The Next LVL
Welcome to our blog, The Next LVL, where our team shares relevant and useful information you can use to LVL-Up yourself, your business, and your lifestyle so you can #GetItHandled®.
Effective Strategic Advice Comes from Lived Experience, Not Hypotheticals in Business Books
What you need from a small business consultant is an approach built on lived experiences and the drive to go with you along the way.
Why You Need a Driven Team to Deliver Your Government Solution
Learn how fits into your culture and allows you to tap into our adaptability, drive, and asynchronous approach.
Rona Jobe's 5 Favorite Time Tracking Apps for Solopreneurs
Learn about Rona’s five favorites and how they can help you optimize your time
4 Tips for Getting through your Next Career Reinvention as an EFM or Military Spouse
Ways to reinvent your career as an EFM or MilSpouse.
9 Books to LVL-Up Your Summer Reading List
A mix of fiction and nonfiction books for your summer list.
“Now I’m Gonna Pretend I Didn’t Hear What I Clearly Just Heard”
LVL-Up uses GiANT's Five Voices tools to keep communications objective.
3 Reasons Solopreneurs Should Be Tracking Their Time
How time tracking helps solopreneurs be more efficient and profitable.
Five Tips for Hiring Your Next Remote Team Member
Hiring a remote employee can be challenging, but you can maintain productivity, connection, and a positive work culture with the right technology and platforms.
How Guiding Principles Attract a Values-Driven Team
Adopting company values that resonate with your team can unlock their internal drive and drive your entire business forward.
SMART Goals Are Not Always the Answer — Here’s Why
If your SMART goals keep failing, you may need to use HARD or FAST goals instead.
How to Use Your Vision to Create Business Goals
Want to know why you keep failing to reach your annual business goals? Because you are confusing your “vision” with your “goal.”
The Secret to Crushing Your Goals This Year is Creating a Quarterly Plan
As a small business owner, you're likely already juggling a lot of responsibilities. It can be tempting to put off business development until a later date; however, this can hinder your long-term growth and ultimately impact your bottom line.
5 Tips for Screen Recording Work Tasks to Document Processes and Train Others
Screen recording is one of the best ways to document processes. These 5 tips help you choose your tools and create stronger SOPs for your business.
Why Focusing on Your Identity is a Form of Self-Care
LVL-Up CSO Laura Jennings discusses how the work we do builds our identity and helps us practice self-care.
Tips to Scale Your Business Development while Managing your Team Capacity
As a small business owner, you're likely already juggling a lot of responsibilities. It can be tempting to put off business development until a later date; however, this can hinder your long-term growth and ultimately impact your bottom line.
Planning a SMART Event to Get Better Results
Using events to grow your pipeline and network can be a lot of fun, but one common mistake is not setting goals and measuring results for your events.
How good is AI in small business apps? Here's LVL-Up's Review.
LVL-Up Strategies did a deep-dive into the most talked-about AI content creation platforms to learn how they work, and to understand how they can help small businesses create content.
LVL-Up Team Shares Their Favorite Mom Hacks in Honor of Mother’s Day
LVL-Up brings you a wealth of knowledge and professional experience from women who have worked all over the world in different professional settings. But let’s be real here, a lot of our best people management skills have come from being moms and managing our households.
Small Business Marketing Plan Results in Free PR Opportunities
Strong and consistent marketing and business development planning led to unexpected public relations opportunities for a service-based small business owner.
Career Progression and Development as a Business Owner
The beauty of becoming a business owner is the freedom it entails. The freedom to make your dreams come true. You can create something that is uniquely yours and be successful if you are willing to put in the work. As a business owner, your career progression and development are now in your hands.
The Disadvantages of Remote, Asynchronous Work Part 2
As an EFM, remote and asynchronous work has many disadvantages such as fewer benefits, more work to build community, less oversight, larger feedback loops & fewer boundaries, and more distractions.
The Advantages (and Disadvantages) of Remote, Asynchronous Work
As an EFM, remote and asynchronous work has many advantages such as provide flexibility, help reduce gaps in employment and forward career progression.
Choice Value Motivation: Convincing People to Buy
Why do people make the decision to buy? And how can knowing more about what goes into these decisions affect your brand identity and messaging?
What is Process Documentation & Why Is It Important?
Process documentation is the gateway to better efficiencies, effectiveness, and eventually scalable growth in any budding company.
Finding the Best CRM for Your Business
Finding a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that’s perfect for your business can be overwhelming. When you consider the positive benefits to your daily business operations the stress and hours are well worth it.
Your First Steps in Building a Successful Team
If you’re uncertain about how to bring on a first team member or get anxious because you’ve never hired anyone before, you are not alone.
Learning Your Leadership Voice
GiANT Worldwide “Five Voices” method is a personality system meant to help you understand how to work with others. This training is vital to the success of our company as an entirely remote company because we place a lot of emphasis on how we work together as a team spread out across the globe.
Why Delegation Is Key For Entrepreneurs
As an entrepreneur the biggest challenge can be letting go. Here are three BIG ways that delegation can help.
Finding and Solving Your Pain Points
Discovering and solving your company’s pain points is the only way to make sure that your company can grow and develop into what you dream it to be.
Adaptability, a guiding principle put into action
LVL-Up has built a culture of adaptability for our staff and our clients by embracing change, taking risks, planning for the entire alphabet, and communicating clearly.
Five Reasons Your Business Needs a Well-designed and Cohesive Look
Building a visual representation of your business using fonts, colors, illustrations, and patterns takes organization and strategy. By taking the time to make your look cohesive and recognizable, your brand is elevated.
4 Ways to Build a Team that Turns Inspiration Into Action
To benefit from inspiration in action, you need a company culture that celebrates diversified thinking and creative problem solving.
Thriving with Colleagues you Trust like Family
Our clients rely on us to build strategies that are 1) fearless in their approach, yet adaptable in their execution; 2) solve complex problems with creative solutions; and 3) streamline multi-directional logistics into efficient processes.
Tips and Tricks For Moving To Developing Nations
We spent two years in Kinshasa and it was a fascinating place. I’m often asked about living in Congo and so I put together a list of things that I learned while serving there.
Collaboration, a guiding principle put into action
At LVL-Up team members are invited to join the team and help shape and grow the culture, the norms and the business.
Building a Supportive Remote Culture: Four Tips That Go A Long Way
Even in our remote work environment, LVL-Up’s founders have created a collaborative and suppportive culture that provides the psychological safety needed to grow and progress.
Five Ways to Find Meaningful Work as an EFM
Congratulations, you are starting the life of an EFM (Eligible Family Member). You have agreed to move every 2-3 years and will soon learn the weight of all of your clothes. You will become an expert at planning the unplannable.
How to Use Social Media as a Tool to Influence, not Sell
Getting hot leads and sales from social media is absolutely possible, but you or your sales team must dedicate daily time to generate and nurture those leads.
LVL-Up’s Genesis: Combining Small Business Needs with EFM Talent
Learn how LVL-Up Founder Rona Jobe used her experience in management consulting and the Foreign Service to launch LVL-Up Strategies.