Meeting with yourself keeps you on track!

 

11 Agenda Items you can use to plan your business week

When we are working for an employer or as part of a team, meetings often serve as touchstones for actions and activities. They help with brainstorming new ideas and solutions and, if recorded, they provide a reminder of tasks which need doing and can even celebrate wins.

So what do you do when you work for yourself, are your own boss, and maybe don’t have employees or a team – you hold meetings with yourself!

Don’t laugh … it works really well.

Have regular meetings with yourself - 

it works really well!

Having regular meetings with yourself helps you focus on what’s important. You can set an agenda, follow through and follow up the next week to see what you’ve achieved. You can set goals, itemise the steps you need to take to get to the end and record how you did. The notes will help you reflect and serve as a bit of a road map, as well as a good aid to your memory if you want to do a similar project again.

Don’t discount the benefits of holding solo meetings however silly you may feel.

I regularly hold meetings with only me in attendance. There are major benefits of being the only person in the metaphorical room! You don’t have to listen to other people waffle on or go off on tangents, you control the narrative and the outcomes.

Being a solopreneur can be a lonely time, the worst of which is that you don’t have anyone to bounce ideas off and no one on the sidelines either giving you a hand or telling you you’ve done a good job.

Don't discount the benefits 

no matter how silly you may feel!

Solo meetings can fill some of those gaps. You can play around with ideas, be your own Devil’s Advocate and look at the pros and cons of introducing something new. You can record your progress in your projects, identify your pressure points and work out solutions because you have created the time to do this.

Set aside at least an hour once a week to have your meetings. Grab a coffee or drink of your choice, a snack and a pad and paper. Once you have held your first meeting, make notes and file them, then bring those notes along to the next meeting with yourself.

Put an agenda together similar to this one – add or subtract things that don’t work for you:

AGENDA

1.       MINUTES

Review the minutes/notes of your last meeting.

2.       THIS WEEK’S PROJECTS

Look at those things which you completed and note any pressure points, things to remember for the future etc. If it was client work, was the effort you made to get the work done equal to amount you are charging. If not, review this and think about changing your pricing to make the work viable if you do a similar task again. 

3.       PRICING

Checking your pricing should lead to a pricing menu for your work if you are a service-based business. If you sell products, you should ensure your profit margin is viable and if not you will need to check where leaks can be plugged or pricing adjustments made. 

4.       NEW CLIENTS

Make some notes about any new clients which will help for future reference. Were they easy to work with, would you work with them again? 

5.       TIME MANAGEMENT

Review your past weeks’ time management – was there any time you could have reworked so you would have more time for yourself? Could you consider scheduling client appointments all on the same day/s so you don’t have to break up concentrated work effort for meetings. Are there better ways to manage your time? 

6.       NEXT WEEK

Look at the coming week – what work have you got coming up, are there time slots you can allocate for certain work etc. 

7.       MARKETING

– what worked this week. What will you do next week? Do you have a theme this month /week for your social media? Do you have to plan some content? 

8.       FINANCES

How are they looking? What was your income v expenses? Are there any big bills coming up? Any other financial matters you need to think about? 

9.       NEW PRODUCTS/OFFERINGS/WORKSHOPS         

Brainstorm some ideas. 

10.   PERSONAL TIME / FAMILY TIME

Block it in for the coming week. 

11.   ANY OTHER BUSINESS

Anything else you can think of you’d like to discuss with yourself!