Sometimes new beginnings happen even when we least expect…and frankly didn’t want any. Yes, spring is seen as a time for renewal, new life and new beginnings. But sometimes new beginnings happen even when we’re not planning on it. Last week, I was making some changes to my new website, ready to launch it and poof…I did something terribly wrong. I called Support for some help to find out that my blog and all the setup and design work I had spent months working on was gone.

I had been working on the site myself and had made some rookie design errors and truthfully didn’t really love the way the site was coming together, but I had spent so much time working on it that I had to forge ahead…right? Wrong. The site was gone and I was so disappointed, frustrated, and close to tears when the help desk folks delivered the bad news. But once I got over my pity party I was invigorated…like a woman on a mission to build a new site and build it fast.

I literally had to start over from square one, there was nothing left. Over the course of a weekend I was obsessed and got a completely new site ready to roll. It was amazing to me that the first version took so much time, effort, blood, sweat, tears but the second time around I worked for speed and got it done.

We so often let projects take more time than they need to. I think about this often. A mentor of mine prides herself in working very quickly and I’ve always admired her for that and wondered how I could be quicker in my work. In doing so I could instantly give myself a raise and have more time for building my business and spending with my family. So, even though I had not planned my fresh start this spring, I’ve got one and here’s what I learned:

1. Embrace a fresh start…even when you didn’t really want one – Take a look at areas in your business and life that may be pushing for a fresh start. I needed a fresh start with my aged website and my underperforming blog but had been procrastinating, nibbling around the edges, and not moving forward. Now, the momentum created by ruining my site is working in my favor. I’ve got a new site, a new blog and a new lease on life (okay, maybe that’s a bit dramatic)!
2. Learn from the past and embrace what’s to come – By losing all of my work and having to start over, I was able to instantly implement all the lessons I had learned from the mistakes on my first website and build it in record time.
3. Backup your work – Even in the age of the ‘Cloud’ when we tend to assume there’s always a backup copy of our stuff somewhere, as a small business we have to protect our digital assets and confirm that a backup is being created. Our website and digital assets are important! Okay, that’s enough of the tech stuff!

Well, I hope you can take a minute and look around the new site! It’s a work in progress, but getting there and I’m pretty proud of it so far.  Let me know what you think and I’d love you to become a subscriber so you’ll get notified when I post next time. Until then…enjoy spring and feel free to share your story of new beginnings!

Cheers!