How Make It Happen Club helps solo business owners be more productive
When you’re growing your business there are a million and one things you could be doing aren’t there?
You want to build your audience, showcase your expertise, nurture relationships, create a new offer, update your branding, run an event, start a podcast. And of course you want to deliver an exceptional service to your clients. And have space for conversations with potential clients. And keep on top of your inbox, socials and finances.
It's a lot, eh?
With so much to juggle, it’s no wonder so many solo business owners feel like they’re dropping the ball or not doing enough, no matter how much time they spend at their desk.
If that feels familiar and you’re starting to believe you’re destined for a life where you never feel on top of things, read on to find out how Make It Happen Club will make you more productive.
1. You’ll be more strategic about how you’re spending your time
If you spend all your time in ‘doing’ mode without considering whether the things you’re doing are connected to your goals, you’re not being strategic, you’re being reactive.
A great idea pops into your head, so you run after it, regardless of what that means for the great idea you started working on last week that’s not yet finished. Someone asks you to speak at an event, and you say yes without stopping to consider whether the audience is a good fit. You offer to do something extra to help a client out, without realising what that means for your own priorities.
In fact, now you come to think of it, what even ARE your priorities right now? You wrote your goals down at the start of the year, but that was months ago, life got busy and you’ve barely looked at them since.
Sound familiar?
When you’re always in reactive mode it’s no wonder that the things most important to you barely get a look in. They’re being crowded out by everything else that’s flying at you day in day out.
How Make It Happen Club will help you be strategic
Every time you show up for a Make It Happen Club planning session you’re prioritising yourself and your business.
For 90 minutes every month, you quieten the noise of everything shouting for your attention, revisit your vision and goals, and remember what’s most important to YOU.
Being strategic can be as simple as choosing where to invest your precious time, energy and attention based on the goals you’re working towards.
Being strategic can be as simple as thoughtfully looking at the brilliant ideas gathering dust in your notebooks to see whether any are ready to be brought out into the light.
Being strategic can be as simple as paying attention to your capacity (time, energy, mental bandwidth), and keeping that in mind when you choose what to focus on.
In Make It Happen Club, I guide you to make those choices. Every quarter you’ll think about what you’d love to accomplish during the three months ahead, and then every month you’ll break that down into proactive action steps.
And what do you know? You’re being proactive and working on things that will actually move the needle for your business.
(Don’t like the word ‘strategic’? Try replacing it with ‘purposeful’. Different word, same outcome: you, spending your time on the things that matter most.)
“What Louise does is powerful and effective. The quiet, methodical, and meditative space she provided each session gave me a lasting clarity of purpose that carried me through the month.”
Ash Jackson, Tech Boffin
2. You’ll have a flexible, spacious plan to guide you every single month
How often do you put time aside to pause and plan? To think about what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it?
Whatever your relationship with planning, there’s no judgement here!
But my guess is that you’re reading this right now because whatever planning you’re doing – or not doing – isn’t working.
And as a result, the days and weeks slip by without you progressing the things that matter most. The new course you want to create is still languishing in notebooks. You haven’t set a date for the event you want to run, researched the podcasts you’d love to guest on, or created the free resource you know will grow your audience.
You know the theory. You know that a goal without a plan is just a dream. You know you need to break your projects down into smaller tasks. But knowing all that and actually finding a way to get organised that works for you are two very different things.
And it’s not as if you haven’t tried! All those fancy planners, apps and project management doodahs? You’ve been there, done that. Spending ages setting up a system or creating a plan you’re convinced will work - putting things in your calendar, time blocking, and deciding on the perfect routine – only to completely ignore it once the novelty wears off.
Frustrating, isn’t it? Not to mention a waste of time. (And I know, because I’ve been there too!)
How Make It Happen Club will help you create a plan you’ll actually follow!
Here’s the truth: when it comes to creating a plan that helps you get what’s important done without the overwhelm, you don’t need anything fancy.
Because despite what the productivity industry would have you believe, your ability to get stuff done is not about the system you’re using. It’s about thoughtful decision-making that’s aligned with your goals and will move you closer to your vision.
That’s why in Make It Happen Club we don’t do complicated spreadsheets, planners or templates. Instead, I guide you to make intentional choices about what to focus on and to make space for those things.
A big reason why the planning we do in Make It Happen Club works, is that we don’t rush it. Our monthly momentum planning sessions last 90-minutes because I know that’s how long it takes to do it properly. To feel a deep connection to what you’re doing and why. To protect time for what’s most important. And to set yourself up for success.
And the process works! Apart from a few tweaks here and there, the steps I guide you through haven’t changed since the Club began in 2020 because I know they give you everything you need for a focused, proactive, productive month. (If you’re curious to know what that looks like, take a look at this sneaky peek behind the scenes.)
By the end of every session you’ll have a plan you can refer to throughout the month, so you’ll always know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing and why. And when you have that level of clarity? Taking consistent, aligned action becomes so much easier.
“The process in Make It Happen Club feels so spacious and freeing… By the end of my first month in the club, I’d completed most things on my list. I quite surprised myself by how much I’d achieved.”
Melina Abbott, Sales Coach
3. You’ll be realistic about how much you can get done (sexy, eh?!)
“Be realistic” is not something people usually want to hear. When it comes to your vision and goals, it’s great to stretch yourself and shoot for the stars, so in that context those two words can be the squasher of dreams!
But in the context of actually getting things done? Being realistic is a GOOD thing.
Have you ever got excited about an idea, and wanted to get it done by tea-time? Then, when it gets to the end of the day and it’s not finished, you beat yourself up, fixating on the things you didn’t get done, rather than celebrating the things you did.
I speak to so many people who are stuck in that cycle, and are now convinced that they’re incapable of staying focused and being productive.
They start doubting themselves, questioning whether they’re cut out for this running a business lark, and generally feeling like a failure. When all that’s happening is they’re writing a list too long to get done in a day.
Here’s the thing: when you’re trying to do too much, you’ll always feel like you’re not being productive, no matter how focused you are day-to-day.
Spread yourself too thin and you’ll always be surrounded by half-finished things, experiencing what Greg McKeown calls “the unfulfilling experience of making a millimetre of progress in a million directions” (Essentialism - the disciplined pursuit of less, p. 7)
How Make It Happen Club will help you be realistic (in a good way, I promise)
The trouble is, so many people decide what they want to get done without looking at their diary first. They do a brain dump of everything that feels important, and then call that their to-do list with no thought to when they’re going to actually do all those things.
Needless to say, that’s not how we roll in Make It Happen Club!
Here’s how I make sure the plans you create are realistic and achievable:
1) At every session you’ll have your calendar in front of you so you can see everything that’s coming up in your business, your social life and your family and home life.
2) You’ll protect time to meet your existing commitments, so there’s no last-minute panic as you realise the workshop you thought was ages away is actually next week and you’ve no idea when you’ll prepare!
3) Only then - once you’ve got a sense of your capacity - will you start making a list of what you want to get done during the month ahead.
4) Next I give you space to reflect and review. Is everything you’ve written down actually important? Does it all need to be done by you? Does it all need to be done now? Is it aligned with your vision and goals? Are you leaving space for fun and rest?
5) Lastly, you’ll prioritise what’s in front of you and consider how to protect space to work on those things.
And hey presto! A plan that’s been designed with your capacity, your life and your goals in mind, and that feels exciting, motivating and achievable (aka realistic 😉).
“What’s amazing is that when I look back at the end of the quarter, I have more or less done all the things I set out to do. There is no other planning approach I have ever experienced where that is true.”
Susan Fielden, School Finance Expert
4. You’ll replace frazzled faffing with calm focus
When you’ve got a bazillion ideas and a big vision for your business, it’s easy to slip into a frantic and frazzled overwhelm loop where you can’t see the wood for the trees. It’s hard to know what to do first, and as a result you either try doing everything, everywhere all at once, or feel stuck and can’t get started.
And the very human response to feeling that way? Keep going. Go faster. Work harder.
But when you’re feeling frantic and frazzled, it doesn’t matter how many hours you spend at your desk - your productivity always suffers. You pick things up and put them down again, you’re easily distracted, and lose hours or even days to procrastination.
I promise it’s not just you. And I promise you’re not broken.
It’s hard to get the important stuff done when you’re feeling frayed around the edges, pinging from one thing to the next like the ball in a pinball machine, and feeling guilty about the things you should be doing but aren’t.
I’m exhausted just thinking about it!
How Make It Happen Club will help you find calm, clarity and focus.
The best thing you can do when overwhelm strikes is take a step back. Lift yourself out of the weeds, gain a sense of perspective and make choices from a place of calm, rather than a place of panic.
And that’s what you get when you join Make It Happen Club. Not just once, but every single month.
Our sessions together are a regular time out, away from all the doing, so you can settle your nervous system, take a breath, and make sure you’re heading in the right direction before diving back into action.
So yes, Make It Happen Club will give you the practical guidance you need to get the important things done. But it will also give you something magical that has a massive impact on how you feel and your ability to get stuff done:
Silence.
It would be impossible to reflect on your goals, look at your capacity, make choices about what’s important, figure out when to work on your projects and break them down into small, actionable steps with constant chitter chatter going in the background.
Apart from a few minutes of optional sharing at the end, the only voice you’ll hear is mine. I introduce each part of the process, and then we sit quietly together and do the work. (Don’t worry, I don’t abandon you – I’m there to support you the chat if you get stuck or need help.)
By keeping things calm and quiet, I’ve removed all the distractions, the comparisonitis, and the pressure to perform that can actually get in the way of your progress.
“A beautifully held space where my heart rate always goes down and I just start to speak more slowly, to think more slowly, creatively, helpfully. I really look forward to it. I know my frazzled, scrambled brain will feel different afterwards.”
Katie Duckworth, Leadership Coach
5. You’ll find a way of getting things done that works for YOU.
Get up at 5am! Hustle! Don’t hustle! Get some accountability! Plan every minute of every day! Follow your energy! Put everything in your diary! Time block! Use the pomodoro technique!
Everyone seems to have an opinion. Putting everything important in your calendar. Spreadsheets with multiple tabs with sections to break your projects down into tasks, decide how long each tasks is going to take and when you’re going to do it. Finding an accountability buddy to check in with at the start and end of every day.
Once people find what works for them, they start evangelising. Telling you to do what they do, insisting there’s no reason it can’t work for you, and that if it doesn’t, you’re not trying hard enough.
I call BS.
If you have a rebellious streak, accountability won’t work for you no matter how hard you try.
Those magical unicorns who can put a thing in their calendar and then actually do that thing when their calendar tells them to? According to Gretchen Rubin’s research on the Four Tendencies, those people are very much in the minority.
And if you’re a night owl, getting up at 5am is going to leave you feeling exhausted and sleep deprived.
There’s no one-size-fits-all, so trying to follow someone else’s idea of what works will only make you feel like a failure.
How Make It Happen Club helps you find what works for YOU.
I’ve worked with enough clients, read enough books, listened to enough podcasts and observed enough people moving through the world to understand that we’re not all the same. It’s not as simple as ‘just do x y or z’.
And so I don’t peddle any of that stuff in Make It Happen Club.
Instead I give you the space to find what works for you.
I have tips and tools up my sleeve that I share when I’m supporting people during our sessions, but I never make blanket statements or suggest that a single approach is going to work for everyone.
As you show up to plan month after month, you’ll gradually learn what feels good for you and what doesn’t. You’ll discover how much easier things become when you accept and work with your own tendencies rather than trying to fight against them.
When you’re in Make It Happen Club, you can’t help but build your self-awareness, which will empower you to find what works for YOU so you can find your productivity groove and get the important stuff done.
“I’ll be there for our next session, after one of the most productive months I’ve had in ages - and it felt doable, gentle and kind!”
Morag Young
So how do you know when you’ve nailed your productivity?
When you have an achievable action plan that’s aligned to your goals…
When you sit down at your desk every morning knowing exactly what needs to be done, so you can get on with your day without faffing…
When you spend less time on busy work that doesn’t actually move the needle for you, and more time on the things that will make the biggest impact…
THAT’S when you’ve cracked it!
That’s when you’ll move through your days feeling good, growing in self-belief, and getting more of the right things done than you ever thought possible.