It’s that crazy time of year for most businesses. You’re either trying to fill Christmas orders and beat the Australia Post shipping cut off or you’re trying to finish reports and jobs that need to be delivered before Christmas.

2015 has been a big year for everyone I’ve spoken too, so many changes, so many challenges but also plenty of great things too. I’ve seen a few new businesses start up and thrive from day one and I’ve seen another close it’s doors after fifteen years in business. There has just been no pattern for 2015, no predictions and no consistency.

As I frantically rush around to finish everything before Christmas Eve I have stopped to think about my year and how much my business has changed. After a 2014 filled with severe pregnancy illness and the early arrival of our second child I put everything on hold and focussed on survival rather than growth. Throughout the start of 2015 I concentrated on getting a little sleep when I could and making it to the end of each day in one piece. I was still just surviving and adapting to life with no day care and two children 2 and under who didn’t sleep. I look back now and wonder who was that woman!

As the year ticked away I realised I needed to get back into the real world again and reconnecting with my business contacts and friends outside of motherhood. I sat down one Saturday night and decided to pull myself together and start working again. To dip my toe back in the water I decided to do a 30 day challenge to help other businesses to grow their business and learn some marketing tips along the way. Since July was the start of the financial year I decided to launch on July 1. What a perfect time, it was meant to be. I checked my calendar to work out my promotion/writing period and realised I had actually lost a week. It was June 27. Oh well, I work better under pressure anyway ha!

I put it out there on my Instagram and sat down each day to write my daily newsletter and work out the daily tasks. I’ll admit, some days it was so hard and I was still writing it right before my 7am publishing deadline but I’d committed to showing up every day for my business and yours so I did it.

Looking back, this was the best thing I have done for myself and my business growth. When I committed to doing it I had no plan beyond the 30 days but I was turning up each day and loving what I was doing.

Midway through the challenge I was getting so many questions and great interaction from people doing my challenge and seeing results in their business as a result. This just reinforced I’d done the right thing committing to this and so I decided to turn it into an ebook to sell at the end with some bonus content. Again, why not put pressure on myself to get something done at the 11th hour! Thankfully I had great support from my husband which made the late nights and weekends that little bit easier.

Off the back of this little idea to get back into the real world, my business has grown in ways I couldn’t imagine. I started doing one on one workshops with people, building on the skills they learnt from the 30 day challenge and starting to put some systems and strategies in place to help them streamline their business and get results. My niche slowly changed and I found I was getting booked in advance rather than living week to week.

All this has happened so quickly with no plan and no systems in place to make things easier. I am balancing it all now but I know that I can’t go on like this long term.

So as 2015 draws to a close I am really looking forward to sitting down and planning out my 2016 and what my business looks like. I am going to concentrate on launching a couple of new products as well as streamline my workshops to allow for group sessions as well as some collaborations with other businesses.

As you can see my business world dramatically changed from one small action and now it’s time for me to build on this momentum and and make some great leaps forward.

My challenge to you today is to commit to doing one small action that will make a big difference to your business in 2016. What will you choose? Why not declare it publicly here today and I promise to keep you accountable.

Stay tuned as I will be publishing some key planning tools over the next few weeks to get you thinking about your year ahead.