2024 is the year we’re coining the Year of Life. So many life events have happened to us, our clients, and our partners. From family deaths, illnesses, hurricanes, burnout, and priority shifts, life doesn’t wait for the perfect moment in your business to slow down.
No ma’am. It continues whether you want it to or not. And while that’s frustrating, it’s taught me a couple of crucial things you must have in place if you desire continuity in your business and life.
6 Things Every Entrepreneur Needs To Be Successful In 2025
While success can be defined in a million different ways, we define it as making progress towards your specific goals. Ideally, success is even reaching those goals. They can be financial, physical, emotional, spiritual, or any other -al variation. The key is it’s a big win for you and your business.
Solid Strategies To Filter Through The Noise & Find Your Focus
When applied, focus truly amplifies your impact. And while it’s probably the most underrated skill, it’s also one of the hardest things to do with all the distractions thrown at us. It takes time to build in focus. But 2 things have really helped me focus on the right things.
First, I’ve created systems in ClickUp – our project management software – that help me focus my energies on one area of the business at a time. For example, if I’m in our Clients space, I am all about each of our clients – focused on delivering the best results, customer service, and communication. But if I’m in our Marketing Schedule space, you better believe I’m throwing all sorts of ideas at the wall to see what sticks. And it wouldn’t be focused if it wasn’t color-coded either. So because of the division of tasks, color association, and knowing what mindset I need to be in, my focus is that much more amplified.
Secondly, I’ve created a place to dump all my amazing (and not-so-amazing) ideas. As entrepreneurs, we are constantly thinking of new ideas, strategies, and ways to accomplish our goals. And while there is a time and place for that…It can stifle our productivity. But what if it’s a million-dollar idea? Write it down in one place so you can pick it back up whenever you’re ready.
A Strong Business Referral Network
It is simply impossible to have your ear in every conversation so that you can identify and talk to every single person who’s interested in what you have to offer. But what you can build is a strong business referral network to help you mimic that. This network is either a formal or informal group of individuals who know what to listen for to make an introduction or pass a referral to you. They are usually interacting with the people you want to connect with – so start building, reviewing, or reshaping your list of contacts.
Lauren, how do you build a strong business referral network?
There are 2 ways we’ve seen this done:
- Join a referral networking organization like BNI (Business Network International) or Network In Action to build a formalized network.
- Do it yourself and find people who understand your value. The key here is to document and regularly maintain those relationships.
Want to start building your network? Let’s grab a virtual coffee to see if there’s something to explore.
A Curated Collective Of Business Besties
Having a business bestie (or a few) takes your referral network to the next level. Whereas the previously mentioned option is based on referrals, a collective of business besties is based on seeing you succeed.
You could have 1-2 or 5-10 business besties. As long as your business besties are other entrepreneurs who…
- Want to find and send referrals to you
- Are vulnerable enough to confess their business challenges
- Are confident to cheer you on when you feel weak
- Will help you strategically overcome challenges in your business
The only rule? There should be an equal balance of giving and receiving, expressing challenges and celebrating wins, and support for one another.
You cannot force this type of relationship. But as soon as you find it, you’ll know it and grab tight onto those people.
Documentation For ALL Your Processes
Ever dream of…?
- Selling your business
- Getting acquired
- Adding an investor to your team
- Growing your team beyond yourself
- Leaving a legacy you’re proud of
Well…you need documentation. Consider every single thing that needs to happen inside your business to make it operate. Then start by tackling each “department” and get it written down. The best way that we’ve found to do this is…
- See one. Host a team training to teach them how to do a single process.
- Do one. Have your team do the process with you so that you can adjust or correct their steps.
- Teach one. Once they are proficient, have them teach that same process to other team members.
P.S. Copy Systems is your way to document, implement, and experiment with all your copy- and marketing-related tasks for your business. Explore a membership here.
A Better Recipe To Write High-Converting Copy
No matter where you stand on copywriting (you love it, hate it, loathe it, AI it, outsource it, do it yourself, etc.), you need good copy to connect, engage, and convert prospects into clients. But there are a lot of barriers to creating effective copy…
…Starting with you. You may not like it or even have the time to do it. So you have 3 options:
- Do it yourself and (probably) hate yourself for it every single step
- Use AI and settle for subpar, inauthentic, and robotic-sounding copy
- Outsource it to a copywriter (hopefully not to a freelancer who is not fluent in your specific language)
While there are obvious issues with options 1 and 2, let’s dive into option 3. Even if you hire an outsourced copywriter, you still need to communicate your brand, messaging, voice, target customer, and marketing objectives.
What happens when you don’t have any of that? The copywriter will fail to achieve your goals…every single time. Then, you’re stuck with editing until it’s perfect (another pain point for most entrepreneurs) or rewriting it yourself anyway. Yeesh!
That’s why we’ve developed Copy Systems to help you build out the core tenants required for effective copywriting – whether you write it yourself or outsource it. Explore your membership here.
More Time To Pour Into Your Business
You may be laughing at this point, but hear me out…When you have more time, you have:
- More space to think and dream
- Increased capacity to actually get everything you need to get done
- Freedom to spend your time as you please (whether that’s with family, traveling, or at a coffee shop alone)
And who doesn’t want that?!
Here is how to build more time into your schedule.
- Create a theme for the year and break that up by each quarter.
- Assign one SMART goal that fulfills your theme.
- Choose no more than 3 sub-goals that fulfill that 1 big goal.
- And do nothing else besides that.
Sure you’ll think of plenty of ideas. Create a place for you to dump those brilliant ideas for you to pick up when you’re ready to focus on other areas of your business. But the idea here is when you are laser-focused, you create more time because you aren’t chasing the shiny objects or squirrels. Your distraction and tenacity to dream may be the one thing limiting your schedule.
For Q4 2024, here is how we structured our time:
- Theme: Building better rhythms
- Primary Goal: Build a more sustainable business (starting with the financial side of the business)
- Sub-Goals:
- Launch our brand new Copy Systems membership program.
- Continue to be profitable.
- Grow our recurring revenue.
Filling each of these out for yourself does not need to be complicated. In fact, the simpler you make it, the easier it’ll be to follow.
Implement Better Systems To Set Your 2025 Up For Success
…Starting with your copy.
We’ve developed Copy Systems to be an easy-to-implement membership that dives into specific topics that will make your marketing and messaging so much more effective. And when you have the right words, you connect with the right clients and convince them that you’re worth investing in.
We believe that people want to work with other people and, ultimately, businesses they know and trust. This is another reason why we’re giving you the same tools we use to define your brand, target your audience, and write marketing materials that speak to the core of your successes.
