Do you have a big goal for this New Year?
Do you want to substantially increase the number of clients that you have this year, or your income?
Do you want to have a bigger impact on the lives of your clients or team members?
If that’s you, then most likely you’ve been thinking about your goals for this New Year. You’ve been thinking about the actions that you want to take that might be different from last year.
I invite you to turn your thinking upside down and look not just at new things you want to add in but to also look at what you want to release.
This is the first in a series of videos about what you’re going to have to give up in order to go up this year.
Today I’m talking about the difference between your comfort zone and your growth zone.
One of my favorite sayings is, “There’s no comfort in your growth zone and there’s no growth in your comfort zone.”
These two zones are completely different from each other. Every second in your business you’re in one or the other, you can’t be in both.
When you’re in your growth zone, it may feel uncomfortable, you may be doing things that don’t feel natural or that have you questioning yourself.
When you’re in your comfort zone, it all feels really good but it’s not moving your business forward in any way. Your comfort zone is like a rut. You’ve fallen into it. It feels really comfortable. The end results may make you miserable: not enough clients, not enough income, not enough impact, but you know every step of that particular rut and path.
What are those activities that are in your comfort zone? They’re typically things that help you feel busy but they don’t move your business forward. That can include things like obsessively checking your email, spending a lot of time on social media in an unplanned, not strategic kind of way, and just that general time suck of surfing the Internet. If you’re a home-based business entrepreneur then you’ve got a whole plethora of personal activities that you can be doing during the business day as well that fall into that comfort zone place.
For me, one of them is filing my emails out of my email inbox. When I find myself filing unimportant emails just to make sure that every email from the day is taken care of (vs. filing the important emails that I do want to save), then I know that I need to stop that and switch over back to more effective activities.
Your growth zone consists of the activities that are making a difference for your business. These activities connect you with opportunities, with relationships, with prospects. Depending on your business, that might include making phone calls to book parties or following up from networking meetings, or looking for speaking engagements. It can also include back-end activities in your business like solidifying your hostess coaching or if you have an internet-based business, creating more effective email autoresponders.
These growth zone activities move your business forward. So if you want to make that bigger impact this year than last year, if you want to have more clients and team members this year than last year, if you want to have more income this year than last year, you’ve got to focus in on these growth activities.
I invite you over the next two days to really track which of these zones you’re in throughout the day. Your comfort zone activities are like red flags. When you see these that’s a sign that you need to switch back over in to your growth zone.
When you can be in your growth zone consistently, every day, not just for 10 minutes a day but for an extended period of time each day, how will that affect your business? How many prospects would that bring you in touch with? How many potential new clients could you have? What kind of impact could you make on the world around you? How many people’s health or happiness or financial security could be affected by you spending more time in your growth zone?
I bet that number’s a lot. I invite you to think about what that is for you, keep track of which zone you’re in and keep moving steadily out of that comfort zone and into your growth zone. Your comfort zone is the first thing that you’re going to need to give up in order to go up in this New Year!
CALL TO ACTION
Write down what’s in your comfort zone. List the tasks that keep you feeling busy and secure, yet don’t advance your business.
Write down what’s in your growth zone. Make a list of the tasks that are proven to help your business grow.
For the next 2 days, keep an eye on how much time you’re spending in your comfort zone vs. how much time you’re spending in your growth zone. The bigger the time in your comfort zone, the slower your business is growing.
How will that ratio of comfort zone to growth zone time affect your 2015 goals?
If an outside opinion and expert mentoring on mindset, marketing or leadership is the support you need NOW, to keep you more easily in your growth zone and move your business to a new level, then I invite you to contact me for a complimentary private call. On this call, we’ll explore your business goals, what’s getting in the way and whether coaching together makes sense. I am not attached to the outcome of this call. You can easily contact me at success@marcystahl.com.
