Give your business some good old tender loving care (video)

With Valentine’s Day coming next week, I thought it would be fun to get some loving happening.

There are probably areas in your business and life that could use some good ol’ tender loving care or TLC.

If you look to the Internet to help you plan and improve your year, you could get quickly overwhelmed. There are endless ideas out there.

Here are just a few examples of what I found on Google:

• “Plan 2013” – 2,420,000,000 hits
• “Love your business 2013” – 1,920,000,000 hits
• “Improve 2013” – 903,000,000 hits

Today, I’m going to help you bring some loving to your year by using an exercise from my do-it-yourself audio course The Annual Planning System^TM.

I’ve used my business planning system for two years in my business. In 2012, it helped me double my business income compared to 2011, work 3½ days each week, and take 11 weeks of vacation in 2012. This stuff really works!

Learn more about this article in this short video:

This exercise is called The Improvement Matrix^TM and goes like this.

The idea is to come up with three improvements – let’s say good ol’ loving changes – in eight areas of your life and business.

Your business – whether you’ve already started it or you’re planning to – is really one part of your life, just like recreation, family, health, etc.

Your life is really the big picture and all the other parts fit within it.

The Improvement Matrix^TM helps you come up with some focus points for the different areas of your life and business that are interconnected.

Here’s what I’d like you to do:

1. Get out a piece of paper and draw a circle with eight slices, just like a pie with eight slices. 
2. Label the slices: health & fitness, family & friends, money, personal growth, business support, clients, skills and time.
3. Write down three improvements for each area, i.e. three improvements per slice of the pie.

Let’s talk about what I mean by the word “improvement”. What do you want to change? What do you want to be different? How do you want to grow? Keep these questions in mind for all the areas as you go through this exercise.

And, by “business support” I mean support to you as a business owner. It could be virtual staff, employees, accountants, your coach, any service providers. It could even be your technology.

Here’s a quick example from my own life and business for each of them and then I’ll let you jump into the exercise so you can do it for yourself:

• Health and fitness. Complete two adventure races over the next year.
• Family and friends. I work three days a week and about a half a day on the weekend – the improvement is no more working on weekends.
• Money. Pay off my mortgage by July 2013.
• Personal Growth. Develop a joint vision with my husband for our family.
• Business Support. Set up my Apple technology, transfer over to Apple and not have this current situation of half PC and half Apple going on anymore.
• Clients. Spend more time appreciating my current clients to ensure they know I love working with them – because I do!
• Skills. Learn how to write and publish a book.
• Time. Put my iPhone in the back seat of my car when I’m driving so I’m not distracted by it.

It’s Your Turn.

Grab a piece of paper and take 15 minutes to do this exercise. Then, type a comment below with an improvement in one area of your life that you’d like to make in 2013 – and why. Be specific.

P.S. If you’d like to experience my highly pragmatic way of annual planning – the approach that helped me double my revenue and take 11 weeks of vacation in 2012 – I invite you to take my do-it-yourself program, The Annual Planning System^TM.