3 Ideas to Supercharge the Success of Your Business | By Ruby McGuire

Whether you're just starting out, or you've been in business a few years, it's always great testing out new ways to take your business to the next level.

Today, I'm going to share with you 3 ideas to supercharge the success of your business. They may seem obvious - but are you doing them? If not, add them into your mix of experiments. You never know what might happen!

1. Don't Be a Silo - Collaborate!

Oh we are SO good at trying to do everything ourselves. As if running a business isn't hard enough already! So many of us want to make it even harder by doing it all on our own!

I'm not just talking about bringing on support like coaches/mentors, or people to support areas of your business like a Virtual Assistant, some marketing support or book-keeping help etc. Obviously, they're all great ideas, but what I am talking about here is collaboration.

There is power in numbers.

You can collaborate with others in many ways. And if you have complementary skills with another business owner with a similar audience, then it could be a match made in heaven.

Here's a few ideas to get you started:

• A joint workshop, webinar or masterclass
• An online training programme
• Joint blog posts
• Joint podcast show
• A Referral scheme (where you refer clients to each other)
• Sharing your content with each other's networks
• Commenting on each other's posts.

Reach out and collaborate with others to get in front of a bigger audience - for example a blogger who has the same target market as you. It can be easy to get sucked into the fear that the person you team up with will take away your business. That's just your fear talking. While people might buy from your collaborator and not you - it doesn't mean that what you offer isn't great. The right product/service for the right person. Your right people are out there too.

Any/all of these collaborations will open you up to a wider audience and get your name out there more quickly than you working on your own at home, in your PJ's!

TIP: When reaching out to potential collaborators, always think about the WIIFM (What's In It For Me) Principle. If you've got an audience of 100 and they have an audience of 10,000 then you may find they won't want to play. So make it easier on yourself and start with businesses that are similar in size to yours.

YOUR ACTION: Write a list of people that you'd like to collaborate with, then do some research around what they offer and who their audience might be. Once you've done the groundwork, draft an email to them sharing with them what you like about their work, how you think you could collaborate together and outline the benefits for you both, with an invitation to chat with you to find out more.

EDITOR'S NOTE: You may like our Free Tool: Create Your "My 50" Referral Team! It will give you ideas of who you could connect with...

2. Be Fearless and Bold

It doesn't matter where you are in business, fear is something that comes up over and over again. You can choose to let it hold you back, or you can use it to your advantage - it won't be going anywhere! Ruby McGuire

I remember someone saying once (I wish I could remember who!), that if you haven't asked for something, then you already have a 'no'.

Make the first move. We're often afraid to make the first move in case we get rejected. But if you haven't asked you have already (kind of) been rejected. You've got a 'no' now.

And just because someone says 'no' to you now, it doesn't mean it will always be that way. I can't count the number of times people have said they want to work with me, but not right now. Then they find a way for us to work together later.

It's also important to work on your mindset. I recently shifted my message from visibility to leadership. And as part of that message I talk about being the King or Queen of your business. because what matters is that you manage your mindset. You need to stand in front of your people feeling confident.

If you want to be successful, you need to work on your mindset and release your fears. It's too easy to get into overthinking about everything, and get nothing done. All too often we fear what people will say or think when we talk about what we do. The reality is they'll probably be more worried about what's going on with them than thinking about you.

When you manage your mindset, you make smarter choices. You're not panicking about what people think, you're just sharing the services that you know on a deep level are going to help people. You can be fearless with gentleness.

This isn't about you turning into a Machiavellian Monster! It's about defining what you would love in your business and being brave enough to go out there and make it happen.

As Susan Jeffers would say, "Feel the fear and do it anyway."

YOUR ACTION: Set yourself a mini dare, a challenge of something that scares you. Tell someone what you're going to do (it always makes you much more likely to stick to your commitment) and then go and do it. I've done this a lot with my clients (and I also challenge myself). Just remember to celebrate - that's a BIG part of the process, and one we often overlook.

3. Focus, Focus, Focus (on the right things!)

I've written whole articles on this because it's such an important topic. It's so easy to fall into the trap of being busy. But are you busy doing the right things?

Being in business takes a lot of commitment. Sadly we can spend a lot of time doing things that don't earn us any/much money. If you want to get clients, you need to take action that gets you clients.

As someone once said, "The enemy of great business is great busy-ness."

Take the right action. I have had so many clients, even in the past week, that have been working incredibly hard in their businesses. But they weren't making the progress they wanted to make. When we delved deeper we learned that they weren't working on the right things. They weren't working on tasks that produced money, ie. generating client calls, inviting people to work with them, sharing great content with a call to action. You need to be doing work that produces money. 'Action Producing Money' was a fab mantra I was given by someone many years ago. It's served me well.

Drop the procrastination. Many of us do what I call 'tinkering', also called procrastination. Tasks like updating the words on our website, creating yet another new funnel, changing our mind about our pricing, writing, rewriting and then REwriting blog posts until they are 'perfect'.

On the surface we look busy, incredibly busy. But when you delve deeper, we're not busy doing the right things. I fall into this trap over and over again. It's just that now, I notice it much quicker than I would have done in the past. And over the past few years, I've taught myself how to focus. I set myself much smaller goals to achieve my end goals, and whatever I work on, I try to work with 100% focus - mostly!

YOUR ACTION:

• Do an honest check-in to find out if you are doing actions that will produce money - 'Action Producing Money'. Make all your actions count!
• Set yourself Realistic and Measurable targets!
• Remove all distractions (I personally love to use the Pomodoro method where you use a timer and work in 25 minute blocks).

Wrap-up

We've explored 3 ideas to Supercharge the Success of your Business:

1. Don't Be a Silo - Collaborate!
2. Be Fearless and Bold!
3. Focus, Focus, Focus (on the right things!)

Which one of these three ideas would be a good place for you to work on this coming year?
Share in the comments below.

You May Also Like:

• 7 Helpful Tips to Get Started with Online Training (and Grow Your Biz!) also by Ruby McGuire
• Identify Your Daily Success Habits! With 7 Insightful Coaching Questions
• 5 Step Process to Create Supportive Daily Success Habits!

Contributing Author:

Ruby McGuire is a Business & Mindset Queen. She's an Accredited Master Coach & Master Mentor with the IAPC&M, Trainer, Inspirational Speaker and Author of multiple books. She loves helping her clients step up and become leaders (aka Queens) of their businesses. She helps her clients develop their leadership and business skills, create a success mindset and attract dreamy clients. She is a Brit on a mission to live a simpler life without marketing on social media so that she can spend more time in her beautiful Scottish surroundings. You can find her at her pretty online home, over on her podcast show, Rock Your Fabulous Biz, and here where she shares her Mini Guide to Marketing Without Social Media. When she’s not working you’ll find her surrounded by books, making hand-made cards, and enjoying life with her hubby, little dog and chickens (usually with a Whittard Vanilla cappuccino in her hand)!

Learn more about Ruby & see all their articles here >>