Happy December, and happy holidays!! Each month we strive to provide you with a variety of helpful resources, tips, and practices to support your continued success, both personally and professionally. Because we work with a diverse demographic of clients, industries, and backgrounds, we aim to provide content equally as diverse. If a particular section doesn't resonate with you, that's okay! Our hope is that everyone can find at least one gold nugget per issue. 

Below, you will find information on this month's article from Crum Consulting, this month's development challenge, as well as general wellness reminders. We have a number of knowledge-forward articles available that explore a variety of professional and personal topics, all of which will challenge your current perspective, and push your continued growth. Each month, we aim to provide you with a new challenge to help facilitate your ongoing growth. These challenges will range in topics and applications, in an effort to focus on a variety of aspects of your life. If you are a recurring client with us, we will be following up on this month's challenge with you in session. If you don't currently have any sessions set up with us, and would like to discuss this challenge and others like it, please feel free to reach out to schedule a session with us! You can reply directly here if we have worked together in the past. If you are a new client, please click here to fill out a consultation form, and we will be in touch to schedule a session with you. We also provide new wellness reminders in the form of our stretch of the month, and wellness tip. Regardless of your background, these reminders will help improve your day to day health and wellness. 

December Article: This month's article is: Marketing Strategy; Not Everyone, Just More. The goal when creating a marketing strategy is not to attract everyone, just more; more people to interact with your brand, more consumers, more advocates, more markets, more demographics, etc. This is an important piece to highlight, as your strategy can easily do more harm than good when you try to focus on too much at once. In this article, we explore the ins and outs of what makes up a successful marketing strategy, the fundamentals required to build your strategy, the noticeable differences in strategies between a new business and a tenured business, and a breakdown of each fundamental of a successful marketing strategy to get you started. If you have any questions surrounding this month's article, or would like to further explore opportunities, please feel free to reach out to schedule a session with us! You can reply directly here if we have worked together in the past. If you are a new client, please click here to fill out a consultation form, and we will be in touch to schedule a session with you.

December Challenge: I challenge you to reflect, refresh, and renew.

→Professionally: Reflect on your business from the highest level; business plan / VTO, 1/3/5 year goals, revenue streams, workflows, processes, financial planning, marketing strategy, departments / roles, target market(s), operating hours and internal scheduling, ad campaigns, networking efforts, collaboration opportunities, training and certifications, diversity initiatives, products / services, etc. Document any opportunities you come across during your reflection, even if you don’t have the solution yet. Refresh what you can on your own, and escalate the remaining opportunities to your executive level meeting agenda to vet out with your team(s). Renew all of the opportunities, as development allows, and implement supporting documentation and workflows.

→Personally: Reflect on your personal life from the highest level; physical health, mental health, energy levels, eating habits, home life, overall organization, daily schedule, work-life balance, relationship dynamics, family time, self care, spending habits, personal look, lifelong learning habits, personal development, etc. Make a list of all of the opportunities you come across in your personal life. For each opportunity, write out 3-5 action items you can implement over the next few weeks to refresh your life. Renew your opportunities by implementing the action items you wrote out, and make sure to follow through with anything you implement. Don’t try to implement too many changes at once, as that will be setting yourself up for failure. Be mindful of your reality, and overall bandwidth, and implement these changes as best fits with your individual scope of practice.

Stretch of the month: Easy pose -  this stretch improves postural awareness, creates a foundation for meditation practices, and can help manage stress. When done in a relaxed manner, this pose activates the relaxation response and deactivates the stress response. Holding it strengthens core muscles, and stretches your groin and inner thighs. Click the (external) link to learn more, or simply google "easy pose"!

Wellness tip of the month: Focus on yourself, in order to focus on everything else. In the life of a go-getter, it is common to succumb to the daily grind by ignoring our mental and physical cues, in order to push through and make magic happen. We think that if we can just finish x, y, and z, that only THEN will we be able to take a break, or check in with ourselves. The trouble with this method is that it is reactive, as opposed to proactive. When we reach the point that every human reaches in their day of needing a break of some kind, our nervous systems are already at critical mass. Reacting to a nervous system on the brink of burning out makes for a rather unpleasant and time-consuming process to recover from. However, if we check in with ourselves about once an hour throughout the day, and actually tune in to really listen to and acknowledge our needs, we can take 5-15 minutes offline to get ourselves back to our top potential. During these check-ins, it is important to remove yourself from your current environment, and find somewhere quiet or peaceful to check in with your needs; do you need food, do you need 5 minutes of breathwork, do you need to close your eyes for 10 minutes, do you need a break from audible stimulation? Make space for yourself and your needs throughout your day to ensure your capability to reach and maintain your true potential.

"Your passion is your permission." -Jen Sincero

Thank you for being a pivotal part of our journey here at Crum Consulting. We would be nothing without you, and your continued support. Please feel free to share our content with others to pay it forward. We relish in receiving feedback, so if you have any suggestions or if you'd like to share your opinion on any of the content we have provided here, please let us know! If you have any questions about anything we covered here, or if you'd like to explore potential opportunities with Crum Consulting, we are here for you! Reach out anytime!

Until we meet again, take care of yourself, and others. Thank you.