I drafted a business plan for myself!

I reckoned that something tried and tested in the professional arena could be conveniently adapted for personal use. I couldn’t afford to get things wrong again, so my natural inclination was to find a structured way of getting things right this time around.

What I produced was a watered-down version of a genuine business plan, holistic in nature, taking into account both my personal and professional life. I was beginning to realize that stress management and work/life balance were closely connected concepts.

So here it is, step by step. Four steps in total.

Step 1 – Conducting a SWOT analysis

The SWOT is probably the single most utilized tool in the professional world. It is used to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a brand or business, and the opportunities and threats they are facing. The first two are internal factors and the second two are external. Once you have completed the SWOT, this can then be used as a springboard to help you select your strategic priorities, giving you a clear sense of direction.

In short, the SWOT pinpoints where you are at and helps you decide where to go next.

You can apply the same principles to more or less anything, including your own personal and professional life. Here was how I used it to audit my situation after I emerged from my breakdown:

Step 2 – Setting yourself strategic priorities

The first role of the SWOT is to itemize the most relevant strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities, but its second crucial job is to then do something with this information. In other words, you have to make the SWOT “sweat”.

1. Which strengths will you leverage?
2. Which weaknesses will you fix?
3. Which opportunities will you look to pursue?
4. Which threats do you need to address?

Each of those four questions demand that you do something tangible with the information you have gathered. By combining, connecting and colliding elements from each of the four boxes, you can formulate a number of strategic priorities that will provide you with direction and destination.

This is how I made my SWOT “sweat”:

Step 3 – Identifying actions

Actions are the concrete execution of your strategic priorities. This is where the rubber hits the road and where the planning process becomes tangible. In order to keep stress at bay, I needed to ensure that the activities I carried out and the behaviours I adopted were holistic in nature. In other words, it wasn’t just the workplace that needed fixing but also what I did in the evenings and at the weekends. The actions listed below were how I planned to execute my strategic priorities, identified in the previous section.

Step 4 – Reviewing your performance

The one area of the business planning process that often gets least attention in the corporate arena is taking the time to review how the brand or business have performed. Which actions have been carried out? How successfully? What have you learned? What will you do differently next time around?

With this in mind, I made sure that I sat down periodically, often with my wife, and reviewed our action plan. A few years later (please don’t laugh!) I actually scored myself against each of the four quadrants. It had been, on balance, a very satisfying period in my life. Room for improvement in all categories for sure, but overall it had been a solid effort all round. It would score a very commendable 30 out of 40!!

I suspect a number of readers will be chuckling quietly now at this attempt to bring the world of business into the personal arena. And yes, at face value, it does seem a little bit over the top, I must admit. But this was how I was, how I still am today. It’s my way of navigating a path through life by providing some structure.

However, I bet there are quite a few closet “theory nuts” right now, nodding approvingly. I also suspect that a number of you will shortly be investing in a little notebook and some highlighter pens.

Welcome to the club.

Mark Simmonds runs an innovation agency GENIUS YOU and is the author of new book Beat Stress At Work 

The post Happy Career Planning appeared first on CEO Medium.

As a result, she founded Brianna Michelle Coaching and used the pause to help, coach, and mentor wedding and beauty professionals.  While her business started with a simple call for help from a fellow beauty professional. She quickly realized that there were hundreds of wedding professionals who had skills,  but no direction, no concrete formula for success. Specifically, when it came to marketing online.   

In the twelve months since the pandemic hit Las Vegas, BMC has coached dozens of women on how to run a successful bridal business. Even as wedding businesses recover in Las Vegas, Brianna continues to coach, teach and mentor other wedding pros on how to build sustainable six-figure businesses through online marketing and mindset strategies without burnout.

Tell us about who you are and what you do.

I am a coach and mentor that assists aspiring wedding professionals to make the quantum leap to grow their business revenues from $1000 months to $10,000 months, sometimes even $20,000 months. Specifically, I am an online marketing strategist helping wedding professionals make money with their passion and create a life by design.

Tell us how you created this brand and what was the sole idea behind it.

About 2 years ago, after I had firmly established my mobile beauty brand, Brianna Michelle Beauty, I had started to slowly pivot into coaching and business mentoring. BMB had reached the point where it was naturally running itself. Then I got a call. It was an acquaintance who had dabbled in makeup but was now getting serious about opening a mobile makeup business in Chicago. She offered to pay me to help her. 

  
It seemed natural to lead into a more educational role. I knew how to build a wedding business and I knew the struggles that most new business women and entrepreneurs face. When I started my mobile beauty business, I was the ultimate billboard for the struggling entrepreneur. I faced self-doubt, fear, lack of confidence, and so much uncertainty. I humbly say, I struggled probably more than most. I was homeless at age 34 after a failed long-term relationship and living in my girlfriends basement because I couldn’t afford rent.  I was trying to get my bridal business off the ground with literally no seed money. I can relate to struggling entrepreneurs because I personally experienced what it was like to struggle as a new business owner. I realized I could use my experience to help other wedding professionals find a faster, less painful, path to success.

It wasn’t until March 2020, when the pandemic essentially closed down the wedding business in Las Vegas that I decided to put both feet into my coaching business! Within 6 months, I had created a second 6 figure business, all accomplished with a modest budget. 

Brianna Michelle Coaching is a transformational program. We help wedding pros grow exponentially through online marketing strategies, mindset, and buyer sales psychology.  We offer self-study online courses for those just wanting to get their feet wet with marketing their business, to private 1:1 sessions, for those ready to go all in. Currently, we just launched a new program called Self Made Woman for those looking to build their own online courses and coaching programs to create passive income.

Our brand’s mission is to help women become Self Made. We change their life. We make them successful. confident, fully capable of supporting themselves and their families. We take skill and turn it into profit.  

Go in detail and tell us about how your brand works. You may keep this from the audience’s perspective.

Brianna Michelle Coaching is built on different levels of the wedding professionals journey and community. Based on Brianna’s 17-year experience in the wedding industry, she understands the wedding professionals’ journey, and different areas needed to maximize getting seen online, attract and book more brides. 

From someone that is completely new to the business, we offer a basic course, Your 6 Figure Bridal Blueprint for Booking Out, which targets finding your ideal bride, setting your rates, and building a converting website, etc. We also offer our Posting for Profit course that is very niched down just helping wedding pros with Instagram for those that already have the basics down such as branding and pricing but aren’t sure how to use Instagram as an additional revenue source. 

Private 1:1 coaching is for those that might be stuck sitting on $6K per month and have holes in their business that is preventing them from hitting over $10K months. In a 1:1 private setting, Brianna can personally comb through your online platforms, find the holes and help you scale and grow to $10K+ months.

What is your giveaway idea through this interview? Highlight something that may interest the readers on a one-to-one basis.

We find new wedding professionals struggle with establishing a strong Instagram presence. Not knowing what to post that converts and using Instagram as an additional revenue stream are particularly challenging issues. So we have a great self-study course called the Bridal Social Suite which is a course helping you know what to post that gets you more clients and revenue.

Explain the challenges you went through while you were working on brand creation. What are the challenges you go through on an everyday basis?

My biggest learning experience as a coach was that learning that I couldn’t help everyone. I struggled going back and forth on whether to offer online courses and programs for all entrepreneurs and coaches or just wedding professionals. This mindset was holding me back from going all in. But when the pandemic happened, my wedding people needed me. We were all struggling and I saw the opportunity of how I could help. I ultimately decided to focus on my niche helping wedding professionals. 

How do you manage your finances through the services you offer. Any fundings etc received? 

I like reinvesting in my business and being resourceful. We were lucky to have taken advantage of the PPP loan as a resource during the Pandemic. Being resourceful has got me where I am today. There is no way I would have built both my businesses if I hadn’t gotten resourceful with finances. Look around you. Get resourceful. 

Tell us your future vision about the brand. How far do you want to take it? What is your dream about taking it to the next level?

My brand is focused on achieving quantum leaping growth through strategy and mindset. The mindset work in all my programs is powerful and transformative. We are currently working on creating an entire Beauty Retreat experience based on this theme. We feel by taking this work in a more “experience” setting we will be able to reach more professionals that crave these types of mindset transformative experiences.

What message would you like to give to anybody who has a plan of creating something of their own and making a living through it?

My message is consistent with every woman I coach. Believe in yourself! Never, ever give up, and don’t be afraid to invest even if the money is tight. I truly believe it was because of my determination and the constant investing in my business and myself that I am where I am today. Living my dream life. My background is not special. I was bullied for being overweight, suffered from low self-esteem, stuttered growing up, and failed math 3 times in college. I never thought in a million years growing up I would be where I am today. It was the fighting through all my struggles that led to where I am today. 

Company name : Brianna Michelle Coaching

Email Address: support@briannamichellecoaching.com

Website : www.briannamichellecoaching.com

www.briannamichellebeauty.com

Instagram: @briannamichellecoaching @briannamichellebeauty

The post HOW THIS BEAUTYPRENUER BUILT A SECOND 6 FIGURE INCOME DURING THE PANDEMIC appeared first on CEO Medium.

I’m not the only one, obviously. Deloitte study shows that 77 percent of respondents say they have experienced employee burnout at their current job, with more than half citing more than one occurrence. The survey also uncovered that employers may be missing the mark when it comes to developing well-being programs that their employees find valuable to address stress in the workplace’.^[1] Even the most successful CEO in the world has a lot of support, or they should because we need to work together to look after wellbeing in the home. 

As parents and carers, we are particularly vulnerable to burnout owning to the 360 demands on our mental, physical, emotional, and practical resources. Parental Burnout is an emerging field of study but the evidence of this impact on family life is worrying according to the article published in the National Library of Medicine.

If you or someone you love is suffering burnout in any area, or verging on it,  here are some tips:

• Fall in love with the word ‘no’. You can say no, you do not have to do it all.
• Delegate as much as possible. In the workplace who can you share the load with? At home can the children help? Can you shuffle around the finances and outsource any jobs?
• Boundaries are your friend. Identify what your non-negotiables are, articulate them to those they concern, articulate the consequence (make it something reasonable and possible). If this boundary is crossed and carry out that consequence.
• Boundaries can be flexible. It might seem paradoxical from the previous points but sometimes you can negotiate a real point of stress within the workplace or home is rigid boundaries that make no sense or have no context. So ask yourself what is non-negotiable? What is flexible?
• Ask for help! There is no shame in the struggle, whatever the situation we cannot do anything if we’re burned out, so who can you look to for support? 
• Sleep is VERY important, so ask yourself how can you get more? Is it quality sleep? How is your sleep hygiene?
• Support energy and health with nutritional foods exercise, and making time for your hobbies.
• Put your own oxygen mask on first, self-care is resilience work if you have a pivotal role as a caregiver in the family, in your job, or lots of responsibility in a business. If you are not well looked after then no one will be, so put yourself in the driving seat of your own wellbeing.

Burnout can be characterised by feelings of helplessness, extreme fatigue, disillusioned and lack of focus, a great guide for signs to look out for can be found here

Mandy Manners is an addictive behaviors expert and co-author of Love Yourself Sober: A Self Care Guide to Alcohol-Free Living for Busy Mothers with Kate Baily

^[1] https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/burnout-survey.html

^[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6230657/

The post Coaching Tips For Coping With Career And Parent Burnout appeared first on CEO Medium.

You can view more about Joyce’s background here:

www.linkedin.com/in/joyceguanwest, or connect with her heart on Instagram (she has some engaging and insightful Instagram Lives): www.instagram.com/joyceguanwest. 

Tell us about who you are and what you do.

I’m Joyce Guan West, founder of Coaching With Empathy. I’m a career coach, executive coach, and business coach. I help my clients get career clarity and land their dream jobs, excel and level up at their existing roles, get promoted and crush it as leaders, and I help entrepreneurs scale and run their businesses. I’ve been an entrepreneur, sales leader, and executive since I started my first business in college, and I LOVE to help people make their breakthroughs. I love money and am very results-oriented, so you should only work with me if you want big, impactful, and quick results. And you’re willing to do the work. 

I’ve helped my career coaching clients negotiate $50K more on their compensation packages and get unstuck and inspired. I’ve helped my executive coaching clients onboard effectively in their new roles, and rock their performance, and gain promotions. I’ve helped my business coaching clients take control of their overwhelm, survive through Covid, and successfully fundraise and scale up sales in this market. 

Tell us how you created this brand and what was the sole idea behind it.

I’ve wanted to coach since I was 20 years old and I hired my first coach. It took me many years to try coaching because I didn’t see anyone who looked like me coaching. I was scared to spend $10-$15K for coaching certification, and then not have any clients. 

I learned about the power of coaching from a young age: I started my first business when I was 19, and I hired a sales coach to help me learn and ramp-up. That upped my game so much! In that program, I met life coaches and business coaches who helped me along the way. When I had a breakup at 22, I hired that life coach and he helped me through the breakup, and also with re-evaluating my career. 

It took me over a decade to get the courage and opportunity to get the official title of coach. 

Between those formative experiences with coaching and finally getting the official title of Coach, I became a sales leader specializing in rapidly scaling startups. I founded multiple companies and sold them to multinational companies in multi-million dollar acquisitions. In my last company, I ran the sales team, and I grew sales by 10x over a year and scaled the sales team from 2 people to 10 people. I also built multiple layers of management there. 

As an entrepreneur, founder, and sales leader, I’ve held the role of the coach all along – when you achieve things that are difficult and seemingly impossible, and move at warp speed, you have to coach your team and work on their mindset constantly, especially salespeople who are regularly having their sales quotas increased. 

After working as an employee for a while following the sale of my last company in 2017, I realized that it was time to be my boss again. The reason that I love working for myself is that no one is taking a cut of the value I’m creating, so it’s easy to have a million-dollar or multi-million dollar business. 

Never say never, but it is very unlikely that I will ever work FOR a company ever again. 

A number of happy accidents in my network led to me joining a coaching platform that valued operators, not certified coaches. I am so grateful for that opportunity. In 3 months, I catapulted to being the top coach on the platform and now have over 60 5-star reviews. That was the experience I needed to realize that coaching is something that I’m good at, and it gave me the confidence to go all-in on it. 

Thus, Coaching With Empathy was born. I initially intended to focus on career coaching, executive coaching, and business coaching. However, when the pandemic hit in March 2020 and unemployment soared to 15%, it was clear that I could help people get their basic needs met and find new employment by helping them improve their resumes. So, I have an entire team of resume writers who help our clients stand out, even in a tough job market through their resumes, LinkedIn profiles, cover letters, and resume design. 

Go in detail and tell us about how your brand works. You may keep this from the audience’s perspective.

My firm Coaching With Empathy was founded on the basis that so much of business, especially in Silicon Valley where I am, is driven by an extreme and unsustainable view that growth should come at all costs. I’m not saying that there aren’t wildly successful companies that don’t have an amazing culture, but I’m simply saying that there are too many companies that don’t prioritize mental health, sustainability, and work/life balance for their founders, executives, managers, and employees. 

I’m a strong, effective leader who delivers supernormal results. AND I prioritize kindness, compassion, staying calm in almost any situation, and drive my team to take care of themselves, and ensure that they have a life outside of work. I realized that in my past, I’ve always sold products and services that required empathy in the sales process – from selling office snacks to overworked office managers, to selling trees where terminally ill people could place their ashes. Yes, check out www.betterplaceforests.com to learn more about that very cool and unique company. 

My biggest fear in life is being undifferentiated, so when it came to naming my company and defining my vision and mission, I focused on getting clear on my unique value proposition. My mission is to help my clients be wildly successful, all while feeling bliss and ease. Thus, the name Coaching With Empathy came up for me. I was blown away that the domain wasn’t taken! It’s as if that wasn’t a priority for anyone else. 

As I mentioned, I believe in the philosophy “the first one is free”. As such, I offer a free intro call to anyone interested in coaching with me. If after that call we decide it’s a fit, then we kick off with a one-hour discovery call to figure out what the person’s goals are, and how they want to prioritize them. We also confirm what the intended outcomes are so I’m clear about exactly what my client wants to accomplish. 

Coaching with me is more like jazz than classical. I’m both highly intuitive as well as data-driven and strategic. What I lend to my clients is my ability to process on the fly and see things that they aren’t seeing due to the blind spots that everyone has about themselves. I am also a master at decision making and building decision trees, so someone unable to decide for months is usually unblocked by me almost immediately. 

What is your giveaway idea through this interview? Highlight something that may interest the readers on a one to one basis.

I have two sweet giveaways – I truly believe in the concept of “the first one is free”. I don’t try to get people to sign up with me without them being fully on board with what I can help them accomplish. 

So, anyone reading this can sign up for a free 20-minute coaching discovery call with me so we can talk about their needs, goals, and where they are feeling stuck. You can sign up for that here: https://calendly.com/coachingwithempathy/intro-call-ceomedium.

For folks who are looking for a new role, I offer a free guide to the Top Interview Questions You Need to Prepare For – DM me on Instagram or email me at hello@coachingwithempathy.com for this awesome resource. 

Explain the challenges you went through while you were working on brand creation. What are the challenges you go through on an everyday basis?

I didn’t have many challenges with brand creation. I’ve known who I am for a long time. I let my values drive everything that I do and how I present myself. 

How do you manage your finances through the services you offer. Any fundings etc received?

I am the queen of self-funded ventures. I am the product, so it didn’t take any startup capital to build my business. However, cash flow is a real thing. In the first 6 months that I ramped up my coaching business, I was still running my sales strategy consulting business to pay the bills. Once I got more traction with coaching, I moved to do that full time. I of course have the luxury of knowing how to sell since I’ve been a VP of Sales for so long. So the classic challenge that many entrepreneurs have of not knowing how to get business wasn’t one of my challenges. Now I teach other coaches how to do that effectively through the coach’s mastermind I run.

I would attribute my success to my family – I have the most supportive, unconditionally loving husband in the world. He keeps me going when challenges come up from time to time. The love he gives me flows through to my clients. He makes me feel psychologically safe, and I in turn make my clients feel psychologically safe. In addition, we have two amazingly cute and affectionate cockapoo puppies, Sprinkles and Wylde. You can check them out on my Instagram. 

Tell us your future vision about the brand. How far do you want to take it? What is your dream about taking it to the next level?

I’ve always been more of a business to business person vs a consumer person, ie I’ve done a lot of selling products and services to businesses. As such, now that I’ve built my own successful and thriving coaching business, instead of spending all of my time signing on individual clients, I am excited to be a “coaches’ coach”. I run a mastermind for coaches, consultants, and service providers who already have some traction in their business and want to get to the next level – they want to get anywhere from $100K to $500K in annual revenue. And they want to get there quickly and aren’t afraid to get out of their comfort zone. We meet weekly and have a monthly topic we’re focused on, run a monthly challenge, and then we have 2 sessions per month where we crowdsource ideas, and every week a few people get to be in the hot seat. We also amplify each other’s social media posts, and we refer business to each other. To ensure that we execute, not just talk about ideas, we also do a weekly 2-hour co-working accountability session. 

Empathy, kindness, and compassion are the key to everything to me – living a full, joyful, blissful life full of ease and love. These themes are the underlying foundation of my career, executive, and business coaching. This year I plan to go even deeper into coaching the whole person. I plan to do this by offering life coaching as well as one on one and group meditation sessions – I’m currently in Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach’s two-yearMindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Program. 

What message would you like to give to anybody who has a plan of creating something of their own and making a living through it?

Don’t wait. Tomorrow or the perfect conditions may never come. There are so many ways to just prototype and test out your side hustle. Or if you have a hobby you love, just take a small step towards monetizing it and doing more. From the time I spent working at Better Place Forests, where I spoke with many people who were terminally ill, you realize that life is short. 

I host an Instagram Live with a guest on the first and third Thursday of each month at 12:30 pm PST. You can check these out here: www.instagram.com/joyceguanwest/channel. Connect with me on Instagram so you can stay updated on when these are happening and what the topics are. 

Company name: Coaching With Empathy

Email Address: hello@coachingwithempathy.com 

Website: www.linkedin.com/in/joyceguanwest

Instagram: www.instagram.com/joyceguanwest

The post Exclusive Interview with Joyce Guan West and How She Started Coaching with Empathy appeared first on CEO Medium.