Live Full Work Fun Podcast

We all have obstacles to overcome whether business or person. Most obstacles are self-inflicted. Meaning we listen to the voices in our heads which plant seeds of doubt in what we can truly accomplish.

One of my favorite sayings is:

"You can't read the label when you're inside the bottle."

Seeking an outside perspective helps you to see the things you either didn't realize or have forgotten.

In this week's episode, I wanted to introduce to you Amy Anfinson, Positive Change Coach. Amy helps countless people get out of their own way and to recognize their inner strength to achieve transformation and growth in their lives and businesses.

I'm excited for you to listen to the episode as Amy talks about how important it is to understand yourself and know what works for you. It can be a journey in finding those key individuals to truly boost your growth.

Finding the right coaching for you so you'll surround yourself with the people and the thoughts and ideas that spark creativity, confidence, inspiration, and motivation is super important. My hope is that by you following me and listening to this podcast, I can spark creativity, confidence, inspiration and motivation for growing your small business.

Afterall, you may be a small business owner, but you think big!

Amy will give you a new perspective in how you should view what's holding you back. Don't hold back, have a listen. Enjoy and be prepared to be motivated.

Thank you for tuning in…

I appreciate you tuning into the Accomplish More Podcast today. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share.

There are many podcast choices out there and I'm honored that you chose mine. Please be sure to subscribe in your favorite podcast app.

Resources Mentioned:

• Amy Anfinson's Website
• Coach for Life Institute

There's mainly one thing holding you back from achieving the success you desire.

Before we dive into that, let's first break it down on what it means to be successful.

Success

Dictionary.com defines success as "the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors; the accomplishment of one's goals."

But success has different meanings to different people. Everyone in his or her mind has a unique definition of what success means to them.

So much of the time, people put pressure on themselves because they are measuring themselves based on someone else's ruler of what it means to be successful.

They are afraid of what other people think of them. They make up stories in their mind of what they think other people think of them. They make up stories in their minds believing they fall short of success.

Do you do this? It's OK if you do…I know I find myself doing it.

On today's episode, I share how I was measuring myself against other people's rulers and was fuzzy on what my definition of success was.

I believe it's important to STOP and really nail down what your definition of success. Don't compare with how you think others define success. What does success look like to you? In your mind. What would give you a satisfied mind?

Achieve Clarity by Pinning Down Your Definition of Success

To gain clarity of what success means to you, try out Frank Kern's Core Influence exercise, by asking yourself "if there were no limitations or consequences, what would your average perfect day look like?"

I challenge you to give yourself a mini retreat. Take the time and put pen to paper and completely write out your average perfect day. Your complete day. From the time you wake up until the time you go to bed. Be detailed.

If you take the time to truly analyze what success means to you… actually write it out…your perspective begins to shift. You will recognize the areas where you have achieved a level of success. You will recognize what needs to be done to move forward in reaching your perfect day…your success.

What's the biggest obstacle blocking your success?

You may blame things like the economy…or the job your stuck in…or the area where you live…or you may even blame your family for holding you back.

But deep down, you know that the reality of what's holding you back is YOU!

YOU are the one that limits your progress in achieving the success you desire.

Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

We all have them…limiting beliefs. We place ourselves in a little box. Our thoughts are powerful. They can move us toward growth, keep us at status-quo, and even spiral us toward destruction.

Are you up for the challenge? Are you going to make time for yourself and take the first step in getting out of your own way to your success? Will you actually write down your perfect day?

There's Great News!

When you recognize that your mindset is truly the obstacle for achieving true success, it's a liberating feeling. You begin to gain clarity and focus. What an important exercise right at the beginning of the year as you start your goals you've set for yourself.

The details of your perfect day exercise are as private as you wish. It should be an honest depiction of your perfect day…a day that without limitations or consequences…a day that you wouldn't get tired of repeating.

I'm not asking you to share with me the details of your perfect day. Just drop me a note and let me know that you did the exercise. What is your biggest takeaway from writing down your perfect day?

Thank you for tuning in…

I appreciate you tuning into the Accomplish More Podcast today. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share.

There are many podcast choices out there and I'm honored that you chose mine. Please be sure to subscribe in your favorite podcast app.

Resources Mentioned:

• Marty Stewart | Satisfied Mind
• Frank Kern | Core Influence
• Been There Doing That | Our Work from Anywhere Lifestyle

In today's episode, I wanted to explain why I was laying low for a while and broke off communication. Nothing bad happened or anything. In fact, some marvelous things were unfolding.

Truth be told, sometimes you have to stop what you're doing and evaluate. Question everything. Regroup and refocus.

As we begin the new year, you may be anxious to get started on your new goals. First, listen to this episode. I hope that it helps you gain perspective on your business and your direction. It's OK to become lost sometimes. It's OK to stop what you're doing to regroup and refocus.

Resources Mentioned:

My new personal brand website | GaylaScrivener.com

Content Marketing Virtual Assistance| ScrivenerSolutions.com

Social media communication is fast and constant. You should have a foundation of consistent posts to be active on your favorite social media platform. In this week's episode, I go over the three habits you should implement today to increase your social media productivity.

To sum it up, the three habits you should implement today to be efficient and save you time with your social media posts are:

Plan Your Content

Stay focused by creating a theme for your content. Having a theme per month is an easy way to break things down. Your theme will guide you on how you'd like to communicate on your favorite social media platform.

If you are just sitting there with a blank canvas without any inspiration or direction, then the canvas usually stays blank. When you set a plan for yourself, you don't have to wait until inspiration strikes on what to post, just follow your plan.

Schedule Your Posts

Once you have your plan in place, then it makes it easy to schedule your posts. There is no need to do your baseline consistent posts in real time. To leverage your time, you should set up a system to schedule your posts. You save time in the long run if you set aside a little block of time and do your posting for the week or even the month all at once. It's much more effective than starting and stopping what you are doing in the week just to make one social post.

Delegate

Delegate your routine, consistent social posts to free your time for important engagement opportunities. Your focus shifts to higher level business developing and planning. Advantages about delegating are you get an outside perspective and you are freed of writer's block.

When you systemize your content strategy, your marketing will become more efficient and effective. Your system will lead to becoming more intentional with your marketing messages. You will learn what messages resonate with your followers and when you make investments in paid advertising, your message will be more effective.

Social media marketing is such a hot topic. It seems like everyone wants all the latest tricks and gadgets to be able to extend their reach and beat the system of social media engagement. Of course, I'm not any different in wanting to know how to communicate better through social media.

But, it's my opinion that there is a lot of misconceptions when it comes to social media. There seems to be a lot of high hopes or skewed views of promoting businesses through social media. I find that many people hope it will be their magic bullet in opening the floodgates of sales.

Social media is a powerful and wonderful tool, however, it's no magic bullet. The first and foremost purpose of social media is to make a connection with people.

You need a foundation and system for consistently communicating and learning from your audience in the social media space. I hope you enjoy today's episode as I review how social media fits into your small business marketing plan.

Additional Resources Mentioned:

• Accomplish More Academy
• Field Notes

You're a solopreneur and feel pretty assured that you have control over all your stuff. To accomplish more and achieve significant growth in your business, you'll begin forming your perfect team. Hiring anyone, whether it's an independent contractor or an employee, you are trusting them to get the job done and achieve the outcomes you desire.

You have a handle on your passwords, but now you need to delegate. You're advised to never share your passwords. But for all practical purposes, there comes a time when you must share some of your passwords simply to get more done.

Most of the time, when you bring on an assistant to be your extra set of hands, you will inevitably need to be sharing access to some of your accounts, therefore will be giving away passwords.

Whether you are already delegating or haven't started yet, it's a good idea to create a best practices policy for sharing passwords to help protect you and your team.

Last week's show I talked in depth about the best practices in creating more secure passwords and developing a system for organizing them. In this episode, I go over five questions you should be asking yourself before sharing your passwords with an assistant.

Develop a Strategy to Safely Share Passwords with Your Assistant by Asking Yourself:

1. What is it that you want your assistant to do? Assess the duties your assistant will be responsible for. Only give access to accounts that they will need.
2. What kind of account are you sharing? Sharing accounts with sensitive information, like bank accounts, is much different than granting access to less sensitive accounts like your social accounts.
3. Can a separate user be created in the program? Before sharing your admin credentials, check to see if the program allows you to create a new user with limited access. Some accounts may have additional users included, while others may offer additional users at an additional cost.
4. How should you send login credentials? Avoid sending your passwords through plain text means, like email or text. For a safer sharing method, use a password management system, like LastPass, so your information is encrypted.
5. What will you do when your assistant leaves? Have a method of keeping track of what accounts your assistant was granted access to. If you do not use a password management system, then it's a good idea to change your passwords. If you use systems like LastPass, then you simply revoke access.

Taking precautions is important with sharing information on any account you have. I do hope you enjoy the episode as I dive deeper into these five questions and give some examples of some of my experiences with password sharing.

Additional Resources:

• LastPass
• Tips for Creating Secure Passwords [Infographic]
• #037 – Taming the Chaos of Password Management
• Accomplish More Academy

Securing our passwords is super important. With cyber hacking everywhere, the bad guys certainly have us on edge. It seems like we are fighting a nameless and faceless enemy.

Everything we have access to online has a username and password associated with it. There's no avoiding it. Password management can get disorganized quickly making you feel annoyed and frustrated.

In today's show, I go over several tips to remember when setting up user passwords. Then, I go over some thoughts on storing those passwords. And finally, I share with you the tool I use for Scrivener Solutions to keep my passwords and my client's passwords secure and organized.

Below is an outline of the areas I discuss in today's episode. I hope you enjoy and have many takeaways that you can implement today.

Tips to Remember When Creating Passwords

• Never use the same password for every account you have.
• Don't reuse passwords to sights with sensitive information, i.e. bank access
• Include words, numbers, symbols and upper/lower case letters in your password
• Create lengthy passwords
• Don't use passwords that are easily guessed, like "password"
• Don't use adjacent keyboard combinations, like "12345" or "qwerty"
• Don't use your SSN, phone number, or family member names
• Use 2-step authentication

Points to Remember About Organizing Passwords

• Never store passwords in plain text onto your computer, i.e. in a Word doc or Excel sheet
• Be sure your computer has a login password if you choose to use the auto password saving feature in your web browser
• If you write down your passwords, be sure your password book is kept in a secure place, not easily accessed
• Use a password management storing system that encrypts your information, i.e. LastPass

Additional Resources Mentioned:

• LastPass
• LessAnnoying CRM
• Accomplish More Academy *the above links include affiliate links

In this week's podcast, I go over why control isn't a bad thing. I believe that there's a healthy kind of control and then there's the micro-manager freaky kind of control.

Control Isn't a Bad Thing

Overall, as small business owners, we need to be able to have the control and flexibility over our systems so that we may adapt and change to fit our clients' needs and to the market's ever-changing climate. That's the beauty of having your own business, you can have the control you want to make the changes you want when you want to make them.

One obstacle that you may when deciding to delegate is feeling like you will lose some control over your business. I contend that the best clients who delegate to virtual assistants are the very individuals who don't want to lose control. They shift their mindset with being bothered with the details to making sure the outcomes are what they want. They spend more time thinking on how things should be and get the help they need to achieve those goals.

Don't Let the Unknown Strip You of Control

Your most valuable online asset is your website. Building and updating your website doesn't have to be daunting or a mystery. Just because you may not know how to create your own website, you can acquire enough knowledge to maintain control.

You want control over your website so that you may quickly make changes, post regular content, and made additions when necessary. Sometimes it's more economical to make the quick changes yourself or have an assistant do them than to have a web developer do them.

As Your Business Evolves, Your Website Evolves

To create your website, you should select someone with the right skills that you need to get things started, but you should also have the freedom to learn to make simple updates or have an assistant do it for you. Building your website isn't a one-time project. As your business evolves, so does your website.

The best solution in starting your website and maintaining control is to use a platform that:

• Is widely used
• Is flexible
• Is economical
• Is easy to learn

I hope you enjoy this week's episode as I do in deeper to each of those four points to illustrate why you should use WordPress when developing your website while at the same time maintain control over your biggest online asset.

Maintain Control with Knowledge

If you don't have a website and are fuzzy as to where to start or how to find the right person to help, I invite you to join us in the Accomplish More Academy community. With your membership, we dive into subjects just like this. We take the mystery of what is involved with systems like developing a website.

It's a place where, if you want to do things like building your own website yourself, you can! You gain the confidence to no longer be afraid of technology and feel more in control over the systems in your business. Even if you just want to know the gist of how systems like WordPress work, then you have better control of how you want to delegate tasks when you are ready.

The Accomplish More Academy isn't just a bunch of tutorials, but it's an environment with coaching, consulting and encouragement where you get your questions answered and receive the motivation and inspiration to become more efficient and to accomplish more in your business.

Especially designed for the solopreneur just starting out, hop over to AccomplishMoreAcademy.com and sign up and let's connect. Feel free to drop me a note at [email protected] with any questions.

Additional Resources Mentioned:

• Free Website with Wordpress
• Wordpress.org
• BlueHost The above link is an affiliate link with Bluehost which means I receive compensation if you sign up for service with them through this link.
• Accomplish More Academy

In the pursuit of accomplishing more, we should remember to take a step back and to not complicate things.

In this week's podcast, I give you an example of how a friend of mine was wanting to do a create an extensive email and social campaign to fill the remaining seats of his seminar. He had high expectations of what the results would be, and I was afraid that he'd be sorely disappointed.

Without an already active email campaign or social media strategy nurturing the relationship of his contacts, I didn't think a quick email "blast" or a couple of social posts on an account he rarely posts to would be effective.

To reach his goal of filling his seminar, I suggested something different. I suggested something with a more personal touch. Listen to this week's episode to hear the entire story and my take on how email campaigns and social media works in your ongoing marketing methods. I'll give you a little secret…it's not always about selling.

If you aren't actively using email or social in your current marketing plan, why not? Is it because you are too busy? Then it's time to delegate. The Scrivener Solutions team of virtual assistants help you stay connected with your clients and prospects.

Maybe you aren't ready to delegate and want to do it yourself. But the issue is, you don't really know how to put it all together. You know you should be doing email, social media, and even blogging, but you have questions about how to do it.

You don't know where to turn to ask things like…

• What email service should I use?
• How to set it an account to do email campaigns?
• What the heck am I going to write about?

Go to AccomplishMoreAcademy.com. Sign up for a membership today and be directly connected with coaching and tutorials on all subjects relating on how to promote your small business, gain ideas and inspiration from your peers, and be in a place where you can learn the basics without feeling like an amateur.

Whether we like it or not, every small business owner needs to become a good marketer.

This week's episode revolves around the three actions you must do consistently when marketing your business. The three actions aren't revolutionary and I'm sure you've heard it before, but my question is...

Are you actually taking action CONSISTENTLY in all three areas?

Working together, the three actions will help you build a strong foundation for your marketing plan. Once you have a handle on your process and become consistent with it, you gain the trust and authority that you need to make your paid advertising much more effective. It makes "selling" so much easier.

Imagine...business coming to you instead of your chasing after business.

What are the three actions? Have a listen to the episode.

You will discover that you may already be on the right track. You may need help in some areas. Action and consistency are key here. Whether you do all three yourself or delegate pieces so you may achieve consistency, you would be taking action.