Denken als Ondernemer: gebruik MindManager om je Bedrijf en Leven te Managen (post 4 van 4)

By: Miquiel Banks (Guest Blogger)

This is Part 4 of Miquiel’s guest blog series on how business owners use MindManager to survive and thrive. Make sure you read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of the series.

Hello dear friends. As you know, my name is Suzie Martinez. My journey began at Beef O’Brady’s four weeks ago with a single question. How can I be more organized in my business when I can’t afford an assistant? And I’m baffled now, seeing how far I’ve come. How do I explain it to you?

How did I go from begging for an assistant and being scared of failure to being invited to present my 2019 plans to Publix and Tampa General Hospital, two of the biggest prospects I’ve ever had? I’ll tell you how. The one thing that has been consistent in my journey, despite the challenges, pain points and doubts, is my desire to be better, and to make the absolute most out of my time. I’ve worried more about who I am becoming, rather than all the things I need to do.

But how did I fix all those pain points to be able to get to this enlightened stage in my business life without forking over tonnes of cash on an assistant? One word: MindManager. But before I get too ahead of myself, let me back up and be professional.

Mind mapping fixed my life, but MindManager was my software of choice.

It opened up my work life to miraculous things that I would have never dreamed of a year ago. Looking back, it’s incredible to reflect on some powerful moments that I’ve experienced recently. I met with executives from Harbour Island, promoted a BBQ Festival, redesigned the Gasparilla Festival for 2018, and still managed to keep up with my fitness routine and have plenty of down time. That’s all thanks to mapping out my timelines and organizing my priorities. No assistant needed, and more time for myself!

Susie’s Journey to Discovering Tiers in Mind Maps

So you may be wondering what’s so special about mind mapping. I mean, it looks nice, but does it actually work? And I can tell you, based on my experience, the answer is yes! Mind mapping pushed me to think more clearly and get to the root of any problem. I also found it to be a great incentive in my business. By using MindManager to manage my business, I was able to go from building to marketing to growth to expansion and, currently, to being at the top of my field in the Tampa area.

But after reaching that point, I stepped back and asked myself a simple question. Why am I in business? Not in a monetary sense, but rather asking myself “why” I do what I do for myself and for my clients. The true test of a business owner is not your competition, or the market or your value in the marketplace. It boils down to change. Are you adapting to the future or resisting the future? I answered  honestly – I am adapting, but I had hit a small bump in the road.

I realized, after climbing the ladder of success so quickly, that my ladder was on the wrong building. That’s a little bit more than a small bump in the road, if you ask me! But we’ll come back to that later. First, let’s look at my journey from the outside. From an outsiders perspective, it may look like I’ve been living the business woman’s dream – lots of success in a short period of time, and a thriving business in my home city. But the problem with that outsider perspective is that is doesn’t show the off-screen incidents.

No one talks about the the long hours, driving from meeting to meeting, being stuck in traffic and living off of Power Bars and frozen food. Despite all of my success, and my ability to do more thanks to MindManager, I still felt like I was barely keeping my head above the water and that, eventually, I would either burnout or come crashing down.  After recognizing that there was a problem, I sat down and mapped out what could be done about it, and I had an epiphany.

It was not about work ethic, brains, marketing, disposition or etiquette. My problem was simple. It was about management and organization. Mind mapping was a godsend for me. It allowed me to work more productively and more efficiently, but also changed the way I looked at the world. And when I was able to slow down a bit, I realized that I still had a long way to go before I was truly operating at my full potential.

Even though I had my tasks mapped out, there was still something missing. Why didn’t I feel fulfilled with my recent success? That doubt – the missing ingredient – was the bump in the road I just mentioned. My ladder was on the wrong building.

So I went back to the drawing board. I looked at my maps again, and noticed something I hadn’t realized before. I began to realize that my life could be broken up into tiers. Rather than a mash of tasks and information, I realized that there was a natural organization to what I was doing. It was such a simple concept – put things where they belong, and tackle each tier individually.

How Discovering Tiers Changed Susie’s Business Outlook

Take a look at the new map I created below that shows how all of my work and tasks could be grouped into tiers using mind maps.

As I began to wrap my mind around this idea of organizing my work and personal life into tiers, I began to realize that this system is all around us. You just have to take notice and apply the concept to your own life. Whether it’s in religion, business, sports, or anything else, using tiers to organize information and tasks is a natural way for people to make sense of the world. And I had just realized that MindManager could help me do it even more easily!

When I began to understand the concept of tiers, I realized that this was why mind mapping was so much better than anything I had be doing before. It allowed me to move the tiers around, rename them and reshape my ideas until the tiers made sense. And the more I did it, the harder it became for me to imagine going back to the alternative. I started disliking the stringent, one dimensional nature of spreadsheets, and started favoring the open and flexible interface of MindManager. With a new outlook on my life using tiers, I was able to think more quickly, more efficiently and with more stability.

And what resulted was that I no longer felt like my ladder was on the wrong building. I started to feel that I had a real sense of direction, and the best tool and plan to get me there.

When I got home, I open my linked maps and prepared for my big meetings with Publix and the Tampa General Hospital. Like most business owners would be, I was so thrilled when I found the opportunity. But then the doubt had begun to creep in – I became convinced it may have been premature to think I could take on such a large client. But after coming to this epiphany about how tiers are my way forward to being better organized and more creative, I realized that I could prepare for anything. A meeting, a car dealership campaign, a school giveaway, a financial meeting, or a planning session – I could tackle any of those by using the power of tiers and mind mapping with MindManager.

And as I mapped out my meeting and proposal into tiers, I was amazed at how simple running such a complex business could be. At the top of was Business and Personal Management. Their importance was paramount.

Next came the arduous process of Project Management. In this category, I lumped in projects, stories, data and content.

The final piece of the puzzle was publishing. How was I going to promote my clients and optimize their social media experience? This piece pushed me to think in new ways and, thanks to MindManager, my brainstorming sessions yielded some great results.

Now that I knew where everything fit, I could address each with the proper attention, and resolve my issues more quickly and efficiently. Thanks to the power of mind mapping, and my new found ability to organize my life and business into tiers, I feel very confident in the growth of my business going into the future.

As a courtesy, and a thank you for reading about my story, I’ll leave you with a few questions to hopefully set you on the right path in your business.

Can you differentiate between your business and personal problems? Are your personal pain points affecting your business decisions? Are your problems at the project tier or the personal tier? What tier of your life seems off a bit?

If you’re struggling to find the answer to any of those questions, then I recommend you consider downloading a free trial of MindManager to help you work through to find the answer!

Thank you for following my story! It’s been a pleasure.

Signing off,

Susie Martinez