Let’s cycle through some methods that will allow you to:
 
- Sense when a period of expansion has reached its pinnacle and a recharge is needed
- Reap the most rewards from planning stages
- Find a rhythm that lets you and your team flow with the needs of each season and stage of development

When we think about expansion versus contraction, most of us are like,  “Of course we want to expand. I want to grow, I want to help more people, I want to reach more people. I want to expand my business!” Or maybe you're in a place where you want to have additional locations, or maybe you want to build a team. But the reality is - most expansion will require a level of contraction first. 

🌞  Time for refection: be aware of what cycles mean in your business. 00:52

🤔  Is it time to recharge and reassess: Stephanie's challenge this year. 03:00

🤯  Too many projects and overpromising to your clients. 04:54

🌊  The Flex Plan: Set your business plan for the slowdowns too. 06:19

🔋  Creating recharge moments before you get exhausted. 07:34

🙃  Priority lists done differently. 08:39

🤓  Getting comfortable with the cycles your business goes through. 09:48

🆚  Expansion vs contraction: Don’t be afraid of the contraction in your business. 11:42

🏆  Success is in the streamline. 13:10

💪🏾  Contraction while spreading out or distributing your work: It helps you, your business and team, even if you’re in the contraction cycle. 14:39

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Thanks for listening to Spark, a podcast that aims to provide a roadmap for the vegan professional. If you are feeling inspired, but wondering how to take some actionable steps to improve your business, I invite you to explore our two premium paid podcasts, Going Solo or Fix It.

It’s not uncommon for business owners to feel like we're in a race against time—we're trying to get the maximum amount of things done in a day until the clock runs out. But I want you to start thinking of your business differently. Don’t always approach your day like you’re racing against time; instead use time as an asset in your business. What that means is sitting down and figuring out what the most important things you do in your business are.

Separate out the things that are critical, crucial, and important to your business. You want to identify the things that really help keep your business afloat! Turn those into recurring tasks. Doing this will help you complete them faster and experience their benefits sooner. This is a critical shift toward success that can happen in your business.

💥 The power of creating recurring tasks for running your business more smoothly. 00:39

👌 How do recurring tasks provide us with freedom? 01:47

⏰ Stop racing against time. 03:38

👉 Identifying important things in your business and making them into recurring tasks. 05:07

😇 Stephanie’s big tasks and tools list. 07:23 

😎 Setting up recurring meetings with clients.08:40

🤩 A tip from Stephanie: set time aside for a content-creation meeting. 11:11

🤝 Taking a look at recurring events that can help you focus on customer experience. 12:28

👔 Prospecting and sales management: prioritizing your tasks. 14:19

❓ Benefits of recurring: Are the things you've been working on actually creating returns? 16:40

🤓 Ensure that your time is secured around projects or collaboration opportunities. 19:50

🙋🏾‍♀️ Getting to the point where a feeling of accomplishment starts to motivate you to do more, and change your mindset. 21:04

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Thanks for listening to Spark, a podcast that aims to provide a roadmap for the vegan professional. If you are feeling inspired, but wondering how to take some actionable steps to improve your business, I invite you to explore our two premium paid podcasts, Going Solo or Fix It.

⚡Finding your rhythm during the day to feel more energized. 00:38
🤔 Reflect on what you've done in the past but don’t criticize yourself. 03:55
💫 Why re-adjusting your schedule and morning routine is important. 04:35
🌞 Creating an intentional morning routine around accomplishments. 07:11
✨ Stephanie's magical morning. 08:35
🌻Finding more natural flow and using "me time" for personal nourishment. 11:22
🏊🏾‍♀️ How Stephanie found something more delightful to start her days with. 13:48
🛌🏾 How to test your wake-up time without taking away from your sleep.15:56
⏰ Adjusting your work schedule to gain more flexibility. 18:28
😇 Distractions may pull you away; how to find a mechanism to get proactive again. 21:41
💡 Having a plan sized just for you is essential. 24:26

Thanks for listening to Spark, a podcast that aims to provide a roadmap for the vegan professional. If you are feeling inspired, but wondering how to take some actionable steps to improve your business, I invite you to explore our two premium paid podcasts, Going Solo or Fix It.

How do you push back the fear, the discomfort, and the challenges you may be facing in your business when it's time for you to make bigger decisions? And how can you prepare your mindset—what I like to call your “million-dollar mindset”?  The reason behind a million-dollar mindset is that when you think about your business, it stops you from thinking small, or about what you have already accomplished in your business. Instead, you start thinking with a mindset that has you reaching towards the stars, towards something big, something that might be scary—maybe something that you don't initially see is within your reach. When you start to build that mindset your perspective grows, and your ability to make more difficult decisions becomes a little bit easier. 

🛣️ Pushing past fears and harnessing a million dollar mindset. 00:42

❎ Don’t get stuck in the crossroads: stop looking for the perfect environment for your business. 03:07

👀 Widen your perspective to see not only the challenges ahead but the opportunities as well. 05:02 

📋 Making a list of your challenges and identifying the biggest one of all.  07:58

🧅 Peeling back layers and making decisions about what to do next. 11:13 

✨ What is the biggest move you can make in your business? 15:55

🙌 Developing an offering that really works. 18:19

🤔 Taking a look at different levels of the offerings you have: why it is important to have high-end offerings. 20:38

😇 Creating a community offer. 24:37

💲 A million-dollar revenue may look huge, but in reality, it’s not that huge. 27:51

🤩 The proper mindset is key in preparing you to make important decisions about steps forward and building a small, mighty business. 30:11

👓 Open up your purview and start to look at your business through different lenses. 31:57
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Thanks for listening to Spark, a podcast that aims to provide a roadmap for the vegan professional. If you are feeling inspired, but wondering how to take some actionable steps to improve your business, I invite you to explore our two premium paid podcasts, Going Solo or Fix It.

It’s important to strike a balance and make sure that you are not only investing in your business, but that you're also investing in yourself. That means making sure that you're paying yourself, even if it's something teeny, tiny, even if it's just a little bit in the beginning. Make sure that you have some level of compensation in your business for yourself as the owner, as the founder, as the leader in the organization.

⚖️  Why finding a balance between investing in your business and paying yourself is crucial.00:39

🤔  Savings versus compensation. 02:36

💸  Decision time: Should you have a business bank account or a separate bank account for business? 04:12

😇  The deeper meaning behind compensating yourself. 07:08

🙌  Pick a date! 11:39

📈  Doing an annual review of your salary. 13:02

🎯  Why it’s important to think of yourself as a person who should be compensated too. 15:04

Thanks for listening to Spark, a podcast that aims to provide a roadmap for the vegan professional. If you are feeling inspired, but wondering how to take some actionable steps to improve your business, I invite you to explore our two premium paid podcasts, Going Solo or Fix It.

✅ How to get the most out of what you’re spending your time on: tactical skills and critical mindset shifts. 0:39

↗️ Why you should start thinking about leveling up your business. 02:05

🛣️ When you start leveling up, why delegating tasks and building ‘fast lanes’ for your team are crucial moves.  05:00

🤔 How to create ‘fast lanes’ in your business and tips for batching your work. 07:46

🤓 Leveling up in small ways: doing things different and better. 10:26

⚠️ Don’t be a critic of your work! 13:13

📈 Leveling up in big ways. 14:53

💫 A different approach: hiring someone to make good things better. 17:51

🙌 Investing in software, tools and 3rd party services, and moving away from the bootstrapping mindset of “doing it all”. 20:37

🙃 Changing your role in your business is sometimes needed to achieve the level of service you want to provide your clients/customers.. 23:22)

🤩 Leveling up is not just about spending money on looking big; remember, it always comes down to your customers and community. 27:45

We all love to “get things done.” Who doesn’t love to check things off a to-do list? But even if you’re good at task execution it’s still easy to get caught sometimes in the loop of tweaking, editing, and perfecting. The problem with this is it can cause you to lose sight of when to move on from work that should have been marked as completed. In this live session of Spark! Stephanie talks about how to set those important boundaries so you can move forward and make more efficient use of your time. You’ll learn:

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When you’re on video - whether in a meeting, or doing a live session of some kind - do you ever find yourself fidgeting or staring at yourself, evaluating your every move? If so, you might need to build your on-camera confidence. In our online world of video meetings it can be hard to get used to seeing yourself, and especially resisting the urge to critique. In this live session of Spark! let’s talk about ways to build your confidence behind the camera, including how to set up your virtual space so it feels like a safe haven. 

We’ll discuss: 

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Do you get the Monday blues? If you do, you need to listen to this episode of Spark! Inside, Stephanie talks about how she transitioned her Monday blues into Monday magic! Make Mondays one of your favorite days of the week by designing them to be productive, inspirational and motivational. You’ll learn how to use this first day as the springboard for a fantastic week. 

Listen to find out:

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I love the creativity that comes with running a business. And I love being able to harness that creativity within a structure that really helps me take advantage of my creative process. In today’s live session of Spark! I want to share a powerful lesson with you: how to translate a creative idea into a document that can be used for strategic planning in your business, and a key tool I use for avoiding rework, and enhancing my creative process even more. 

You’ll learn:

- How you can avoid starting from scratch every time you want to enter your creative zone

- How to use templates as building blocks so you can really focus on the creative process

- The practicalities of creating templates that really work

Subscribe to Spark - A Roadmap For The Vegan Professional on Soundwise