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If you’ve been following this series and doing the work along with me, you created a vision for summer with your family and a vision for your business over the next few months. Now that you know how you want to feel and have an idea of what you want summer to look like, it’s time to create some clear goals.

Set your business and family goals for the summer

I know from experience that if I don’t set goals for the summer, no matter how great my intentions are and how big my vision is, I end up wandering around a bit aimlessly. We go to bed too late and sleep in too long. The projects the  kids and I talked about doing don’t get started, and the places we talked about visiting remain on the list. And, before we know it, we’re gearing up for another school year.Time doesn’t wait for us to get it together.

It’s the same with business. Without goals and a game plan, that website may still be in the conceptual stage, the “home office” may still look like the guest room, and those networking opportunities come and go.

If this sounds a bit familiar, then you probably understand how having having some goals can help you bring your vision to life. When you have well-defined goals:

• It’s easier to focus on what has to be done. In fact, your intent focus will attract the resources, people and situations that will inspire and move you more quickly to your goal.
• Life is easier. Once your goals are broken down, they can be scheduled into your day. You can set clearer boundaries between your work and your personal time, and those boundaries will be easier to explain to your children. Having a plan in place lets you be more present.
• Your children will benefit from more predictability, and your business will also be happy because it’s getting attention, and progress is being made.

Keeping SMARTER goals in mind, some of my summer goals include:

1. Completed detailed outlines for four teleclasses for Fall coaching group by June 30th.
2. A detailed marketing calendar and the launch of marketing efforts for Fall coaching group on website and social media outlets by July 15th. (For #1 and #2, I will ask my coaching mastermind group to hold me accountable and I will report my progress at our bi-weekly meetings.)
3. Each Friday during summer, meet with kids to plan activities and outings for the following week. (This will be scheduled in my Planner Pad, and I’m sure my kids will also hold me accountable!)

What are your goals for the summer? Start working on them now! In addition, create a framework for keeping yourself accountable, whether it’s your husband, a business partner, a coach, or your kids!

For Part 4 of this series, we will take a look at what’s working and not working, and you can think of new systems that can be put in place to help support you in meeting your summer goals.

These posts may also inspire you:

1. 5 Steps to Summer Sanity: Family Vision (Part 1)
2. 5 Steps to Summer Sanity: Business Vision (Part 2)
3. 5 Steps to Summer Sanity: Breaking It Down (Part 5)

Focus on the unique benefits your customers will experience by hiring you. Sure, you can talk about what everyone else talks about in their marketing materials. However, in order for you to stand out, you want to be sure and highlight the problems and solutions that only you can solve for them.

How do you do that? If you’ve determined your niche (and even if you’re still working on that), you will want to create a clear picture of your prospective clients. Depending on your field, you will be asking different questions. Here are some questions a birth doula or childbirth educator may ask herself:

1. What is their age range?
2. What is their marital status?
3. What is their income level?
4. What is their faith/ethnic background?
5. Is this their first birth?
6. What is their birth philosophy? Do they have one? Does that matter?
7. Where do they plan to have their baby?
8. Is their birth high risk?
9. Does your client have specific needs or desires?

Once you have a  clear picture of who your ideal client is, make a list of problems they have, AND the ways you can solve those problems. Get really creative and draw upon your unique skills. What special gems makes you different from other practitioners in your area?

Finally, look at the solutions you have to offer. What unique benefits will clients experience by working with you? When creating your list, focus on how your solutions will affect them physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. The more prospective clients can get a feel for you from your marketing materials, the more likely they will feel a connection with you.

Your prospective clients will likely want to know more about your background and training, but before they consider that, they will want to know how you can help them. In order for you to stand out from the crowd, identify that something special that only you can give, that your clients will really want and benefit from having you on their team.

So what makes you special? Things to consider:

1. Do you do home visits or private sessions/classes?
2. Do you offer additional services, like massage or nutritional counseling, or lactation support?
3. Are you a one stop shop, ie: you provide childbirth education, birth and postpartum doula services, and breastfeeding support?
4. Do you have special partnerships with other practitioners and can offer special discounts for their services if they purchase yours?
5. Do you work in a practice where clients get the benefits of being served by you and your fellow practitioners?

This is just a starting point to get you started. If you are just starting out, you may not have a clear picture of who your ideal client is or what makes you special. The great thing is, you can change your focus as you go along and gain more experience!

For your particular field, what questions have you explored to determine your niche?

These posts may also inspire you:

1. Marketing Basics for The Birth Professional – 6 Strategies
2. Give Thanks To Those Who Have Helped Your Business
3. Should You Include Your Prices On Your Marketing Materials and Website?

Specific, and the more specific they are the better.

Measurable. That which you measure will be treasured, so think about what will be the measurement of your achievement of your goal.

Accountability. Who or what are you accountable to for the goal? Being accountable to something or someone other than yourself will tend to encourage you to keep your promise to complete the goal.

Realistic. It’s good to think big, but setting unrealistic goals will lead to discouragement. Start with smaller goals that are easily within your reach, then begin to challenge yourself more.

Time based. Decide your time-table for completion, and stick to it. Make sure whoever is holding you accountable knows your deadline.

Exciting. Exciting goals will be met far sooner than boring, bland goals.

Recorded. Write down your goal and post it in a place where you can look at it every day.

Exercise:

1. Take a look at the goals you created yesterday. Adjust them as needed to make them into SMARTER goals.
2. When you’re satisfied with them, make three copies.
3. Place one copy should be posted near your work area so you will see them every day.
4. Put the second copy into your purse or day planner in case you need to refer to them, add to the list or check them off your list if you’re away at the office.
5. The third copy will go to someone else who can hold you accountable, like your significant other, a colleague, a friend, or a coach. Be sure to have them check in with you at the deadlines you created for yourself to see if you met them, or to ensure that you’re on track.

Join me tomorrow for more planning tips! If you’ve been following along each day, I’d love to hear how you’re doing so far. Send me an email or a message on Twitter or Facebook and let me know how this is working for you. What insights have you picked up while doing these exercises?

These posts may also inspire you:

1. 5 Tips for Manifesting Your Business Goals
2. The Outer Work of Building Your Birth Business – Part 4
3. 5 Steps to Summer Sanity: Goal Setting (Part 3)

Stephen Covey, the author of several “7 Habits” books, writes in “First Things First”, writes about how humans have four fundamental needs to feel complete. They are:

1. Physical – our basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, health and economic well-being.
2. Social – our need to relate to others, to love, be loved, and to belong.
3. Mental - our need to continue learning to develop and grow.
4. Spiritual – our need to have a sense of meaning, purpose, contribution and personal congruence or alignment.

In a simple sentence, Covey says the “essence of these needs is captured in the phrase ‘to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy’.”

This is another facet of looking at the whole picture of our lives. Yesterday you got to see how balanced you were in specific areas of your life. The model that I’m now presenting melds those areas into these four facets of our basic needs. Stephen Covey goes on to explain in his book that when we are able to view these needs in a way that overlaps, as demonstrated here, we can see how they interrelate. In order to feel fulfilled and joyful in our lives, we must take care of ourselves in all areas of our lives. When one area suffers, it affects the whole.

Do you see the section in the middle that is red? This is called “The Fire Within“. Covey explains, “Fulfilling the four needs in an integrated way is like combining elements in chemistry. When we reach a ‘critical mass’ of integration, we experience spontaneous combustion–an explosion of inner synergy that ignites the fire within and gives vision, passion, and a spirit of adventure to life.

The key to the fire within is our spiritual need to leave a legacy. It transforms other needs into capacities for contribution. Food, money, health, education, and love become resources to reach out and help fill the unmet needs of others.”

Exercise:

Think about a time in your life when you felt really alive. Answer these questions:

• What was going on in your life at that time?
• Who were the people in your life?
• Were your basic needs being met?
• Were you mentally stimulated?
• Were you doing something meaningful?
• Would you say that all your four fundamental needs were met in that moment, and that what you felt was a Fire Within?

I want to sit with this memory for a while, and when you’re ready, answer the following questions. You may want to do this with a friend or partner.

• How would it feel if you could live your life from day-to-day, feeling this Fire Within?
• Picture yourself at the end of 2009, and you are living life with this Fire Within. Close your eyes with you feet flat on the ground, and really feel this Fire. Where are you? What are you doing? Who are you with? How do you look? Where is your family? What does your business look like? How much money is flowing directly to you? Who have you become?

Now, I’d like to think about what you need to do to get from where you right now, today, to where you are at the end of 2009:

• What do you need to take care of your physical needs of food, clothing, shelter, health and economic well-being?
• What do you need to take care with your relationships? Are you willing to let go of relationships that are draining your energy? What can you do to actively nurture the relationships that mean the most to you? Are there people in particular or a group of people with whom you’d like to create relationships with? How will you do that?
• What do you need to learn in the next year to become more effective in your work and your life? What new skills do you want to learn, and what skills do you want to improve? Do you have certifications to complete? Workshops that you’d like to take? Do you want to learn more about business, or becoming a better parent, or something as fun as art, music or gardening classes?
• What activities inspire you? What centers and grounds you? What actions can you take on a regular basis that calm you, give you joy, and allows you to lose track of time?

Working on your doula practice means working on your life. When you feel mostly joyful in your life (let’s be realisitic — we all have bad days now and again!), your work will flow more easily for you. Your life will flow more easily for you. When all your fundamental needs are cared for, you have the energy, or the Fire Within, to serve others more fully. You will feel less like you’re beating against a wall and more like everything is falling into place.

The exercise you’ve just completed are the goals you will take to live your best life in 2009. What do you think about that? Send me an email, make a comment below.

Join me tomorrow and we’ll explore more deeply into ways to accomplish the goals you’ve just set for 2009. Have a great day!

These posts may also inspire you:

1. Incorporating the Big Rocks Into Your Life
2. Stress + Six Weeks + One Book + One Fire = Gifts of Perspective
3. How Balanced are the Various Areas of Your Life?

• Are your relationships satisfying?
• Are you getting enough self-care time?
• Is your health where you’d like it to be?
• Is your home a peaceful, comfortable (or lively, if that fits your personality better) place to be?

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, think about how these other areas of your life affect your ability to enjoy and focus on your business. If these areas were to improve, would you have more energy and be more productive in your work?

Exercise:

Here is a great way to get a visual perspective of how your balanced your life is.

1. On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being least satisfied and 10 being very satisfied, how would you rate the following areas of your life:

• Physical Environment
• Career/Business
• Money
• Health
• Fun & Recreation
• Personal Growth
• Significant Other/Romance
• Friends and Family?

2. Print or draw the following pie chart, then draw a line in each pie piece that matches your level of satisfaction. Color it in for a more dramatic effect.

Examine your results. How do you feel when you look at your Wheel of Life? Are there some areas that could use some attention? If it looks and feels pretty balanced to you, congratulations! If not, don’t despair. Awareness is the first step in making changes in your life.

This is a great exercise to do at least once a year. “Balance” doesn’t necessarily mean that all areas in your life will be rated a “10″. You will find that at different times in your life, some areas will be given more attention than others, and it is always in flux. If you notice that something is lacking, however, this wheel can give you a visual representation of your life at a certain point in time, and you can make a deliberate effort to make changes to help you move toward a more satisfying and joyful life.

Did you have any “aha” moments from doing this exercise? Add a comment below.

Now that you’ve done some reflection, taken a look at your values, and have created your wheel of life, you are at a good place to do some goal setting. Join me next time for our first goal-setting session!

These posts may also inspire you:

1. Incorporating the Big Rocks Into Your Life
2. What Will It Take To Feel The Fire Within?
3. The Inner Work of Building Your Birth Business – The Spiritual Aspect – Part 2

• When you choose to do an activity, explore a field of study, school or parent your children in a particular way, your values are what drives you and keeps you going. They keep you motivated to stay the course and see things through.
• When you value something, you tend to pay more attention to it, nurture it, expand it.
• When choosing to take on a new project or responsibility, see how it resonates with your values. If it doesn’t, you’ll know that you can either say “no” to it, or find some way to outsource or get help with it so it gets done.

Exercise:

Today, you are going to explore your core values.

Here is a short list of values: Love, Family, Respect, Courage, Honesty, Leadership, Power, Intelligence, Beauty, Happiness, Freedom, Justice, Learning, Trust, Compassion, Success, Kindness, Humor, Fame, Adventure, Ambition, Excellence, Diligence, Curiosity, Loyalty.

If you want a more exhaustive list, Steve Pavlina offers one here.

In looking at this list, what would you consider to be your top five values? If you’re not sure, here’s another way to figure out your values: Think of 3-5 influential people in your life. They can include people you know personally or otherwise. What characteristics do they display that you admire? Once you have that list, read it again slowly. You admire these traits because they are in you too. These are your values, whether you live them actively in your life or not

When you’ve determined your top five values, write a sentence that explains what it means to you in your life. This helps solidify what these values mean to you.

Finally, you may want to post these up somewhere in your home, or put them on an index card and carry them with you. Become conscious of your values. During the busy holiday season, we sometimes have a tendency to overextend ourselves. If you are asked to do something and you’re not sure whether to accept it, take a look at your values. If what you’re being asked to do is a match to your values, see if you can take it on. Otherwise, decline.

How else can you use your values as a guide?

Join me next time and I’ll show you how you can determine how balanced your life is.

These posts may also inspire you:

1. How Balanced are the Various Areas of Your Life?
2. The Inner Work of Building Your Birth Business – The Spiritual Aspect – Part 2
3. Building a Business Based on Values – Part 1

Exercise:

To plan for the next year, here are some questions you can reflect upon:

What did you do in the last twelve months that you’d never done before?

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

What was your biggest failure?

What did you get really, really, really excited about in the last twelve months?

Compared to this time last year, you are:

What do you wish you’d done more of?

What did you want and get?

What did you want and not get?

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

What kept you sane?

What is a valuable life lesson you learned in the last twelve months?

I never have time to:

I spend too much time on:

I don’t have well-defined goals for:

I have a hard time saying no to:

I would like to spend more time:

I am happiest when:

Tips for completing these questions:

1. Copy and paste these questions into a Word document and print them out.
2. Dedicate a couple of hours to answer these questions.
3. Write the first thing that comes to mind for each question or statement.
4. Don’t edit yourself or attempt to make this a literary work of art.

You may want to share these questions with your significant other. This is a great conversation starter!

If you like, email me or add a comment about the question that drew forth the strongest reaction, good or bad. Tell me how your answer to the question will affect what you do in your business or personal life for the next year.

These posts may also inspire you:

1. What’s Working and Not Working For You?
2. The Number One Rule To Remember When Marketing Your Birth Business
3. The Inner Work of Building Your Birth Business – The Spiritual Aspect – Part 2

1. Make the decision and say to yourself “I own a doula business”. Does it feel different to say that as opposed to “I am a doula”. As doulas, we are nurturing, caring, creative and passionate about birth. We hold energetic space for a woman. We use our intuition often. It’s a boldly feminine role. On the other hand, running a business is more masculine in nature. It must have its own structure and operate within bigger structures (as in state and federal government structures). We operate the business according to systems we put in place for ourselves, we put ourselves in the public eye through marketing and advertising efforts, and we hold our clients within a framework of expectations. Being a business owner takes recognizing not only who you are as a doula, but acknowledging the fact that you own and must manage the day-to-day tasks of a small business. Both sides of the coin must be balanced.
2. Create a plan for your practice. Business planning helps you to set goals, find out about your competition, determine what your clients want and see what money-making potential your business has in store for you. If you are the sole owner of your business and you are not planning to go into business with others or need outside funding, you don’t necessarily need to create a full-fledged formal business plan. Karyn Greenstreet, one of the business coaches I like, wrote an article highlighting the points you should explore when creating a plan.
3. Maintain a professional presence. You don’t need to wear a suit when meeting with other professionals and clients, but you should dress professionally. Communicate via email without shouting (typing in all caps), the use of slang, emoticons or acronyms (ie: LOL, IMHO, etc) and by all means, use your spell check. Be on time for your appointments and have an agenda to follow for your interviews, prenatals and postpartum visits.
4. Get some business cards. Business cards help to communicate who you are, what you do, and how to reach you. It’s much more professional than giving someone the same information scrawled onto a napkin. Business cards can range from free to fancy. I’d discourage the use of cards printed on perforated business card stock because the perforations are visible and don’t look very good. A variety of cards can be created inexpensively on VistaPrint using their free templates, or you can upload or create your own card using your logo and branding.
5. Create and have your clients sign a contract. Whether you charge for your services or not, you need to have a contract. Contracts help you define your policies and the boundaries you choose to work within and helps you to communicate those with your clients. It is also advisable to have an attorney look over your contract. If cost is an issue for you, see if there is an attorney referral hotline and ask if there are any attorneys who offer pro bono services. Some SBA offices may also be able to refer you to resources for reasonable or free legal services.

Be proud of yourself. You are a doula. You own a doula business. There are many other factors that make a business owner and a business, but the five tips I’ve given you will help you be perceived as a professional and will help you to increase your confidence.

These posts may also inspire you:

1. Inexpensive Marketing Tip #1 – Business Cards
2. Give Thanks To Those Who Have Helped Your Business
3. 5 Tips For A Great Doula Interview

Research the Federal and State Requirements to Start a Business

State Requirements. Each state has its own requirements and laws for starting a business. Some may require you obtain a business license, while others may only require you register your business name. If you are planning to sell any products along with your doula services, you may need to pay sales taxes to the state, and will need to obtain a special permit in order to do so.

The Small Business Notes website has links to all the state’s government sites to see what you must do in your state to start your business.

The Internal Revenue Service. When you begin to attend births as a doula, you must pay taxes on the income you earn to the Internal Revenue Service. Even if you plan to initially offer your services for free, anything money you spend for your business can be deducted in some way on your tax return as a business expense. The IRS’ portal for small businesses is comprehensive and has many helpful articles, links, and online classes to help you learn how to be compliant with tax laws when you have a small business.

If you have questions about any of the information you find online, contact your state offices or the IRS and ask them. In my experience, especially with the IRS and Sales Tax office here in Texas, these are great free resources to utilize, and I’ve always talked to very knowledgeable representatives.

Small Business Counseling. Another free resource available to any business owner is SCORE by the Small Business Association. SCORE is a non-profit association of over 10,000 counselors – experienced business owners and executives – who volunteer their services to help new entrepreneurs. At SCORE’s website, you can request business advice online or meet with a counselor locally. Free.

Researching these requirements may not be fun. Doing the work to set up your business can be tedious. Depending on your state, you may be able to do some of these registrations online, by mail, or fax, which can make things easier for you. Even the IRS allows you to apply online for an Employer Identification Number, (EIN).

Even if you don’t yet have your business name figured out, creating a step-by-step checklist of what needs to be done will keep you moving forward in a systematic way once you are ready to make yourself a bona-fide legal business.

In Part 3, I’ll offer some low-cost resources to help you learn more about business basics.

These posts may also inspire you:

1. Life After Training – Part 3: Learn about Business Ownership
2. Life After Training – Part 1: Build Your Support System
3. Learn Tax Basics for Small Business Owners Directly From The IRS