Stop Procrastinating: How to Start Your Business in 8 Hours

Many people want to start businesses, but procrastination holds them back. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done before you can launch your company. All of those tasks, many of which are boring and tedious, can make the startup process feel nearly insurmountable.

 

What if you could get it all done in a single day? Here’s some good news—you can! If you have a free day on the horizon, make a plan to sit down and work your way through your startup checklist, one task at a time. Here’s how to launch your business in the span of an 8-hour workday!

 

9:00 am-9:30 am Connect with a Business Coach

 

Business coaches are experts at launching and scaling businesses. If you’re looking for help mapping out your next steps, connect with a business coach. Your coach will help identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business plan and anticipate potential problems that could come up along the way. Connect with a business coach like Tolu Areola and schedule a call so you can get the ball rolling on your business.

 

9:30 am-10:30 am Register Your Business

 

Registering your business isn’t very fun, so let’s get this step out of the way as soon as possible. Because each state has its own regulations around registering a business, be sure to research the specific requirements for your state.

 

When you register your business, you’ll need to choose a business structure. Forming an LLC offers several benefits over a sole proprietorship (the default business structure in most states). An LLC will separate you from your business entity, ensuring your personal assets are protected and cannot be seized in lawsuits or company debts. After researching the requirements for forming an LLC Texas, you can use an online formation service to form an LLC without paying hefty lawyer fees.

 

10:30 am-11:00 am Open a Business Bank Account

 

Once your business has been registered and you’ve acquired an EIN (Employer Identification Number), you can open a dedicated business bank account. This will help you keep your business and personal finances separate. As a result, it will be much easier to keep track of income and expenses, prepare for taxes, and maintain compliance with IRS regulations.

 

11:00 am-12:00 pm Build Your Brand

 

Building a brand from scratch doesn’t have to take all day. Shopify outlines just seven simple steps you need to take to build a brand, from deciding on a brand personality to designing your logo. Take advantage of free or low-cost graphic design tools to create branded graphics for your website and social media pages. For example, you can use a free logo design maker to design a professional logo with your own colors and fonts.

 

12:00 pm-2:00 pm Establish Your Online Presence

 

After figuring out your branding, it’s time to build a website and set up social media accounts for your business. With the help of online website builders, you can get this all done in a couple of hours. Look for an all-in-one website building solution that includes drag-and-drop design, content management, and web hosting. These tools make it easy to get up and running without writing a single line of code.

 

2:00 pm-5:00 pm Get Started with Marketing

 

Launching your initial marketing campaign will take some time. Start by researching your market to learn everything you can about your target audience. Next, you’ll need to choose your marketing channels and design your content. This might mean writing blog articles, designing social media posts, or crafting emails. Finally, launch your campaign and monitor the results so you can keep track of what’s working and what’s not.

 

Stop putting off the launch of your business. With a little determination, you can start a business in just one day! Work your way through this startup checklist and you’ll have your business up and running before you know it.

 

Looking for business advice? Tolu Areola offers executive consulting and leadership coaching for business owners like you! Call today so we can discuss your needs! 877-244-5606

A Guide to Self-Improvement: What You Need to Start Doing to Live Better

No one has reached the pinnacle of perfection. Hence, why there is always room for self- improvement in certain areas of your life more than others. Here are some tips on implementing practices to help you work on those weaker areas to become an even better you.

Tolu Areola can empower you to achieve your goals in business and life. Learn more about coaching and training opportunities!

Start with rest

While starting with rest may seem the counter opposite of what you’re trying to achieve, it is one of the most important steps you can take to achieve growth. Why is this so? Because our bodies need downtime to help reset. And it is only in taking these moments for ourselves that we are able to revive tired and weary minds and bodies so that we can push on.

Be grateful

There are certain things we cannot achieve no matter how much we try, whether it’s because we don’t have the education, experience, aptitude, or resources to achieve this. This is where being grateful for what we do have can help prevent us from becoming bitter or resentful about those things we still so desperately want. Furthermore, we might just be able to gain a new appreciation for the simple things in life, as these are often the most important, valuable, and irreplaceable.

Keep a tidy home

Keeping a clean and decluttered home can have many benefits. Not only does it provide a pleasant environment to come home to, but it also helps reduce stress and encourage productivity. Removing possessions that we no longer need or use helps us recognize the value of what we own, reducing wasteful spending. Additionally, a clean and decluttered house lowers the risk of allergies by reducing dust and mold build-up, as well as improving airflow. Be sure to visit https://cleanerdigs.com/ for the latest cleaning tips and advice.

Exercise and eat healthily

Often it is because we fail to take care of our most basic needs, such as nourishing our bodies with healthy food and adequate exercise, that we can miss the mark in so many areas of our lives. This is because one cannot expect to perform at their peak when feeling sluggish or mentally drained. Hence, the importance of really paying attention to what we eat and how much we exercise, as it is these two critical activities that can influence our lives tremendously for the better or the worst.

Take a major step to owning a business

Granted, some of the changes you’ll make toward your new lifestyle will be more drastic than others. Starting a business could be one of the major changes you might be considering right now. If it is, then you might be happy to hear that it is simpler to get started than ever before with some help from a formation service. Utilizing the services of a registered agent is also beneficial as they’ll provide you with tips and pointers to help you come up with the business name and a trademark, apply for an EIN number, and do other LLC formation tasks.

Start a new career

Perhaps you don’t want to go the entrepreneurial route but would rather look for a more stimulating and rewarding career instead. This is where you should take your time in deciding the best career path for you so that you can grow at the rate you desire.
Also, ample planning and preparation are key to ensuring you get hired quickly. Creating an attractive resume and CV is an excellent place to start, as this will allow you to put your best foot forward. Use a free online CV template to make your current CV more memorable. Give this a try—with the framework already there for you to utilize, all you then need to do is add your personal and professional information, images, your own colors, and any photos you wish to add, and you’re done.
The road to self-improvement doesn’t need to be viewed as grueling or unpleasant. Instead, you can choose to welcome these changes with positivity and hope that you will be happier and less burdened because you are starting to be more true to yourself. Improve your sleep, keep a clean home, take steps to improve your health, and consider starting a business or a new career.

Finally, remember, Tolu Areola can empower you to achieve your goals in business and life. Learn more about coaching and training opportunities!
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6 Paths To Leadership

The six paths to leadership and how to successfully switch lanes

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Drawn from interviews with more than 60 successful leaders, Meredith Persily and Mark A. Clark offer new critical insights and strategies for managing across six distinct paths to leadership positions.

It’s all about context

A core idea emerging from our work is that understanding and adapting to the context is critical to a leader’s success. In our research and consulting, we listened as leaders described the differences in coming into new positions through a promotion (Insider), an external hire (Outsider), election (Representative), appointment (Proxy), or in founding their own venture (Creator) or taking the reigns of a family business (Legacy).

From these categories, we compiled distinctive sets of opportunities, challenges, and strategies associated with each path for the successful leader to consider and adapt, as well as some commonalities across the paths.

By better integrating context-based strategies into leadership development programming, trainers, coaches, and learning professionals will be able to increase the relevance and customisation for their clients, resulting in more effective leaders.

The most commonly supported journeys are for those on promoted and externally hired paths, each of which requires targeted approaches that reflect the innate opportunities and challenges.

INSIDER

Opportunities

  • Cultural awareness
  • Relationship network within the organisation
  • Proven track record and commitment
  • Organisational succession planning and leadership development programs

Challenges

  • Managing former peers
  • Shifting perception to become a change agent
  • Adapting habits and metrics to new role
  • Being a ‘First’

OUTSIDER

Opportunities

  • New perspectives
  • Expertise from outside
  • External networks
  • Perception of earned hire
  • Been there, done that
  • Willingness to take risks and introduce changes

Challenges

  • Cultural assimilation
  • Not knowing who you need to know and what you don’t know
  • Organisation onboarding deficiency
  • Identification with former organisation brand
  • ​​​​​​​Lack of support from rivalsIn the fishbowl (visibility)

Our leaders spoke of issues to consider in order to leverage each opportunity and mitigate each challenge, informing a useful set of leadership approaches that can be adapted to the path context. In the list below, we offer a sampling of what leaders may want to consider when coming into new positions as an Insider or Outsider.

Managing former peers versus winning over a new team

1. A leader must build credibility with their new team of direct reports, such as by leveraging their previous success. Insiders may rely on their organisation-specific knowledge, while outsiders should be willing to learn but also can offer outside-the-box perspectives (without overemphasising their past organisation).
2. The Insider may have more relationship baggage from their time in the organisation, and a mixed reaction from others—do colleagues believe the leader deserved to be promoted? Outsiders must assess the players and politics of the organisation before depending on new relationships.
3. Storytelling strategies should be considered. Insiders’ backgrounds are likely more apparent to colleagues and subordinates, making it important to discuss their understanding of the organisation’s future.

4. Outsiders should curate their background to highlight what might be innovative to the new organisation without emphasising their status as an ‘other.’ In both cases, it is crucial for the leaders to emphasise their role in creating success for others.

Product of the culture versus change agent

1. Because leading change is so often crucial to success, both Insiders and Outsiders must be attuned to the role of culture in transforming organisations.

2. Insiders will carry the baggage of what has been tried before, as well as what former leaders believe about change strategies. How can leaders introduce change without being critical of past efforts that included them?

3. Both Insider and Outsider leaders must develop core influence skills—yet their relationship maps and messaging will require quite different strategies, such as increasing the importance of ‘listening tours’ for the Outsider.

4. Outsiders bring the credibility of often having done ‘it’ before at another organisation. Their learning focus needs to be on how to apply these ‘proven’ models to their new organisation.

It may be useful to make a list of how daily actions lead to outcomes needed to fulfill the performance objectives of the promoted position

Transitioning habits versus introducing new habits

1. Whether Insider or Outsider, leaders in new roles have the opportunity to break their old habits and develop novel approaches to fit their context, which also may be viewed as its own system of habits.

2. Insiders may find it difficult to divest themselves of habits from the position from which they were promoted due to the continuity of context and relationships.

3. It may be useful to make a list of how daily actions lead to outcomes needed to fulfill the performance objectives of the promoted position, as well as considering what will help them reach the next level of promotion.

4. Outsiders may have been recruited in part to share habits that have worked in their previous organisations and positions, so they must carefully consider how to introduce them to their new colleagues.

Enhance client success

For these issues and many others covered in our work, a key point is that entry into varied leadership positions may require similar competencies, adjusted through an awareness of the context of their path.

Trainers, coaches, and learning professionals can enhance client success by incorporating path-specific strategies into leadership development programs and emphasising what leaders can learn from other paths.

Meredith Persily is CEO and founder of executive-coaching firm Aspire@Work, a consultant and facilitator, and adjunct professor/lecturer in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at American University.

Mark A. Clark, Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Management at the Kogod School of Business, American University in Washington, DC.

Source – https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/