Everything that has happened in 2020 so far has definitely been a challenge for small business owners and leaders in all areas. It has definitely separated the good leaders from the great leaders (not to mention exposing those who maybe shouldn't be leading at all!).
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Candice Kingston is a leadership coach who works with small business owners and high level professionals to help them grow personally and professionally. Candice's approach is unique in that she uses energetic leadership coaching techniques to help uncover roadblocks that may be holding you back from reaching your true potential. Curious? I know I was.
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I invited Candice to share with us what every small business needs to know right now about leadership.

Candice shared some really great advice about how to bring your full self to your leadership role and help your team achieve peak performance for your business. Some of the topics we discussed include:

• reactive leadership vs. responsive leadership and why that difference is so important
• how conscious leaders respond differently
• how the current pandemic situation is an opportunity for innovation
• bringing your whole self into your leadership role to be a more effective leader

Find out more in our 10-minute conversation right here.

You can find the entire series of interviews on YouTube in this playlist. There are some amazing resources! Each interview is less than 15 minutes long so it is easy to fit them into your day.

Please comment below. I really want to hear from you. :)

"Stories Sell" - I'm sure you've heard that advice. Storytelling is the latest trend in marketing right now, and for good reason. Storytelling allows your ideal clients to get to know more about you, your expertise, and your business in a very relatable way... and we all know that people do business with those they know like and trust, right?

Joey Held from Ink Communications joined me for an interview where he shares his advice on how to use Storytelling to build your credibility and get more clients and customers for your business...

Joey shared some really great advice for how to share your message through storytelling. Some of the things we discussed include:

• What makes storytelling so powerful
• What every story should include
• How to bridge storytelling into generating more money in your business
• How to hone your message effectively
• How businesses can use podcasting to promote their products and services

Find out more in our 10-minute conversation right here.

You can find the entire series of interviews on YouTube in this playlist. There are some amazing resources! Each interview is less than 15 minutes long so it is easy to fit them into your day.

Please comment below. I really want to hear from you. :)

Ask any business owner where there best clients and customers come from and they are likely to tell you referrals. Most business owners think about referrals from existing or former clients, creating partnerships with other businesses who serve the same ideal clients can be an amazing source of fantastic, ready-to-buy referrals.
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Elizabeth Dodson from Home Zada is an expert at finding those referral partners and she was kind enough to share some of her best strategies with me in this interview...

She really didn't hold anything back! I love it when my guests share really actionable ideas and Elizabeth definitely did not disappoint. Some of the topics we cover include:

• Where she finds her most powerful partnerships.
• What makes an ideal partner?
• The keys to building an effective and successful partnership.
• Why partnerships are so important right now.

​Find out the answers in our 10-minute conversation right here.

You can find the entire series of interviews on YouTube in this playlist. There are some amazing resources! Each interview is less than 15 minutes long so it is easy to fit them into your day.

Please comment below. I really want to hear from you. :)

As a parent and a business owner, I often feel like I am directing traffic at a massive (and busy) intersection. Think spaghetti junction.

I’m constantly evaluating what, or who needs my attention. That’s part of the beauty of being self-employed though, isn’t it? We have the flexibility and freedom to control our schedules as needed.

Normally I’m pretty darn good at managing everything if I do say so myself, but sometimes things go amiss.

A couple of weeks ago I had one of those days. If you have kids, I know you can relate.

I had met with Cat Stancik (one of my coaches) the week prior to plan out my goals and vision and I was fresh from a retreat with Victoria Whitfield that left me feeling energized and aligned. My plan was to get up before the kids to work on my 9 Principles of Sustainable Business Success, but my motivation was low.

Self-employment didn’t feel so beautiful that morning and it continued throughout the week.

I wasn’t sure when I would have to toss all my plans out the window and focus on my family. I was motivated to take action on my business but the chunks of time were getting smaller and smaller.

By the end of the week, there was only enough energy to handle existing client work and putting out fires. There are probably a few smoldering fires left lingering right now.

“Pause, plan, move forward” wasn’t working. It was more like, “pause, plan, put out fire, pause, plan…” repeat ad nauseum.

The challenge? Even though I’m normally great at directing traffic, the intersection of family and business had become a 16 car pile up.

I needed a hard reset. The kind where the police, fire trucks, tow trucks, ambulances all come to disentangle the cars, clear the intersection and get the traffic moving again. Perhaps installing a traffic light would help to manage the flow in the future.

But the beauty of the situation is that as the owner of my own business, I get to create the flow. I can direct how much traffic comes from my business or my family life.

And when traffic starts backing up on one side, I can put more time there until I get back to a state where cars flow from each direction in turn, balanced.

I had to let go and realize that week was going to be a full stop on business to let the family flow through until the cars had cleared out. The following week I was able to get back to a more balanced approach.

When you are standing in the middle of the chaos, tt’s easy to believe that the 16 car pile-up is happening to you instead of for you, but the reality is that these moments are a great reminder of the opportunity you have because you are in business for yourself.

As the chief traffic controller, you can engineer a system that works for you.

Once I noticed the pile-up, it was in my best interest to not add any more cars to it. How do you handle the intersection? There are so many options and variations. What works for you?

Please comment below. I really do want to hear from you. :)

I can't wait to share this interview with you! I got so excited about the concepts Jason Howell shared about what every business owner needs to know about personal finance.

Jason was listed as a TOP Wealth Adviser by WASHINGTONIAN magazine. He is also President of Jason Howell Company a family wealth management firm that develops regular net worth parents into patriarchs and matriarchs. He does that by walking them through decisions and a unique family governance process.
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You'll definitely want to take a few minutes and listen to this interview...

Jason shares so many insightful bits of advice that are crucial for your financial well being. Some of the topics we cover include:

• All financial advisors will tell you to "know your numbers," but in the current environment, Jason says there is one thing you need to pay even more attention to.
• What you need to know about the CARES act.
• The 3 things business owners need to do (and NOT do) to go from regular net-worth to high net-worth in one generation.

Find out the answers in our 10-minute conversation right here.

P.S. You can find the entire series of interviews on YouTube in this playlist. There are some amazing resources! Each interview is less than 15 minutes long so it is easy to fit them into your day.

With everything happening in the world today, we’ve all been reminded of how important it is to take some time to re-evaluate things and look at them from a different perspective.

I get this reminder often from the most amazing source… my daughter.
You see, my daughter has anxiety. One of the things that helps her is for us to work on ‘black and white thinking.’ You see examples of black and white thinking all over right now… things are either 100% or 0%... good or bad… pass or fail… win or lose… us or them.

The problem with black and white thinking is that life rarely fits neatly into those two boxes. There are multiple sides, stories, angles, perspectives, experiences, options, and choices that beautifully color our world.

Every day my daughter and I work to challenge our black and white thinking. We have conversations about, “what else could be true?”

I’m proud to say she has become a star at unraveling this thinking and I have learned a lot from her as I help her through the process. Now that I am more aware of this “thinking trap,” I guard myself now against it (although I’m human so I do often make mistakes!).

How often do you find yourself stuck in a mindset that only gives you 2 options? Where you can either win or lose with no middle ground?

You may think the ‘middle ground’ is a compromise. That you have to make concessions in order to solve the problem before you. The issue here is that in compromise you may end up with a half solution that no one loves.

Instead, what if you held a new belief entirely. Not only 2 options but always an infinite number of options. How might that look?

This happens often with business owners. We are so wrapped up in our businesses, and so close to the problems and challenges, that we often get stuck thinking that we have limited options available to us.

That is almost never the case… but it can be hard to see it on your own.
Getting a fresh perspective from someone else can change everything and unlock new resources, ideas, and connections that you were completely unaware of before (even if they were right under your nose! They might ask the right question or give the perfect nudge to help you see “what else could be true” about the problem you are faced with.

It’s often these small shifts in perspective and focus that lead to the biggest changes.

I see it all the time in my 90-Day Productive Profits Intensive. My clients see major shifts happen in their businesses in a span of 3 months. They are accomplishing goals they thought would take all year to accomplish, and they are knocking them out of the park in 90 days.

Take Sonya for example… she had her first (but certainly not last!) $37,000 month during our time together! Fantastic, right? But that's not the full story... you see Sonya got those amazing results while working even less than she normally did.

Not only did she have record breaking revenue, but she got her life back in the process. How awesome is that?

I’m getting ready to start a new round of the 90-Day Productive Profits Intensive and there are only a few seats available. If you are ready to add another $100,000 to your bottom line this year, and you’d like to know more about the Productive Profits Intensive, hit reply and let’s chat.

I’ll be happy to share some info about the program with you, and if it sounds intriguing, we can hop on the phone and chat a bit more about it.

Sound good?
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​PS - Isn’t this image cool? It was taken as my daughter 'climbed' up a fallen
tree, one that was laying parallel to the ground, how many new perspectives exist here?

I noticed something recently and thought it might be helpful for you too. 

Have you ever heard the quote “what got you here won’t get you there” from Marshall Goldsmith?

It means that the habits, behaviors, strategies, and tools that got you to your current level of success won’t get you to your next level of success. You must evolve in order to “level up.”

This idea has become a recurring theme with some of my most successful clients.

They’ve built a strong foundation in their business and it shows in their level of success. They’ve created teams and built communities and are changing the world… but as a result of their success, they are feeling like they are tied to their business 24/7.

They’ve delegated and tried creating systems. They’ve put boundaries in place, but at the end of the day, they still feel like something has to give. 
For many of them, they realize that the potential for massive growth is there, but they are almost afraid to reach that level of success because they fear that achieving it will mean giving up the small amount of freedom they have right now. They fear having that “chained to your desk” feeling that you often hear about from people still working their corporate jobs. 
When they come to me there is one overwhelming sentiment that I hear over and over again…

“I just want to get my life back but I don’t want to slow down the growth my business is experiencing.”
 
Fortunately, that’s exactly what I do best! Helping successful and ambitious business owners (like you) to hone in on exactly what needs to happen within their business to move to that next level with greater efficiency and ease.
 
It starts with understanding that they need to approach things slightly differently. How differently is unique to each business, but there is always something that needs to shift.

And when that shift happens, everything changes, and things start happening very quickly.
 
We approach that shift in 3 steps:

1. Acknowledging what made your original business great and why.  It can be easy to get frustrated with your old methods, but you built a successful business on them so don't walk away without taking the parts that did work well for you.

2. Recognize what you have that can be transformed.  There are always elements of your business that are working beautifully. They may need a little tweak here and there, but they don’t need a total overhaul.  Your client onboarding process, networking, etc are made of the same essence but may need to be tweaked a bit to make them even more efficient and profitable.

3.Let go of the parts that just won't work anymore.  This can be hard to do, but it’s critical for your success. Some things that worked before are just not going to work moving forward with your new goals. Sometimes you need to just let go. Period.  And that’s ok. Say thank you and move forward.

Are you ready to stop messing around with your time and get real results? If so, going at it alone is no longer an option. It’s time to reach the growth you know is possible.

It’s time to take that idea that is just swirling around in your mind and make it a reality so that you can make the changes to the world that you feel called to make.
  
I’d love to help.

My client, Frank, was where you are. In fact, he believed that, having worked with a coach before, he already had everything that he needed but, like so many others, what got him to that first level of success wasn’t working to get him to where he wanted to go.

Frank joined me in the Momentum Accountability Program. Here’s what he had to say about our work together:

“Nettie’s program helps you think about and restructure the things you think you have a handle on, but actually, don’t. I made the best decision in my entrepreneurial life by partnering up with Nettie and receiving the accountability I needed. She really grounds you and puts you into a state of focus that you will never know existed in your world. And... Her program isn’t just about accountability, it’s about action and truly driving home the key elements of your business that need to be put into action. Working with her on this has been a true blessing for me and I can’t thank her enough for helping me along my journey of true entrepreneurial success.”

If you are ready for success, let’s talk. No pressure. No obligation. Just a chance to see if we might be a good fit to work together to move your business forward and give you your life (and time) back in the process.

I think we can all agree that 2020 has not gone the way we expected it to.It most certainly has not gone the way we wanted it to.But here’s the good news… we are officially past the halfway point in the year.

We’ve learned a lot and we realize that we need to make adjustments to how we do things, but now it’s time to take those lessons and tackle the second half of the year with a renewed focus on achieving your goals.
Let’s pretend we have a “reset button” for 2020, shall we?

I use this exercise at the start of each year with my clients, but it feels right to do it again for our 2020 Do-Over…
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1. Out with the old! Clear out files, projects, receipts, digital files that reflect past work you are no longer doing. Archive if needed and delete to give yourself a fresh start. (handling files now makes tax time much easier!)
   
   
2. Spend a morning listing all of your accomplishments and the lessons you’ve learned so far this year. Once you have a good list, make a note of 'how' you achieved those successes or what changed with those lessons. It's easy to forget what we have accomplished when we are moving forward but we can learn from our successes and our challenges equally.
   
   
3. Review your calendar. We’ve all had to make changes to plans for in person events, travel, and other things that look very different now from what they did 6 months ago. What can you let go of to make room for as you create your new 2020 plan? Add the 'big stuff' onto your calendar to give yourself a framework moving forward.
   
   
4. Vision - Wave a magic wand. Write yourself a letter six months from now explaining all that you have accomplished in the last half of 2020 (despite all of the Corona-craziness). This clarifying exercise can help you see what will be important in the coming months.
   
   
5. Break down your plan - on 2 separate sheets of paper (a digital file works, too if you print it or save as your phone wallpaper) - list what must be accomplished in each of the remaining quarters of the year. Work from the end (Dec 31, 2020) back to the starting point.

If you are ready to hit that reset button and start your 2020 do-over, and you would like to know more about how to create your own recipe for the business you desire, let’s talk.

It’s easy, just a 15-minute conversation to see where you are, where you would like to go, and what’s getting in the way.

It may just be the one conversation that changes everything for you.