How to Get Business Direction Clarity

I find a lot of business-owning moms need clarity around the direction of their business, or even what results they want to see in a few months or years. This post will take you through getting really, really clear where you’re going with your business and creating a way of getting there.

This post will help you get the bigger picture of where you want to go. It’s the Clarity phase of my Done by 3:00 Workday model. If you want in-the-moment tactics, read this post on how to decide your next step. 

Business-Owning Moms Try to Be Everything to Everyone

Ultimately, the biggest problem business-owning moms (BOMs) face is that they try to be everything to everyone. That is tremendously overwhelming and leads to so much stress and overwhelm. Those overwhelmed feelings lead BOMs directly to operating in reactive mode.

Operating in reactive mode focuses BOMs on the needs and wants of everyone else, rather than the needs and wants of her business. They don’t take any time for deep thinking or planning because there is ALWAYS something to react or respond to.

Do you need to save 10+ hours each week just to get a little time with your kids? Learn about the Done by 3:00 Workday coaching program – I’m inviting you (100% no sales pitch) to chat with me for a few minutes to find your next best step to saving time in your business. Click here to schedule!

Focus Brings Clarity

The solution is focus. You can focus on where you want to go and get out of that reactive mode and into a more proactive mindset, where you’re driving the bus. 

Here is an interesting truth as I see it. Disclaimer: This is entirely me. I am not a neuroscientist. I just like to read & observe. But what I realized in my own life is that my brain likes to collect up information and filter it all the time. My brain both responds to what’s going on and filters all of that information at the same time. 

It creates a loop of collecting information, responding to that information, and filtering out other information. So my brain decides what I see or think about or do and it’s responding to that. Very little new information is even perceived!

When we get that crazy feeling of overwhelm, that’s actually what’s happening. The way out of that is to be proactive and regularly set your own filters in your brain. 

Setting the Filters in Your Brain

One of the reasons we actually like that reactive mode is because it feels busy and it feels like we’re productive and we’re knocking things out and getting things done crossing things off our lists. But we end up doing things that we don’t really even need to be doing. Why? because we are not focused on the right filters. 

So instead, let’s set our filters so that our brains focus on what we want to do and accomplish. We need to decide ourselves what filters we want our brain to be using. We want to plant those ideas in our brain so that our brain knows what to be looking out for. 

Do this and give your brain just a little bit of breathing room to do some thinking. And you’ll be amazed at the opportunities you see and the things you see that you normally would have missed. 

It’s a lot like when you buy a red car to be different than everybody else, and all you see on the road is a sea of silvers and whites and blacks. You go get yourself a red car and suddenly, everybody’s got red cars. How did that happen? Well, they were there all along. Your brain was just filtering them out. You weren’t noticing. But as soon as you started focusing on red cars, you see them everywhere. 

That’s a little simplistic, but that is the way it works. And you really can set your own filters. And it might be hard at first. It might be hard to keep those proactive blocks and filters in your head. Especially if you have toddlers! Bless your heart if you do, you might need a little more practice with this. 

Decide and Document Your Filters

To set your filters, you first have to decide them and write them out. Then, you have to review them frequently so that your brain knows you want to focus on those filters.

Discover Your Dreams

The first thing you’re going to do is dream. Dream about how to make the world a better place and how to live a better life for yourself. What do you want your days to look like? Who do you want to serve?

Chart Your Path

Next, to stay on a path to success, you have to build that path. What do you use to build that path? Look at your values, both personal and business. It’s also important to be conscious of what values you actually want? Are you living those values? Is your business living its values? 

Once we do that, you use those values to create a beautiful vision of what you want to see and how you can make a difference, how you can make something better based on your dreams. 

Finally, you need to create a mission statement that is free of jargon, concrete, and crystal clear.  Then post it somewhere you can see it. This is your path.

There are gonna be moments when your brain slips right back into reactive mode. And you need this inspiring mission to keep you focused on being proactive!

Find Your People

Once you have that down, then you need to decide on which people you will serve. Your business is nothing without people – clients, customers, employees. You need to know what people you’ll serve so that you can find them. We need to know all about them. And we need to know what their problems are.

Is All this Work Worth the Time?

Yes, it’s 100% necessary. And you will need to revisit it for review (to keep it in your brain), and revision (because over time, you own dreams, the path you want, ot the people you want to serve may change).

Once you have a clear picture about your dream path and the people who want to go along with you, the steps you need to take to get there become clearer. It’s easier to see what you need to be working on day to day.

By reviewing these filters we set, we’re also telling our brains what opportunities to be on the lookout for, which also helps us stay on our path. Without this foundational work, you’ll stay in a reactive mode, and will end up building your clients’ businesses, but not your own.

Take back your afternoons!

Do you need to save 10+ hours each week just to get a little time with your kids? Learn about the Done by 3:00 Workday coaching program – I’m inviting you (100% no sales pitch) to chat with me for a few minutes to find your next best step to saving time in your business. Click here to schedule!