Jill Bucher

Why Your Business Needs a Daymark

Jill Bucher — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 09:06:19 +0000

Have you ever seen a lighthouse on a bright sunny day, its unique pattern standing out against the clear blue sky? That’s a daymark. It’s a lighthouse’s way of being recognized during the day, just as it’s known for its light in the dark of night. It’s a consistent, reliable signal to those navigating the vast sea. Now, imagine your business as a lighthouse. Your brand and long-term content – they’re your daymark.

The Power of Recognition

Branding isn’t just about creating a pretty logo or a catchy slogan. It’s about the repeated, consistent presentation of your business identity across all platforms that builds recognition.

Just as a sailor recognizes a lighthouse by its daymark, your audience should be able to recognize your business no matter where they look.

From your website to your social media profiles, to the content you produce, there needs to be a common thread that connects them all – your brand.

Think of successful businesses like Apple or Nike. Their branding is consistent, recognizable, and evokes a distinct image and feel that’s uniquely theirs.

Navigating the Sea of Content

In the digital age, content is king. But with so much content floating around the internet, it can feel like an endless sea. This is where your daymark comes into play. By developing and maintaining long-term content, such as blog posts, podcast episodes, and older social media posts, you can ensure that your business is discoverable through searches. Just like a daymark guiding ships towards safe harbor, your content can guide potential customers towards your business.

The Longevity of Your Daymark

A daymark isn’t a temporary signal; it’s a permanent feature of a lighthouse. Similarly, your brand and the content you create should be designed to stand the test of time. This is where ‘evergreen’ content comes into play. By creating content that continues to be relevant and useful over time, you are creating a permanent feature that keeps your business on the map, visible and recognizable.

Building Your Business’s Daymark

So, how can you build your business’s daymark? Start by developing a consistent branding strategy. This includes a common color scheme, logo, tone of voice, and messaging that is carried across all your business’s touchpoints. Next, create long-term content that aligns with your brand and adds value to your audience. This content shouldn’t just be promotional; it should offer valuable information, insights, and resources that reflect your business’s expertise and values. Create content that stays true for your business for a long time.

Conclusion

In a sea of content and competition, your business needs a daymark – a consistent brand and vault of long-term content that sets your business apart and guides your audience towards you. It’s not just about standing out; it’s about being a reliable, recognizable presence in your field, guiding those who are looking for the services and values you offer towards your shore.

What does your daymark say about your business?

Take a moment to think about your business’s daymark. Does it stand out? Is it recognizable? Is it guiding potential customers towards you? If not, it’s time to start building.

And remember, a daymark isn’t built in a day. It requires consistent effort and commitment, but the reward – a sustainable, successful business – is worth it.

The post Why Your Business Needs a Daymark appeared first on Jill Bucher.

CEO Time is the new Self-Care

Jill Bucher — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 14:31:19 +0000

As Entrepreneurs, we’re often focused on our clients and serving them well, while actually neglecting our own business. It’s one of the biggest challenges I see my clients go through as their business grows. They grow, grow, grow, but don’t allow the business to catch up with the growth. That leads to overwhelm and a lot of stress, because now when they’d really need a well-functioning business backend, they cannot fall back on it.

A small way to bring that focus back is by implementing what I call CEO time.

What is CEO Time?

CEO time is dedicated time each week that you focus on your business. No client work.

Depending on your workload right now, you might only be able to find an hour or two each week. And that’s fine. Every hour you can find will help.

So what are some things you can do during this time? Well, here are some suggestions:

Clean out your email inbox and unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters
Update your finances
Document a process in your business you would like to delegate in the future
Make sure your project management system is current

These suggestions are obviously directly related to your business. There is, however, something else I also want to suggest for that weekly CEO time.

Depending on what’s going on during any given week, your CEO time might just be an hour that you rest and do nothing. This is equally if not more important than the systems updates. Running on fumes is not good for your business. Give yourself permission to rest without guilt!

Oh, and please put your CEO time on your calendar as a non-negotiable meeting with yourself. Don’t think that you’ll just take your CEO time ‘when it fits’. It will never just happen.

Grow your CEO Time into a full CEO Day

Ideally, what I’d like you to try is to make it a whole CEO Day and not just an hour or two each week. Our brain is constantly switching between tasks and if you’re having a lot of clients, most of your week will be spent mentally jumping from one client to the next.

By dedicating one day per week as your CEO Day, you’ll ensure that on this day you’ll get to focus on just one ‘client’, your own business. You’ll be much more productive than trying to fit in an hour or so every few days.

Take a look at your current schedule. What day of your work week might be a good day for your CEO day? The most common ones I’ve seen (and tried myself) are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It’s powerful to either start or end your work week with a CEO day. If you’re currently getting overwhelmed and exhausted during the week and the weekend seems to be way too far away, consider taking a day in the middle of the week as your CEO Day. It will allow you to slow down and take a breath (or a nap) so you’re refreshed and ready to tackle the rest of the week.

For me as a Highly Sensitive Person, I cannot sustainable work 5 days a week packed with client meetings. So I plan for my needed ‘recovery time’ by adding a CEO day.

Stepping it up with a seasonal CEO Week

If you like the idea of CEO Days as much as I do, then you might like to step it up even more by adding a quarterly or seasonal CEO Week. YES, a whole week without client work that is dedicated to just your wellbeing and the wellbeing of your business.

When I implemented seasonal CEO weeks in my business, it was a game changer. Back in Fall of 2021, I decided that I’m always going to take a full week off of client work in the week of the solstices and equinoxes. Since I’m planning my business year seasonally, that only seemed fitting. That way, I get to concentrate on my own business for a full week, reflect and then plan for the upcoming season.

Picking that specific week every season makes it also really easy to block off these weeks in my calendar for the full year in advance, so that no client accidentally schedules a meeting with me during that time. It’s also something I can clearly communicate to my clients when we work together on an ongoing basis.

Now maybe you’re not into seasonal planning, or you don’t want to plan a full year out in advance. You can still plan your CEO weeks. I highly recommend having one every 3-6 months and then plan out when the next one happens as one of your tasks for the CEO week. Don’t wait and think you’ll just pick a week and do it. Chances are, you’ll not be doing it. Just like with CEO time, make sure it’s scheduled.

Which type would you like to try and implement? An hour every week? A whole day per week? Or maybe even the whole CEO week every 3 months? Whichever one you pick, it will help your business to get some much needed love.

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Turn your Daily Business Routines into Daily Rituals

Jill Bucher — Sun, 05 Jun 2022 13:00:00 +0000

Do you ever get to the end of the week and cannot really remember what you actually did for your own business? You might remember the interactions you had with your clients, or the work you did for them, but how about all these day-to-day things you do to move your own Health Coaching business forward?

As a business owner, you probably have a few things you do each day when you start your work: check your calendar, read up on messages from your team, reply to emails, look at your project management tool for your agenda for the day, check social media, etc.
They might not happen all every day and in the same order, but each of us usually does most of these at some point during the day.

And similarly to your Beginning-of-Day Routines, you’ll probably have some sort of End-of-Day Routines as well: check emails one more time, sign off in your team communication, maybe it’s just closing your laptop at the end of your business day.

Unfortunately, you may not be fully aware of these individual actions.
They’ve become habits, for better or worse.

Here is thing about habits:

The good news is, they run on auto-pilot and you hardly think about them.

The bad news is, they run on auto-pilot and you hardly think about them.

So it takes an intentional approach to change something once it becomes a habit.

Building Good Habits

In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about the importance of habits and the right systems around them to make sure you’re building good habits and breaking bad ones.

James introduces the 4-stage Habit Loop: Cue, Craving, Response and Reward.

”If a behavior is insufficient in any of the four stages, it will not become a habit. Eliminate the cue and your habit will never start. Reduce the craving and you won’t experience enough motivation to act. Make the behavior difficult and you won’t be able to do it. And if the reward fails to satisfy your desire, then you’ll have no reason to do it again in the future. Without the first 3 steps, a behavior will not occur. Without all four, a behavior will not be repeated.“ ¹

His idea is to use the Habit Loop to your advantage. He calls it the “Four Laws of Behavior Change”:
In order to break a bad habit, you need to “Make it invisible. Make it unattractive. Make it difficult. Make it unsatisfying.”¹
In order to build a good habit, you need to “Make it obvious. Make it attractive. Make it easy. Make it satisfying.”¹

By building better habits, you’ll slowly but surely improve your life and your business. And I’m all for better habits for your business.

Habits vs. Routines vs. Rituals: What’s the difference?

I see both Routines and Rituals, as a collection of habits, done back-to-back. But to me there is an important difference:

Routines are highly focused on the outcome.
Getting the tasks done quickly and efficiently.

Rituals on the other hand require a different mindset. They focus more on the experience and the meaning behind those actions.
Yes, they eventually still lead to the same result, but how you get there is different. I see a ritual more as the scenic route to your destination. A way to be more mindful and to make sure you enjoy the journey.

In short:

A habit is something that you do repeatedly and usually on autopilot.

A routine is a collection of habits, done back to back.

A ritual is a routine with added mindfulness and an enhanced experience.

3 Steps to turn your routines into daily rituals

How can we use that knowledge to shift how we work each day?

1 – Document for a week what your daily habits actually are.
Your habits may shift based on the day, so don’t just pick a random day. Do it for a whole week. And yes, even on the weekend because you might be surprised how much you still do for your business on the weekends.
Write it down immediately while or after you do something, otherwise you’ll not remember later. Write it down even if the action you take seems small. It’s important to become aware about our autopilot tasks again.

2 – Evaluate what you’ve documented.
Are these ‘‘good’ or ‘bad’ habits? (Side note: only you determine what’s a good or bad habit based on what your intentions are, nobody else can make that decision but you.)

3 – Come up with ideas how you can shift bad habits into good ones. Think about how you can enhance your experience with them.
Maybe you feel better starting your workday with a clean desk. Add that e.g. to your End-of-Day ritual so you’re already starting with a clean desk the next day.
Maybe a simple change in order might do the trick, e.g. journal a bit before you check emails so you can stay with you and your business for a little while longer before you get sucked into somebody else’s drama.
Maybe you’ll need to add something to help you be more mindful like doing a 5 min breathing meditation or going for a short walk around the block before you even sit down to work.

Now it’s your turn!

Go ahead and get creative. Develop your own beautiful business rituals that you cannot wait to go through each day!

SOURCES
1. Quotes from Atomic Habits by James Clear. https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits

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Moving forward after a Vulnerability Hangover

Jill Bucher — Sun, 29 May 2022 08:23:03 +0000

I don’t like social media.

Well, that is not totally true. I don’t like putting myself on social media or ‘out there’ in general. I’m a highly introverted and highly sensitive, behind-the-scenes kind of gal.

The thought of having to post something just for the sake of posting every day gives me a lot of anxiety. This anxiety is exponentially higher when I’m posting something that is really near and dear to my heart.

The moment I shared about my new offers in my IG stories was one of those.
But let’s back up a bit.

Back in December of 2021, I realized that the packages I had offered my Health Coach clients were not in alignment with who I was anymore. I’ve outgrown them since becoming an Online Business Manager back in 2019. Not just on a skill level, but also on a mindset level. I’ve learned so much about myself and what I value from working with clients and it was time to adjust my packages accordingly.

By early April of 2022, it had been a couple of months since my decision to change my offers.

Yet I hadn’t officially announced any of it.

I felt really excited about what I’ve created but I was scared to share it with the world. Scared of the reactions. Scared of not being able to live up to what I envisioned. Scared to step into the light and shine. So I took my sweet time.

Then on that first Monday in April, I finally published a few IG stories, announcing very briefly what my new package structure will be like.

Finally, progress. Or so I thought.

I was instantly hit with what Brené Brown would call a ‘Vulnerability Hangover’.

The Vulnerability Hangover

In general, a vulnerability hangover occurs after you’ve put yourself out there in a way that is deeply personal. It might happen only for a moment, maybe for a few hours or even days until you’ve recovered from it and carried on with your life.

Mine lasted for almost 2 months.

I wasn’t really consistently posting before that Monday in April, but at least I was doing something. After hitting publish on those stories, I felt paralyzed and completely stopped posting anything on social media. I was stuck behind this invisible barrier that I didn’t seem to get past.

It took me a while to understand what had happened and a bit longer to figure out how to move forward.

The short answer is: Posting these new offers was a move so far out of my comfort zone that I had to snap back fast and hide to feel safe again. Even though I understand now where I’m heading, I need to take a slower approach. Expand my comfort zone little by little and not with such a massive jump. It’ll still be scary at times and I’ll probably feel like puking more often than I’d like, but I will hopefully not end up in freeze mode again.

Moving Forward

So now I’m taking it slow. I’m posting on my terms and I’m doing that to be authentic and true to myself and what I need right now. Yes, I obviously want you to get value from this as well (and I really hope you do), but for right now, I just want to share my story with you. So if you’ve also been scared to show up authentically or have experienced a vulnerability hangover before, know that you’re not alone. We’ll get through this. Together.

This blog post is me being vulnerable and making a little step out of the comfort of the shadows and towards the light again. And I’d be honored to have you come along for the journey.

Love,
Jill

PS: If you haven’t already, please follow me on IG: @sensitiveandshining

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How a lighthouse completely changed the direction of my business

Jill Bucher — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 10:02:37 +0000

It all started with a dream of a lighthouse…

Back in 2011, I had a very vivid yet strange dream. So vivid, that I actually drew an image of what I had seen. The picture showed the light of a lighthouse from inside the tower. You could look out through the windows in every direction and see calm water.

The light itself wasn’t actually a light, it was a walnut lying on its side. In the dream, I felt the need to build a wooden frame for it to bring it back upright and secure it. The walnut itself was very special, as it was an amulet that you could open. Inside it held the most beautiful amber heart. I titled the image ‘The Space around my Heart’.

Once I was done drawing it, I realized that I recognized the shape of the heart inside the walnut as an actual piece of heart-shaped amber I had since I was a kid. I rummaged through some drawers and when I found it, I was amazed to see that the size I drew in my picture matched the amber heart perfectly. I remember being stunned, but eventually put it aside and didn’t think about it for a while.

A few years later I stumbled across a photo online. It was a picture taken from within a lighthouse, with windows all around looking out on calm water and right in the middle of the photo was the amber light. I was instantly reminded of that dream I had, so I saved the image. ‘What a fun coincidence’, I thought. And did nothing further with it for a while.

Finding my Lighthouse

Then in 2013, while I was living in Vancouver, BC, I somehow got the urge to find that photo again. I found it on my computer and luckily, I hadn’t changed the original file name. I googled the name and found out that the lighthouse in that picture used to be located in British Columbia on Galiano Island, only a ferry ride away from my location at the time. The lighthouse was unfortunately not there anymore, but I still ended my year in Canada on the little island that used to house it. And I thought that this was it, the final destination of my lighthouse journey.

I WAS WRONG.

While reading ‘Light is the new Black’ by Rebecca Campbell in 2020, I stumbled across a quote by Anne Lamott. The quote was

‘Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save, they just stand there shining.’

I felt weirdly connected to this quote, but I didn’t have a slightest clue what this would mean for me or my business some day.

Finding Myself

A little later I bought a beautiful oracle deck called the Lightseer’s Tarot by Chris-Anne. As I was flipping through the cards, I stopped at the Hermit card. I was mesmerized by it and couldn’t look away for quite a while. The Hermit is my personality card (if you’re into tarot, you’ll know what that means), but with all the other tarot decks I’ve seen, it never fully resonated with me. Until I found this deck and this card. I finally felt fully seen. The person in this picture was not only a woman, but she was sitting high up and she was … shining … just like a lighthouse.

Card by Chris-Anne (@pixiecurio);
Photo by Jill Bucher

In that moment, all the lighthouse pieces connected and I knew that this is at the core of who I am and what I need to do.

In August of 2021 I first posted about that quote and what it means to me and I’ve been aligning my business ever since.

Now, in March of 2022, I’ve completely shifted how I do business and I’m excited for my new offers. All inspired by a crazy dream and some weird coincidences, lighthouses and lots of shining.

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