re gone. If that last sentence just sent a chill up your spine (“But…no one can possibly take care of my business except me!”), read on.

The first element of Go theory, its absolute essence, is hiring great people to work in your business:

• Fire quick and hire slow. Invest the time and money required to make the best choices. I don’t rely on just myself to spot the right person — I make sure that at least two other people whose opinions I respect interview the candidates.
• Hire smart. I hire people who are smarter than me.
• Pick people with a track record for doing their tasks and accomplishing their goals. You don’t want to deal with excuses.

The second element of Go theory involves what you do with those great employees once you have them:

• Give people a great place to work, including real benefits.
• Trust them to handle problems and give them room to succeed or fail.
• Get in the habit of throwing issues back to employees — otherwise, you’ll be chained to your business 24/7.
• Make your business a vibrant and healthy system and you’ll find that employees work better when you’re gone.

The third element of Go theory is at once the easiest — and the hardest:

• Give employees clear directions or goals, and leave them alone to do their jobs. A quick check-in early in the project to make sure they are on track is OK, but then…go away!

The idea is for you to work on your business instead of in your business. This forces you and your staff to create good systems that can run without you. As the CEO, you want to be useless in the day-to-day business activities so you can be proactive and reactive to markets and opportunities. Keep in mind that what puts your business ahead of the competition is not logging lots of hours at the office — it’s creativity. Ask yourself: How can you be creative if you’re spending all your time making sales calls?

Go Theory provides a lot of rewards, including a “real life” for the CEO and a stronger, healthier bottom line for the company. I find that in my absence my business thrives. Projects move forward, problems get solved, and new ideas emerge. All this — just because I learned to get out of the way and work from a beachside cafe two hours a day.

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With over 70% of the economic experts expecting a last quarter uptick in the economy, now is the perfect time to start preparing for the extra business.  I am a big fan of using virtual assistants to help build out my team during peak seasons.  This is an especially useful business strategy in today’s market place.  One of the best lessons a recession can teach us is that in many circumstances variable costs beat fixed costs any day.  To survive the feast or famine rollercoaster of entrepreneurship, you need to make sure your expenses mimic those same ups and downs.

Benefits of Virtual Assistants

Adding virtual assistants to your workforce is a terrific way to turn a traditionally “fixed” expense, like payroll, into a more cash flow friendly variable expense.  Let me explain how it would work.  For example, most business advisers suggest that payroll expenses should average 20-30% of your sales.   This would mean that when sales are flush at $250,000/month that translates into payroll expenses of $50-75,000.  When sales hit a downturn at only $50,000/month, your payroll would then move back to a more manageable, $10-15,000.  As a business owner, how closely you adhere to this ratio means the difference between bleeding red and staying in the black.

Additional Benefits Include:

• No payroll taxes or employee benefit expenses
• No “on site” office space requirements
• No costly training programs when hiring experienced VA’s
• No long term commitment
• No morale draining lay offs during slow seasons

Understanding the Relationship

When considering virtual assistants to help manage business tasks, there are a couple considerations to keep in mind.   For starters, they are not your employee but independent contactors.  This means they will most likely have other tasks and deadlines on their schedule while they are working for you.  READ: They are on their clock- not yours.  Make sure you are respectful of time constraints and provide as much advanced notice of tasks, deadlines, and special circumstances as possible.  As with many business relationships, communication is critical.  You can’t blame a virtual assistant for not living up to your expectations if you never made those expectations clear.  In other words, don’t just say you need something “right away”, make sure you define “right away” as within two hours.

Getting Started

I also think it is wise to start slowly when building a new relationship with a virtual assistant.  For example, instead of requesting that they create a new website for you, start by having them update your blog template first.  As each task is completed satisfactorily, and communication strengthens, you can then proceed to larger and more complex tasks.  Also, be sure to discuss with potential VA’s their strengths and weaknesses to ensure the best experience possible.  If you are in the real estate field, consider searching for VA’s with backgrounds in real estate.  If you an entrepreneur looking for marketing help, be sure to search for VA’s with a background in marketing or who are currently active in social media.

Tips from an Experienced VA

For more tips, I turned to Dawn Martinello of Monday Morning VA.  As an experienced virtual assistant herself, she had some great insight to share.  She can be found at MondayMorningVA.

• Be sure to have an exit strategy.  Does your contract give you an out if you don’t mesh well?  This is especially important for first time clients.  For example, our services are non-refundable, but for first time clients we give a 7 day grace period in which they can bow out of the contract if they aren’t working well with their VA.
• When you’re considering outsourcing keep the price in mind.  My rule of thumb is that an entrepreneur shouldn’t be doing anything in their business that doesn’t earn them at least 2/3 of their regular rate.  That means if you’re a bookkeeper who charges $30.00 per hour, you should consider outsourcing anything that doesn’t earn you $20.00 per hour.  The reasoning behind this is that business people need to spend their time and energy on what generates revenue for them.  Spending 4 hours trying to update your website doesn’t earn a bookkeeper anything!

If you have never considered hiring a virtual assistant to build out your team, I strongly suggest taking a second look.  As technology continues to advance and better networking platforms are built, virtual work relationships will only become even easier.  A couple great places to start your search for virtual help include Guru.com, Freelance.com, RentACoder.com, or a simple “virtual assistant” search on Google.

Business Owners, feel free to leave any questions or experiences you would like to share in the comments. Virtual Assistants, be sure to leave any additional tips and your contact information including your area of expertise.

I’d love to hear your comments below and please be sure to follow me on www.twitter.com/glamajama! Want more DIY PR tips? Sign up here

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Before starting his own business, Spalding worked as the online marketing director at Grooveshark, a music streaming company out of Gainesville, FL. He met co-founders Quang Tran and Nathan Thompson. Nate was his first intern and Quang and Steve had been working on various entrepreneurial projects for about a year before they buckled down and decided to throw themselves into Crossing Gaps. The opportunity to work in a startup helped prepare him for the challenges he could expect to see in his own endeavor.

“Blogging about entrepreneurs before joining Grooveshark gave me some idea of what having my own business might be like, but there is nothing quite like being in trenches. ” – Steven Spalding

Enjoying the coaching aspect of consulting the most, Spalding enjoys seeing his clients move to the next level in their marketing. He works with large and small organizations but the most satisfying work he does is with their smaller clients. “To see people who didn’t know anything about marketing on the web three months before be able to do effective, creative things without any prompting from us is really fantastic.”

Spalding recently authored a book named All The Little Things. Centered on creativity, building great ideas on the web and keeping yourself sane in the process. He is releasing a version for free, (http://atltbook.com) and selling a PDF “Final Edition.” For some inspiration, give it a read.

Here is a little more of my conversation with Steven:

What is the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome to start your business?
We started our little enterprise right in the middle of the economic downturn. We have had to deal with everything that entails. No one has money, everyone is tightening their belts and you have to work better and smarter to survive. When I reflect on it, I know it has made us a stronger firm. We’ve needed to be really realistic and really -good- to push through and when things turn around it will pay dividends.

What would you do over again, if you could?
I would be better organized. The biggest issue you have when you get three entrepreneurs in a room is that everyone is working on 50 projects at once and no one wants to write anything down. This is a fantastic way to create ideas, but when you start dealing with schedules and deadlines it gets to be really stressful. Over time we’ve built up systems to deal with that problem but it has been a lot of trial and error.

Has running your business been what you expected it would be? How?
It has been harder than even I expected it to be, and I had no delusions going into it. What it boils down to is responsibility, responsibility for people other than yourself. What I didn’t expect was that it never really “turns off.” When you run your own business, you live it, 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Are you happy?
I wouldn’t do this if I wasn’t. I am extraordinarily happy because I get to do something few people ever get to, wake up every day and know that I have control over what is happening next. Sure, we deal with clients, deadlines and all the other stuff that comes along with working with people but we make those choices and accept the consequences of them. It’s a great feeling. 

What makes you get up in the morning?
Before I gave up caffeine I would have told you three cups of coffee and a migraine . . . Really, what makes me get up in the morning is knowing that I am one step closer to accomplishing my goals. As important as tangible success is to me, I know the most important

Have you ever failed?
I fail everyday and I think that’s a part of the point. If you aren’t failing you aren’t growing, and you can’t survive entrepreneurship without growth. The trick to failure, if there is one, is to admit it to yourself and try to take the lesson from it. It’s absolutely fine to fail, but it’s not if you are constantly failing and not learning from the scratches and bruises.

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Victoria, ever committed to the success of moms, provided us with this great guest blog post to share with you moms who are trying to juggle work, life, momhood, etc.:

As the founder of Ladies Who Launch and mother of two, I’ve spent years refining my strategies to juggle both roles and gain a comfort level for living a lifestyle that works for me. I’ve compiled some tips below that I hope you will find helpful in your own endeavors!

 

Structure your downtime: Structure and plan every minute of downtime, naptime or time away from kids in terms of what you will accomplish in your business. Set goals, use detailed lists and be conscientious about crossing things off your list.

 

Let go of guilt: Decide how you want to be as a mom, let go of any guilt, and go for it! Set your own rules and don’t be swayed by mom-peer-pressure. Do what works for you. Think out of the box and have fun!

 

Define your task list. Outsource the rest: Decide the tasks you will do yourself and those you will outsource (Everything from grocery shopping, cooking, birthday present buying to online ordering can be outsourced—get creative, get help from high-schoolers). Save tasks like laundry and dishwashing for the end of your day and don’t use them as excuses to procrastinate business tasks. Structure and organize your time down to every second of your day.

 

Quick tips:

 

Keep a tape recorder in the car to record ideas in real time.

 

Don’t read an email more than once unless it requires a lengthy, well-thought out response later. Practice the art of short, to the point texting that summarizes your question or response head on.

 

Plan your meals for the following week on Sunday, shop, create lists.

 

Meditate to save sleep time: Meditating one hour a day actually diminishes sleep requirements so you need fewer hours of sleep and have more time for your business.

You can access some great links to LadiesWhoLaunch resources by visiting this page in the Leading Moms in Business Competition section of StartupNation’s site.

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