Lifestyle Freedom

There seems to be some confusion as to what constitutes real lifestyle freedom.

In fact, I would go so far to say that some folk are positively delusional about the lifestyle they have. This kills peoples chances of achieving their dream lifestyle and real freedom.

Let me explain:

What a lot of people are calling “having a lifestyle” isn’t a lifestyle at all.

They are referring to things such as a trophy home, numerous flashy holidays every year, spending shed loads of clothes each and every week and so on. What they are actually describing is consumerism not lifestyle.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not being the fun police here. I like nice clothes, holidays and nice stuff as much as the next person.

But to me a kick ass lifestyle is about having real freedom in all areas of your life. Freedom to only work when you want to, on your own terms. Freedom to have the family life you really want with work fitting in around it. Freedom to have enough time to nurture and keep important relationships healthy. The list could go on and on.

Here is the point I am making:

Many people are so busy chasing consumerism (and calling it lifestyle) that it is actually costing them true lifestyle freedom.

The reason for this is they have to strap themselves to their business hamster wheel and pedal damn hard to feed their consumerism habit.

Things to Consider

• Are you confusing consumerism with lifestyle?
• Are you having to flog your guts out in your business to feed consumerism habits?
• If so, what is that costing you in relation to lifestyle freedom? (and I don’t mean just financially!)

There is a lot of focus these days on how work life impacts quality of life, families and lifestyle. And rightly so.

But if you are genuinely looking to create REAL lifestyle freedom you also need to take a long hard look at what impact the choices you are making in your personal life is having on how many hours you have to work, the level your business has to perform at, your family life and so on.

Is your business life feeding your ideal lifestyle or consumerism?

So, I invite you to take a step back and take a good long hard at all the choices you are making in your personal life. Which are keeping you a slave to working longer and harder? Which are really moving your towards true lifestyle freedom and a business life on your own terms? Is it time to make some changes?

What is your take on this? Do you agree, disagree, have an alternative perspective? Please share your views.

The Obstacle That Will Kill Your Ideal Lifestyle is a post from: Ali Davies Small Business Success & Lifestyle Freedom

Is the dynamic between your work life and school holidays exactly as you would like it to be? (and I mean your absolute ideal)

Do you believe it is possible to work only when you want to during school holidays without your business suffering?

These are important questions to consider if you want to create your ideal lifestyle.

Managing Your Business and School Holidays

In the previous post 7 Tips to Manage your Home Business during School Holidays we looked at things you can do to manage the dynamic between your home business and family life during school holidays.

Those things will help you manage your current situation. But, if your current situation isn’t your ideal, you need to know the answers to the questions above to get on a path to something better.

How do you go about getting your work life, school holidays and family life to be ideal?

Here are some suggestions to get you started on designing future school summer holidays to be ideal:

1. Believe it is possible to create your ideal. If you don’t then you are not going to be in the mindset that will allow you to create what you really want.
2. Stop thinking balance. Start thinking design. Many parents are so focussed on balancing everything that it stops them from designing things how they really want them to be. For more information on this read The Curse of Work Life Balance and Why work-life balance is misleading.
3. Work out what ideal means to you – forget any perceived limitations and write down, in the present tense what you, your kids, your work life and lifestyle is like during school holidays when it is ideal. Start taking action to turn this into reality.
4. Include family life & lifestyle in your business planning – many people review and make business plans and decisions in isolation from the rest of their life. Big mistake. Look for creative ways to re-design how your business operates and earns revenue around your family life. Do this at least monthly.
5. Keep focussed on the end game – design your actions plans, schedule and what you spend your time on around your big picture.

The main point I am making here is this:

If you are not happy with the dymanic between your business, family life and school holidays, then start designing it so that you are.

It is 100% possible. And the rewards, well, they are priceless.

But it is essential to remember this – don’t wait. Start working on how you want the dynamic between your business and school holidays to be for future summers NOW. Get busy designing, then put action plans in place to make it so.

What challenges do you face during school holidays? Do you have any suggestions to add to this list?

In the next post we will look at one of the main obstacles that keep people from creating their ideal lifestyle.

How to design Work Life around School Holidays is a post from: Ali Davies Small Business Success & Lifestyle Freedom

So, here we are again – school summer holidays time.

How are you feeling about it?

- Are you are delighted at the opportunity to spend quality time with your little cherubs?

- Are you feeling guilty because you feel you have to spend all summer keeping the business going so  you don’t have much time for the kids?

- Are you not enjoying the time with your kids because you are worrying the business is being neglected?

- Are you feeling so frazzled about the whole thing that you aren’t enjoying work or family life?

Regardless of which of these categories you fall into, there are always ways to improve the dynamic between your home business, family life and your lifestyle.

7 Tips to Manage your Home Biz During School Holidays

1. Set clear, strong boundaries between work and family life and implement them.
2. Don’t mix work and family time – this doesn’t work for anyone. Keep them separate.
3. Create a schedule of what you are doing when – this will help with point 2.
4. Prioritise hard - look for stuff that can wait until September. Read Time Management – the REAL reason you don’t have enough time for ideas to help with this one.
5. Avoid Lone Ranger Syndrome – look for where you can enlist some help e.g. family, friends. To find out more read Is Lone Ranger Syndrome Killing Your Business?
6. Delegate – what can you delegate out? Doing everything yourself won’t lead to success whether it is school holiday or not. Don’t use “I can’t afford help” as an excuse. Get creative. For example, students looking for a few hours work experience could be an option, there are people you can hire on an hourly basis etc. What other creative ideas can you come up with?
7. Form a support group with other parents who run their business from home – set up a rota for play dates to give each other work time without distractions.

The point is this:

Your kids grow up very fast. Once each year is gone, it is gone for good. I speak to many parents of grown up kids who say “I wish I had spent more time with them when they were younger”. Haven’t heard one yet say “I wish I had spent more time at work while the kids were younger”.

So, I invite you to get creative and look for what things you can put in place to enjoy your home biz and the school holidays with your kids without feeling stressed, guilty and frazzled.

In the next post we will look at how you can design your business to operate around school holidays and family life moving forward. In the meantime, what tips would you add to the list above? Please share your thoughts to help other parents.

7 Tips to Manage your Home Business during School Holidays is a post from: Ali Davies Small Business Success & Lifestyle Freedom

Excellent Client and Customer Service is something I feel really passionate about. In fact, I would go one step further and say it isn’t about “Service” it is about “Caring”.

Caring about what experience people have when dealing with you; caring about them getting what they want out of your product or service; genuinely caring about them without the “what’s in it for me” goggles on.

There is so much mediocre and poor service out there. Do these people not realise how this is damaging there business, brand and reputation?

So, if poor service is damaging to your business and reputation. What impact does “wow” service and caring have?

Let me share a couple of personal examples with you.

Example 1 – a few years back, I was looking for a good painter and decorator to help me do up my house. Having experienced poor tradesmen in the past I asked a neighbour if they could recommend anyone good. My neighbour waxed lyrical about the wonderful guy who had done her house. Impressed by how she raved about him, I hired him.

He was brilliant. Did an excellent job. Turned up on time every day. Kept checking I was happy with progress.

Example 2 – Last week I ordered a bracelet online from one of my twitter contacts. Once ordered I received update emails and tweets advising each stage my order was at. The bracelet arrived two working days after the order day (pretty impressive from the UK to Ireland!). It was packaged beautifully and included a handwritten, personalised note thanking me for ordering and hoping I liked the bracelet.

In a world of mediocre service, both these experiences stood out as “wow”.

The painter and decorator was always fully booked for months on end with work and had a long waiting list. He never advertises. His business thrives because his customers rave about him.

The lady who runs the online jewellery store I ordered from last week impressed me so much with her fantastic service and personal touches that I will definitely buy from her again. I will recommend her business to friends. I am a fan because of her “wow” service (her website is www.caradiaz.com )

So, take a minute to think really hard about how you impact your clients.

• Do you “wow” them?
• Are they raving fans?
• Do you really care about them?
• Are they out their “selling” you to their family, friends and contacts.

If not, it’s time for a rethink.

Note: the key lies in how much you care. How much you care about the quality of your product/service, the experience your customers have with you and how they FEEL about you.

What can you do to upgrade the service your offer to create raving fans that wax lyrical about you that leads to sales come knocking at your door?

Giving “Wow” Service = More Sales is a post from: Ali Davies Small Business Success & Lifestyle Freedom

Achieving Goals

I have a real interest in football.

Having spent my childhood in Liverpool it would be hard not to! I love the excitement, atmosphere, passion and buzz that it generates. Recently I have been enjoying the World Cup excitement with my family. Even with England (my home country) having a dismal start and Ireland (my adopted country) not even in it at all, it is already getting very exciting.

At half time each team has a chance to review their first half performance and work out their second half strategy.

I imagine their half time dressing room chats would include:

• Have things been going as planned?
• Are we ahead or behind on where we wanted to be?
• What worked well?
• What didn’t work well?
• What impact are our competition having on us?
• What do we need to do in the second half to have achieved our “goals” by full time?
• Do we need to make radical changes?
• In what areas do we need to up our game?
• What Mindset do we need to create to deal with the pressure, unexpected setbacks and to be our best?

This sort of review is also highly applicable to all of us Self Employed Parents, Sole Traders and folks running a business from home.

Why?

Well, because we are half way through the year.

If 2010 was a football match, how was your 1st half? What half time talk do you need to give to yourself?

We should all be scheduling a “drains up” half time review and asking the same sort of questions of ourselves that the managers and teams of the World Cup are asking themselves at half time (maybe the England camp aren’t asking these questions which might account for the shambolic performance on Saturday!!!).

So, schedule your half time review and analysis now (mine is later this week). Make sure you don’t just focus on the business. Think of every area of your life as a player in your team success. Include family life, lifestyle, relationships and so on. Take the World Cup question list above and apply it to all areas of your life. Then create an action plan and go do.

Where will you be by full time on 31st December?

PS Note to England Football Squad – READ THIS POST

It’s Half Time. What’s Your Second Half Strategy? is a post from: Ali Davies Small Business Success & Lifestyle Freedom

One of the things I hear most from Self Employed Parents is that they feel they can’t get everything they need to get done in the time they have. They feel they are running to stand still. This often results in feelings of frustration, guilt and failure.

There are all sorts of Time Management related subjects that can contribute to this. Things such as procrastination, ineffective planning, lack of focus, to name but a few (those are things for another post).

But what I have noticed is that one of the biggest contributing factors to that feeling of not having enough time to get everything done is this:

Self Employed Parents are trying to do more than is possible in the time they have.

It is not uncommon for parents to be trying to run a successful full time business, be the world’s best parent, be a domestic goddess, taxi driver to every family member – the list goes on.

That is like trying to do more than one full time job each and every day. So here is what I would like to suggest.

STOP. Yes, stop. I know this can feel impossible as I often hear “I don’t have time to stop”. But really, give yourself permission to stop and take stock.

Ask yourself “Is my perceived lack of time the result of trying to do more each day than is possible or reasonable?”

Because here is the reality – often all those feelings of frustration, guilt and failure don’t come from not having enough time. They come from placing unrealistic expectations on ourselves of what we can physically fit into each day.

Try this experiment.

Get a piece of paper and make out a timetable like you used to have at school. Days across the top and hourly slots down the side. Fill in for next week all your priority stuff giving them set time slots. ALWAYS put your most important stuff in first.

Now, if you are trying to stuff more in than your timetable is showing you is realistic you can see where you are actually creating that “I don’t have enough time” syndrome yourself. Run this experiment ongoing. It will help you to stop overscheduling and placing unrealistic expectations on yourself.

What strategies do you have for not overscheduling yourself?  Or do you regularly overschedule yourself? Please share your experiences and views below.

Related posts:

The Problem with Time Management

3 Myths of Multi Tasking

Are You Trying to be a Superhero?

Time Management – the REAL reason you don’t have enough time is a post from: Ali Davies Small Business Success & Lifestyle Freedom

Many people go to networking events with the wrong intention in mind.

A lot of people still think the aim of going to networking events is to sell themselves and their products and services. Big mistake.

Here’s why:

How do you feel when, at a networking event, you feel pinned to the wall by some doughnut you have never met who is hellbent on getting you to buy their stuff? Horrible isn’t it? Personally I would never buy off these people. Nor would I recommend them to my clients or my personal network.

On the other hand, there are some lovely people who have great products but are paralysed by fear of coming across as “salesy”. As a result they act like wallflowers, skirting the room and not fully engaging or connecting with anyone.

And don’t get me start on speed networking. I’ll put it politely and say it isn’t for me! (if I wasn’t putting it politely I would say I would rather stick pins in my eyes than partake in this version of pimping yourself to as many people as you can in as little time as possible).

So let’s get one networking myth busted shall we?

Effective networking isn’t about selling your stuff or yourself

A huge sigh of relief for all of the wallflowers terrified of appearing “salesy” eh?

So, if effective networking isn’t about selling yourself and your stuff, what is it about?

Effective networking is about relationship building. Genuine relationship building.

Having said that, watch out for the networking groomers. These are the people who pretend to be building a relationship with you but really are only interested in getting something they want out of you. They are transparent. Avoid like the plague.

Always remember – People buy People

On that basis, who you are being is vastly more important than what your do. A powerful question to ask yourself is – How do I come across at networking events?

Effective networking habits

So, the thing to focus on is developing habits that build genuine relationships. Here are a few essentials:

• Listen more than you talk
• Engage
• Add value (with no strings attach)
• Be true to who you are
• Focus on others

What would you add to this list?

Networking – Busting the Myth is a post from: Ali Davies Small Business Success & Lifestyle Freedom

Rules.

Where do they come from and why do we follow them?

It is an important question to ask because many people just follow rules blindly, without question, even if it compromises how they really want their business, family life and lifestyle to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe there is a value in certain rules. Rules like it is not OK to kill someone or don’t text while you are driving. Great rules. Totally on board.

But it is the unwritten and self imposed rules we live our lives by that concern me. The rules that society or our parents or peers have decided are the “norm”.

When I challenge the rules that are holding people back from having the business, family life and lifestyle they want I often get the response of “well everyone does it” or “that is just the way it is”.

Rubbish. Just because everyone does it doesn’t make it right for you, your business or your family. It used to be “normal” to put kids up the chimney but it didn’t make it right.

All rules are made up. Are you living by rules you made up or someone else’s?

Here is my point:

Conformity is the killer of creativity

Conforming to rules set down by anyone other than yourself, based on your values and what is most important to you is stopping you from living, working and having family life on your own terms. Blindly conforming is like getting on the train to mediocrity central.

So, I invite you to look at the rules you are running your business and family life by. Ask questions such as:

• Is believing and operating within this rule helping me or hindering how I want things to be?
• What if this rule isn’t true?
• What new rule could I put in place that more closely matches my values?
• If I wasn’t buying into those rules what would I do differently?

So, here’s the challenge folks – start breaking all the rules (obviously not the ones that would mean breaking the law!). Start creating your own rules and “norms” based on your values and what is most important to you.

What unwritten or self imposed rules is it time for you to break?

Why You Should Break All The Rules is a post from: Ali Davies Small Business Success & Lifestyle Freedom

What are your views of Twitter? Raving fan? Can’t stand it? Not interested? Don’t care?

I ventured into Twitterland last year as part of checking out all this new fangled social media malarchy. OK, I confess – up until then I had been somewhat of a social media dinosaur.

When I first signed up for Twitter I fell into the “so what” category. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. I gather that this is quite common for people losing their Twitter virginity.

However, before writing it off completely, I decided to get educated on it’s potential business benefits – why I should be doing it, how I should be doing it, strategy and so on.

Suffice to say I now “get” its power and potential in a business context. I have morphed from the “so what” brigade to bordering on raving fan!

Confession time!

But for me, the real power of twitter and what I really love about it has got nothing to do with business. There, I’ve said it.

Yes, I know it is a powerful business tool but I have come to realise it’s real power lies in its ability to bring out what is good in human nature.

Sound like a whole load of soppy sentimental nonsense? Well, let me explain:

Last week my husband was in hospital for a big operation. The operation took a lot longer than I had been told it would take. Every minute felt like an hour. The days following the operation were a challenge.

During that time I received loads of messages via twitter from people all over the world. Messages of support, messages to make me smile, messages checking we were OK. I can’t tell you how much of a boost those messages gave me during what was a very difficult week.

There is much talk in the world of social media about measuring return on investment. And as I business owner I totally get that. In those terms, last week the personal return on investment I got from Twitter was priceless.

And that for me is the real power of twitter – humanness first, business second.

Please don’t think I have come over all rose tinted spectacles. There is much on twitter I don’t like. To find out more read Confessions of a Social Media Virgin!

What about you? What are your thoughts and feelings on twitter? Come on – ‘fess up!

Related posts:

1.Confessions of a Social Media Virgin!

2.Confessions of a Blogging Virgin!

Confessions of a Twitter Virgin is a post from: Ali Davies Small Business Success & Lifestyle Freedom

Have you noticed how many people place great importance on the ability to multi task?

It seems to me that it is viewed almost as a badge of honour to strive for and achieve. It seems to be viewed as the answer to the overload of tasks so many people seem to be trying to juggle.

But here’s the thing:

Multi tasking isn’t the most effective way to manage many tasks and can actually be counter productive

3 Myths of Multi tasking

Myth 1 – You get more done if you multi task. Not true. Your productivity actually reduces the more you multi task. You are also likely to make more mistakes. Tasks actually take longer when you are trying to complete them at the same time as other tasks.

Myth 2 – You will feel more in control of all your tasks and responsibilities. Not true. It actually increases stress levels. The more you are trying to do at any one time, the more your stress levels go up. Not good for your health. Also, it isn’t attractive to others if you are constantly a little cloud of stress hanging round them!

Myth 3 – You can get stuff done while being with your family. Not true. It detrimentally impacts family life. One of the most important things our kids need from us is our time and undivided attention when we are with them. It sends a very negative message to our kids if when we are spending time with them we are also juggling lots of other stuff, especially work.

The Alternative to Multi Tasking

So, here’s the good news. It is OK to stop multi tasking. There are far more effective ways to get things done. Here are a few suggestions to play with:

• Organise your tasks for the day into priority order and give them time slots.
• Focus on each task totally, giving you full attention until it is done.
• Remove distractions and temptations before you start each task.

The alternatives to multi tasking are much more enjoyable, effective and healthy. It will enhance your productivity levels and the quality of what you are going. All areas of your business will benefit. And most important of all, your kids will love you for it because they will feel more important to you than your work because you are protecting and enhancing family life.

Now that we have busted some myths surrounding multi tasking, is it time for you to evaluate how you manage your business tasks and family life?

3 Myths of Multi Tasking is a post from: Ali Davies Small Business Success & Lifestyle Freedom