When I was teaching writing classes, one of the hardest areas for my students to grasp was creating an outline for their writing project. For some reason, the word "outline" caused their brains to seize up and their fingers to freeze on the keyboard. Creating an "outline" seemed like such a HUGE task because they thought they needed to know EXACTLY how their book was going to flow. The word "goal" and the words "business plan" seem to bring the same response from some people. If I tell someone to "set a goal" or "create a business plan", you can almost see the painful "OH PLEASE, NOT THAT - ANYTHING BUT THAT" expression come across their face or, suddenly, all that will be seen is a blank slate - no emotion at all. The words "goal" and "business plan" - just like the word "outline" - brings a moment of panic that I can't explain, but have witnessed many times.
Obviously, these words, for whatever reason, seem to evoke an extremely daunting idea, so I decided to remove these words from the equation and replace them with something that everyone is familiar with... a Table of Contents. Instead of telling my students to write an "outline", I told them to create a Table of Contents for their book project. Suddenly, the task was easy and my students had absolutely no problem putting their book ideas into a "mock" Table of Contents. The familiarity of the words "Table of Contents" solved that mental block.
Building a home business is done in baby steps - one day at a time. You do, however, need to have some specific ideas in mind as to how you want your home business to flow and what you would like to accomplish at the end of a certain time period. This allows you to work in a specific and logical order which strives to accomplish that end result you have decided upon. So, instead of thinking of it as a "business plan", think of it as "your story" and write out your "Table of Contents".
For instance, Chapter One might cover purchasing the Wee Folk Toracles deck and learning how to read them using the FREE ebook, "Become a Skilled Card Reader" that you can find on my website at http://www.landofweefolk.com. Underneath this chapter heading, you might write "Read one chapter a day from the Become a Skilled Card Reader book" or, if you learn better from videos, you might write "view one video a day from the Become a Skilled Card Reader video series" that can also be found on my website. The second line underneath the Chapter One heading might be "spend time familiarizing myself with the Wee Folk Toracles deck."
Chapter Two heading might be "Creating My Home Business Space" and the lines underneath this heading might cover such things as "how I want my space to look", "de-cluttering", and "cleaning". Chapter Three heading might be "My Business Image" and underneath would be "clothing", "make-up" (if you're a woman), and "hair".
Basically, what you are doing here is creating a "to-do" list in a chronological order that makes sense and will allow you to accomplish specific things toward making your home business successful. You would keep going with as many chapters as you need to reach whatever end result you want to see. This end result could be, for instance, Chapter Fifteen - "Reading for Three People Every Day". Chapters One through Fourteen would be the steps you need to take to reach this end result.
In your Table of Contents, always allow yourself some extra lines of empty space after whatever you list under each chapter heading because you never know what other ideas might pop up that you will want to write under that chapter heading later. Your Table of Contents is ALWAYS open ended which means that it is "subject to change at your discretion" anytime if you discover something that might work better than an idea you had previously. Just because you write something down does not mean that it is "written in stone". Plans are great, but life happens and you have to allow yourself the "freedom" to change if you feel it is best for your business.
As an extra guidance tool, I have created a free ebook called "Wee Folk Toracles Moon Guide for Business for 2018". This ebook offers you the opportunity to use your Wee Folk Toracles cards, along with the New Moon and Full Moon AND the zodiac energies, to create a Chapter One main "goal" and to work with this main goal throughout the entire year. You can download this ebook for free HERE.
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