My Top 3 Business Blunders of 2015

I get deeply annoyed and sometimes angry when I see “gurus” pretending that their lives and businesses are perfect because…NO ONE’s life or business is perfect. We all have our challenges, our frustrations, and I am pretty sure we all make our fair share of mistakes.

I always strive to be as transparent as I can with YOU (my beloved community!) because I know that your personal and business growth will accelerate if you know that you are in very good company when things don’t go your way — it will help you refrain from beating up on yourself, comparing yourself, and judging yourself… all things that slow down your growth.

So here’s what you need to know:
I make mistakes.
Lots of them.
Sometimes, after I’ve made them, they are seriously painful.
They may cost me time or money or opportunity or peace of mind.

And…even through making my mistakes…all is well. I survive. My family is OK. My team survives. My business survives and grows. Mistakes do not mean failure, not by a long shot.

I also want you to be able to learn from my mistakes — it’s so helpful to have someone further along the path share their experiences with you so that you can hopefully avoid some pitfalls. So…here we go! My top 3 mistakes of 2015 (it was hard to choose just 3!):

1. Have an Offer Ready.

In 2015, I poured my heart & soul into the creation of an assessment that rocked the worlds of over 7,000 new women who opted-in to our community (within weeks!) to benefit from it (Click HERE if you haven’t taken it yet). We literally received hundreds of emails of gratitude for the assessment, many with detailed accounts of how the information in it created instant healing and forward motion in their businesses.

It was truly amazing and humbling.

But here’s the mistake I made: I was so excited to get the assessment out into the hands of women that really needed it that I did’t take the time to create a really aligned and solid follow-up offering after it. The result? Tons of women who were excited about the Archetype work in the assessment and who wanted to invest emotionally and financially in the next level of learning, but no offering on my end to help them do this. Lost learning and growth for the women, lost opportunity to serve and to earn income from this funnel for me.

We of course corrected this in many ways once I became aware of the blunder, but it definitely caused some missed opportunities before it was fixed.

The Lesson: When you create a body of work, and you know that the content is pure gold, make sure your next step offer and funnel is super solid and tight before unleashing your creation to the world.

2. Know When to Move Slowly and When to Move Quickly.

This is embarrassing to share, but I’ll go ahead and tell you: I’ve been in the process of re-branding and launching a new website for over a year. Yup, you heard correctly — over a year.

The new branding and website WILL finally launch (hopefully by the end of this month — I am SO excited — so stay tuned!), but honestly, this project could have and probably should have been done 8 months ago!

Why has there been a delay? I’d love to blame my designer or my programmer or life circumstances, but the delay has been none other than ME. I deliberated and deliberated and deliberated over certain design elements and certain branding elements. I requested way too many edits on different versions of logos over a 3+ month period, and I put off getting new professional photos for the new site for months.

In the full picture of things, the delay on the website hasn’t really cost me business. But it has cost me time, extra money on edits that were probably unnecessary, and most importantly, I felt held back on certain other projects until this website was completed.

The Lesson: Especially when it comes to marketing materials — Don’t make decisions in haste, but at the same time, don’t deliberate ad nauseum or try to create perfection. It will just waste time and cause frustration. Marketing materials don’t need to be perfect. They just need to be good enough.

3. Schedule MORE time to work ON your business than you think you need…and then SURRENDER.

This mistake is probably the most annoying one for me, because it’s one that I’ve had to learn over and over and over again…the hard way.

And each year I make huge progress on it, but it’s still a lesson I’m learning.

When I plan out my business goals for the year, I plan them according to how much time I have available to work on my business (excluding time I spend IN my business coaching clients, teaching classes, leading retreats and leading my team). However, I somehow always underestimate how much it really takes for me to complete tasks (in particular writing copy and doing individual outreach are doozies for me).

In years past, when I’ve underestimated how much time I needed ON my business, I somehow still found the time in other places, and of course each year I learned from the year before and scheduled more time ON.

This year, however, even though I scheduled more time ON than I ever have before, it still wasn’t enough! And this year I simply was not willing to take the extra time from my personal time. The result? A deep, deep honoring of my personal time and boundaries, and…not getting as much as I would have liked to get done in my business.

The Lesson: When you do your yearly or monthly or weekly planning, schedule more time ON your business than you think you need. Contingency time always helps! …There was also a second, even more important lesson here: Don’t stress if you make decisions about your time that honor your priorities — when you honor your priorities, all is well.

With love,
Joanna