In the Fall issue of The Professional Quilter, Longarm Forum columnist Mindy Caspersen lamented about the year she was quilting for customers right up until Christmas Eve. For her that year was not as joyful as it should have been. She missed time with her kids, and says she let herself be cheated out of her holidays. Vowing never to let it happen again, she took four steps to insure that her future holidays were full of joy. Here’s an excerpt from her column:

Without a doubt, the most important thing you can do is to schedule properly. You must take into account the number of quilts you can reasonably do without overworking yourself. A lot of us just put the quilts on the list as they come in the door or as the customers call, but this method will really put you in a bind as the holidays get closer.

If this is your first year in business, it’s very difficult to estimate how many quilts you can do in a specific amount of time, and it will take you a couple of years to figure out how many quilts you can comfortably do in that specified time period. Just try not to overestimate. It’s better to underestimate than to book too many right now. Do not try to schedule more than you can handle. Most of us don’t work well under pressure; we become frustrated, and then we begin to resent the whole process and our customers. You must set limits for yourself and stick to them! Understandably, you want to be as productive as possible and take advantage of this extra earning time, but overworking yourself only produces poor quality work, which will cost you customers in the long run. If this is your first time for a new customer, it may be the last time if you return poor quality work. Returning customers may be more understanding, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be happy. It may end up costing you more than you bargained for by having to refund money or do the next job at a big discount.

You also need to allow time for yourself. If you have family that will be visiting for the holidays or kids that are out of school for a couple of weeks, you need to be able to spend time with them and enjoy that time without constantly feeling guilty or feeling the need to get back to your pile of customer quilts. If you don’t allow yourself this time to enjoy your family and friends, you’ll resent your customers, and it will show in your work and your attitude toward them.

Also remember to allow time for the unexpected. Never had to set the timing on your machine? You’ll have to do it in the middle of the rush season! Never run out of needles before? It’ll happen now. It’s the nature of the beast, one of those Murphy’s Law things – whatever can go wrong will go wrong at the most inopportune time! Maybe you don’t have that perfect color of thread and you’re waiting for your order to come in the mail. And guess what? The mail gets overloaded at this time of year and slows down too! Or family or friends unexpectedly decide to come visit, or the furnace dies or the dog needs surgery. A million and one things can suddenly come up and take you away from your work. You can’t deal with those things if you’ve overbooked yourself with customers and are already frustrated.

To read more of Mindy’s tips in her Longarm Forum column in Issue 109 of The Professional Quilter, your subscription or membership in the The International Association of Professional Quilters must be current. Learn about all the benefits of IAPQ membership here.

I got back on Sunday evening from Las Vegas where I attended Ali Brown‘s SHINE conference. I went with specific goals in mind and certainly made headway on them.

One of my goals was to start to create a plan for 2010. Before I can do that, though, I need to take a look at where I am now and how I got there. One of my favorite resources for this is Your Best Year Yet by Jinny S. Ditzler.  I’ve been using this little book for years. It offers a framework to define your personal values, identify the various roles you play and create goals for those roles. Here are some of Jinny’s questions plus a couple of my own:

1. What did I accomplish?
2. What were my biggest disappointments?
3. What did I learn?
4. How do I limit myself and how can I stop?
5. What are my goals for next year?
6. Where do I need to education or support to get there?
7. How can I make sure I achieve my top goals?

I find one of the most empowering aspects of Jinny’s system is the look at the successes of the year. It let’s you focus on my successes not get weighed down by what didn’t work. It also lets you get off the treadmill of working on my business to see if you really are on course.

So take some time this week to start planning for 2010 by looking back at 2009. Ask and answer these questions. Let me know how this system works for you.

Do you have systems in your business? Maybe you haven’t given much thought to what systems can do for you. Here are just three benefits: They can give you more time to be creative. You’ll have time to work on your business rather than just in your business. And, they will let you grow your business.

If you are like most of our readers, you’re a small business owner or solopreneur. At some point you’ll discover you can’t do it all. That’s the time to get started with systems, if you haven’t already.

How do you go about creating systems? I’m actually in the process of creating systems for some of the processes I do. My goal is to hire someone to handle some of our processes so I can devote my time to creating new products. To that end, I am writing down step-by-step how each process is handled. Yes, it is taking me extra time, but I know in the end it will pay off.

Here are just three ideas that you might try for your business:

Handling Fabric. After our last teleclass on organizing, one of our listeners contacted me about how she would start the year with her fabric organized and then the studio would quickly become unmanageable. It was something she repeated on a frequent basis. I suggested she write down her process for storing her fabric, i.e, develop a system for storing her fabric, and then hire a high school girl to come in a couple of times a week to get it back in order. This lets this quilter focus on what we could call her genius or brilliance.

Teaching or Media Requests. Do you scramble looking for all the materials to send when you get a request to teach or promote your business? Create a system to keep all those materials easily accessible. You could create folders on your computer or in your physical file cabinet to include photos, short and long bio, résumé, your brochure, anything that you are ever asked for. By keeping everything in one place, it will be easy to find. That means less stress looking for it or less time having to recreate something you find shortly thereafter.

Online Marketing. Are you sending out e-zines or updating your blog? Do you need to update your Facebook page or Tweet? Do you use a shopping cart and autoresponders? I have a couple of suggestions here. Create a schedule for doing this. For example, on Friday set aside several hours to write your newsletter, a few blog posts, and updates to Facebook and tweets. Many of these can be scheduled ahead of time. An assistant or virtual assistant can also be valuable setting up and maintaining these for you. That allows you time to work on activities that add to the bottom line of your business.

And, a big plus for creating and working the systems is you have lots of energy. And, when you have more energy, you’ll work at a higher level in your brilliance.

What ideas do you have for systems?

The Professional Quilter includes articles to help you create success with your quilt business. If your subscription is not current and you need to renew, or you want to start a new subscription, here’s a link to our order page

I’ve been thinking a lot on the power of intention this past year. For years in my yoga classes the instructor has had us set an intention for class, and, yes, occasionally mine is to make it through the class. About a year ago, I taped a note to the bathroom mirror that says, “What is your intention/choice for today?” I find it gets me started on a conscious path each morning.

What exactly is intention? Webster defines it as a “determination to act in a certain way or resolve.” Gary Zukav in The Mind of the Soul says it’s “the use of your will….a commitment to accomplishing an objective, to creating something that was not there or to continue creating something that is.”

Here are some tips for creating powerful intentions in your life:

1. Get clear about what kind of person you want to be. Then get clear about what you want to do and what you want to have. Clarity is very powerful. I think figuring out the kind of person you want to be is most important; the “do” and “have” will follow.

2. State your intention. Say it out loud. Say it more than once. Write it down. I’ve been known to write my intentions on a paper and put it in my pocket. I take it out during the day and read it. This is especially helpful if I think self-sabotaging behaviors (like grabbing an extra one of those cinnamon scones that I picked up at the bakery last week and put in the freezer) are around the corner or I need an extra boost of motivation to stay focused and on track.

3. Share your intention with someone who cares about your success. It’s helpful if you share your intention with someone who will hold you accountable. Offer to do the same for her.

4. Now take action to demonstrate commitment to the intention. It doesn’t have to be some big action; many little actions will compound. And, while you can have a whopping big intention for your business, your intention for today might be to find some peace in your hectic life, no small feat.

5. Celebrate or somehow acknowledge this achievement, and then take the next step or action. Then rinse and repeat.

Before you know it, setting an intention each day will become a habit. Setting an intention clearly puts you in charge, and you’ll be energized by how much you are in control. You’ll be thrilled with the person you are “being” and with your ongoing accomplishments.

I hope you’ll take the time to set an intention for yourself and/or your business each morning. Let me know how it makes a difference in your life.

Here are two quotes on intention that I like:

I heard from a number of readers about crafting SMART goals. Remember SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. Have you taken time to craft your goals for the new year? I think it’s hard to set aside enough time to do a good job at these. I’ve made progress on some of my goals and want to share some tips to help you make progress towards attaining yours.

• Review your goals daily. I think the best time is first thing in the morning, so it sets your day off on a positive note. It’s also a good idea to review them again at night. Try visualizing the goal as already completed and yourself enjoying the rewards of completion.
• “Chunk” down the goal into small steps. That’s how any goal is actually achieved, with small steps. And a large goal doesn’t look overwhelming when you’ve broken it down. You could use a “mind-mapping” technique to accomplish this.
• Take five steps toward completion of your goal each day. Again, they don’t have to be big steps, just something that moves you towards your goal. The small steps compound.
• Ask yourself if what you are doing moves you closer to or further from your goal. If it moves you closer, you are on the right track. If not, you need to rethink your decision. The difference between action and activity is movement towards the achievement of your objective.
• Share your goals and action steps with a coach or friend who can keep you on track. I have a mini-Mastermind group with one friend and this helps both of us move forward on our goals.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes on goal setting, “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.” Michelangelo

The Winter issue of The Professional Quilter includes an article on goal setting using the SMART method. If your subscription is not current and you need to renew, or you want to start a new subscription, here’s a link to our order page.

I’ve heard from several readers about how useful Your Best Year Yet! by Jenny S. Ditzler is for evaluating what you’ve accomplished and for setting goals for the coming year or years. The chapter on goals starts with the following, “People who have goals achieve more results in their lives.” But how do you go about setting good goals? For years people have used the SMART system. I can hear you now, “I used that when I worked in the corporate world, but now I’m a quilter.”

The system works no matter what you do because it provides a framework for your commitment. After all, goals are a commitment. Here’s a quick rundown of setting SMART goals.
 
Specific. The goal “work out with a personal trainer three times a week” is much more specific than “start exercising.”
 
Measurable. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. That does not mean that measures have to be in dollars. If your goal is not measurable, however, it’s actually an aspiration, a good idea or perhaps a hallucination. Years ago in the corporate world, I had a boss, who when reviewing generic, immeasurable goals, would ask, “So, how do I know when we can declare victory?”
 
Attainable (or Actionable). When you begin setting goals, you learn a
lot about goal setting and about yourself. Goals that seem like they “stretch” you too much initially seem perfectly reasonable shortly thereafter. Stretch goals engender commitment, activate energetic responses, stimulate the generation of creative action steps and “close the exit doors” on excuses. Make sure that “attainable” becomes more challenging over time.
 
Realistic. This is the first cousin of “attainable.” It’s not realistic to expect to win Best of Show in Houston this year when you’ve only just learned to quilt.
 
Timely or (my preference) time-bound. By when are you going to achieve your goal?  Without a target date, it’s an illusion.

Here are three examples of SMART goals:

• Obtain representation in three new galleries by 10/21/09.
• Produce $250,000 in new business from my online presence by 12/31/09.
• Build longarm quilting business to $5,000 gross per month by 7/15/09.

The Winter issue of The Professional Quilter includes an article on goal setting using the SMART method. If your subscription is not current and you need to renew, or you want to start a new subscription, here’s a link to our order page.

A few weeks ago I noted that I wanted to get a head start on business planning for 2009. I’ll mention again the resource I like to use, a small book called Your Best Year Yet by Jinny S. Ditzler. It offers an easy framework to define your personal values, identify the various roles you play and create goals for those roles. I particularly like the emphasis on evaluating all the good things before you look at setting new goals. I always get a number of comments from readers about how helpful the book is. Here’s a link to Amazon if you are interested in learning more about the book.

Here are six more ideas to consider as you plan for next year:

1. Start with a feeling of gratitude. I think this does more for you than just about anything to bring a sense of joy to your life. Why not start or end each day with a list of just three things that you are grateful for? You’ll be surprised by the change. Here’s a wonderful quote on gratitude from Sarah Ban Breathnach’s book Simple Abundance:

   “You simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life. And you will have set in motion an ancient spiritual law: the more you have and are grateful for, the more will be given you.”

2. Invest in your own well-being. Go on a retreat. Eat healthfully. Get exercise. Take a yoga class. Get a massage. Relax in a bubble bath. It’s easy to get bogged down in our everyday lives and commitments and neglect our own self-care.
3. Set aside time each quarter for a personal business retreat. Review your goals, celebrate your successes and make necessary adjustments.
4. Set aside time each day for centering, daily creative time, a mini-mini-retreat, whatever you want to call it. This is time just for you, when you can step out of your life and find calm. It’s wonderful for renewing your energy and spirit. For me this can take the form of an artist date, lunch with an old friend, a cup of tea and a good book, drawing in my journal or personal sewing.
5. Join or start a MasterMind group. This is different from a large networking group. It’s usually two to six people all of whom have your best interest in mind. Set up expectations for yourselves and commit to personal and professional development. Give more than you get. Together you will catapult your businesses.
6. Create a vision board to represent the life, both business and personal, that you want. Start with a large sheet of poster board and add pictures and words that express what you want your life to be. You can use magazines to find photos or use your computer to create words/slogans. This gives power and energy to your dreams.