If you are in need of someone to hold the space for you to take your next big leaps, here are a few things you should do before and during the mentoring relationship:

Research Your Mentor

Decisions feel better when we do our due diligence… yes, sometimes, you do have to follow your heart and let it guide you.  I do that, however, I always make sure to research and run the numbers on my mentoring investments.  Has this person accomplished on a bigger scale what I want to accomplish next?  Has he or she been there and done that and do they have the numbers to prove it?  Ask WHY you are choosing them as a mentor?  Is it based on numbers or something more personal. I like it to be both, but not one or the other.

Listen to Your Mentor

For some reason, as long as I have been a coach, I have people each year hire me in the range of $25,000 to $100,000 to teach them methods to grow their business and then proceed to use their valuable time with me having me tell them why methods from other teachers will or won’t work.  If you hire someone, let them teach you their methods so you can both move as fast as possible to those profits. Your mentor will teach her methods the best–they are the ones she or he knows backwards and forwards. Remember, there is indeed more than one path to success, but it is really hard to be on two different paths at the same time.

Know That Your Mentor is Human

Sooner or later, you will see that your mentor is human and if you have been holding them up on a very high pedestal, it could get in the way of the effectiveness of your relationship from that point on.   Do not let that happen. Separate their faults from their results. And by faults, I do not mean lack of integrity…  we are assuming your chosen mentor is full of integrity.  I have seen many clients get in the way of their results because so and so that they were following was less than a God.  It is unrealistic to have those expectations and I believe that some people unconsciously do this as a way to self-sabotage their own success. Let’s face it… isn’t it easier to blame our results on external forces than see how we play a part in them.

Understand the ROI of Mentoring

The mindset I always have when making a large investment with a mentor is that this is a lifetime investment in my career and in the security of my family.  As an entrepreneur, each mentor always helps me to expand much farther than I could alone. That expansion drives my ideas and behaviors for the rest of my life. So remember, even if you make a large investment one year, you may not recoup it in the same year.  A lot of variables (roadblocks) can keep you from moving as fast as you like. Remember that your mentor will not be taking their knowledge back at the end of the year.   You get to keep that knowledge and experience and move forward into the next year of possibilities.

Lastly, and this is a big one…

when considering your comfort level around the mentoring investment amount. Remember that if you aren’t willing to invest that amount in yourself, how can you expect others to turn around and invest in you and your business later.  You have to walk the journey before them.

Want To Use This Article In Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Sheri McConnell is the CEO of the Smart Women’s Institute of Entrepreneurial Learning (formerly the National Assn of Women Writers-2001). You can visit Sheri, access her free article archive, and grab lots of free stuff at http://www.smartwomeninstitute.com. Sheri lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband, their four children, a weenie dog, and three hermit crabs.

Last week we covered Simple Steps one through five, you can read them here. I hope you enjoyed them and don’t underestimate how powerful they are in your life. Now let’s move on to number six…

Six – Create A FUN JOB

Remember, you are the architect of your life and your business.  You can change ANYTHING at ANY TIME. Watch out for the times you will inevitably go on autopilot and find yourself not liking something you created.  Also remember that you are the mirror in your life and business. Your clients, your team, your vendors are all reacting to the the energy you send out. Be authentic, dependable, fun, and abundant in everything you do and you will find that you have created an incredibly FUN JOB for yourself and those you have chosen to work with.

Seven – Position Yourself

Pay attention to your choices.  Subconsciously, everyone is making assumptions about you based on what you say yes and no to.  For instance, do you write articles or author books, do you speak at workshops or provide keynotes to conferences, do you run a company of one or have a team…  the list goes on and on.  People are making assumptions all the time whether we like it or not.  You need to be aware of this and you need to leverage this human behavior in everything you do from now on.  I have a long list of ways I have my clients think bigger and act bigger in this area. 

Eight – Slow Down

The paradox of time in business… Time is money and what I have learned is that the more realistic and balanced I became about the concept of managing and leveraging time, the more magnetic my company became. When I respected myself enough to create a schedule that included time for me to just “be”, I was able to “be” whatever my team, clients, or family needed later on.  Slowing down also allows us to create in a conscious way so that we avoid mistakes in our lives and in our businesses.

Nine – Decide What You Will Leverage

In business, we have time, money, and expertise to leverage. That’s it. You can create more leverage by creating something once to sell over and over again.  Could be a membership, an infoproduct, a software, a manufactured product, and so on.  If you must provide a service, then go directly to managing others to provide that service and you skip a huge hurdle right away and introduce scalability (leverage) to your business.  There are many more examples… your job today is to start leveraging something as soon as possible.

Ten – Write It All Down

Busy CEOs such as ourselves have a huge amount of information in our heads. Create processes in your life to to get it all out of your head and on paper or in virtual systems.  I keep track of various parts of the business on a 4 x 6 write on wipe off board on my office wall as well as using Google Calendar, Google Email, and Basecamp to manage all the different parts of my life and business.  This allows me to move from project to project faster as well as manage a team and a family because everything is written down somewhere.  Be patient with yourself while you work on creating ways to track information you consistently need access to.

Want To Use This Article In Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Sheri McConnell is the CEO of the Smart Women’s Institute of Entrepreneurial Learning (formerly the National Assn of Women Writers-2001). You can visit Sheri, access her free article archive, and grab lots of free stuff at http://www.smartwomeninstitute.com. Sheri lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband, their four children, a weenie dog, and three hermit crabs.

Success often comes to those that take a series of some times very easy steps… what can make the journey difficult is when you look too far in front of you and get overwhelmed or paralyzed. Sound familiar?  Here are 5 of the 10 steps that I find really powerful for my clients.  Note that some of them require physical work and may take more time but are easy mentally. While others can happen in a mere moment and can be much harder because they require a mental shift.

One – Organize and Purge

Remove clutter for clarity.  If you start here first and organize parts of your life, you will be far more productive. Bring in a 3rd party if needed and clear away the old life to make room for the new.

Two – Buy Simple Planning Tools

My favorite CEO planning tools are a giant Write On Wipe Off Board (my idea of being in Nerd heaven) and large Post-it Notes.  Both are for planning new ways to work the M’s. Marketing, Money, and Mindsets.  I use these tools to work on my own business and my clients’ businesses.  For a wall sized board option, try this large inexpensive board you can get at Office Depot.

Three – Plan Now to Step Up and Step In

Here is my method for planning… note I have 4 kids, two weenie dogs, and a team to manage. Having so much on my plate has forced me to cut through to the highest ROI strategies. This method is all you need to get going and get in the trenches, don’t over think everything. People just want to take some steps with you and accomplish small successes one at a time. Get your brilliance out there so they can get started and let them grow while you grow.

Plan what to do next in your business using this method:

• Pick a theme for the next six months or for the year. Mine this year is: Speaking at Events, last year it was: Do More PR on TV and Radio) I have always found that when I am focused on one theme and take small steps toward that theme, the universe listens because I am very clear. When I am confused, the universe has absolutely no idea what to give me.
• Loosely map out the big projects and events for the year. I do this across the bottom of my big Write On Wipe Off Board.  The open months tell me where I have room for the new creations!
• Now, move and take the next 3 steps in front of you. Speed is money, delegate and choose steps with a higher ROI, and you get to higher profits a lot quicker. Need help, hire a mentor or coach to help you sift through your decisions so you can learn how to do this on your own.

Four – Know the Three Things That Most Often Get in The Way of Your Dreams

Over the years, I have found that the following three areas are the most common areas that hold us back. I give them to you today as a gift so that your blind spots can be illuminated.

• Indecisiveness – Decisions are always forward movement even if they end up being the wrong decisions.
• Slow Speed – Repeat after me. “I am liquid, I am not rigid and I flow with my business eroding away all obstacles.”
• Faith In Yourself – This is the number one reason we don’t make decisions and move to slow.  You have to believe it before you can achieve it.  The best coach in the world can not help you believe. This happens within you.

Five – Commit to Achieve and then Recommit

Once you have developed faith in yourself and in your own abilities (and there is no other way to do this but to dive into the trenches and do it), then you only need to commit to achieve each goal you set.  Once we have faith in ourselves, business becomes a rinse n repeat process… aka, a behavior of you committing and recommitting over and over again.

Click Here for Part Two – Steps 6 – 10

Want To Use This Article In Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Sheri McConnell is the CEO of the Smart Women’s Institute of Entrepreneurial Learning (formerly the National Assn of Women Writers-2001). You can visit Sheri, access her free article archive, and grab lots of free stuff at http://www.smartwomeninstitute.com. Sheri lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband, their four children, a weenie dog, and three hermit crabs.

Beauty in Life Comes from Letting Go
by Sheri McConnell

In life and in business I have discovered that beautiful synchronicities show up in all parts of our life when we just let go.  Here are just a few areas you can begin to practice letting go.  Even though some of these areas might seem focused more on the personal side of our lives, rest assured that they completely affect your business too. And isn’t it such a beautiful world to live in where we can allow our businesses to help us grow.

Let Go to Love

Letting go and trusting others to have the best intentions for you. Let go and trust yourself to love others enough and hold the space for them to be healthy. I’ve discovered that we are the mirror of LOVE at all times. I receive as much as I give and I can only love others as much as I love myself.  We all have to let go of the fear of not being loved back.

Let Go to Create Profits

Letting go and trusting yourself that you will do what it takes to follow through to make profits in your business.  I’ve learned that making money in business is just about letting go of low ROI behaviors. It is about letting go of our ego and learning from others.  Profits are made when we let go of the way the other business does it at least part of the time so we can innovate.  Without letting go and living in RISK, you can not make profits in business.

Let Go of Weight

Letting go of foods and drinks that don’t feed your body and soul.  Letting go of the urgency to have food now and then taking the time to prepare real food.  Letting go of all processed foods and realizing that beauty in life comes from the earth. Letting go of using food as a way to not deal with everything else.

Let Go of Pain

Letting go of past pain and releasing it forever. Drama is just the reliving of pain over and over again in some way. If we don’t process through the pain that occurs in our lives, it shows up in all of our personal and professional relationships.  It is extremely hard to be of service when pain is keeping us from trusting our customers, our clients, our vendors, and most importantly ourselves. Take a chance and let go of the past so you can move forward.

Let Go of Religion

Letting go of any belief that does not support that we are all one. Any decision ever made that imposes a division between you and the other person is the opposite of letting go. Religion (not spirituality) is about holding on instead of letting go.

Smart Call to Action for YOU today: Let go and LOVE and let your business be the catalyst for positive change today.

Want To Use This Article In Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Sheri McConnell is the CEO of the Smart Women’s Institute of Entrepreneurial Learning (formerly the National Assn of Women Writers-2001). You can visit Sheri, access her free article archive, and grab lots of free stuff at http://www.smartwomeninstitute.com. Sheri lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband, their four children, a weenie dog, and three hermit crabs.

(Chapter 15 Excerpt of Smart Women Know Their WHY)

Your relationship with money and how you feel about it determines your success. Period. If you feel shame when you have debt or if you are paralyzed when making a certain investment because of a relative number, then your money mindsets are affecting your results. To be successful, it’s crucial to begin a lifelong study of healthy mindsets and behaviors where your money is concerned. Mindsets are energy, just as money is energy. And you can literally attract money by learning how to experience money in a healthy way. Here are three money mindsets you can learn that will help you grow your business.

Customers Want To See You Invest In Your Business Before They Are Willing To Invest In You

Have you ever visited a website and subconsciously decided this website wasn’t worth your time or money? Of course you have! Internet visitors do it everyday. Yet, many business owners think they can convert website visitors to members without putting their best foot forward. They expect visitors to log onto their less-than-stellar site and invest in them when they first aren’t willing to find a way to invest in themselves. Trust me, I know cash flow issues. But if you understand the basic rule of “invest in your website and your customers will invest in you,” then you’re ahead of at least 75% of businesses existing on the Internet today. And it doesn’t cost as much as you would think. The costs have come down substantially over the last five years as innovative new companies have popped up to serve online businesses. There are three core areas I have my clients invest in to get the highest ROI on their websites. They are:

• Invest in the latest technologies, such as WordPress.org, that allow you to integrate multiple innovative plugins and blogging software.
• Invest in professional copywriting or invest in learning the skill yourself.
• Invest in a good designer who understands converting visitors to paid customers and/or members.

Spending Money Creates An Energy Flow And Customers Are A Form Of Energy

Money loves speed. People love speed. Since money is energy, it likes to flow. Business expenses literally create a flow of money going out and create a space and vacuum for money to flow back in. If you aren’t spending any money on your professional development or your business, you are literally turning off the faucet to the flow of money in your company. If it doesn’t flow, it doesn’t come in or go out. Of course the goal in business is to create a positive cash flow. Cash is “queen.” As in all laws of the universe, it’s your job to find the right balance of high ROI expenses to allow revenue to flow back in. Some high ROI places to encourage positive customer energy (or customer conversion) are:

• Marketing and advertising
• Customer support
• Development of tangible passive income infoproduct

Business Debt As A Leverage Tool

Another area that almost all business owners struggle with at one time or another is the shame they have when incurring debt. Know this: a healthy business has debt during many phases of business growth. Debt is a growth tool and a form of healthy leverage you use to move yourself and your business forward. To leverage business debt exponentially, plug into passive income producing business models (see examples in Chapter 10). Cash will then flow back into the business even when you aren’t working.

Want To Use This Article In Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Sheri McConnell is the CEO of the Smart Women’s Institute of Entrepreneurial Learning (formerly the National Assn of Women Writers-2001). You can visit Sheri, access her free article archive, and grab lots of free stuff at http://www.smartwomeninstitute.com. Sheri lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband, their four children, a weenie dog, and three hermit crabs.

Perhaps you may have read the recent article by Sir Richard Branson on the Five Secrets To Business Success. I loved the article, agree with it completely and found myself still not connecting to it at the deep level I have grown accustomed to.  As a woman entrepreneur, I thought you might have felt the same.  So I offer my version of the five secrets below. Enjoy!

Live Your WHY

Women who are able to connect their business to a larger meaning or movement are more likely to create a longterm profitable business. This is because the business has a WHY for them. As they inevitably run into problems that are part of creating and running a business, they are able to sustain themselves through it all because they know how important it is that their business survive.

Be A Challenger

Successful female entrepreneurs eventually master a graceful balance of being able to challenge themselves, their clients, and the world as a whole in an way that inspires and allows people to proactively move forward on their own. These women know that by challenging their clients and customers, people know how to fish for themselves instead of showing back up hungry again later.

Inspire Your Staff To Quit

Successful women entrepreneurs create cultures in their company that are centered around growth. They walk their talk behind the scenes so much so that often their staff becomes so completely upleveled that they literally have to go out into the world and live their own purpose. Successful entrepreneurs know that this is all part of the big picture and these women or men will help them from the outside of their companies too.  Successful women entrepreneurs take pride in the growth that happens collectively from the culture they created because they know it all comes full circle and is exactly what is supposed to happen.

Be A Visionary

You guessed it.  Successful women entrepreneurs look to the future intuitively.  They don’t ask how until they are in the trenches building it. They plan around the what and the why and then once they run the numbers for profits, they jump in and just get started knowing the how will be revealed.

Create Positive Change for Others Each Day

And finally, really successful women entrepreneurs can do many things at once each day for their families, their friends, their team, their clients– all because they focus on scalable positive change.  They ask what can I do with the least amount of effort that will cause the largest ripple.

Want To Use This Article In Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Sheri McConnell is the CEO of the Smart Women’s Institute of Entrepreneurial Learning (formerly the National Assn of Women Writers-2001). You can visit Sheri, access her free article archive, and grab lots of free stuff at http://www.smartwomeninstitute.com. Sheri lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband, their four children, a weenie dog, and three hermit crabs.

The economic news of the last few years has been less than uplifting. I find myself not wanting to listen to traditional media sources. The only thing we really have control over is our thoughts…so let’s decide NOT to participate in the recession!

Small business owners have the opportunity to grow their business in a recession and wealth can be made during bad economic times. In fact, it’s probably the best time to start a business!

Here’s why:

Small business owners can be flexible.  You are small enough to change course and offer things people want when there’s a shift in preferences.  If they were building homes, now they may be remodeling instead. You can change course easily to address a new need.

Small business owners don’t have to lay off employees.  You typically aren’t overstaffed and may even be working with people overseas or as virtual employees.  I have people that work for me in the U.S. and Canada.  Some people work with virtual employees in India or the Philippines like Tim Ferriss the author of The 4 Day Workweek.

Small business owners can easily do market research.  It’s easy to get a group together like a master mind and ask them what they need.  One business owner created a “Recession Rescue” and gathered a lot of new clients.
Small business owners can market to the world.  With the internet and social media, many small business owners can look like a large company by being at the top of the search engines, outsourcing the production of information products (books, DVD’s, and CD’s), and gaining the attention of the media.  It’s a more level playing field than it’s ever been. That’s why newspapers are having trouble, because bloggers are filling a gap that the mainstream media isn’t reporting on.

Now is the time to set yourself apart and market to your niche.  Even if you work for a corporation you can set yourself apart by becoming an expert in a specialized area or focus on providing better service. Let’s decide NOT to participate in the recession and continue to thrive in spite of what others are experiencing!

Wealth advocate, Linda P. Jones, believes anyone can build wealth with the right habits, mindset, and knowledge. “The 8 Steps to Wealth” is a step-by-step process that is the roadmap to financial freedom she discovered and followed to become a millionaire at age 38. It’s the only wealth building process that begins with mindset and then gives 7 practical steps to building wealth. If you’re ready to take control of your money and your life, get your free Wealth Acti on Plan, including a report on The 8 Steps to Wealth, a mini-course, and “Will You Be Wealthy?” quiz now at: www.showmewealth.com

Read more about Linda on our faculty page – Click Here

Answers in the Dark by Sheri McConnell
Excerpted from Smart Women Know Their Why at www.smartwomenwhy.com

“Sometimes you have to let go over everything to trust that which you cannot see.”

—Unknown

Faith is a big part of living a successful life and being a successful entrepreneur. My secret is deciding to have faith in myself more than any type of external force. Notice I said the word “decision” because that’s where it starts. My journey has taught me to always intuitively know which direction to head next and when I look to find answers outside of myself, I always end up off the path a bit. It took me until I was well into my thirties to be able to trust others because of not having established trust in any form whatsoever during my childhood. For me, I had to have my own family and connect with the love I had for them, to be able to trust myself and others.

The deeper reason it’s important to be able to trust is because your heart must be full and complete in order to bring out the passion and joy for yourself and others in your life. The feeling of trust will penetrate the walls surrounding a broken heart, the pain from being alone or feeling alone. Like you, others have been in the dark and are searching for what you now know to be true. They are searching to believe in themselves in the darkest moments of their being. This is trust at its core.

Let’s talk about a few ways to learn to trust yourself, to empower you to live the life of your dreams – which could mean grow a wildly profitable business, having a huge family, authoring a series of books, or traveling the world and meeting exciting people. Shoot, your dream life could include all of these! Mine does!

Trust in Balance

If you’re moving in “auto-pilot” the heart will not shine and the days will cast heaviness in the center of your body. Balance will provide the base of being grounded to the truth. Believe in the love you have for yourself and you will come from the deepest parts of your soul.

The fastest way to develop a trusting relationship with balance is to connect with nature. This will bring the balance between work, family, love, and life. In this connection you will build the foundation to hold you up in any storm. Each day, work on getting out and seeing the beauty of nature around you. This will help make the connection stronger and remind you of just how small we are in the universe. The more you bring in nature and hold the thought of each molecule and atom circling in your path, the more balanced you will become.

I live in San Antonio, Texas. We’re blessed here with nine annual months of beautiful weather, enabling me to connect with nature more often than many. If you live in a more extreme weather climate, do whatever you can to create the sounds and smells of the outdoors in your home during the cold winter months.

Trust in You

True power will emerge when you’re engaged in being of service. All you have to do is trust that the power is given to you to serve and that if you serve, the world is abundant. This doesn’t mean when running a business, you don’t charge for products and services. You can’t produce quality products and services and effectively help your customers if there isn’t an exchange of money. Trusting in your own power to lead others through your products and services is the inner structure that allows the new ideas and the new beginnings to come forth.

Trust in Energy

The innocence of childhood energy is what we tap into when we are at our center. Remember the feeling of being with oneself and having no cares or even a negative thought to speak of?

This energy still exists within you. Trust yourself to bring this calmness into your thinking when you’re taking on the biggest obstacles and conflicts. Tapping into this energy will help you to reduce stress and become heart centered. This constant energy, felt by others, enables them to rejoice in the knowledge that this power is also within them. And knowing about this energy will help you break the barriers of negative energy in any room.

Our truest sense of self comes from trusting in our energy and the energy signals we get from others. Your goal is to have no barriers or boundaries where energy is concerned. To be with the energy of each moment. In the present moment, there’s no fear, no doubt. Only you in your power, experiencing all of life’s joys presented to you each day.

Stuck in Your Journey?

Many people get stuck in their journey. They relive the worst parts of it over and over, in an unloving way. This vicious circle of disappointment in self, circles them right back around to the same negative starting place. I’ve been there and I get it.

Instead of getting stuck on your journey, take the mistakes you made and will make and love yourself as if you were a child who is learning. Even as adults, in some areas of growth we are only children and we must be gentle with ourselves to thrive and grow through the journey. What I know to be true is we’re all searching for a place of belonging and validation. You can create this for others by being a leader who spreads passion and love.

Your journey is a gift because it provides the wisdom you will need to go out and create positive change in the world. Your goal is to learn from your past and do better as soon as you know better. Be strong and have courage to change. Trust me, I know how hard it is to move past comfortable dysfunctional patterns. But the rewards of doing so allow you to stand outside yourself and get a good look at who you have been and where you are now. What surfaces is love. And then you can shine this love for others… because, you see, without the journey, you would not have this gift.

Because of my journey (see chapter one), I was able to survive the darkness and can now shine a light for others who are now in the shadows of darkness themselves. They need help from someone who has been there and who has conquered the fear of internal and external chaos. I do this by casting light on dark situations and allowing my words to fill the gap between doubt and love. I invite you to find your passions (your gifts) and cast light for others too.

Want To Use This Article In Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Sheri McConnell is the CEO of Sheri McConnell Companies, Inc. and the president and founder of two global organizations, the Smart Women’s Institute of Entrepreneurial Learning (formerly the National Assn of Women Writers-2001) and the Global Institute of Associations-GIA. You can visit Sheri, access her free article archive, and grab lots of free stuff at http://www.smartwomeninstitute.com or http://www.giaconnect.com. Sheri lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband, their four children, a weenie dog, and three hermit crabs.

The ABC’s on Creating a Back-to-School PR Campaign
by Stacey and Regina (Smart Women Institute Faculty Members)

As always, journalists are looking for new ways to cover an “old” topic. This can include a vast array of experts and products, including fashion trends; supplies; food and nutrition; technology; organization; after-school programs; online safety; street safety; school-life balance; and more. Leverage this seasonal opportunity by finding a way to insert your expertise or product into the story.

In order to ensure that you “make the grade,” keep the following steps in mind as you develop your campaign:

A: Advance Planning - Most of us have had to cram for an exam at some point in our lives, but avoid compromising your results in your PR campaign by allowing yourself sufficient time to plan your campaign and put it into action. Give yourself at least a month to develop any ideas, promotions, press materials and/or partnerships; and then several weeks to pitch your story to the press.

B: Broadcast Your Message - Once you’ve planned your campaign, it’s time to get it out to the world. Pitch newspapers, radio, TV and online outlets (as appropriate for your goals and objectives) to broadcast your message.

C: Collect Coverage - Always make sure to gather any clippings or appearances you’ve done. These can be leveraged for years to come in both your online and offline efforts. Take your traditional press and utilize it to further expand your business opportunities.

Read more about Stacey & Regina on our faculty page – Click Here

The Real Reason You Do Agreements
by Alexis Martin Neely (Smart Women Institute Faculty Member)

I’ve talked with so many business owners recently who are doing business with undocumented agreements.

Hand shake deals.

They tell me they intend to get it done, but we both know the truth … they won’t.

I get it – I experience a lot of my own personal resistance to getting agreements documented.

Getting written agreements in place brings up a lot of stuff that can be challenging to deal with.

Just the other day though I was reminded of how important it is.

Tina Forsyth hired me to create custom Terms of Service for the website for her THRIVE Hiring System and a template agreement that business owners who invest in the THRIVE Hiring System can use before hiring.

Before I began work, I sent Tina an agreement confirming what I understood the scope of work to be and it’s a good thing I did because I was slightly wrong about what I thought I was doing for her.

Had I gotten right to work without sending her the agreement for review/signature (as many of you are doing!), I would have wasted my time and hers.

This is why you do agreements – clarity, certainty, the best possible chance of success in your relationships, which means more work with less time and more ease.

Who knew you could get all that from an agreement?!?

Do you use agreements in all your business dealings? If not, why not? How can I help?

Read more about Alexis on our faculty page – Click Here