Home staging business ideas are exciting. There are thousands of ways to grow your staging business and make more money doing what you love. But what if there are too many ideas, and too little time to do them all?
If you run your own home staging business, you’ve probably run up against the challenge of how to stay motivated to take action and not procrastinate. Last week I wrote How To Stop Home Staging Business Procrastination – Get 8 Things Done Now where I shared 3 examples of how to create public deadlines that will push you to get 8 critical things finished and move your home staging business forward significantly.
I continue to think about the “procrastination problem” because I suffer from it myself. My personal weakness is being addicted to generating new business and marketing ideas. Deciding which to do first can easily derail me from doing anything, when I let it.
Like most things in life, it’s a choice to sit on the sidelines, or just pick something and run with it. Most of my boldest and most successful life and business choices were made without tons of thinking and research. When I was inspired, I took action before that little voice of doubt could stop me.
To stop being overwhelmed by too many ideas/choices, you need to let some go.
After all, what’s the point of hanging onto ideas you don’t really want to do? Clearing them out is like getting rid of mental clutter and allowing you to appreciate the gems that are left. Something we all do with furniture, accessories and junk in home staging. Why not do the same thing with our minds?
Formula for dealing with too many home staging business ideas
How about stepping back for a moment and realizing that it’s impossible to do everything you can think of, or that you want to do in your lifetime. What about if you decided to try and put a number to how many you can achieve? Then you’ll decide which ones are most important.
Here’s how I worked my formula to deal with my business ideas:
Let’s say I work for 20 more years (perhaps you’ll use a bigger/smaller number). Assuming I take two months off every year (for vacations, illness, grandchildren I hope to have, and other life events that take priority), that means I only have 200 months.
Now let’s say I can tackle one new big idea every 2 months. That means I only get to do 100 more of them in my lifetime if I work until I’m 73!
When 100 is all there is
If I only get 100 more ideas to implement for my lifetime, that clears a whole pile of To Do items off my desk! Instead of chasing every “shiny penny,” I’m going to be VERY selective and let go of a lot of “stuff” from now on!
What do you think of this idea? How have you dealt with procrastination? I’d really appreciate it if you would add your comments below and click on the share links. I really want to spark a bigger discussion on this topic as I know we can all learn from, and be inspired by, each other!
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
Debra Gould has and MBA in Marketing and has been a serial entrepreneur since 1989. She is president of Voice of Possibility Group Inc. with a mission of helping entrepreneurs create their ideal businesses and lifestyles. An internationally recognized home staging expert, Debra created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program with 7,000 students in the U.S., Canada and 20 other countries. She is the author of 5 guides, including the Simple Marketing Plan: A Stress-Free Approach to Promoting Your Staging Business.
I don’t feel like I have an issue with procrastination but I definitely deal with the too-many-business-ideas problem. this summer I focused solely on getting my website finished and all that goes with that: creating editorial calendars for my blog and newsletter, creating pinterest boards to link to from said blog posts & newsletters, and on & on. I had to force myself to pass up on what sounded like some unbelievable training on Facebook and LinkedIn and several other trainings that would definitely add to my knowledge base but I felt would overwhelm me & take me off task. it wasn’t easy but I just kept reminding myself that there would be a better time and point in my life/ business and if that time never came, I didn’t need to pursue those opportunities after all. when you put it in terms of how many months, etc it makes total sense (as always, ms. Gould!) and feels freeing for sure!
Thanks Lori for adding your comments and experience, I know it will help others. I’ve been building my own websites since 1995 and I can really relate to what you’re saying about realizing that you could definitely get overwhelmed and off task diving in too deeply trying to know everything there is to know about online marketing.
It’s a ** huge ** topic and one that is constantly changing. So it’s not like you learn it once and then you’re done, you have to be a perpetual student. That’s certainly where I am, investing somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 a year on my continuing education on all things Internet. I try to bring the highlights of what I learn to my students both in articles on this blog but also in my one-on-one coaching and monthly group coaching calls.
Congratulations Lori on your great new website. You’ve done an awesome job with it!
Those are some good points. I need to find a way to keep track of all my ideas besides in my head and on scraps of paper that begins to make a pile and clutter the rest of my world. That goodness for my smart phone. I will start a list in there and highlight the ones that I really want to do and delete the others. This might keep me on track. As always you keep me thinking about what is best. Thank you.
Thanks Donna for sharing your comments, I really appreciate it.
You might want to take a look at Evernote, as a way to keep your ideas organized. I wrote an article about it called Home Stagers How To Get Organized for the New Year which you might find helpful. It includes a short video.