Your Biz, Your Rules

Unleash the creativity you never even knew you had.

• Creative thinking is huge for our lives and our businesses in so many ways. When we apply creative thinking techniques, we allow our brains to see things from a different perspective, to see things in a whole new way. And why is that useful? Well, if you are operating in a crowded marketplace you might want to be able to think about some products or services that are different. You might want to think about how to use language and visuals, and your brand to position you in a different way and help you stand out. Also, if you apply creative thinking to everything in your life, you’re going to have a much more fun experience. You’re going to see things in a new way.

• Start with something simple like making a habit out of doing something new every day and then layer on outputting something every day. Whether you’re creating a really short video, or you’re journaling, or you’re creating an image. If you start to output, you’re synthesizing information for yourself and for your audience. You’re kind of allowing yourself to absorb what’s going on out there in your industry, what’s going on in the world, what’s going on in culture, and you become a synthesizer for your audience and for your clients. It also helps you understand things a lot better as well. So tiny tweaks. Something new every day, then output something every day. Then you can apply some creative thinking and triggers.

• Try using Netflix as a creative thinking trigger. Think about one of your favourite box sets or series or films or programmes, and then jot down everything that’s to do with that show – the characters, the themes, the music, the location, the storylines…

  Why the heck is that useful for your business? So, if you use those triggers, and you start spidering down even more, you can apply those concepts and those thoughts to whatever it is you’re creating. You have to kind of go with the freeform thinking at first, and let it sound as nuts as it’s going to sound, and then start to play. This is all about having your own personal playbook.

  If you start playing you end up having a lot of fun, for one, which is always a good thing because that really connects your clients to you. But also, if you’re creating stuff and finding points of difference you are going to stand out from people who are all doing the same things. And it will help you uncover some new language and some new words, because the more you delve into different parts of your brain, into unexpected themes, unexpected mixtures of stuff, the more you come out with different outcomes. You’ll find your blog posts are flowing. You’ll find your content ideas are thriving. You’ll find you’re inspired a lot more often.

• Once you’ve generated loads of ideas, you need to make a plan. You need to get this thing done. Small chunks are always a really good way to work – focus for short sprints at a time.

Join me on Instagram here: 
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a) Share your favourite moment, takeaway, or place to listen in your Instagram Stories, tagging me (@dairecharlotte)

b) Hop over to iTunes and leave me an honest review.

Explore the wacky world of EFT and what it can do for your business.

• EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique, involves tapping on certain points of the body to stimulate healing. It allows the subconscious beliefs we have hiding beneath the surface to come up in a safe way so that we can recognise it, let it go and stop it from holding us back.

• EFT can help you deal with all sorts of issues that impact your life and your business – money blocks, fears of visibility, overwhelm, guilt, a tendency towards being a workaholic…

   

• If you’re interested in dipping your toes in the water, head over to Youtube and find someone who resonates with you, someone who you trust. We all have a natural preference about who we like to work with, who we like to listen to. You might even find that different people click for you at different times in your life

• Always work through your EFT videos more than once. It’s a compounded effect. You’ll often find that you’ll suddenly have an amazing insight, but it might take a few times before you really get to the magic of it.

Join me on Instagram here: 
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Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

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a) Share your favourite moment, takeaway, or place to listen in your Instagram Stories, tagging me (@dairecharlotte)

b) Hop over to iTunes and leave me an honest review.

Sprinkle your business with a little work-smart wizardry.

• Freelancing was made for introverts – you get to work from home, you get to take your control back and you get the flexibility of working around your energy.

• If you download an app and don’t like it, you can request a refund… who knew?!

• You will never get to the point where you will entirely finish your to-do list. Accepting that will never happen is the healthiest approach you can take!

• As a generation, we feel very uncomfortable being bored. It used to be normal for people to feel boredom, but now we’re constantly driven to be always working, always improving. It’s like we must always be achieving something. What’s that about?

Join me on Instagram here: 
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Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

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a) Share your favourite moment, takeaway, or place to listen in your Instagram Stories, tagging me (@dairecharlotte)

b) Hop over to iTunes and leave me an honest review.

Do you want one word or the whole damn dictionary?

• The “word of the year” is a concept (dreamed up by Christine Kane) which involves setting a one-word intention for the year. However, I tend to use this words as prompts to check in with myself, to make sure I’m on track to achieve what I want from the world. This year, I’ve got 3:

  • Chill: I want to stop driving myself into the ground – I have a tendency to throw myself ALL IN, consequences be damned!

  • Change: Last year, I found myself coasting along quite a lot. I let myself be content hiding away behind the scenes, doing my client work and avoiding any of the big projects that could bring me a different kind of success.

  • Cha-ching: I’ve got a couple of big expenditures on the horizon (a.k.a. a house and a wedding) so this year I want to a) be discerning about what I spend and b) focus on work that brings in the money I’d like to be making.

Join me on Instagram here: 
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Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

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a) Share your favourite moment, takeaway, or place to listen in your Instagram Stories, tagging me (@dairecharlotte)

b) Hop over to iTunes and leave me an honest review.

If you're holding back your personality in business, you're losing money. Simple as.

• One of the biggest benefits of running an online business is the fact that you don’t have to sit there, pretending to smile. You can always switch off the camera. Nobody can see you. You can be making all of those ugly faces, groaning inwardly at the stupidity of human nature, and whoever you’re dealing with won’t even know it. You can’t do that in real life because they can read it on your face. It’s kind of hard to fake enthusiasm, love and devotion when you are face-to-face with people, but you can totally do that on the Internet.

• You have to decide at the get-go whether you want to be a “hell, yes” for 50% of the people and “hell, no” for the other 50% or a “whatever” for 100%. Being a “whatever” in business is a kiss of death – you want people to sit up and take notice when you say something.

• When you hold back your personality in business, you actually lose money because you’re attracting wrong people. They might end up being on your list, but they will never buy from you. Or they might buy from you and then they will make your life hell. Or they may be ideal customers and buy from you, but then when something goes wrong and you show your true colours, they’ll be like, “who is this psycho?” The fact is you’ve always been a psycho, you’ve just been hiding it and they were mistaken. It’s a loss for everyone.

• When it comes to free ways of growing your list, hands down the best strategy is guest blogging. Nothing compares to it. Bushra’s first 2,000 subscribers came from a guest post, as did her first sale – that is the power of a well-placed, well-crafted guest post. Honestly, if you are looking to grown your audience from scratch, and you don’t know where to start, reach out to top industry blogs in your field and just beg them, bribe them, or just go sit at their doorstep to get them to let you guest blog. Even if they don’t give you a link back, that does not matter. If your guest post is good enough, people will look you up, they will find you, and they will come back for you.

Join me on Instagram here: 
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Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

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a) Share your favourite moment, takeaway, or place to listen in your Instagram Stories, tagging me (@dairecharlotte)

b) Hop over to iTunes and leave me an honest review.

Let's talk about setting creative goals (or not).

• There seem to be two main camps in the goal-setting debate – those who believe that because the clock has struck midnight all change is possible, and those who believe that boycotting all goals and resolutions is some sort of badge of honour. (I’m neither)

• 90-day blocks of goal-setting and planning are perfect for high achievers, those who get bored easily and those who just enjoy the whole process. Having those 90-day stints gives you a specific timeframe in which to accomplish something and then at the end of those 90 days you have the opportunity to revisit those ideas, see if that’s still even what you want.

• SMART goals are boring… try CREATIVE goals instead. (Challenging, Recorded, Explicit, Affirmative, Time-Based, Inspiring, Valuable, Enjoyable)

Join me on Instagram here: 
https://www.instagram.com/dairecharlotte/

Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

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a) Share your favourite moment, takeaway, or place to listen in your Instagram Stories, tagging me (@dairecharlotte)

b) Hop over to iTunes and leave me an honest review.

Transform your business in ways you've never even imagined.

• Rapid transformational therapy is a form of hypnotherapy during which you access the subconscious mind to heal your mind and your body, to clear blocks and patterns, to work on your relationships. It can be used to move past visibility fears, to work on your money mindset, to improve your focus… whatever your business needs.

• There are two key sides to rapid transformational therapy – regression and rewiring. It starts by going back and finding the root cause of something and then rewiring the mind and changing the message.

Join me on Instagram here: 
https://www.instagram.com/dairecharlotte/

Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

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a) Share your favourite moment, takeaway, or place to listen in your Instagram Stories, tagging me (@dairecharlotte)

b) Hop over to iTunes and leave me an honest review.

Be more strategic about how you spend your time!

• Everybody has areas in their lives where they’re hyper-organised or they’re really decluttered and really streamlined or super-productive, and other areas of their lives that are just a big mess.

• It’s really easy to fall into the trap of merging home life and business to the point where there’s not really any clear boundaries or distinctions. I find that having really a designated space in your house, whether it’s your couch, you have an office, your dining room table or whatever, but it is specifically for work so that when you get to work you know it’s time to focus.

• So many things in life we do just because that’s what we did before. We did that yesterday so we’re gonna do it again, or somebody told us one time that this is what we should do. We do the thing, without stopping and revisiting it. It’s funny when you start becoming aware of all this – you just feel lighter because you’re not dragging around all that stuff anymore. The physical stuff, but also the stories.

• Setting limits is the way to go.

• Take that extra minute, or two, or three to finish whatever it is you’ve started will make a massive difference.

• Find a way to make painful organisation FUN.

   

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Join me on Instagram here: 
https://www.instagram.com/dairecharlotte/

Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

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a) Share your favourite moment, takeaway, or place to listen in your Instagram Stories, tagging me (@dairecharlotte)

b) Hop over to iTunes and leave me an honest review.

Don't work yourself into the ground just because you can... install these super simple habits instead.

• Many of us (myself included) have a tendency to work and work and work until some external force makes us stop – often that force is burnout. When you get to that place it’s virtually impossible to enjoy your life and whatever’s going on around you… but there are ways to get around this. Ways to prevent the business burnout from taking hold of you.

• Set your work hours. That includes scheduling in regular breaks. Hustling for 40-50 hours a week is not sustainable and in the long run, it will hurt your business.

• Maintain a regular flow of ideas – that means taking things in and putting things out. Simple as.

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Join me on Instagram here: 
https://www.instagram.com/dairecharlotte/

Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

--------------------

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a) Share your favourite moment, takeaway, or place to listen in your Instagram Stories, tagging me (@dairecharlotte)

b) Hop over to iTunes and leave me an honest review.

Be more strategic about how you spend your time!

• Pull out your pens and paper and brain dump all of the things you need to do in your business. This includes the one-off projects as well as the daily/weekly/monthly/90 day/annual tasks. We’ll go through each of these to figure out which you should do, which you should delegate, which you should delete and for which you should devise a better way.

• There a whole bunch of stuff out there designed specifically to help you find a better, quicker, more efficient way to complete different tasks in your business. These could be tools, they could be templates, they could be techniques… get creative!

• “Getting the help you need” does not necessarily mean hiring someone and it does not necessarily relate to accomplishing day-to-day work tasks. It might be a skills gap you need to find, or inspiration you’re searching for, or peer support and accountability you crave.

Join me on Instagram here: 
https://www.instagram.com/dairecharlotte/

Sign up for my weekly (ish) jolts of genius here: http://dairepaddy.com/

--------------------

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a) Share your favourite moment, takeaway, or place to listen in your Instagram Stories, tagging me (@dairecharlotte)

b) Hop over to iTunes and leave me an honest review.